King Arthur Movie Tristan

Weekly Geeks: photo tours

Many of you have already posted photos of bookshelves, so here are some other ideas for photo tours. You could post just one, or many.



*Bookshelves, of course.


*TBR piles.


*Your favorite places to read in your house or apartment.


*Other favorite places to read: coffee shop? library? park? secret hiding place at work?


*Your book group: faces, places, books you’ve read for it.


*Collages: books you’ve read or plan to read, or just your librarything collage.


*Your kids reading in their favorite places.


*Your own ideas!



So the only real guideline for this week’s Weekly Geeks is that it should include bookish photos.



This is so up my alley, I love taking photos.


One thing I love to do is settle down with a hot cup of tea while I read.





Here's my TBR mountain:





And here are my bookshelves:





I mostly have the books on top, then my DVD's on bottom.





fellow blogger, Kim has posted some fun pics at her blog. stop by and check those out

If you've posted pics of your books, let me know and I'll link you here too.

Video clip of Jimmy Page and Leona Lewis performing Whole Lotta Love at the closing of the Olympic ceremonies:




It's unbelievable that the French TV commentators can't shut up for the 4 or 5 minutes that someone is singing a song. That's right, the world tuned in to hear what you dunderheads think, en francais, of Jimmy Page/Leona Lewis/Led Zeppelin.

None the less, it's a good performance, and Leona Lewis handles the song very well.

Happy Sunday Salon everyone.


I've been catching up on my reading now that the Olympics are pretty much over.



This past week I read and reviewed:


I Just Want My Kids to Be Happy: As a parent of two, this book was an insightful read. It gives reasons not to spoil your children and the results of what can happen if you do. This book shows how to 'plant the seeds of true happiness' and several ways to help you raise your children to be loving, fulfilled and truly happy people. .....click here for my full review.









Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict: I found this to be a fun, light read. It made me LOL, at work no less, as I was reading certain parts. I really liked how the author refers back to Austen novels, quotes and characters throughout the story. At one point, while riding in the horse & buggy to church with her parents, Courtney...a.k.a... Jane, looks out and sees Pemberley in the distance....
click here for my full review.







Matrimony: This was a wonderful read. It's a book is about marriage, friendship and family. It's also a story about hope. I enjoyed the storyline and the characters. It was one of those books I didn't want to put down. I kind of 'lived inside' this book for a few days, and was very taken with the story.
click here for my full review and for info on how to win an autographed copy for yourself.










I also posted about my Gene Kelly obsession :o)
He's awesome to watch, and he's easy on the eyes too. If you're looking for a good old fashioned film to watch, check out one of his movies. You won't be dissapointed.









And I snagged a few ARC's from librarything


Rain Song by Alice J. Wisler













And Paco and the Giant Chile Plant/Paco y la planta de chile gigante by Keith Polette. What a fun book cover and title.









What have you been reading this past week? Enjoy your Sunday.

Sometimes on this feature, I have fell into sheer review. It's a mistake. This was never meant to be, "what a great CD." It is much more about the effect music has, the feel I get from listening, how life is improved through the sheer act of music. This was one of the moments when I almost fell into review, but escaped through expansion of the original idea. Thus one of my all time favourite musicians, and people, Bob Seger, got some Looking Back:

Sunday, September 17, 2006
This week on my i-pod - More Bob Seger

With the new album out, I have spent much of the week with Bob Seger playing. Whether the new CD, or a classic album I have covered a lot of Seger ground this week. By Friday afternoon, I decided to pick a bunch of songs and have the MP3 play them randomly. It's always interesting to pick songs instead of full albums, as it gives you a closer look at what is moving you.

On this week, I picked two of the new songs: Wreck This Heart and Wait For Me, the first two tracks on the album. Working backwards, there is only one song from the last album, "It's a Mystery", that I bother much to listen to, but it's one of the greats. Lock and Load is a great Seger rocker, possibly even the best in the last 30 years.

Of course The Real Love from "The Fire Inside", Like a Rock and American Storm from "Like a Rock", and Even Now from 1982's "The Distance". The mid 70's is his best years and was well represented. However, it was one old and one new (fairly) that where the true gems of the listen.

