So, my friend Abby says she read someplace that the average American has only read six of the following books. I've read 23. Now if we were to count again and include the movie versions... well, never mind.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Studio Photo Session

Here's a couple images from a photo session I had this weekend with my willing neighbor kids... both four years old! Aren't they handsome? I picked up these desks recently while driving by a church... they were putting them out for trash pick-up (I snagged three - all I could fit in my car). Fun, fun, fun!

This is the San Antonio Riverwalk. Such a beautiful place. Robin and I visited here this weekend, in addition to going to Sea World and the Alamo. It was a great, fun, but HOT weekend.

Grace

What is grace? I looked it up in the dictionary:

Elegance, beauty of form, manner, motion, or action. A pleasing or attractive quality. Favor or good will. Mercy, clemency, pardon. Favor shown in granting a delay or temporary immunity. The freely given, unmerited favor and love of God. The influence or spirit of God operating in humans to regenerate or strengthen them. A virtue or excellence of divine origin. Moral strength. A short prayer before or after a meal, in which a blessing is asked and thanks are given. A formal title. To lend or add grace to, adorn. To favor or honor. To be kind. Regarded with favor.

Synonyms are: 1. attractiveness, charm, gracefulness, comeliness, ease, kindness, love, embellish, beautify, deck, decorate, ornament, enhance, honor.

Are there those in our lives that scream out "GRACE?" I can think of some in my past and present life that show grace on a daily basis. Do I? Not so much, I don't think. Maybe in some circumstances, but in all? No way. I'm going to singularly focus on this for awhile, and make a special effort to improve on areas in my life where I'm not filled with "grace," where I don't offer grace to someone I'm in contact with, outwardly and even inwardly... that place or that reaction that no one sees or hears but me (and God... yikes).

Happy 10th Survival Anniversary!!!

OH MY GOSH. I should have had a party. Someone just reminded me that it was 10 years ago (on July 10th - Bryan's birthday) that I was given a "death sentence." My doctor said he would not give me a time frame, but that I would never go into remission... his goal for me was quantity and quality of life. My second opinion gave me two years. Wow. Those were tough times, and beautiful times. It gave me an appreciation of all the little aspects of life... to appreciate each day's beauty (yes, I actually stop my car, get out and watch beautiful sunsets); it taught me how to be pro-active and be in charge of my body and treatment. I learned that some loved ones just don't know how to react to illness, and that other loved ones are gifted caregivers. It showed me the importance of church, fellowship and prayer. Thank you to those who were with me, cared for me, prayed for me... and simply loved me during those challenging and incredible months.

Here's my precious babies... Moon and Shadow. They were a bit confused during this photo session. "You mean, Mom, you want us to stand over here on this backdrop... the same one you trained us not to get near?" They sure don't look very happy. They are just a couple love bugs, and have always been SO good... even as little tiny puppies. Moon follows me around wherever I go, and Shadow is just a big teddy bear. Isn't it amazing how we get so close to our pets?

Here's the first images using my new studio lights...

we had a blast... and the subjects are pretty awesome too...

(Carl, Bryan and Joanna... Bryan's girlfriend)

Goals and Dreams Wordl

I enjoyed creating yesterday's wordl so much, I decided to do another one today. This one focuses on my goals and dreams. As you see, I have a lot of personal goals, and the dreams seem to focus a lot on traveling. I got the travel bug this summer. Fun Fun Fun!!!

wordl

Just discovered this... (thanks Bruce)... thought I'd create one showing some my favorite things and things I'm grateful for! Click on the box above if you want to see it blown up!

Here's my new portrait studio on Robin's property... he just added a porch, a rocker and a couple hanging plants... he is so supportive of my hobby/business. Now we need to add electricity, studio lights and an air conditioner! I won't really be able to start using it until we get married and his home becomes "our" home, but I can hardly wait!