See life through MJ's optimistic eyes.
I am currently reading “Call of the Mall” written by Paco Underhill. This book is about the geography of shopping and it offers first-rate insights with equal measures of humor and rage. Paco Underhill also wrote the book “Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping” which was a bestseller. I have learned a lot of things so far in this book and I am only halfway through it. Made me think of all the quotes and words of wisdom that I have compiled through the years.
I bought one of Eckhart Tolle’s bestselling books today. The book is the Power of Now. I have heard so many good reviews about it. I’ve just finished reading the introduction. I will let you know what I think of it after I finish reading the entire book!
Get ready to be transformed MJ!
I have just finished reading Hope Donahue‘s book entitled Beautiful Stranger: A Memoir of an Obsession with Perfection. I decided to write a short blog post about it because I don’t want to forget the insightful words of Hope Donahue. I am not going to talk much about it but I’m just going to direct you to this site where you can see a summary of the novel. I recommend this book to everyone!
But let me share my favorite part of the book:
The young, beautiful models in fashion magazines do not represent the norm. In fact, these freakishly beautiful women make up less than one percent of the population. Their looks are the result of a genetic gift. And yet, they are the standard against which we are told to measure ourselves. The magazines tell us that we, too, can be as lovely and desirable as they are if only we have the right beauty regimen, exercise program, or plastic surgery. And despite the bold claims of anti-aging treatments, there is no way to recapture youth. It’s a profoundly unfair ideal that leads women on an impossible quest.
When you find out you will die, that’s when you decide to live.
It wasn’t until she decided to die, that Veronika found a reason to live.
It’s Saturday and again I decided to take the afternoon off so I went to the city, met up with Tim and we went malling. He had to buy something at National Bookstore for his sister’s wedding so I went with him. While he was looking for whatever it was he wanted, I went to the bestseller’s section and looked over the books that I haven’t read yet. And Paulo Coelho’s Veronika Decides To Die caught my eye. I have heard of this book many times before but I haven’t got the chance to read it. So after a little thinking I decided to buy a copy for myself.
After reading the first chapter, I decided that I love this book already. Paulo Coelho is such a great writer. I’ll continue reading and I’ll put the things I’ve learned here later on. And also the things that needs to be off my mind.
I browsed the internet and I learned that there’s a movie still in production process based on this book. Sarah Michelle Gellar will star as Veronika. It’s going to be out in 2009.
Veronika is 24 and she decides to die? She has everything but she decided to die? Why?
That’s what I’m going to found out.
I found this list at elvisgirl77 and learningagain‘s blog.
Here’s how it works:
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE
4) Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them.
The premise of this little exercise is that the National Endowment for the Arts apparently believes that the average American has only read 6 books from the list below.
(Note: I’m a Filipino but I have read some of this books [more than 6] so I joined this little exercise. 
)
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling- I’ve only read the first one in this series
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare-Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
7 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
So far I’ve read 29 books from this list and planning to read more. Good luck to me. 
