Since everyone is talking about roles

I think roles are only okay when the people performing those roles consent to do so.

In a marriage, for instance, I think that if you're going to have roles, there needs to be a discussion about what those roles will be and both people need to agree. I think going into a marriage with an assumed role, or being told what your role is rather than choosing what it will be, becomes a breeding ground for resentment and unhappiness.  And I think the roles need to be up for discussion as your lives change and times change.

I know that I want to choose what I do in my life myself.  I don't want it to be told to me or chosen for me, or assumed for me - whether by a person, loved one, society or tradition.  I am the master of my own fate and I get to choose.  I choose to make that decision with my spouse and considering kind advice from loved ones, but ultimately, it's up to me.

You can love roles.  You can hate roles.  But I don't think anyone should be able to tell you what your role is other than yourself.



p.s. Commenting is turned off.  Here's a cute polar bear.

Follow up

Well, it didn't knock Pride and Prejudice out of the top spot, but I think it's in my top five.

I listened to the audiobook, and as it is set in Australia, they had an Australian guy read the book. He sounds just like the man from Snowy River and I pretty much want to marry him now.  I loved the main character, Tom, in this book.  He is a Good Man, which is my favorite type of male character.  There are exquisite thoughts about life and raising children and so much of it reflected how I feel about my own children and the experiences I've had with them.

This is a Sad Book.  I didn't think that I could love a Sad Book so much, but I do.  I think it's obvious that I am a Happy Book person and that's how I roll.  But I still enjoyed every minute of this, even if so many of them had me silently weeping in the car on my way to work or while laying in bed with Colin sleeping near me.  It was actually kind of cathartic.

A couple of things kept this out of the #1 spot for me, which I'd be happy to chat about with anyone who reads the book, but it's still very good.  I certainly won't look at a lighthouse without a huge amount of sentiment (and maybe a little heartache) any time soon.

2012 Reading Review

In 2012 I read 62 books and a total of 20, 391 pages.  That's a lotta meatballs.  More than I have read in any past year ever.  Here are the charts that Goodreads does so nicely:

Number of books read:

And pages read:

I have five favorites from the year.  They are:

For Darkness Shows the Stars, which is my #1 favorite.

#2 and 3 are a tie between these two:

Ready Player One

Throne of Glass

Followed by two sequels in dystopia series, which are:

Pandemonium (Sequel to Delirium)

and Prodigy by Marie Lu (Sequel to Legend)


If I was a good blogger I would chat about why those are my favorites or whatnot.

But I'm not a good blogger.

Deal with it.

But I will say, I'm already reading a book right now that might be my very favorite for 2013 and might even knock Pride and Prejudice out of place for my Favorite Book.  Basically, I'm saying that I want to put down roots in a good neighborhood with this book and read it again and again until we're old and grey/tattered and earning social security.  I love it that much.  But I haven't finished it yet so we'll see.  (more later)

I don't have any book resolutions for 2013.  Oh, wait, I do.  I have a goal to read more Book Club books (because I am the head of the book club team at my library).  But I don't have a number-of-books-read goal.  Hitting 62 was pretty cool last year (that's about 5 per month) as well as most pages ever.

As far as general 2013 resolutions go, I resolve to keep treading water and to try to not get too dramatic about how I feel most of the time.  2012 was a very lovely year, thanks to Michael and his efforts to make it "The Year of Fun."  We did have lots of fun last year.  If I have anything to say about it, 2013 will be good, too.  Hopefully.

Moar happiness

Maybe this blog will just become about cats

Watching this makes me immensely happy:

Ebony and Ivory

We have noticed some differences between our cats.  As in: we think one is retarded, and the other isn't.  Okay, retarded isn't the right word.  She's just... odd. 

These are our two cats:

I love both my cats.  Well, I'm using the word "love" loosely here.  They both have strengths and weaknesses.  Abba is very well behaved.  Rocky is very smart and affectionate.  I wouldn't part with either of them.  But as with pretty much everything, there is a flip side to the coin.  Rocky is naughty, crafty, and tries to get away with drinking the milk from our cereal bowls when we're not looking.  Abba is just... "special."

