This past weekend my sister and I flew down to North Carolina to surprise our mom for her birthday. And it was hilarious – my mom saw me screamed and then cried, and then realized my sister was there too, screamed and cried again. It was a good surprise and a good trip down. It was an incredibly fast trip, but it was relaxing to get out of the city for a day and see family, even if the travel was a bit stressful.
One of the advantages of going home, aside from seeing family, was that I got to raid my book boxes I have stored at my mom’s house. Unfortunately, I could not find my copy of Wuthering Heights, but that’s okay because I bought a beautiful compilation version of it, Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey a few months ago. However, I did find a stack of books to bring back and was sorely tempted to bring my entire box of Harry Potter books back! (But I restrained myself to 11—and one awesome pamphlet.)
I picked up a few as potential reads for the The Literary Others event in October hosted at Roof Beam Reader (which I will do my post later this week).  And I grabbed my copies of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (I definitely want to re-read the Hobbit before the film comes out.)  Left to right from top to bottom they (minus the pamphlet on top) are:
- The Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
- The Laramie Project – Moises Kaufman
- Mrs. Dalloway –Â Virginia Woolf
- The Hours – Michael Cunningham
- My Undoing – Aiden Shaw
- Oranges are not the only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
- Zami, A New Spelling of My Name – Audre Lorde
- The Return of the King – J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Two Towers – J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Fellowship of the Ring – J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
The pamphlet on top is something special.  It’s from my favorite Geordie, and one of my all time favorite people in the world, my Facebook sister/former complicated lover Helen.  It’s titled Todd’s Geordie Words and Phrases: An aid to communication on Tyneside and thereabouts.  I didn’t have a chance to look through it again while I was at home, but I did throw it in my pile of books to come back up to Massachusetts with me.
That’s an impressive list of books.
Thanks for sharing.
Haahaa – thanks for stopping by and the comment! I’ve actually read all of them before, so they’ll be re-reads whenever I get around to them.
All these blogs I’m finding with books…GAH. i have to stop writing on my blog and start reading! 🙂
I know what you mean! Thankfully I can read most of my blogs on my lunchbreak our throughout the day, and then read on the way to and from work! The hardest part for me is not adding all the books everyone reviews to my list of to-read-books!
I’m mid-way through a re-read of The Hobbit right now. Man, I just love that book.
I’ve only ever read it once and am definitely looking forward to re-reading it. My aunt’s must’ve read it 100 times between them.
I need to get a copy of Scots dialect. I have a lot of trouble pronouncing ‘Kirkcaldy.’
What a wonderful surprise and reaction is priceless 🙂 I had that same Catcher in the Rye myself. I wish I had held on to all of my books!
Yeah. It probably made her year 🙂 I don’t even remember when I read it the first time. I’m definitely excited about reading it because I tagged a few pages that I must’ve really liked.
Three cheers for surprises! I love your mom’s reaction.
Great group of books, too!
😀 They are! I’d forgotten I kept copies of a few of them and was peasant,y surprised when I opened the box.
I recently read Mrs Dalloway and loved it. And I adore the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. Happy reading.
I didn’t really appreciate Mrs. Dalloway until I read it not for a class. I had to read it for two classes in undergrad and both times I enjoyed it but didn’t really appreciate it. I think when I re-read it, I will re-read Isherwood’s A Single Man as I felt like there were a lot of fascinating similarities between them.