Coming Back Full Circle

While I was in Europe back in February 2010 I had some books on my mind, one of those books was Elizabeth Eulberg's The Lonely Hearts Club.

After my friends and I had crossed Abbey Road and got a look at Abbey Road Studios

we headed to The Beatles gift shop.

While in the shop I saw some buttons or badges as the British say for St. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. 

(my library bag I mentioned in another post)

Which made me think of this lovely passage from The Lonely Hearts Club...

I bought badges not only for some friends and I, but one to send to Elizabeth as well. Then Elizabeth wrote Prom & Prejudice, which also went so well with my trip to Bath, and the I Heart Darcy badge I bought. 

While in Paris I had a book I had never read on my mind. I was so excited to read Stephanie Perkins debut novel Anna and the French Kiss and thought how awesome it would be to visit places then read about them. Can I just say what a genius I am, because it was not only awesome it was like making dreams come true before you even dream the dream. I am so lucky Stephanie is so nice and took the time to send us a list of places we should see, because it made Paris all the more special. 

For example I would have never gone to Shakespeare & Company book shop. But after going to Paris & reading Anna I often see pictures of Shakespeare & Co and see the picture above on the left and see people commenting on how they dream about going there. And look there I am in the chair in the famous book shop fulfilling a future dream. 

Both Elizabeth & Stephanie are on twitter and if you didn't already know I adore these woman. When I found out that there were going to be an a panel together I was wishing I could be in Georgia. But because these woman are awesome they fulfilled another wish for me and took a picture of them together. 

While in Europe I didn't buy a lot of things for myself but I saw the Lonely Hearts Club key chain and thought it would be a great way to remember my London trip and remember that "this lonely hearts club was the opposite of depressing. It was alive." After I got the beautiful "I left my heart in San Francisco" key chain from Stephanie I put it on my key chain and sent her this picture along with my thanks.

When things come around again in full circle, it just makes me feel a peace like good things do happen in the world and I am lucky to be apart of them. 

More Austenland - The Movie

At my book birthday party (see post below) some of us talked about how excited we are for Austenland the movie and I promised a friend I would send her links to some of the fun things I have found. Which I did but I have seen a lot of traffic coming to my Austenland post so I thought I would share the links with you all as well.
The following pictures came from Jennifer Coolidge twitter account...

Keri Russell is in the brown dress as Jane Hayes and Jennifer Coolidge as Miss Charming is in the pink dress.

Here is Keri & Jennifer again with the director Jerusha Hess.

The following picture of Bret McKenzie as Martin was taken from a film extra's twitter account.

The fan site Absolute JJ Feild also has posted pictures supposedly from set, I just didn't see where they got them so I am not going to say they are for sure. Although I think he does look very Darcy/Nobley.

There are more if you click on their link.

Screen Daily also did a great article that I already posted on facebook awhile ago about their on set visit. Here is one of my favorite parts...
"I witnessed Bret McKenzie from Flight of the Conchords grinding up on Keri Russell, all the while wearing regency finery. Oh, and did I mention a Nelly song was playing? What more do you want from a film, people?"
What more could you want indeed.

Ricky Whittle twitted about production if you want to check out his twitter. He tweeted a picture, of some possible swim trunk wardrobe???

Mr. James Callis tweeted the following picture of himself as Colonel Andrews from his trailer...

Austenland Exclusive with JJ Field, Bret McKenzie, Georgia King & Ricky Whittle


If you want more you can read Shannon Hale's (author of Austenland book & co-authored screenplay) blog for her on set adventures.

I really want to see Austenland get picked up by a studio soon so I am going to do everything in my power to get the word out there!

30 Rocks!!!

I was not feeling so good about turning 30, every time I would think "30" my heart would get a little tight. But thankfully I am very blessed to have people in my life who helped me completely forget about my twinges of anxiety.
My birthday was Thursday, I started off the day by receiving Hey Tell messages from William & Gracie telling & singing me happy birthday. I took the day off of work & spent the day with my mom & sister. My mom picked me up and we met Debbie, Gracie & Joseph at Liberty Market for breakfast.

Then we headed up to Last Chance to do some shopping. After we went to Le Grande Orange for lunch. Other than the heat the day was perfect we all found some clothes, ate good food and had fun just being with each other. Debbie also gave me my own personal Library Kit, thank you Pinterest! I have always wanted to be a librarian & now I get to! It was also the start of my "book birthday party".

Saturday night Debbie threw me a book birthday party. It was such a fun & cute party! I should have taken more picture of all the cute things but I did get a picture of my food. Which was a huge hit!

And my friend Jenny Bradford, made the most awesome birthday cake EVER!!! Those are all my favorite books, and I am still just so amazed, thank you Jenny!
My other friend also named Jenny but Whipple is her last name made me these paper cuts of pictures from my trip to Europe, again my mind was blown.

