Hello Old Friend, It's Been Too Long

Being the daughter of intelligent and awesome people I grew up listening to NPR on the radio.  "Fresh Air with Terry Gross", "All Things Considered", and occasionally "Car Talk" were all programs whose sound I easily recognized and could listen to, even if the content was usually way over my head.  I still know that NPR is fantastic radio but I haven't been able to actually find it in either of the cars I drive now.  (You can't actually read the numbers on one of the cars, so that makes it rather difficult.)  But my problem has been solved!


I am the proud and addicted owner of the amazing Droid Eris, which I maintain is an iPhone with a much cheaper app library, and way better cell reception.  There is an NPR app for the Droid which allows you to see the programs that have aired, including blurbs about their content, and then you can listen straight away or add it to a playlist for listening to later.  Seriously, it's perfect.  As I was driving home from my internship at a non-profit the other day I saw an article called "Non-profits Find Social Media Presents New Challenges", ironically this was the topic of the meeting I had just been in.  As I made my way through traffic on the 405 I listened to the article, and felt more informed on the topic.  Today I sifted through the "All Songs Considered" program and added a bunch to my playlist, so as I played video games and did stuff around the house I got to listen to some awesome new music from various bands, as well as a cool program were Jonsi played DJ and had some Iron Maiden, Billie Holiday, Audrey Hepburn and Django Reinhardt.

So if you have a Droid you should DEFINITELY download the NPR app for listening to on the go, but I believe you can listen to all the programs on NPR.org, so head there for a good time.

Read: Reading Lolita In Tehran

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books is by Azar Nafisi, who worked as a professor and writer in Tehran.  Here are a few images that I found online that I feel really set the scene for the book:

       The books is set in Tehran, and is broken up into 4 section: Lolita, Gatsby, James, and Austen, if that gives you some idea of the literature covered in the book.  (You may have noticed I did another Read Review of Lolita some time back, I decided to read Lolita before Reading Lolita in Tehran, and I'm glad I did, though it is by no means required.)  I really enjoyed Reading Lolita In Tehran because I didn't know a lot about Iranian history, or the fact that before the shah Iran was more liberal and open, it's only in recent years that it's become so oppressive.  The book covers a lot of the current history of Tehran, like the siege of the US embassy, the bombings of Tehran, the political power struggles, etc, as well as personal history like girls being jailed or arrested on the side of the street for wearing nail polish or having a strand of hair sticking out from under their head scarf.  It gives you an honest idea of what living there, as a girl, is like.
      The book was also right up my alley because it's all focused around a book club and reading, which I'm sure you've figured out now, I love.  The book was a bit difficult to get through at times, I found I could rarely read more than 25 pages in one sitting.  I'm not sure if I was getting bored or found some of the topics a bit too intense.  All in all I was glad I read the book.

       If you've read this post and want to read the book for yourself just leave a comment and I'll send you my copy of the book!  Make sure your comment has some sort of link to your email so I can contact you for an address.  I'm moving to another continent in July and need to seriously start purging my library.  Just for the record I bought the book used at a street sale so it's no where near "new" in condition, but isn't that part of what makes books great?  Wondering about their previous owners....  Ok maybe that's just me.

Photography: Get Back In Your Book

This is probably the coolest Flickr set I've seen in awhile. It's by Lissy Elle, who is super talented, so you should check out their other stuff. This set is entitled Get Back In Your Book and as you can see from the pictures below it shows people from books literally coming out of the book.  Of course my favorite is the Harry Potter one, but they're all awesome.  And it incorporates reading, so I'm always a fan.

Harry Potter

Sleeping Beauty

Alice in Wonderland

Peter Pan

Enjoy. :) And happy Wednesday!

Wedding: Gorgeous Nature-y Napa

I saw this beautiful wedding on the blog Style Me Pretty. She has two posts on this wedding here and here, take a look! The wedding was held in Napa Valley in close-to-my-heart Northern California, and had an excellent balance of outdoorsiness as well as classic beauty. The pictures below seriously do not do the wedding justice (I can't make them any bigger, huge bummer), so be sure to check out the links above for the real deal.

(all the pictures are from Style Me Pretty)

I love that picture in this last grouping where he's kissing her on the forehead afterwords. So adorable.

Have a good night. :)

Inspirational Photo Friday: Easter

I'm up in Northern California for Easter, so here are some pictures to get in the spirit!

I've always loved eggs that look like this! From weheartit.

My silver nest necklace!

Cutest coats ever!  From weheartit

Adorabley decorated eggs!  Picture from weheartit.

Cute little hand puppets!  Picture from weheartit, originally an etsy thing that I can't find on etsy anymore!

Dying eggs!  from weheartit

These Handblown Nest Bell Jars from William Sonoma

Hodge Podge of Stuff!

I've had a lovely few days off. First there was Santa Barbara, and then there was staying with the lovely Paris girls in San Diego. A very great time was had by all. Here are two pictures from the hike we did:

This is Tangerine Falls!

This is a bit of a modge podge entry, just a bunch of stuff I wanted to share. Here's a video that shows the creepy similarities in drawing and movement of some Disney movies, suggesting that they just reused the basics and drew over things I think. It's interesting to watch, and that french song is awesome, I wonder what it is!

I'm a big fan of this concept for eco-friendly packaging for Coke.  You can read all about the project here on the Packaging World Blog.  It's a design project by a gentleman, and not actually being implemented by Coke (unfortunately).  I'm actually doing a project on Coke right now and one of my suggestions for opportunities they could pursue was being more eco-friendly.




And one more amazing pic to share with you:

That picture is simply beautiful! I love the teal/pale aquamarine vases, and the wood table... I just want it in my house!  As well as a well lit window with white curtains like the one in the picture, I could go for that for sure.  But this image was found on the adorable Tumblr called "Elizabethtown" which has some great little findings, and has a special place in my heart now because of Elizabeths penchant for all things Harry Potter.  (You should check out her Hogwarts houses polyvore post, super cute.)