What's Joy reading?

Monday, December 27, 2010

Beautiful Photos

Here are some gorgeous photos my mother emailed to me today -

I picked up two books at the library today. I'm reading The Liars' Club, a memoir by Mary Karr with my online reading group friends. It's been on my list for a long time.

I also got the new book from The Daily Show With Jon Stewart called Earth (the book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race. It's sure to be entertaining -

The eagerly awaited new book from the Emmy-winning, Oscar-hosting, Daily Show-anchoring Jon Stewart--the man behind the megaseller America (The Book). Where do we come from? Who created us? Why are we here? These questions have puzzled us since the dawn of time, but when it became apparent to Jon Stewart and the writers of The Daily Show that the world was about to end, they embarked on a massive mission to write a book that summed up the human race: What we looked like; what we accomplished; our achievements in society, government, religion, science and culture -- all in a tome of approximately 304 pages with lots of color photos, graphs and charts.

I'll let you know what I think once I've gotten into these books. And may I just add - Libraries are to be cherished!! I love mine!

Thursday, December 23, 2010

A British Christmas

I was just thinking about our trip to London and wishing we could be there for Christmas. Wouldn't that be a fun place to spend the holidays? I hear they have a ton of snow right now though.

Westminster Abbey

It's exciting that there will be a royal wedding next year when Prince William gets married at Westminster Abbey. We spent quite a bit of time looking around there and it's just as beautiful as you would imagine.

Pop Culture's All-Star One-Man Band

According to the Dallas Morning News, "Jon Hamm didn't just lead the reigning best-show-on-television, Mad Men, through its best season. He also continued his cameo-comic greatness on 30 Rock and he hosted Saturday Night Live twice. Not to mention his great performance in The Town. His greatest feat: being that smart, funny, handsome, talented, successful and yet you still can't bring yourself to hate him."

Jon comes across as such a genuinely nice guy in the interviews I've seen him give. I can't wait to see what he does next!

Here's a roundup of some more Mad Men news for all you Maddicts out there -

http://blogs.amctv.com/mad-men/2010/12/press-roundup-1224.php

"Are you crying? There's no crying! There's no crying in baseball!"

That memorable quote was from manager Jimmy Dugan (played by the always wonderful Tom Hanks) to Evelyn, one of the Georgia Peaches, in the classic 1992 film A League of Their Own. By the way, Evelyn is played by Bitty Schram who starred as Sharona, Monk's first assistant on the USA show Monk. It was fun to see her playing a different role. Anyway, the movie is a fictionalized account of the real-life All-American Girl's Professional Baseball Team which started in 1943.

This wonderful movie was directed by Penny Marshall and stars Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Lori Petty, Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell. Madonna really did a great job and the movie was perfectly cast. It's touching, funny, moving and entertaining and if you haven't seen it, you really shouldn't miss it!

You Light Up My Life

Debbie Boone was on Oprah recently and she sang her huge hit song You Light Up My Life. The song was written for the 1977 movie of the same name. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. When she sang the song on Oprah, it brought tears to my eyes and it sounds better than ever. Debbie looks great too!