word-less Wedn.

A borrowed book meme or check this one out!

A book meme--what could be more fun? A meme about books. I'm borrowing this from a talented blogger/writer, Anno and since it is an open invitation, give it go yourself. I'd be interested to know your choices. . .all in the spirit of getting to know you better. So,

Four Childhood Books I've read:
1. Little Women / Louisa May Alcott
2. The Secret Garden / Frances Hodgson Burnett
3. Black Beauty / Anna Sewell
4. The Little Prince / Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Four “So-Called Classic” books read and never forgotten.

1. Les Miserables / Victor Hugo
2. Catcher in the Rye / J.D. Salinger
3. To Kill A Mockingbird / Harper Lee
4. My Antonia / Willa Cather

Four personal modern “Classic Novels”

1. Prodigal Summer / Barbara Kingsolver
2. Father Melancholy's Daughter / Gail Godwin
3. Caramello / Sandra Sisneros
4. Fugitive Pieces / Anne Michaels

Four authors I've read again and again

1. Daphne Du Maurier
2. Chaim Potok
3. Anne Tyler
4. Oscar Hijuelos

Four authors &/or books I'll never read again...ever

1. Tobacco Road / Erkskine Caldwell
2. Bonfire of the Vanities / Tom Wolfe
3. The Lovely Bones / Alice Sebold
4. Cold Mountain / Charles Frazier (just too heart wrenching)

Four books on my “To-be-read-list"
1. John Adams / David McCullough
2. The History of Love / Nicole Krauss
3. The Audacity of Hope / Barack Obama
4. When You Are Engulfed in Flames / David Sedaris

Three Fiction and one Non-Fiction I’d take to a desert island (instead of 2 each)

84, Charing Cross Road / Helene Hanff
Bird by Bird / Anne Lamott
We The Living / Ayn Rand
Carry On, Jeeves / P. G. Wodehouse

Four Book recommendations I have followed (and loved)

On Beauty / Zadie Smith
Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
Women Who Run With Wolves / Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Pride & Prejudice / Jane Austen

The last lines of one of my favorite books:

He had always been more sensitive than the people about him to the appeal of natural beauty. His unfinished studies had given form to this sensibility and even in his unhappiest moments field and sky spoke to him with a deep and powerful persuasion. But hitherto the emotion had remained in him as a silent ache, veiling with sadness the beauty that evoked it. He did not even know whether any one else in the world felt as he did, or whether he was the sole victim of this mournful privilege. Then he learned that one other spirit had trembled with the same touch of wonder. . . And there were other sensations, less definable but more exquisite, which drew them together with a shock of silent joy: the cold red of sunset behind winter hills, the flight of cloud-flocks over slopes of golden stubble, or the intensely blue shadows of hemlocks on sunlit snow. When she said to him once: "It looks just as if it was painted!" it seemed to Ethan that the art of definition could go no farther, and that words had at last been found to utter his secret soul. . .

from Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Catch me if you can!

Time marches on. . . .
we're highlighting C on Round 4 of ABC Wednesday.

C for me always reminds me of my maiden name, Cuoio, which means leather in Italian. Perhaps there were shoemakers in our family. As leather goes, I do know there were cousins who left Italy and traveled to South America to work as gauchos on ranches there. Then there's the sugary delight with never ending versions: the 'Betty Crocker' cupcake from my favorite place, Cupcake in Minneapolis. If you'd like, I'll meet you there for lunch; Tomato Basil Soup and a baby cake, o.k.?

American Impressionist painter, Mary Cassatt with several of many paintings and drawings of children. My favorite being the last on the right because Erica used her left index finger as a binkie when she was a baby too. Sweet memories and likely some needed orthodontic work as a result!

The book that most influenced me during my tentative adolescence, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. While the rest of my lit class was involved with the class reading list, I kept this book in my desk and surreptitiously read it instead. Eloquent, tortured bad-boy Holden Caulfield became my James Dean and I've never quite let go of that crush.Finally, one of my favorites, Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli.

Visit Mrs Nesbitt to see other bloggers' C-words for ABC Wednesday.

C for ABC Wednesday

This week's letter is C and I offer three flowers : Cosmos, Calendula and Chicory (ok, I know its a weed but such a fine and true blue!) plus a closeup of a painting by Mary Cassatt and a memory from the late '60's.

Summertime, Mary Casssatt, c. 1894

See more contributions for ABC Wednesday here and a word about 'summer'.