finally!

Guess who has finally written a new book? One of my favorite authors, Francine Rivers! And maybe she is one of yours too. If that be the case, I wanted to share this news with you. My sis and I discovered it while ordering our coffee and Barnes and Noble today. They were advertising it at the counter. I can't wait to read it!

HER MOTHER'S HOPE: Now available!

February 12, 2010 | 0 comments

The first part of an unforgettable epic family saga about the sacrifices every mother makes for her daughter and the very nature of unconditional love. On the eve of the First World War, fiery Marta Schneider leaves Switzerland and her difficult childhood behind, determined to find a new life on her own terms. Barely out of her teens, Marta is haunted by a devastating loss that fuels her ambition to one day own a hotel. From the cramped quarters of a French housekeeping school to the portrait-lined halls of a stately English manor, Marta becomes a hard working domestic who has little time to dwell onwhat might have been. Instead, she draws her strength from what could be. Then, Marta meets Niclas Waltert, a man just as determined as she to forge a better life in a new place. Niclas captures her heart and together they endure the harshness of life as tenant farmers on the vast prairies of Winnipeg, Canada, before following the promise of the American dream and migrating to the agriculturally rich Central Valley of California. Marriage and motherhood bring both joy and heartbreak, as Marta must surrender her long-held ambitions for the sake of her husband and children, including her daughter, Hildemara, upon whose shoulders her own hopes now squarely rest. Only the strong survive and Marta is determined to raise a daughter as strong as she. But as Hildie reaches young womanhood and another war is fast approaching, those hopes become too heavy a burden for Hildie to bear. Born with a heart to serve others, Hildie pursues her calling as a nurse, something Marta can’t understand. Marta’s years of hardnosed parenting have left Hildie still hungry for her mother’s love…and now for her mother’s respect. Amid the drama of WWII, Hildie falls in love and begins a family of her own. She wants her daughter, Carolyn, never to doubt her love—but the challenges of life conspire against her vow and the only person who can come to her aid is the person she remains so desperate to please: Marta, her mother. With hallmark touches of brilliant prose and gripping characterizations, Her Mother’s Hope is a rich, moving epic about faith and dreams, heartache and disappointment, and ultimately the resilience and tenacity of love.

Oscar Night

I'm a little late with recording my thoughts about The Academy Awards on Sunday night, but I must share them, for it is one of my favorite events of the year.

First, let's talk awards. No real big surprises except for the fact that Avatar did not take the Best Picture title. I did have a suspicion that The Hurt Locker might sneak up and win. Has anyone actually seen this movie? I haven't heard of anyone that has, but apparently its amazing. We'll see. Second big thing...I am very happy for Sandra Bullock. I think her performance was just perfect in The Blind Side. Honestly though, I think Gabourey Sidibe as Precious was even more perfect. I watched that movie for the second time last night, and I just can't get over how realistic her character is. After seeing her in interviews and on the Red Carpet, I am even more convinced of her acting skills, since she is absolutely nothing like Precious (her voice especially!). But way to go Sandy! And didn't she look like an Academy Award winner? Beautiful.

Favorite moment of the night: The John Hughes tribute. As I've already mentioned, I loooove John Hughes movies. Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club were probably the first movies that I recognized as "favorites". Though his movies were never what we would call Oscar-worthy (though I think they maybe should have been!), he was still an important figure in Hollywood, and I was touched they highlighted him with a tribute at the awards.

Now, on to fashion.

Favorite Dresses

Demi Moore

Rachel McAdams

Anna Kendrick

Overall Favorite Look of the Night

Sandra Bullock

...and Dresses I Had Problems with

Charlize Theron

Sarah Jessica Parker

Undecided

Zoe Saldana

But...I want to say it worked for her. I love the colors. Those kind of look like pom-poms, though.

That was fun! I need to blog more often. Someone hold me accountable!

happy valentine's day: continued

I have to add a little something to my V-day blogging. This is both the most hilarious and most offensive valentine I have ever received, and it is from my loving brother-in-law. If you knew our relationship, it might be more amusing. But even if you don't, it's funny that they actually make these!

happy valentine's day

Is Valentine's Day ever on a Sunday? I don't remember it ever happening. I think I like it. It was nice going to church on the "holiday of love". Everyone was wearing pink and red. My celebration has so far consisted of: going to see Valentine's Day last night (it was actually really funny; a tad cheesy, but that can be expected) and eating Russell Stover chocolates out of the heart-shaped box my mom gave me. Yes, my parents still give me valentines.

I started wondering today about Valentine's Day...you know, what it really means. All holidays have a basis, and I don't know what V-day's is, so of course I went to Wikipedia. The modern day "definition" of Valentine's Day is one we are all familiar with: "a day on which lovers express their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery (haha, how often do you hear that word?), and sending greeting cards". But where did it all start? With the annual honoring of two Christian martyrs, both bearing the name Valentine, on the date of February 14th. There were no romantic links to the holiday until the 14th century, possibly instigated by the poet Geoffrey Chaucer. I don't know where I'm going with this, I just thought it was interesting that it was originally a Christian holiday. Up until today, I really thought it might have been invented by a candy or card company.

