Penny Raile

I Hate My Purse

I love Nora Ephron.  She makes me laugh, snicker and say out loud "Amen."  The older you are, the funnier the book.  But you don't have to have a wrinkly neck to love every minute you spend reading I Feel Bad About My Neck. 

My favorite part was about hating your purse.  I have been searching for the perfect purse ever since I started carrying a purse and have yet to find one.  After reading Nora's book, I realize it is not the purse I hate, but the fact that it represents my "negligent housekeeping and ongoing failure to throw anything away."  (This is when I said Amen!)

Please read it, you will not feel alone in the world any longer.

Mixed-Media Collage Jewelry: New Directions in Memory Jewelry

Janette Schuster, Artfest friend, has a book coming out in August called Mixed-Media Collage Jewelry: New Directions in Memory Jewelry.

I am pre-ordering it from Amazon as I am suggesting you all do the same.  I have personally seen Janette's work and it is fabulous.

Here is a brief description from her publisher:

The book showcases 25 innovative how-to projects created by Janette and 11 other talented jewelry artists, including Thomas Mann, Stephanie Jones Rubiano, Linda O’Brien, and Amy Hanna, just to name a few. In it, Janette shows you how to use your own personal keepsakes, including vintage and new family photos, travel souvenirs, and found objects, to create one-of-a-kind wearable art that celebrates your life events, relationships, and passions.

Back To Reading

Finally, I finished reading Napoleon and Josephine, An Improbably Marriage.  Quite fascinating.  Much like a soap opera.  Also, I learned a lot about French history without being bored with it.  I would recommend it to anyone.

Current book: Michelangelo & the Pope's Ceiling.  It is hard to believe that the Sistine Chapel could be so interesting.  Reading is now competing with drawing zentangles.

Last night, an electrician installed the light fixture I purchased recently.  The light is a great loft type fixture - very industrial with four strong lights.  It is for above my two giant worktables.  Once again, I was deceived.  The fixture looked big in the store.  Above my tables, it looks wimpy.  It only shines on half of the table space. Back to the drawing board.

Oh, I must tell you about the fight that Mabel and JJ had last night.  It was a real fight, not a play fight.  I brought home high quality cat nip in a toy that looks like a fabric cigar.  I tossed it out of the bag and Mabel got to it first.  She clung on to it with all four paws while twisting deliriously on the rug.  JJ tried to take it away from her so she laid on top of it and growled at him.  JJ then starting biting her neck.  The whole scene was getting ugly.  Finally, I put it away.  I did not want to see blood.

Required Reading

The Looming Tower was recommended to me by friend Diane Parks.  After reading it, I believe it should not just be recommended but required reading of every American.

The book outlines the historical roots of Al Qaeda that can actually be traced back to Greeley, Colorado of all places.  The background stories of Bin Laden and Zawahiri are interesting and enlightening. 

If oil was taken away from the entire Arab world, it would produce less than than the Finnish company of Nokia with less than 8,000 employees.  There are only about 10,000 books translated by Arabic translators.  They have little resources to understand our world.

The Islamics have no plan.  All they want to do is destroy and take over.  They have no goal or plan for society.

Even after Homeland Security was created, the FBI and the CIA continue to be staffed by Irish and Italian descendants.  Arab applicants are shut out leaving the agencies with no one that speaks Arabic creating no human intelligence.

This was not a hard book to read.  It went slower than most for me because of all the similar Arab names and keeping track of all the networks.  But I found myself drawn back to the book every day until I was finished.

Reading Project

Part of my 101 Things To Do In 1001 Days is to read books I should have read when I was younger.  As soon as I was done with the Harry Potter series, I started Slaughter-House-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.  It was a very odd transition from Harry fighting Lord Vordemort to Billy Pilgrim and the fire bombing of Dresden, Germany in World War II. 

However, I must say that Slaughter-House-Five well deserves being called an American classic.  This unconventional narrative has us following forward and backward the time travels of Billy Pilgrim, a prisoner of war, who has become unstuck in time and abducted by aliens from the planet of Tralfamadore.

My introduction of the writing of Kurt Vonnegut (who just recently died), makes me want to read more of his work.  But in the meantime, I have started my second classic on my list, A Wrinkle In Time by Madeline L'Engle.  I was hooked after reading only a few pages.

Harry Is Scary

I have now completed the entire Harry Potter Series.  The last two books were great.  However, if I were a child reading this, I would be extremely traumatized.  How do kids today go to bed without having nightmares?

This is a violent, bloody book with giant "people eating" spiders, enormous snakes, wands that can kill, mental and physical torture, friends who are lost and an evil enemy that has split his soul seven different ways to secure immortality. 

I resisted the temptation of looking at the back of the book to see if Harry makes it to the end.  You will have to read it yourself to find out. 

I must say I was impressed how J.K. Rowling pulled everything together and her cleverness through all the books.

Perhaps now I can get to my "High School Reading List."

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I finished reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower this weekend.  The book is written with a series of letters to an anonymous person from a fifteen year old named "Charlie."  This coming of age book struck my fancy, and I would highly recommend it. (Unless you are offended by the awkward time of a teenage adolescent which includes sex and drugs.)

Besides reading this weekend, I took in the movie Ratatouille.  Loved it!  I would recommend the movie to anyone but my mother who absolutely despises rodents - especially rodents in the kitchen.

The creative forces were pushing me over the last few days.  I saw a drawing of a fat cat I made in my sketch book many years ago.  I decided to try to make it out of fabric.  With no pattern, I cut out a huge fat cat body, a tiny cute cat head and four stubby paws.  Once I put it together, it started talking to me.  It needed more.  So I added a lime green ruffle collar and the cutest lime green party hat complete with black feathers.  The cat was greedy, it wanted more.  So I made a tiny quilt and embroidered it with MOUSE KILLER and put it on a wire flag pole so it could hold it.  Then the cat said it needed proof it was a mouse killer.  So I promised I would make a mouse for it tonight.