Two parts rants, two parts raves, one part review, with a dash of daily etc. from a lover of life, learning, books, and beauty.

A Fabulous Fictionista

A nice, personal writing pad for your thoughts 'n stuff

Dont throw yourself out on another’s whim. People change, as do intentions and as a result, consequences. Live for yourself - Love those around you, but realize that they’ve got their own agendas. - Alex Gaskart (via creatingaquietmind)

(via teachingliteracy)

Why can’t I have cool friends who will do this for me? Note to self: Make yourself a Jem cake. 

(Source: capblackard, via jemandtheholograms)

ohmuffins:

Simple and powerful.

(Source: whitepaperquotes)

Check it out » BBC Book Quiz – How Many have You Read?

amandaonwriting:

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 Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’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 Meaney – 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 – 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 Inferno – Dante
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 – Enid Blyton
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

It is never too late to turn on the light. Your ability to break an unhealthy habit or turn off an old tape doesn’t depend on how long it has been running; a shift in perspective doesn’t depend on how long you’ve held on to the old view.

When you flip the switch in that attic, it doesn’t matter whether its been dark for ten minutes, ten years or ten decades.

The light still illuminates the room and banishes the murkiness, letting you see the things you couldn’t see before.

Its never too late to take a moment to look.

- Sharon Salzberg (Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation)

(Source: quotelibrary.info, via myquotelibrary)

Growing old: Today I turned 26.

A decade ago I was 16, a teenage girl with lofty goals and a romanticized view of the future. Fast forward 10 years with many life experiences, heartache, loneliness, and many priceless memories, and I’m 26. A lot has changed. A lot. And although I’m a completely different person, there is still a part of me that feels like the 16 year old Renee. 

Growing up/old is a weird experience. It’s an experience that I didn’t really realize was happening until recently. Time speeds up, runs ahead of you, and then stops suddenly, smacking you right in the face, forcing you to look at and come to terms with the changes around you. 

I’m 26. In four short years I will be 30. I’ve graduated college, I’m a teacher, and I’m pursuing my masters degree. My academic goals are on point. However, my 16 year old “goals” and predictions about my life did not entirely come to fruition. 

For years I’ve been a single woman watching practically all of my friends get engaged, married, and in some cases, birth little ones. And honestly, this is all ok. But it’s weird being, practically, the “only one” left not doing that. 

The gang, the group, my people. In recent months, after a decade of hard work, have split apart. Jobs and girlfriends keep us apart. And that is probably the saddest aspect about turning 26; that no one is here to celebrate with me and that it will probably always be like this from now on.  

No one warns you about this feeling. The truth is, as fabulous as growing up can be, there are many things that make you feel just like the unsure 16 year old. Maybe nothing really changes, but we just perceive it to change. 

This is a brief summary of what I’m thinking lol and I could write thousands of words about this. 

To be continued.