Homekeeping Dreaming

I spent some time tonight paging through Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook. It is a book filled with information about ANYTHING you ever wanted to know about "keeping house". I have a fascination with "keeping house". When I was in the 8 to 5 world, I would daydream at my desk about organizing, cleaning and repairing whatever needed to be fixed in my house. Sometimes I would even come home at lunch time and clean out a drawer or organize a corner of the garage, pull weeds or clean a bathroom. I also talked to my co-workers about the joys of laundry and ironing and gave them helpful hints like not adding fabric softener while washing towels (the towels dry your body better that way).

As I was cleaning under and around the stove yesterday, I thought of Martha. I remembered I had this book and pulled it off the shelf.

Martha writes in the opening paragraph that she started to research and compile information many years ago when she realized that homekeeping, homemaking and housekeeping were her favorite subjects. Since leaving the 8 to 5 world I had forgotten that they are some of my favorite subjects as well. Thanks for reminding me. I didn't (and still don't) have a "routine cleaning" and "periodic maintenance" list as Martha does in the book. Hmmm - I think I want one.

How many books?

I did a little bit of organizing today. After I found all the books I am reading and stacked them up, this is what I found. I'm reading 19 books at the same time and didn't even realize it. New plan, one at a time. Which one is first? Decisions, decisions.

Recommended by Jane

I used to knit. In fact, this blog was originally called "The Knitting Yogini". Way back then, (ok, last year) I was on a quest to find all blogs knitting. It was during this time I ran across a blog authored by Jane Brocket called Yarnstorm. I fell in love! She is not only a knitter, but a baker, a reader, a traveler, a (book) writer, and she takes spectacular pictures. (The first time I ran across her blog I saw a picture she had posted with flowers and her painted toes. "I take pictures like that," I exclaimed. Wow - soul sisters!) She is pure inspiration for me. (The only difference is that I do yoga, and as far as I can tell, she does not. I am willing to overlook this based on EVERYTHING ELSE.)

The latest inspiration came from her mention of a book she was reading on the train headed to a meeting in London. I immediately put it on hold at the library and picked it up this afternoon - 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff.



It is a series of letters written over a twenty-year period between an American writer (Helene Hanff) and a British bookseller. Loved it, of course. It was the perfect afternoon read (short, ~ 100 pages). In the sun, on a lawn chair in the back yard. I laughed and cried and then wished that I had not read it so fast! Now I must purchase a copy for myself.

Read it then let me know if you like it as much as I did :-)

Book Meme!

I found this Book Meme from YogaMum - she has the best memes! This is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users. Mark the books you have read with bold, underline books you read in school and italicize books you started but did not finish.

I have to say that I don't remember a lot of the books I read in school :-( And I couldn't figure out how to underline them so I just put SCHOOL next to the book. Also noticed that I started but didn't finish many books. Maybe I could get through them now?

I would have a lot more bold if this was a YOGA BOOK Meme - what a great idea!

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey - SCHOOL
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The [A] Tale of Two Cities - SCHOOL
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales - SCHOOL
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath - SCHOOL
The Poisonwood Bible
1984 - SCHOOL
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince - SCHOOL
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye - SCHOOL
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

Sweet Home Alabama

Vacations are wonderful - especially when you are allowing yourself to forget about everything and enjoy the precious time away. Unfortunately, the first 5 days of my recent Alabama vacation I was unable to ground myself into my new surroundings and my yoga practice was anything but consistent.

Fortunately, when we travel, my husband reads and reads and reads. We make many trips to the book store. One store had a display with books by Southern writers. I found two books about the area written by authors who also live there. The first book, Point Clear by Jennifer Paddock, was written so vividly about Point Clear and The Grand Hotel I just had to visit. It was exactly as she described it and so fun to be there.

The second book, The Poet of Tolstoy Park by Sonny Brewer, was set back in time in the real Alabama town of Fairhope and gave wonderful descriptions about the area and the history. It is a wonderful read and for that very reason I have chosen it for our next book club read.


After reading these books and visiting the nearby towns I was able to fully appreciate the history and the beauty of this area.

I was also finally able to fully integrate my yoga practice into my "vacation life". I did poses on the balcony, I did poses on the beach and in the water. I find it so interesting that once I took the time to learn about the history and about the area, my asana practice bloomed. I was grounded!

And a side note - I love reading about the south and especially Alabama in particular. I found a book about an Alabama author which I highly recommend. It is called Mockingbird written about the life of Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird. Remember that book from 8th grade?

Do you know of any other good books about the south? Always looking for good reads in the summer time :-)