Aside from V-day: I keep meaning to write more often, but I lack self-discipline. I just have to face it: I'm finding out that I am not much of a creative writer. Ideas for what to write about do not spill out and overflow for me. Maybe I like to write when given a topic and not when having to come up with one on my own. Or maybe I do actually have things worth sharing, and I judge them as not worth sharing. Thus, the dryness of this blog. Does anyone else have this "blog struggle"? I do apologize and hope to be a more active writer!

i have a friend and his name is oscar

Oscar noms were announced today! The big shock: TEN nominations for Best Picture instead of the usual five. I thought CNN had made a mistake. So I checked into IMDB because I know they don't lie. And it is true. Apparently around 5o years ago, that's how they used to do it. I still don't know how I feel about it. My pick: Precious. My prediction: Avatar. Ok, enough of this dorky Oscar buzz post....but before I go, the complete list of nominees I must share.

book recommendation: into the wild by jon krakauer

The 2007 film Into the Wild stirred me so greatly that I had to know more about the life of Chris McCandless. Luckily, I found that this movie was actually based on a book by a man named Jon Krakauer, a writer who had similar feelings of intrigue after finishing an article he was asked to write about McCandless in Outside magazine in 1992, soon after the young man's death. For the next three years or so, Krakauer immersed himself in extensive research, meeting with family members, friends, and acquaintances, collecting journal entries and letters, and even visiting the exact spot in the Alaskan wilderness where McCandless starved to death, to find some answers to the questions surrounding the tragedy and to see a little more clearly what it was in the first place that made the 24-year-old "supertramp" leave everything he knew behind.

A little summary: In 1990, 22-year-old Chris McCandless, remarkably intelligent and fed up with middle-class life and modern society in general, graduated from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. A month later, he donated his entire savings to charity (over $20,000), drove out west, and never spoke to his family again. Abandoning his car a few weeks after embarking, he became a permanent hitchhiker, relishing in tramping around the U.S. for the next two years, meeting interesting people along the way, living a minimalist life-style, completely independent of responsibility and every element of his former life. Alaska was his last big adventure in the spring of 1992, where he lived in an abandoned bus in the wilderness for four months in complete solitude before starving to death.

So why did he go? And what is so interesting about his particular story anyway? As Krakauer points out, there have been many men, young and old, just like Chris who left society to be on their own, sometimes doing very dangerous activities in remote parts of the earth, who were either found dead or never seen or heard from again. Krakauer himself strongly identified with McCandless, being an avid mountain climber as a youth and young adult, once climbing the dreaded Devil's Thumb in Alaska with stubborn determination, an act he thought, "would fix all that was wrong with my life...in the end, of course, it changed almost nothing." Maybe it is that, upon finding out who Chris really was and what his life had been like, it's a little easier to see why he wanted to get out and it's almost admirable to see him actually try to discover a life of what he called truth.

I don't think he should have severed his relationship with his family; this is not what I admire. His lack of understanding in the area of forgiveness is not something we can scorn, but rather only something to be saddened by. What is beautiful about the story of his walk into the wild is that he was willing to give up everything he had in worldly terms (a college education, possessions, career, modern distractions) to find truth. He knew none of these tangible things could fill him up or make him happy. Only truth. And to me, this is a such a clear testament to the fact that our souls are not satisfied, not really, until we find it.

I think he missed it. But I also think he was very close. In a letter to an elderly friend he met along the way to Alaska, Chris writes, "You are wrong if you think joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living." Chris knew the splendor of God's creation, that it was praiseworthy and to be enjoyed. But he vastly underestimated the beauty of humanity because all he could see was that it is fallen, and therefore missed the truth that is Christ. Reading a post on the blog, "Of First Importance" last week, these statements reminded me so much of Into the Wild: "He (John, who recorded one of the Gospel accounts) tells Jews that the truth and self-expression of God has become human. He tells Greeks that the meaning of life and all existence has become human. Therefore, only if you know this human being will you find what you hoped to find in philosophy or even in the God of the Bible. The difference [between any other great figure and Jesus] is the difference between an example of living and one who is the life itself."

It is not for me to judge and say he missed it, for in that bus it is possible he came to the truth as he neared his end. We at least know that he realized isolation doesn't really work; several of the notes marked in books he was reading at the time indicate this, including his exclamation, in all caps, quoting a line from another book, handwritten in a page of Doctor Zhivago: HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.

Bottom line: great book and well worth the read.

the golden globes

It's Golden Globes night!!!

I am pulling for:

- (500) Days of Summer (Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy)

- Tobey Maguire (Brothers, Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama)

- Joseph Gordon-Levitt ((500) Days of Summer, Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy)

- Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones, Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture)

- Mo'Nique (Precious, Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture)

And, I did like Up in the Air also, just not especially pulling for it.

Movies I have failed to see, but want to: The Young Victoria, An Education, Avatar, A Serious Man, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Up.

Favorite dresses (so far): Emily Blunt, Maggie Gyllenhaal

I'm excited!