The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch

Heads up, this one's a tearjerker. A little background about the author. Randy Pausch is a professor of Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon University, and he also previously taught at the University of Virginia. He has extensive knowledge in computer programming and is a firm believer in living your childhood dreams. He lives with his wife and 3 kids in Virginia. In 2006 he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer - which is terminal - and given only months to live.

He was asked to give a "last lecture" - where professors are asked to consider their demise and to spread their story now while they still can. Pausch's last lecture is infamous at this point; I heard his story on Oprah earlier this year, and when my boyfriend - a computer nerd himself - purchased this book, I knew I would read it immediately. His story is heartbreaking - but he is the face of positivity.

These are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

p. 33 - "Have something to bring to the table, because that will make you more welcome."

p. 79 - "Brick walls are there for a reason. They give us a chance to show how badly we want something."

p. 145 - "Look for the best in everybody."
"Watch what they do, not what they say... 'When it comes to men who are romantically interested in you, it's really simple. Just ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do."

p. 149 - "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer."

p. 159 - "All you have is what you bring with you."

p. 176 - "Communitarians... 'When we're connected to others, we become better people."

I really loved this book. It was hard to make it through without crying, but it really goes to show that you might be perfectly healthy - and still only have months left. When his 3 young children are old enough to watch the videos he is filming for them, and to read and understand the letters he is writing to them, they will certainly feel the love from their father.

What would you say in your 'last lecture'?

P.S. It should be noted that Jeffrey Zaslow co-authored this book. Please visit The Last Lecture website here and Randy Pausch's personal website/blog here.

The New Classics

Entertainment Weekly has compiled a list of the 100 Best Reads from 1983 - 2008. I've highlighted in bold the one's I have read, and in red are books on my TBR list.

1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars' Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
16. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (1990)**
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
47. World's Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators' Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)

**I actually read excerpts of this in a college course, and I've been meaning to read the entire book, but obviously haven't gotten around to it yet.

Wow, I should delete this right now! I've only read 4?!?! What is wrong with me?! I call myself a reader? I realize this is just an EW list, and there are obviously several books I've read throughout my relatively short life (I was actually born in 1983) that did not make this list. I think when I'm through with my 101 books in 1001 days challenge, I'll have a lot of this list covered.

Thanks to Susan at Bloggin' 'Bout Books for this list! :)

Pack Up the Moon - Anna McPartlin

The book opens with this:

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

From Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden

Emma and John are the perfect couple - together since high school, now living together in Dublin, surrounded by their closest friends. But tragedy strikes early in this debut novel when John is the victim of a fatal accident. Emma must face her loss and rebuild, with help from her friends and family.

Emma's grief and rebuilding process is sad, true, poignant and witty all at once. After she is past the initial shock and devastation, Emma's wit and humor carried her through (McPartlin was formerly a stand-up comedian.)

When it appears halfway through the story that Emma and Sean, her deceased boyfriend's best friend, will proclaim their love for each other, it only becomes a matter of time. It took poor Emma far too long to realize her love for Sean, and once she does, everyone cheers and awaits their next move. Before long, Emma is pregnant (which ironically, is something she found out she was NOT on the day that her boyfriend John died) and they are planning a future together. I was so glad to see that Emma was finally getting the happy ending that when she almost died after giving birth I was ready to cry - and throw the book across the room. I didn't - and she lived, of course.

The stories of Emma's friends Clodagh and Tom, Sean, Richard and Anne, as well as her Catholic Priest brother Noel, were integral parts in her recovery, and the whole gang seemed to really move forward together, with the help of each other. I tend to really love stories of treasured friendship and I thought McPartlin did an amazing job with this group.

I loved this book. I highly recommend it to all!

Remember Me? - Sophie Kinsella

Imagine heading out to the club with your girl friends, having a cocktail to relieve the stress of work, heading home early befause your father's funeral is the next day. Then imagine waking up and it's 3 years later...and you have no recollection of the last 3 years.

This is what happens to Lexi Smart, a twenty-five year old woman working a crappy going-nowhere job with a loser boyfriend. Only she wakes up in a private hospital room, with a hot husband and designer gear. But has no idea how she got there.

