Friends and Books - Can't live without em!

Above is a most lovely Thank You card that I received from my friend Karen. We work together. Karen was recently married to the wonderful Jody.....so for her wedding shower I gave her some ingredients for making a scrapbook as she had voiced an interest in making a scrapbook. You can imagine how much fun I had picking out papers, stickers, and a small album! Fast forward several months and now Karen has the scrapbooking/card making/rubber stamping fever! So we get to compare notes and I have the pleasure of watching her dive enthusiastically into this new craft! It is a blast! Tomorrow she is coming over after work so I can show her my stamp room. Which I half-cleaned in her honor! Woohoo!
Above and below are the pictures that my friend Jane got when she was in Sandwich and one from an antique shop in Volo, Illinois. Out of the tons of people at the Sandwich antique market my Mom and I ran into Jane and her husband, Mike! That was fun. We got to ooh and ahh over each other purchases. I love this picture of these two gals in their formals and below, the picture of this little girl with the birdie is so sweet!
And this one below, the little girl with the phone, is priceless!
I was online e-mailing with Lainie today. She is a fellow Alphabetica girl. We were talking about books because she recently finished a journal entry that prominently featured the names of authors, go to http://knitandpurlgrrl.blogs.com/my_weblog/ to see this really cool piece of work. It is the one with the number 26 on it (as in 26 letters of the alphabet!). Anyway, Lainie reads even more books a year than I do. I told her I was going to send her some of my best books lists....Of course, right now I can't find last year's list, but I did find a list I made of Four Star Books.......the books that I can highly recommend, wait, the books that I can beg you to read because they are PERFECT!!! I have them listed in categories: Memoirs, Non-Fiction, Fiction, and Kid's books......just so I have fodder to write about all week, let's take each category a day at a time.............

Today's category is MEMOIRS:

1. Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
2. All Over but the Shoutin by Rick Bragg *
3. Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl *
4. 84 Charring Cross Road by Helene Hanff
5. The Lunch Box Chronicles by Marion Winik
6. Looking Back by Lois Lowry
7. The Cliff Walk by Don Snyder
8. Dear Exile by Hilary Liftin and Kate Montgomery
9. Safekeeping by Abigal Thomas
10. My Own Country by Abraham Verghese
11. Expecting Adam by Martha Beck
12. Blackbird by Jennifer Lauck *
13. Needles by Andie Dominick
14. Being Brett by Douglas Hobbie *
15. Motherland by Fern Schumer Chapman *
16. Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott
17. I Closed My Eyes by Michele Weldon
18. 50 Acres and a Poodle by Jeanne Marie Laskas *
19. Lummox by Mike Magnuson *
20. God Said Ha by Julia Sweeney
21. It Takes a Worried Man by Brandan Halpin *
22. Lucky by Alice Seebold
23. When Katie Wakes by Connie May Fowler
24. An Italian Affair by Laura Fraser *
25. Raising Blaze by Debra Ginsberg
26. Tumbling After by Susan Parker *
27. Without Reservations by Alice Steinbach *
28. A Slant of Sun by Beth Kephart
29. Waiting for My Cats to Die by Stacy Horn
30. Bald in the Land of Big Hair by Joni Rodgers
31. Change Me into Zeus' Daughter by Barbara Robinette Moss
32. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

Okay, that is a long list, but memoirs are my favorite genre. Love em!!! Anyway, copy the list, and then go to Amazon and look up each title to see what they are about. There is not a bad one in the bunch......I have put a * sign by the ones that are must reads! I would call them total 5 star, total perfect, can't put it down books.

Please leave feedback if you have read any of these.....please!