Building an Arky Arky

So the amount of rain has almost reached Biblical proportions... we calculated and it has been raining almost non-stop since May 17. yep, you read correctly - May 17. I feel like we either live under a black cloud or I just need to go home so the sun can reemerge. our plants are rotting in the ground and we've resorted to taking family trips to the dechetterie (the dump) just to get out of the house. Les Sullivans vont au dechetterie!!! (SIDENOTE: it's amazing what people throw out... if I didn't have baggage restrictions I would have come back with an entire set of pots and pans.)

anyways - in these oh-so-many rainy days I've been doing a lot of reading so I decided to create a list of good rainy day (or sunny day) reads I've blasted through so far - so here goes:

1. Kite Runner - I'm only like 3 years behind in reading this but it's well worth all the hype that it got. I had to fore-go watching the movie on the plane on my way over so I could read the book first.
2. My Life in France - a biography of Julia Child! I knew essentially nothing about her apart from her crazy accent and her TV show. the book chronicles her culinary beginnings in Paris at the Cordon Bleu. I'm not going to lie I skipped the last 100 pages because I really didn't care about what she did after leaving France, it was the France part that interested me. from my interpretation the French haven't changed too much when it comes to their feelings on food.
3. Atonement - yeah, it's the book that the movie is based on. surprise surprise I didn't see the movie, but the book is wonderfully written and I found myself falling in love with the characters, despite many of their flaws. I won't go into this too much seeing as I feel like most people are more attracted to Keira Knightly than 300 pages...
4. Three Cups of Tea - a fairly new one that's been heralded by the NYTimes etc. etc. as amazing. it's about this one man's journey to build schools all across central Asia (Pakistan, Afghanistan etc.). he started off as an alpinist who was so moved by the lack of education, especially for girls, that he's made it a life-long endeavor. it packs in a lot of interesting information about Pakistani culture and people.
5. Ethan Frome - so I've been trying to diversify my reading materials a bit this summer (you know - move on from Patricia Cornwell mystery novels - which I highly recommend, by the way) and my mom had given me this for Christmas a couple years ago. (somehow it made its way over here... but that's beside the point.) it's a really quick read and one of the most moving love stories I've ever read. and this is coming from a cold-hearted cynic!
6. Suite Francaise - it's gotten a lot of lauding in the WSJ and other book reviews. the Wall Street said it was one of the top five books to encapsulate France. the story behind how the book came about is just as interesting as the book itself - which is amazing! it sums up the stories of several different families and individuals in France during WWII - both during the occupation and the mass exodus of people from Paris prior to the occupation. the author (who was a French Jew, killed during the war) had plans for it to be a huge War & Peace type book, but she never got to finish it. I'm not quite done with the book so any other thoughts will have to be added later.

ok, so I know I haven't included pictures on this blog post (as I have promised I would...) so I'll make up for that later. and I'm sure I have also rambled about, on and around all these books - but I promise they're all really good. I'm trying to ration myself on Suite Francaise because after that I'm not sure what else I'll have to read. despite having a huge selection of books here, I've either read most of them or they're kid books. I do have a stack of French books sitting in my closet that I got for my birthday several years ago that I have yet to tackle and I'm not sure if I want to. reading with a dictionary by your side isn't exactly the most fun, but we'll see!