Take tonight, for example.  We came home from a movie to find that Rocky had left us a present on the back doorstep.

This is the whole reason I got cats in the first place.  As far as I'm concerned, Rocky is finally pulling his weight and earning his cat chow.  Good cat.

...And then there's Abba.  I was getting ready for bed and she came frantically into the room, communicating something like this:

Oh, Abba. 
Abba frequently stares at the wall above my bed.  There is nothing on this wall.  Nothing is happening on the wall.  There aren't even shadows or cobwebs on this wall.  But she keeps a steady eye on it!  Yes, sir.  If that wall puts one toe out of line, she will be on top of it!

Sometimes Abba comes up to you, panicked, crying, "Meow!  Meow!  Meow!  Meow!  Meow!  Meow!" desperately trying to get your attention like someone going, "Hey!  Hey!  Hey!  Hey!  Hey!  Hey!" 
Until I finally can't take it anymore and turn to her and say, "WHAT, Abba?!!"

And then she gives me a look so confused and irritated, she could be a teenage girl who's just been interrupted in the middle of a call on her cell phone, as if to say, "What?!  NOTHING.  Geez."

Yes.  Abba is the ditsy blonde of the family.
It's what we love about her.
Because if we didn't have her here, life would just make too much sense.  We need Abba.

Day 30 of my really long book discussion

I think we're somewhere around 6 months for this "30 day" book discussion.  Sorry.  I was depressed and then I got pregnant, it's lucky I somehow came up with 29 blog posts before this.

So this post is about Your Favorite Book.

A few months ago I came up with this great idea on how to tell this post with something insightful to say, etc, etc.  And then the next day I forgot what that insightful thing was supposed to be.  So I kept putting it off thinking it would come back to me.  It didn't, so I'm just going to tell you what my favorite book is:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

I know.  It's not fantasy or sci-fi or young adult.  The first time I read this was actually in college, but not for a class.  I worked in a tech support office, and in between calls I took advantage of a program on the computer that had a collection of books, many of them public domain books (I also ready The Secret Garden this way).  So I slowly started working my way through Pride and Prejudice in between my phone calls, and I steadily became more engrossed until I was rushing home after work and bringing up the novel online to finish my chapters and see if Mr. Darcy was going to talk to Elizabeth again.

I didn't know very much about the book before reading it, as this was 2004 and the Keira Knightley movie didn't come out until the next year.  I think I had seen the BBC version but didn't remember a thing.  Anyway, experiencing the twists and turns of Elizabeth's subtle relationship with Mr. Darcy (with no prior knowledge of it) had me holding my breath and staying up late.  I think this is the reason that the book remains my favorite book today, because the emotions that I experienced while reading it were so captivating that they made a lasting impression on me, and I guess I am still pretty captivated (if the way I continue to seek out Jane-Austen-y movies and books is any indication).

One of the biggest impressions the book made on me was the way that Elizabeth's feelings towards Mr. Darcy slowly, slowly changed as she started to re-evaluate his behavior and realized that she had been mistaken about him in so many instances.  And not only that, she also began to realize that Mr. Darcy was a good, thoughtful, breathtakingly honorable man.  And she had just rejected his marriage proposal.  Nice one, Elizabeth.

Anyway, like I discussed in my last blog post, everyone has different preferences, and those preferences are all okay.  If you don't like Pride and Prejudice, that's fine.  If you do, right on!  But I think the Favorite Book is a highly personal choice that is usually shaped by our personal experiences and views, and in a way, that's really cool that we're all so unique and can enjoy so many different things.

So what is YOUR favorite book?  When is the first time you read it?  Do you think that seeing movies can ruin experiencing a book for the first time, or are movies beneficial for exposing a wider audience to books?

Thanks for doing the book discussion with me, everyone.  I know it's been a long-haul, but it's been really fun to hear about your experiences and talk books with all of my friends and family.