Continuation of other post (see other blog)

So our book club meets tomorrow, but since I live with Loralee who is choosing our next book I got found out early what to read. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Loralee told me that she bought it for herself and Joni, this girl in our bookblub whose birthday it was yesterday (referenced on other blog) and that it was so cheap because all the Barnes and Noble classic series were 50% off. They are already really cheap already so I was like awesome. Time to add to my already unread library.

I didn't really set a restriction on myself like I know I should when I go into bookstores. Well, right from the door, do I head to the classics section? No, I go to Journals. I've been wanting to buy a new journal, leather bound and really cool looking. Something that says "this has got some really interesting life stories in it" to my future progeny. Boy will they be disappointed. Especially, if I never write in it which I don't keep a consistent journal. I think the last time I wrote in a journal was over a year ago. I wanted to start one on my birthday and then every year my gift to myself would be a new journal but that didn't happen. Well, back to the journal section. I saw this really cool one that to me said what I wanted it to say but it wasn't leather bound and I really wanted a leather bound one too. As you can see I said too as in also. Yes I bought two journals. They were not that cheap either. One of them will be my travel journal that I take to Europe with me and I think whenever I travel anywhere. It's a small leather bound book so it won't be too cumbersome to take with me.

Okay now it was time to head over to the classics section. I knew exactly where it was because I have bought several things from there. Its not really a section more like a display. I was afraid that it would have ones that I already had but lo and behold it had lots I didn't have but are on my list to read. So I loaded up with Les Miserables, Great Expectations, Heart of Darkness, Count of Monte Cristo, Walden Pond, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson, and Canterbury Tales. There might be another one in there but I can't remember it at the moment. So I am set for some major classic reading and my arms were overflowing But that's not all. Oh no. I needed to check one more thing.

Our neighbor and Loralee's whatever, David, was telling us (or really Loralee, I was just there) about his reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories and how good they were. He brought the book over and it is pretty thick with over twenty stories to read. So I decided to see if the store had it. They did but a little pricey. Ah to heck with it, I'm sure I'll really like it. I had never read anything by Fitzgerald before but I decided to be adventurous. Might have been smarter to start off with a smaller more economical book of stories to read but I guess time will tell. Okay that's all. I new I was going to be spending a pretty penny on all these books so I tried talking myself out of getting one of the journals. But I would not be budged. I promised myself that I would write in them and fill up each and every page. My progeny would not be disappointed, well at least not in the fact that there is something to read.

Well, got up to the register and requested that the clerk tell me how much we were at after ringing in all the classics. He did $20. Not bad for all those. So I said keep going. It felt kind of like I was on the Price is Right but I knew I was already gonna lose (hello the prices are right on the books). Next came the Fitzgerald book. That doubled it. "Ooooh" I could hear the audience in my head say as I had possibly made a bad decision. But I said I'm gonna continue, Bob. Don't think that was really the clerk's name but go with me. So next came the journals. Another $35.00. With a grand total of $76.82. "Oh, Cassie, I'm sorry but you have overbid and lost the game", says Bob, "but we have some nice consolation prizes fo ryou, which are these books and a nice debit out of your checking account." Crap I gave him the wrong card.

The Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan

I'm not big into non-fiction. Well, in other words it is not usually my first choice of what to read. I first became introduced to non-fiction my first two years of college because I had to read certain books: the biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Frederick Douglas, Jihad vs. Mcworld, and another book about surviving in America on minimum wage or something like that. I came to find that they were all really interesting and enjoyable to read.

And this one was no exception. I have not read any of Amy Tan's books even though I have wanted to read The Joy Luck Club and I loved the movie. Basically I was just going off my mother's reccommendation. It is made up of a collection of essays, speeches and stories of her life. So at times she get repetitive because she talks about the same thing in a lot of speeches but some delve more deeper than others.

This book was extremely interesting and covered a lot of different topics. Mothers and daughter relationships, friendships, dealing with medical issues in ourselves and in our loved ones, and even racism in the world of writing. Though all of these topics are serious things to consider she knows when to put in a little bit of her humor to cut the tension. One of my favorite parts was when she explains how people analyze and her books, college students write there thesis on her, not just on her books, but on her. It was so fun to hear her refute their findings. It makes you think of how complicated you look into books that you are told are great masterpieces when the author was just trying to tell a story and it's just a coincidence that patterns arise. I thought it was hilarious.

Another enjoyable part about reading this book was that I had borrowed my mother's copy so it had some lines underlined and they were quite interesting read as her daughter. For example: "My mother believed in reincarnation and she believed I was someone from her past, a woman she had obviously wronged. Why else had I come back as her daughter to torment her so?" "How could I have been so stupid not to know this all these years. It had been so simple to make my mother happy. All I had to do was say I appreciated her as my mother." Okay so that's really the only two, but I thought that it was quite funny and a little offended to read and see it underlined. Later, after I became less self-centered, I realized maybe she was looking at herself as a daughter. It's hard to think of my mother as a daughter sometimes. Not that she was one that tormented her mother or anything, but she had some sort of a relationship with her mother. Which it has recently become interesting to observe other girl's relationships with their mother and how different they all are. Amy Tan had a traumatic relationship with her mother but it ended well sort of. My mom is like my best friend and it surprises me when others don't have the same relationship.

Other quotes that my mom underlined but I liked them too and so I was just a little lazy to underline any of my own. Get off my back.

"And I guess that is the role of both an editor and a friend--to have that confidence in another person, that the person's best is natural and always possible, forthcoming after an occasional kick in the butt."

"Memory feeds imagination, and my imagination is glutted with a Thanksgiving of nightmares." I have never had the experience of a Thanksgiving nightmare, well there is the one time that I was so distraught that I missed all the gorging and I had to heat up a plate because the family couldn't wait. I had to go and cry in the pantry. It was the first time I felt like I had missed Thanksgiving. But other than that my Thanksgivings have been really pleasant but I guess others have really bad ones. I have yet to see a movie about Thanksgiving that was pleasant all the way through.

"Who would be frank enough to warn that my husband might exchange me for a younger woman unless I forced him to buy me jewels so expensive it would be impossible for him to leave both me and gems behind?"