The Books Around Me

So I was tagged in this internet meme by Dr. Beck, but the problem lies in the books that are around me...HA! Uhh...so the first one I grabbed which is among a stack is "Kokology: The Game of Self-Discovery" which is a fun book/game in itself; however, its pages are made up of rather short snippets, so when I turned to page 123, there was only 7 sentences total ON the page. I decided to move on...

The other things in the stack included stuff like a VHS tape of "Search for Bobby Fischer" (an EXCELLENT movie by the way) and a diary of my friends. Neither of which met the "page 123" criteria.

Turning to my other side in the room is a another stack (believe it or not, my room is actually rather clean and organized--my friends can attest to this, as they like to joke that I'm the one of the three of our close group that they can show up at my house at anytime and not worry about me being embarressed that my room is a mess....HA) which is many movies I have stacked up to hopefully watch at some point in time, and then at the bottom of the stack is four books I used to like to call my "books I'm reading", but being completely honest with myself, they are all books I've started at one point over the past year and haven't picked any of them up in months...HA! From this "stack" I'll use "The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients" by Irvin D. Yalom, M.D. for this meme (even though this one too happens to have a short number of sentences on page 123--it's the end of a chapter, but I'll just proceed into the next chapter to complete the meme).

The meme plays as...

Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more.
Find Page 123.
Find the first 5 sentences.
Post the next 3 sentences.
Tag 5 people.

Sooo...

It bursts loose in every nightmare. When we were children we were preoccupied with death and one of our major developmental tasks has been to cope with the fear of obliteration. Death is a visitor in every course of therapy.

~The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients by Irvin D. Yalom, M.D.

Obviously anyone is free to play along with this meme, but for "tagging" purposes, I suppose Kim, Jennifer, Brooke, Katey, & Holly.

Just Some Stuff...

• Today I finished reading a book I started a couple weeks ago. This sounds like a dumb thing to mention, but this is honestly like a big feat for me. I hardly EVER finish books I start reading. The book actually wasn't all that amazing of a book, but I chose it from my many of books on my small bookcase next to my computer desk (which sits there as a constant tease for me, because I sit at the computer and find myself looking over at the books on it and thinking, "Gosh, I really wanna read that book" but I'm fully aware of the likelihood of me actually reading...or if I start it actually finishing it). The book I read was Maria Shrivers "Ten Things I Wish I'd Known - Before I Went Out into the Real World". Don't get me wrong, it was a decent book, but I mainly chose it because it was one I had wanted to read and mostly because it is a small book and I wanted to remind myself that I could be dedicated enough and read a complete book. Today, I read the remaining 8 of the 125 pages and I feel good knowing I can start and finish a book!
• Something interesting about that book is how I think back on it now that I've read it all and it was the chapter on marriage that I recall enjoying the most and thinking how true so many points of it seemed to be...HA! Funny, since I'm not (and never have been) married. But maybe it seemed interesting because I was reading it during a time I was dating a guy, and working on a relationship by compromising brings about similar situations whether you're dating or married. The chapter is called "Marriage Is a Hell of a Lot of Work" and here is the opening paragraph to that chapter...

Oh my God, is that true. And I had no inkling of this when I left college. Otherwise, I wouldn't have spent my twenties worrying that I wasn't married. In fact, if any of you is worried that you haven't run into anyone named Right, male or female, don't be in such a hurry. Chill, relax, and enjoy your freedom, because once you're married you don't have that kind of freedom anymore. After being in such a rush to meet their soul mates, so many people complain about being married to them. It's nuts.

• Instead of starting another book now, I think I'm going to give this audio book stuff a try, as I got a book on CD I've been interested in reading for sometime now for only $10 a couple weeks back. It's a book a good friend of mine read a while back and recommended it to me saying she thought I'd enjoy it. It's called "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell. I've gotten about halfway through the first CD today and it seems interesting. It's strange to listen to someone reading a book to me over my iPod, but we'll see. I hear this audio book stuff is cool. I will say though, as a non-fiction reader, I like to "read" stuff that makes me think, thus I find myself wanting to read slowly and understand everything and let stuff set in before moving on, and this might cause me issues with an audio book. There's been a couple points where I've paused my iPod so far to let a sentence he read set in...HA!
• Tonight, one of my best friends added a new entry to her blog that she hadn't written in for over 3 years. This makes me smile.
• I'm in LOVE with this new website one of my friends introduced me to via her blog. It is called GoodSearch and it's a search engine that gives money to charities everytime you surf it! How GREAT is that! Sure, it only gives like a penny with each search, but do you know what sort of potential this has!?!? I SOOOO recommend you become a GoodSearch-er and recommend it to your friends. I downloaded the GoodSearch toolbar because I used to always use my Google search toolbar, and then I changed my internet explorer homepage at work from Google.com to GoodSearch.com because I'm often having to look up stuff on the internet at work and I like to give back to GREAT causes when I'm doing my work! Go check the site out and pick a charity you like to donate too. I've chosen the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Oh, and if you're worried that it might not be a "good" search engine and that you think nothing compares to your Google, understand that GoodSearch is powered by Yahoo, thus it is a "good" search engine and will give you good results! =)
• Finally, I was recently introduced to this GREAT "waste of time internet game" that you and your friends can fall in love with too! HA! It's one of those games that is extremely simple (in a complexity sort of way, not in an easy-to-win sorta way) and highly addictive. The email forward that I got the website from claims that this "game" is actually a test used by the US Air Force. They say that those training to fly in the Air Force have to obtain a score of 2 minutes on this test, but I don't know if that's a bunch of bologna or not...HA! Anyways, the email also states that if you can go more than 18 seconds on it you're "phenomenal"...uhhh, my current high is 25.016 seconds and I've scored in the 20 seconds several times, so uh, I guess I'm "phenomenal"...but I'm not going to go writing home about that one. Or at least not until I am good enough to be an Air Force pilot! HA! ;) The website is this. There are instructions on how to play it at the bottom.