Turn the Page is the Seger song. All other pale in comparison. Not just Turn the Page though - Turn the Page from the "Live Bullet" album. I have the "Back in '72" album that the song comes from originally, have quite a few bootlegs and have seen him numerous times. I can assure you, that one performance of "Turn the Page" is heads and shoulders above the rest. It's not really surprising. He was playing the mid-west bar circuit, travelling club to club. Then he came home to Detroit to sell out Cobo Hall on two consecutive nights; 10,000 people a night. And you sing this song:

Say, here I am, on the road again. there I am, up on the stage.
Here I go, playing star again.
There I go, turn the page...

Out there in the spotlight your a million miles away,
Every ounce of energy, you try and give away,
As the sweat pours out your body like the music that you play.
Later in the evening as you lie awake in bed,
With the echo from the amplifiers ringing in your head,
You smoke the days last cigarette, remembering what she said.
Now here I am, on the road again. there I am, up on the stage.
Here I go, playing star again.
There I go, turn the page.
Here I am, on the road again. there I am, up on the stage.
Ah here I go, playing star again.
There I go, there I go.

Is it any wonder the song had a little something extra in it. After all the years of living the song, finally he wasn't playing star, he was a star. Yea, that night was special and it came across in one of rock and rolls greatest moments. Turn the Page is a good song - even Metallica couldn't ruin it (God help them, they tried though. They tried!) - but on this night a great song was born.

The other song was 1998's Chances Are with Martina McBride, from the Sandra Bullock movie "Hope Floats". I don't have much time for country music, mostly because I can't take the whiny twang of the singers. But there's a couple of the lady singers I like: Shania Twain is one; Martina McBride the other. Martina McBride might just have the nicest voice in music. It is stunningly beautiful, clear as a bell and pitch perfect note for note. Bob Seger, on the other hand, has a "smoke too much, ah hell it was close" kind of voice. A singer I have always loved, a distinctive interesting voice, but let's not kid the troops. Like Seger himself, it is a working man's voice, a voice not presented upon birth as a gift from the Gods, but a voice that is solid only through hard work and years of performing. And when McBride and Seger put them together, it's magic.

I have discussed my wife's romantic dances on the deck before, how I'm responsible to a) attend and b) supply the music. I have decided that Chances Are belongs on our deck next time, is a song that I can comfortably sing to my bride, knowing she would appreciate it:

Chances are you'll find me
Somewhere on your road tonight
Seems I always end up driving by
Ever since I've known you
It seems you're on my way

All the rules of logic don't apply
I long to see you in the night
Be with you 'til morning light

I remember clearly how you looked
The night we met
I recall your laughter and your smile
I remember how you made me
Feel so at ease
I remember all your grace and your style

And now you're all I long to see
You've come to mean so much to me

Chances are I'll see you
In my dreams tonight
You'll be smiling like the night we met
Chances are I'll hold you and I'll offer
All I have

You're the only one I can't forget
Baby you're the best I've ever met

And I'll be dreaming of the future
And hoping you'll be by my side
And in the morning I'll be longing for the night
For the night

Chances are I'll see you
Somewhere in my dreams tonight
You'll be smiling like the night we met
Chances are I'll hold you and I'll offer
All I have

You're the only one I can't forget
Baby you're the best I've ever met


It's the kind of song you expect Bob Seger to write. According to Greatest Hits 2, he wrote it in 1990. There where rumours at the time of an album that got mostly scrubbed because the centre-piece was Tom Waits' Downtown Train. He told Rod Stewart about it, Stewart recorded and released Downtown Train first, so Seger returned to the studio and released "The Fire Inside" in 1991 instead. If 1990 is the date for Chances Are, then we can assume it is from the lost album, and we can are left to speculate how good an album we missed.

title: I Just Want My Kids to Be Happy! : Why You Shouldn't Say It, Why You Shouldn't Think It, What You Should Embrace Instead


author: Aaron Cooper, Eric Keitel



genre: self help

pages: 160

first line: 'Why are so many of our children unhappy?'

published: 2008

While millions have pledged allegiance to the happiness of their offspring, kids are less happy than ever-more worried, anxious, and depressed. In this ground-breaking and highly readable book, a psychologist and an educator explain the troubling connection between I just want them to be happy and the problems affecting our youth. The authors describe the ingredients-the eight seeds-that research has revealed to be the basis of authentically happy lives. Ingredients like gratitude, optimism, a life of meaning, and acts of loving kindness. Through numerous "Plant a Seed" suggestions, I Just Want My Kids To Be Happy will show you how to sow the right ingredients into your children's lives today, so that authentic happiness will bloom for them tomorrow.

