Music Monday: The Greatest Band Ever- Part 2

First of all, I have to start off by telling you that I could just scream.  When I was writing my last post, I had a list of 24 Beatles songs that I managed to get down to my Top 10.  I meant to copy the ones that weren't in the last post and save them in a draft to write this post. 

I forgot.

So I had to go through it all again.  UGH.

In case you missed it, last Monday, I shared songs 6-10 of my Top 10 favorite Beatles songs.  Today, I share my Top 5!

To recap:

10. "Hello, Goodbye" from The Magical Mystery Tour
9. "Do You Want to Know a Secret" from Please, Please Me
8. "I'll Follow the Sun" from Beatles for Sale
7. "All You Need is Love" from The Magical Mystery Tour
6. "Girl" from Rubber Soul

Without further adieu, here are my Top 5 Beatles songs!

5. "Something" from Abbey Road

  4. "All My Loving" from With the Beatles   3. "Can't Buy Me Love" from A Hard Day's Night    

2. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" from Meet the Beatles

  

 

1. "Yesterday" from Yesterday and Today
 

 

So there you have it!  Again, I will have to say that I'm still not so sure I'm settled on this, but I'm happier with my Top 5 than the first 5!  :)

 

Honorable mentions (in no particular order):

~From Please Please Me: "I Saw Her Standing There" and "Love Me Do"

~From Meet the Beatles: This Boy
~From A Hard Day's Night: "I'm Happy Just to Dance with You" and "Tell Me Why"

~From Beatles for Sale: "Eight Days a Week"

~From Help!: "You're Gonna Lose that Girl" and "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"

~From Rubber Soul: "Michele"

~From Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band: "A Day in the Life"

~From Magical Mystery Tour: "Penny Lane"

~From Abbey Road: "Come Together", "Oh! Darling", and "Here Comes the Sun"

and

~From Let it Be: "Let it Be"

 

Now you can see why this was so difficult!

 

Did I miss any of your favorites??

Happies & Crappies

I'm not sure what happened that I didn't write posts for Wednesday and Thursday.  I knew I wanted to write something for today, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to write about.  Then I remembered that Amber co-hosts "Happies & Crappies" on Fridays.

Perfect.

Happies
~This was supposed to be our first full week back to school after Christmas break, but we had delays and a day off every day but Thursday.  (And since I'm actually writing this on Thursday night, Friday is TBD.  We'll be in a freezing rain advisory from 4 AM - 3 PM.  So it's possible that there will not be school again.  I hope.)

~I had spaghetti for dinner this week.  It is absolutely one of my favorite meals.

~I got to spend my day off on Tuesday at home with Scott since he was off of work.

~We had a game night at our friends' house on Saturday night.  We played Cranium.  It was really a lot of fun, and we plan to do one hopefully every month!

~It's supposed to "warm" up this weekend.  (Also known as temperatures in the 40s.  It's like a heat wave!)

Crappies:

~One of my best friends lost her father this week.  Please say a prayer for her and her family.

~I am SO over winter.  I travel a little over 30 minutes to work every day.  There are areas I drive through that are just awful (with or without a delayed start). 

~My day off on Tuesday wasn't actually for snow, though.  Unless you've been living in a box, you know that much of the country was in a Polar Vortex.  Then again, if you were living in a box, you'd definitely know because you'd be totally frozen.  ;-p  It was negative something or other here with windchills in the negative double digits.  Yuck.  It can totally be spring any day now.

Did you see the pictures of Niagra Falls??  It was so cold falling water was freezing!!

~It's nice to have surprise days off, but we do have to make them up.  I will not be so thrilled when I'm only left with one day off for Easter break.

Book Review: The White Princess

Have I mentioned how much I love Philippa Gregory??

Seriously, I started devouring her historical fiction on the Tudor Court in England a few years ago, and I just can't get enough.  After finishing those books, I was glad that she had written books about the Cousins' War (aka The War of the Roses) that preceded (and led to) the Tudor's rise to power.

ANYWAY

There are currently 5 books in The Cousins' War series:
1. The White Queen
2. The Red Queen
3. The Lady of the Rivers
4. The Kingmaker's Daughter
5. The White Princess

(According to Goodreads.com, there is a 6th book called The Last Rose due to release in August of this year.)

Over my Christmas break, I finally had time to read The White Princess, which I got for my birthday in September.

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According to Goodreads.com:
Caught between loyalties, the mother of the Tudors must choose between the red rose and the white.

Philippa Gregory, #1 New York Times best­selling author and “the queen of royal fiction” (USA Today), presents the latest Cousins’ War novel, the remarkable story of Elizabeth of York, daughter of the White Queen.

When Henry Tudor picks up the crown of England from the mud of Bosworth field, he knows he must marry the princess of the enemy house—Elizabeth of York—to unify a country divided by war for nearly two decades.

But his bride is still in love with his slain enemy, Richard III—and her mother and half of England dream of a missing heir, sent into the unknown by the White Queen. While the new monarchy can win power, it cannot win hearts in an England that plots for the triumphant return of the House of York.

Henry’s greatest fear is that somewhere a prince is waiting to invade and reclaim the throne. When a young man who would be king leads his army and invades England, Elizabeth has to choose between the new husband she is coming to love and the boy who claims to be her beloved lost brother: the rose of York come home at last.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love this edition in Philippa Gregory's Cousins' War series. Having read the previous books and the books based on the Tudors that follow, it really pieces the stories together. The uniting of the York and Lancaster families through the marriage of Elizabeth and Henry Tudor isn't as simple of a solution as they had hoped. Gregory does a wonderful job of weaving historical fact with fiction to speculate on what might have actually taken place at this tumultuous time in England!