When Jenny got to the party she told Chelsea she would have to apologize to her later. I was confused since Jenny had never met Chelsea, but then we understood she had taken Chelsea out of the picture. Not that she hadn't tried, poor paper Chelsea just ended up looking like this...

I can not even begin to explain the laughing that went on over poor sad paper Chelsea. Then Chelsea said she looked like a death eater & you couldn't have a death eater in the picture. Which only made us all laugh more.

Debbie throwing a book party was pure genius, I mean look at all the pretty books I got!

I have to tell you about the book Melissa got me. It is a fifth edition of Pride & Prejudice Volume II printed in 1902 in London England! I just can't get over how pretty it is, I showed Debbie and she said the same thing, it is so pretty. It has pictures and can you see how uneven all the pages are? Melissa swears she did not spend a lot of money since it was only volume II but I love it, it starts with Darcy's proposal, just when things start to get good!



Mimi got me these adorable Jane Austen pocket pads, they are so tiny and perfect. I always carry notebooks to write notes in. Each book is after a dance in a book & each have a little dance card in the front. I always wanted a dance card.

When I got home I tried to decorate with the new HUGE London & Paris books Chelsea got me. They are so pretty and I stuck my cake topper in a bowl filled with black beans until I can get a shadow box to put them in to go besides these...

                             

One of my friends named Jen wrote in my card that I was going to rock the 30's, and I have to say so far 30 has been pretty amazing! We had planned to make some book crafts, but once we get talking, there is no stopping us. I really had such a lovely time and felt so loved and grateful for such amazing friends. After everyone was gone and Debbie and I were relaxing on the couch after kind of helping clean up (thank you Russ you are made of awesome) I said to Debbie "I love all my friends". 

No! Frodo!

Remember when I talked about vlogging here? Well on Saturday I was watching Debbie's kids and when William walked in first thing he says to me is "I want to watch Lord of the Rings". They stayed with me a few weekends ago and sadly I don't have many toys, but William likes to play with my Legolas action figure.

And maybe I also let him play with my bow & arrow.

After asking I grabbed my Lord of the Rings and headed out to my moms house. There we watched the second half of the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring. It reminded me of one of my favorite vloggers Elmify's vlog called No! Frodo!.

If you don't want to watch the whole thing you can skip to about 1:50 where 14 year old Elmify is acting out a scene from Lord of the Rings and yells "No! Frodo". (But you should watch the whole thing because she is hilarious) Then last night I went over to Debbie's to watch the kids and guess what they were watching. If you guessed Two Towers, good job. Gracie was going crazy about Golum, who she calls the slimy guy, telling me she hates him when he is bad but loves him when he is good.

I showed Gracie & William the "No! Frodo! clip and they kept wanting to watch it again. 

I started writing this yesterday & decided to share the video with Ms. Elmify herself on twitter & guess who responded?!? You can also see her comment if you go to the youtube page. 

Today I would like to remind Lauren & Lindsey how much I would love for them to start a vlog! And since it was Lauren's birthday I have been remembering the trip we took to California the weekend of Lauren's 18th & my 21st birthdays. So if you need a subject for your vlog, there you go. Consider yourselves birthday challenged!

Unexpected Gift

After I did my last post, Team Adam, explaining how I won author Gayle Forman's contest to design a Team Adam button. I found out my friend Stephanie Perkins was one of the judges on Gayle's expert panel. Here is the comment Stephanie left on Gayle's blog.

Ha ha ha!!! When I voted for Connie’s design, I had no idea *my friend* designed it. I’m quite giddy. GO CONNIE! Congratulations!

—Stephanie Perkins


Sometimes it just blows me away how awesome Stephanie is & that I have some how managed to be friends with her. Did you know that she did a panel at Comic Con? Yes I have a friend who was on a panel at Comic Con!

We have recently upgraded our friendship to sisters, which Debbie & I both feel really good about!

naturallysteph Stephanie Perkins

@

@connieonnie @SassyCassinasty @debsfreckles I now declare us all sisters. Hugs for everyone!

(Shout out to my other new sister Rachel, I can't wait for you blog to be rolling!)

If this wasn't enough awesomeness, Wednesday I went to check the mail and found a unexpected gift from Stephanie. Her new book Lola and the Boy Next Door comes out September 29th, which I have been counting down the days (see widget on my blog, just look to your right).

I was so touched that Stephanie would take the time to mail me a copy and even more touched by her inscription

And the beautiful key chain, the book takes place in San Francisco.

Let me just say I not only left my heart there, it was stolen! I am not going to go into to much detail because I don't want to ruin any of the fun BUT, I'll post this picture to show my love for The Boy Next Door & Lola.