I liked this breezy story, and I think I mostly loved the connection between Lexi and Jon, her husband's architect, with whom she was having an affair before her accident gave her amnesia. I like how determined she was to piece her life back together, with little help from her husband - who turned out to be a selfish twerp. I liked Jon from the moment he saved Lexi from her horrible driving skills a few days after her accident. I liked how she really did try to love her husband, to be a good wife, and she tried to ignore the excitement she really did feel with Jon.

And yes, it was a happy ending. It is a Sophie Kinsella novel after all.

101 books in 1001 days update

So far I've read 24 of 101 books in 5 1/2 months. Not too bad; I'm well on my way. Based on my end date of September 30, 2010, I have approximately 27 months to read 77 books, which averages almost 3 books a month. Even with all of my extracurricular activities lately, I've still been managing over 3 books per month. I'm well on my way to exceeding my goal. I may even hit 150 books in that time, a challenge I mentioned at the start of this project.

Just finished Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella; stay tuned!

P.S. - Sex and the City was fabulous!!

Belong to Me - Marisa de los Santos

This was such an excellent read! I really look forward to reading more of de los Santos' works.

We are first introduced to Cornelia, a usually calm woman from the city who is transplanted to the suburbs with her husband, a doctor named Teo. Next we meet Piper, the preppy, perfect sophisticate who does not easily warm to Cornelia. We also learn (eventually) that Piper's also perfect best friend Elizabeth is suffering from cancer and Piper swoops in to care for their 4 combined children together. (We also learn later that Elizabeth had wanted to separate from her husband, Tom, because she met someone else. Also ironic is that we later find out that Piper's husband, Kyle, also wants a divorce because he is in love with the nurse in the children's doctor's office. Still following?) I think that's what I loved about the book - there was just so much going on and I was just waiting for the moment that sent everyone reeling!

A single mom named Lake enters the novel and befriends Cornelia. We are later introduced to her son Dev, a very smart teenager who eventually falls in love with Clare, who is like a surrogate child of Cornelia and Tom (once again, sounds complicated but really, it's a great story!)

I really loved this book from the beginning. Cornelia was by far my favorite woman in that she never cared too much what others thought of her, but Piper turned me off instantly. The death of Piper's best friend Elizabeth was devastating - although completely forseen - and I was on the verge of tears, which rarely happens to me while reading. But I did not like at all how Piper fell for her best friend's husband after her passing. The time they spent together was supposed to be "to make life easier for the kids" but really, it is up to the adults to help children cope and while in the beginning of a grieving period, it may be in their best interest to keep them surrounded by familiar faces, I don't believe in the long run it helps them to process their grief.

It took me longer than it probably should have to realize who Dev's real father was. It was so unexpected and briefly earth-shattering to not just Teo but to Cornelia as well, seeing she was to give birth momentarily. Cornelia handled the news with grace, and really showed her true love for her husband. I loved the very last chapter when Dev follows around his little sister, Rose. How sweet :)

I highly recommend this book to all!

The Bright Side of Disaster - Katherine Center

In this quick, light read, Jenny is thrown into single-motherhood in an instant when her fiance abandons her the day before she goes into labor. I found Jenny's character to be refreshing and honest, even funny at times. She never takes care of herself, and admits to looking sloppy, yet I really felt like I could identify with her. She was such a realistic character; I'm not a mother but I was a nanny for awhile and I know it's not easy to care for children. Exhausted and alone, she does absolutely everything she can for her new daughter, all while attempting to push her former fiance out of her mind. Jenny is lucky to make friends in a mommy group, and also with her charming, handy-man neighbor who is eager to help.

Since I knew her ex would eventually return, I just braced myself for the moment - and when it came, and Jenny took him back, I was furious! I get that she wanted him to know his daughter, but the fact that she so easily took him back into her bed really frustrated me. I'm glad she finally came to her senses and kicked him out for good - he was just too messy, too flaky, and too unhealthy for her.

This was a great debut novel, and I look forward to reading her next. According to the back of this book, her new one is titled Everyone is Beautiful and will be available in Spring 2009.