View all my reviews

As always, I would highly recommend this book if you enjoy historical fiction, anything about England, or Philippa Gregory!

Music Monday: The Greatest Band Ever- Part I

I'm hoping that title got your attention.  :)

I'm sure we all have our own opinions on what band just might be the greatest band ever, but for me there is, and always has been only one....

The Beatles

I've always loved the music of the 60's.  My cousin and I are still convinced that we grew up in the wrong era.  We love oldies from the 50's, 60's, and 70's.  Granted, I do generally enjoy most music across many, many genres.  But there's just something about the 60's, and especially The Beatles that I just really love.

When I originally sat down to write this post, I wanted to do a Top 5.  This proved impossible because even upon being extremely  picky about which songs I chose, I still had 24.  SO, I decided to do a Top 10.  Today will be the bottom 5 songs of my Top 10 Favorite Beatles songs of all time!  (NOTE:  I still had to eliminate 14 songs from my list.  Torture.)

10. "Hello, Goodbye" from The Magical Mystery Tour 



9. "Do You Want to Know a Secret" from Please Please Me



8. "I'll Follow the Sun" from Beatles for Sale

7. "All You Need is Love" from The Magical Mystery Tour

6. "Girl" from Rubber Soul

I'll be honest, I'm still not convinced that this is the right order!  Stayed tuned next week for my TOP 5 Beatles songs, and a list of the honorable mentions that didn't make my TOP 10 (after putting myself in extreme duress....).

Are any of these in your Top 10??

Book Review: Inferno

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Yesterday, I shared the books that I read in 2013, and this was one of the last three that I squeezed in before the new year!  I promised book reviews for those last few books, so here we go!

Summary from Goodreads.com:
In his international blockbusters The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons, and The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown masterfully fused history, art, codes, and symbols. In this riveting new thriller, Brown returns to his element and has crafted his highest-stakes novel to date.

In the heart of Italy, Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon is drawn into a harrowing world centered on one of history’s most enduring and mysterious literary masterpieces . . . Dante’s Inferno.

Against this backdrop, Langdon battles a chilling adversary and grapples with an ingenious riddle that pulls him into a landscape of classic art, secret passageways, and futuristic science. Drawing from Dante’s dark epic poem, Langdon races to find answers and decide whom to trust . . . before the world is irrevocably altered.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I did enjoy this book, but found it more difficult to read than the other stories of Professor Robert Langdon. There are many references to places and works of art in other languages (mostly Italian) that slow down the pace of the reader. The story also drags a bit, and I felt as if they just needed to "get going" throughout the story. I was genuinely surprised by the many twists...especially toward the end of the story, and I really liked how the story resolved.

View all my reviews


If you have read any of Dan Brown's other books--especially the stories about Robert Langdon--this is a must read!

Sharing at Live & Learn Thursday:

Books I've Read in 2013

When I got an e-mail from Goodreads with the books I've read in 2013, I thought it was a great idea to write a post with what I've read, and what's on my list for 2014!  Since I only joined Goodreads in March, it wasn't totally up-to-date, but luckily, I use my blog to write book reviews!  (Books I've reviewed here have links to the original posts.)

Before I share what I've read this year.  I added a widget from Goodreads to my sidebar.  It will show the ratings and reviews of books I've recently read, AND it will also show what I'm currently reading.  Also, feel free to check out my Reading List page.  I also found and added a widget from Goodreads with my current books to read.

1. The Little Book ~Selden Edwards

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2. The Casual Vacancy ~J.K. Rowling

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3. The Kingmaker's Daughter ~Philippa Gregory

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4. The Poisonwood Bible ~Barbara Kingsolver

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5. Gilt ~Katherine Longshore

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6. The Giver ~Lois Lowry

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7. Gathering Blue ~Lois Lowry

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8. The Messenger ~Lois Lowry

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9. Number the Stars ~Lois Lowry

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10. A Spear of Summer Grass ~Deanna Raybourn

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11. Redeeming Love ~Francine Rivers

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12. Between Shades of Gray ~Ruta Septeys

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13. The Phantom Tollbooth ~Norton Juster

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14. Hatchet ~Gary Paulsen

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15. The River ~Gary Paulsen

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16. Inferno ~Dan Brown

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17. The White Princess ~Philippa Gregory

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18. The Perks of Being a Wallflower ~Stephan Chbosky

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I didn't review The Phantom Tollbooth, Hatchet, or The River  here on my blog mostly because they are books that I only read because my students chose to read them for reading class.  I did enjoy all of them, though, and I have two of the other books about Brian Robeson (by Gary Paulsen) on my reading list.

I literally read Inferno, The White Princess, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower from December 23rd to December 28th.  I LOVE Christmas break.  :)  I WILL have my reviews for these posted soon.

So there you have it!  I read 18 books in 2013!  I have decided to set myself a reading goal for 2014.  I want to have 20 books read by this time next year.  I have one more book I picked up and have marked as "currently reading" on Goodreads, but I haven't officially started it yet.  So I think that I'm going to have that be my first book of 2014.  

What was the best book you read in 2013??

Happy New Year

May your 2014 be the best one yet!