Edit... In case you were wondering there were more sticky notes than Anna.

Team Adam

I have some great friends who also love books & we love to go to book signing events together. At one of our many trips to Changing Hands we were sitting at a table talking about, you guessed it books! My friends Jen & Espe run a site called Late Bloomers where they do book reviews & Georgia is part of the site Eve's Fan Garden and they were all gushing about getting the ARC (advanced reader copy) for Where She Went & then asked if I had read If I Stay. I had not read it, and they all began gushing about how I would love it and needed to read it. I trust my friends so I soon got If I Stay and read it & loved it. I was heading out of town, driving to Utah a ten hour drive, so I asked Jen if she would let me borrow her ARC of Where She Went. When I picked it up from Jen she told me to text her along the way. It was so much fun reading & texting my favorite parts (I wish I still had those texts). Sadly I finished another book before starting Where She Went so I didn't get a chance to finish reading before we got to my aunt & uncles house. You should have seen me at my cousins house filled with my family sitting around talking and me sitting on the floor kind of hiding behind a plant reading. It wasn't that I didn't want to talk to my family, it is just that I found it really hard to put the book down.
When I saw the author Gayle Forman announce on her blog that she was having a Team Adam button design contest I felt it was just up my alley. If you have read my blog you probably know that I collect rocker boyfriends & fictional boyfriends so what could be better than a fictional rocker boyfriend? I knew exactly what I wanted to do, one of the scenes Jen and I text about involved a specific guitar. Soon I came up with this and sent it off to Gayle.

I don't have photoshop I just used picnik so it is not exactly what I wanted. For example the pick with the heart in it, this is the closest shape I could come up with. I really wanted the pick to be in the shape of a heart, but look like a pick. For the most part I was very happy how it turned out.
It was a lot of fun to be a part of the contest and see people vote for it, I told a handful of my friends but I wanted to leave it up to fate. So thank you to everyone who voted for me, when I get my winning buttons or badges (as the British or want to be British say) let me know if you want one I will be happy to share! I know where mine is going, right next to the "Boys in books are just better" badge Melissa gave me, all my badges are on my library bag. What a happy way to start off my morning by reading an email from Gayle Forman telling me I had won the contest, I have been smiling all day!
I just remembered that after reading Where She Went I went to Gayle's website and watched a video she made that is a tour of the New York City that is in the book & in the video she is wearing a shirt that says "Fictional Character". I am not sure if it was on her blog or in a chat but someone asked her about the shirt and she said she got it from Changing Hands, as in the bookstore where I was convinced to read the books. I love when everything comes full circle.

Kindred Spirits & Reading

My brother Mark & I like to debate about owning books vs electronic readers. He is pro-electronic readers and never having to move boxes of books. My rebuttal always consists of how personal a book is. You can get it signed, share it with your friends, stick sticky notes in it and maybe even hug & smell them.
The other night I was hanging out with some friends and the conversation turned to books, something we do not normally talk about. I asked what their opinion was on books vs. readers. One said he liked having books and then jokingly added how it made him feel like he was better than other people. He asked if I ever felt having books made me feel superior. I just laughed and explained how I use to read books that others considered intelligent and although I could appreciate them I just did not love them. Then I found books that made me love reading again, and I have never looked back. Although I am not ashamed of the books I love, I realize that most people are probably not impressed with my books.  I was kind of surprised when he confessed he was impressed that I read.
That conversation took place Monday night then today a blog I follow did a post called My Taste in Books , where she lists what she looks for in a book. I could pretty much copy the whole post over here because I loved  & related to it all. But here are some that especially resonated with me...

• I like reading the truth, being moved and authors who get under their character's skins.

I have noticed that characters who feel the most real to me are characters who authors say had a mind of their own, making choices the author did not want them to make. 

• I love hope and redemption and life.

I believe in Hope as in the song The Cave by Mumford & Sons "I will hold on hope".

• I love books that somehow manage to peek into my soul.

There is such comfort in reading a book where a characters shares your insecurities, fears or joys.

• I want to read books that have characters worthy of me spending my time with them. 

Exactly! I can not read books where there is not someone I would be friends with in the book.

I found the blog after reading a review by Nomes on Goodreads, she had said exactly what I had wanted to say about the book. After clicking on the "compare books" in Goodreads I found we have 64 books in common and are 86% similar. Nomes lives in Australia, we don't even live in the same country and still have that many in common, she is definitely a kindred spirit.

"Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world." — Lucy Maud Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)


One of the last things she says in her post is... "No one has the same taste as me. No one will 100% love what I do. And, I like that."


Isn't it funny how we both love to find people who love or hate the same things we do but we also love the little things that make us us.