'I Just Want My Kids To Be Happy' is an interesting and helpful book for any parent. The book's main purpose is to tell you how 'wanting your kids to be happy', isnt always the best thing. Instead of giving into thier every need, and spoiling them, you should show them how to appreciate what they have and that happiness doesn't come from material things.



The authors use an example of how parents tend to take kids on shopping sprees to the mall, when the kids are bored or if the kids seem 'unhappy'. Buying them things to cheer them up. So children equate material things with happiness. Or how some parents spoil thier kids so much, that once these children are adults, and are out in the real world, they are in for real a shock. They have to face reality, where people won't spoil them or give into thier every whim. They then feel unfulfilled and lost.



Meanwhile, many of today's children are unhappy, even depressed. Spoiling them and buying them whatever they want, does not bring anyone true happiness.




As a parent of two, this book was an insightful read. It gives reasons not to spoil your children and the results of what can happen if you do.
This book shows how to 'plant the seeds of true happiness' and several ways to help you raise your children to be loving, fulfilled and truly happy people.

'Happy, flourishing people have created a sense of meaning in thier lives, a purpose in living that anchors them to something beyond thier own fleeting pleasure and gratifications.'


'We must teach our children that meaning is found outside ourselves, not in an attachment to our own needs and wants and feelings.

True meaning comes from activites whose payoffs linger in our hearts and minds.'

As with self-help books, I don't give them a rating. It is up to the individual reader how they use this information in thier own lives. Personally, I found this to be a helpful book, and would recommend it to any parent.





about the authors:

Aaron Cooper, Ph.D. is a Harvard-educated psychologist and teacher with more than thirty years of experience working with children and families.



Eric Keitel, M.Ed. is Director of Family Education at an independent school on Chicago's north side.





This book was sent to me for review by j.kaye. Visit her blog for info on how you can become a guest blogger.

Saturday Fluffernutter - all the fluffy news about those nutty celebrities.


In the movie "Dodgeball," Ben Stiller's creepy character White Goodman is always saying something inappropriate, then following it up with, "just kidding... not really." i.e.:

Kate Veatch: [outside Kate's house] White? What are you doing here? How do you know where I live?
White Goodman: It's called the Freedom of Information Act, Kate. The hippies finally got something right! Ha-ha! Just kidding. But not really.

Apparently P. Diddy, Doggy Dog has been studying up on his White Goodman:

Diddy claims that if he were in the Olympics, he would win a medal for having sex the longest.

"I think that's an event I can do well in. And probably (I can) stay up the longest," Diddy told New York magazine, usmagazine.com reported.

"Just so you know, that's supposed to be funny. Even though I am serious."

Creepy, and not very funny. No, really.

At Home in Hespeler is pleased to bring a new feature to Saturday Fluffernutter: Review in Brief. This week, it’s a movie review - The Sisterhood of the Ya-Ya Pants movie, part II:

"It's pretty good Dad."

Your welcome.

Four songs from U2's upcoming album, No Line on the Horizon, were leaked onto the internet this week. Lead singer Bono was apparently listening to the tracks at his villa in the French Riviera when a passerby recorded them on his phone.

Which leads to the question: how loud was he playing the music that an audible recording could be made from outside the home? And if the owner of the music chooses to play it so loud, has he not placed the music into the public domain?

RIP Jerry Wexler (1917 - 2008).

Wexler helped run Atlantic Records during it's early years when it was producing some of the most enduring records of the rock and roll era, including the Atlantic catalogue of Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles and Wilson Pickett. He along with Ahmet Ertegun, signed Led Zeppelin to Atlantic Records. While working with Billboard magazine in the late 1940's, early 50's he coined the term Rhythm and Blues and was portrayed by actor Richard Schiff (Toby Ziegler on The West Wing) in the Ray Charles biopic Ray.

Jerry Wexler died last weekend at his home in Sarasota Florida of Congestive Heart Failure at the age of 91.