I saw him just in time

Robin Williams is undergoing heart surgery just a few weeks after visiting Houston. I'm glad I saw him already.

Adventures with Authors

In May 2008, one of my favorite authors visited Houston. Augusten Burroughs spoke about and signed A Wolf at the Table.
I had a chance to ask about his fiction, and he said that Showtime had picked up Sellevision. I am anxiously awaiting its debut.

Adventures with Authors

Charlaine Harris wrote the Sookie Stackhouse chronicles - a series of books upon which HBO's True Blood is based. She visited the Houston Public Library in January 2009. I bought some books for her to sign, but I was number 148 in the line. She signed my books later.

Adventures with Authors


Larry Wilmore, author of I'd Rather We Got Casinos, Senior Black Correspondent for The Daily Show, and creator of The Bernie Mac Show, visits Houston.

My whiteness throws off the entire composition of the photo.

Book list from J - my main source of material

Key
Bold the books you have already read
Italicize the books you intend to read
Notes in parentheses next to note-worthy titles.

1) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2) The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien (saw the movies)
3) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
4) Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling
5) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (and saw the movie)
6) The Bible (excerpts only)
7) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
8) Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell (no, but I did read Animal Farm)
9) His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
10) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
11) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
12) Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
13) Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
14) Complete Works of Shakespeare
15) Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
16) The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien (I tried – I really did – but I could not finish)
17) Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
18) Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
19) The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
20) Middlemarch by George Eliot
21) Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
22) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
23) Bleak House by Charles Dickens
24) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
25) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
26) Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
27) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28) Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (perhaps the best book ever written)
29) Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
30) The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
31) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
32) David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
33) Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis (only The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.)
34) Emma by Jane Austen
35) Persuasion by Jane Austen
36) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis (why is this listed separately from #33?)
37) The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
38) Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres
39) Memories of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
40) Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
41) Animal Farm by George Orwell
42) The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
43) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44) A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving (I liked Garp better)
45) The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
46) Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery
47) Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
48) The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
49) Lord of the Flies by William Golding (many, many years ago)
50) Atonement by Ian McEwan (saw the movie)
51) Life of Pi by Yann Martel
52) Dune by Frank Herbert (saw the movie)
53) Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
54) Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
55) A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
56) The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57) A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (many, many years ago)
58) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (where’s my Soma?)
59) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
60) Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61) Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
62) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (one instance where the movie may have been better than the book – the original movie with James Mason and Shelley Winters)
63) The Secret History by Donna Tartt
64) The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
65) Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
66) On the Road by Jack Kerouac
67) Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
68) Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
69) Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
70) Moby Dick by Herman Melville
71) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (saw the movie)
72) Dracula by Bram Stoker
73) The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
74) Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson
75) Ulysses by James Joyce (not yet, but I plan to read it in 2009)
76) The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
77) Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
78) Germinal by Emile Zola
79) Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
80) Possession by AS Byatt
81) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (saw the play many times)
82) Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
83) The Color Purple by Alice Walker (saw the movie)
84) The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
85) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
86) A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
87) Charlotte’s Web by EB White
88) The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom
89) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90) The Faraway Tree Collection by Enid Blyton
91) Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (saw the movie Apocalypse Now, which was based on this book – fell in love with Larry/Laurence Fishburne)
92) The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93) The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
94) Watership Down by Richard Adams
95) A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
96) A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
97) The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98) Hamlet by William Shakespeare
99) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (saw – and loved – both movies)
100) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

I count 26 out of 100. The average American has read only six. So according to this, I’m 4.5 times more well read than the average American. But who created this list? Where is Kurt Vonnegut? Why is Bridget Jones’ diary on par with Shakespeare?

With thanks to my good friend J...

Have you ever been on TV? Only in the background or crowd scenes.

Have you ever sung in public? Does church count? As in before high school? After that, no one would tolerate it. But I do sing during the seventh inning stretch at baseball games – after many beers.

Have you ever dyed your hair blonde? I was blonde, but it wasn’t a direct result of dye. It was the aftermath of going to black then stripping to blonde. It lasted about 36 hours – until I could get professional help.

Have you ever eaten frogs’ legs? No way

Have you ever received a present that you really hated? Yes. But I am so polite that I keep them for years.

Have you ever walked into a lamp post? I’m clumsy and have limited depth perception. I have walked into a lot more than lamp posts. I have perpetual bruises on my legs from walking into sharp edges of tables.

Have you ever cooked a meal by yourself for more than 15 people? Yes. Most recently at Christmas, where we had Navidad – a Tex Mex Christmas dinner.

Have you ever fallen or stumbled in front of others? Too many times to count.

Have you ever done volunteer work? Yes…from working at the food pantry for AIDS patients to helping people build miniature art cars at a local festival.

25 Random Things About Me
(for those who don't believe in Facebook - you know who you are)

1. I was born a poor black child. Oh wait…that’s not me. That’s Navin Johnson.
2. I wanted to be an only child. I have a brother and two sisters. Plus 20 adopted half-siblings, step-siblings, and former step-siblings.
3. On a dark and rainy morning in February 1965, I was sitting in the back seat of my parents’ VW Beetle when I heard that Ringo Starr had married. I burst into tears because I was sure that he would wait for me to marry him. I was 4 years old at the time.
4. Because I was born in October, I was not eligible to start school when I was almost 6. My uncle paid for me to attend first grade at a private school where my teacher, Mrs. Mitchell, made her fingers into rabbit ears and told us to “tune into channel M” to hear her. We moved in the middle of the year to a progressive town where I was not allowed to finish the first grade.
5. I attended first grade again the following year, wearing my corrective shoes, eye patch, and cat-eye glasses. I was the chubby preacher’s kid. I was quite popular, especially when my mother dropped me off at school in the 10 year old light green Plymouth (with fins) that was covered in flowers painted by her friends.
6. We soon moved to an even more progressive town where they didn’t have a second grade teacher. I was placed in the first grade room for the third year in a row. I was able to take a test and skip straight to the third grade. I had to learn cursive writing on my own.
7. My dreams for when I grew up: be a princess, actress, or model. Reality: I’m a marketing manager for a software company in Houston, Texas.
8. I attended 10 schools in 12 years. I graduated as salutatorian of my class (of 42 people), which was enough to earn me a 4 year paid scholarship to college.
9. I stayed at the same college for 4 years, where I edited the yearbook, wrote for the school newspaper, joined a service sorority and social sorority, and served as a little sister to the service fraternity and a social fraternity.
10. While in college, I babysat for the daughters of the VP of Development. I still keep in touch with them.
11. My little sister in the service sorority has been named one of the top stockbrokers in America several times, and she had lunch with President Obama the day before the inauguration.
12. My lifelong dream was to go to England to see where the Beatles came from. In 1985, I visited Liverpool and saw Strawberry Field, Penny Lane, and all the Beatles sites. I had tea and biscuits in the house where Paul McCartney grew up. In London, I crossed Abbey Road and ran through Marylebone Station (where they filmed the greatest movie of all time).
13. Four years later, I visited Egypt, where I rode a camel and went inside King Tut’s tomb.
14. Five years after that, I climbed most of the way up the Pyramid of the Sun outside Mexico City.
15. Following a tradition begun by my maternal grandfather, I began brewing my own beer. I joined a home brew club in hopes of meeting men. Had I wanted to find overweight, balding married men, I would have been in hog heaven. I traveled to Oktoberfest in Munich and learned what it means to party.
16. I have met and had books signed by Joe Bob Briggs, Stephen King, Hakeem Olajuwon, Augusten Burroughs, and Charlaine Harris (author of the Sookie Stackhouse chronicles, upon which “True Blood” is based). I have mailed books to two of my favorite authors to be signed: Hollis Gillespie and Celia Rivenbark.
17. I edited my sister’s book: Change Your Reality, Change Your Life by Robin McKnight (available on Amazon).
18. I am a proud and doting aunt for three nephews and one niece. Who needs children when you can borrow some when it’s convenient?
19. I was making scrapbooks before “scrapbook” was a verb. I hate the way so many nouns have morphed (incorrectly, I might add) into verbs.
20. I am living proof that teenagers should not have babies: my initials are KKK.
21. I have lived with a black man for 8 years. I am a vegetarian; he is a meat and potatoes man. I love to bake; he doesn’t eat sweets. It works.
22. My father was a Methodist preacher. My stepfather was a Methodist preacher. I attended a Methodist college. My first job was at a national Methodist newspaper. I have not been to church in 18 years.
23. Vows I made as a child – and have kept: I will never buy a used car. I will never live in a house without central air conditioning. I will drive a red convertible.
24. I have officially made the best picante sauce in the state of Texas – twice. I won blue ribbons from the State Fair of Texas in 1996 and 2008. (And remember – it ain’t bragging if you can prove it!)
25. I love professional basketball because of all the hot sweaty men. And the beer.