Tag: books

Jodi Picoult’s Rules for Life

1. There’s always someone better than you.
My mom always used to say this, and I’ve always lived it, because I think it keeps me really humble. No matter how much success you’ve had, it makes you remember that you didn’t always start there at the point of glory—and you might not always end up there.

2. Even teenagers love to snuggle.
Having that moment of connection with your children—there’s nothing like that. Last night, my daughter, who is 16, patted her bed and said, “Come sit down, Mom.” And I said, “What do you want me to do? Tuck you in? Give you a kiss goodnight?” And she said, “No, come here.” Then she lifted the covers so I could get in and snuggle with her. And for a 16-year-old, that was great. We just kind of sat there and talked for a little while. I’ll never forget. Next time, it’ll be my idea!

3. The secret to fearlessness is…
Two things: Either having nothing to come home to or having everything to come home to. Either you’ve got absolutely nothing to lose or you’ve got everything to lose and you don’t think about the scary events in your life because they’ve all got to get done to protect the people you love.

4. Never eat caviar.
Does anyone really like it? It’s really expensive. It’s fish eggs. They pop in your mouth, and it’s kind of gross.

5. Give somebody else a chance to do the dishes.
What I mean by this is: If I make dinner, my husband will say, “Oh, I’ll do the dishes!” And then, he leaves the kitchen and goes online or watches Jon Stewart. Sure enough, I go into the kitchen a half hour later and dishes are piled in the sink. And I just think, “Forget it. I’m just going to do them.” And I do the dishes. And then he says, “Well, I was going to do them.” And maybe he was, but he wasn’t doing them fast enough for me. I have a tendency to assume if someone doesn’t work as fast as I do, or as thoroughly as I do, I’ll just take it over and do it myself. And I can’t. I don’t have the time and I can’t do everything, even though sometimes I want to. It’s very hard for me to understand that people work on different time schedules or that they process things differently, and the end result may be just as wonderful, but the end result may just take a little longer, or arrive in a different fashion. 

6. Forgiveness and acceptance are not the same things. 
For me, there really is a big difference between forgiveness and acceptance. If you forgive someone, you aren’t necessarily saying that what the person did was right. What you’re saying is, “I’m not giving you the power to make me a victim. I’m not going to let you invade my mind and make me hate you.” Forgiveness is not for the other person. It’s for yourself. That’s the way I see it. Whereas acceptance is really more of a caving in, as far as I’m concerned. It’s saying, “What you did, I’m okay with.”

My book in 2013 is going to be all about this. The novel is about this young woman at a grief group who befriends an old man in her small town who is everyone’s favorite grandpa. He’s the Little League coach and a teacher, and he’s been a fixture in the community for years, but he confides in her that he used to be a Nazi, and he’d like her to forgive him and then help him die.

8. When you see a bathroom, stop.
Because you never know when there is going to be another one. 

9. In times of stress or rage, remember the Alvin effect.
A really good way to calm down is just to pick up a dog. We have three dogs and our littlest is a rescue puppy from Mississippi, and he’s a very portable size. And you know, when everything is really, really crummy, and you’ve got Alvin on your lap, really, not much matters anymore.

10. The title of my (unwritten) memoir is:
No Pudding for Jodi. Because when I am in the U.K. on a book tour, I do a lot of luncheons. All these wonderful ladies come out and we all have a big meal, and I go up to the podium and give a talk. But the presenters always have me get up and talk when they’re serving dessert. So I never get to have dessert, which they call pudding.

11. Go for the happy-looking melon.
This is my daughter’s rule, actually, and she’s so right. I don’t know how to explain it, but when you’re looking for a melon at the grocery store, pick the happiest one—one that’s really round, that’s a good color, that’s sort of warm to the touch. If it looks happy to you, it’s going to taste really good.

I can’t agree more with some of Jodi’s Rules for Life. Since I have just started reading one of her books, I wanted to know more about her and I came across this.

Link: http://www.oprah.com/relationships/Jodi-Picoult-Interview–Jodi-Picoult-Quotes

 

 

Reading is good

I have never been much of a novel reader or a bookworm, except for browsing magazines or even better e-magazines. My favourite ones being Oprah, Elle, Cosmo, Reader’s Digest, Good Housekeeping etc. However I decided to dedicate more ‘me time’ to reading a book. I have had A friend s who can could finish a brand new novel in a day or two, and I always find that impossible. So one of my aim, wouldn’t call it a resolution, is to read more.

I have started on Brida this month, and hoping to finish it within this month too!! (Yes that long !!) Well at least it’s a start. Wish me Luck 🙂capa_Brida

OMG!

4-Year-Old Rips Up His Parents’ Life Savings — Literally

As a parent, it’s hard to know what to let your kids do sometimes to amuse themselves. Should you let their iPad be their babysitter? Should you let them flush a toilet 30 times, as a friend of mine did, rather than listen to them scream about how they want to flush the toilet? It’s a constant balancing act. (And, sorry, this planet is going to run out of water someday — in no small part to kids who flush the toilet 30 times.) One set of parents thought there was no harm in letting their 4-year-old boy rip up old books. It was keeping him occupied, and they didn’t want the books anyway. But then that little shredding habit wasn’t so cute when he found their life savings under the bed.

The parents of the little boy, who live in China, allowed their son to rip up old books, as it seemed to be something he enjoyed doing and what harm could there be in that?

The mom said:

We don’t have much time for reading here. We didn’t really care when he ripped up the old books we had lying around, and it was easy to buy very cheap old books down the market which he happily ripped into small pieces.

Hmm. I’d probably do the same. Keep the little bugger’s fingers occupied.

But then things started to go awry when they left the little ripper alone in the bedroom. Mom says:

I thought if I left him alone with a book for an hour it would be no problem and we could hear the ripping sounds from the kitchen but didn’t think anything of it.

This is beginning to sound like a horror movie. La de dah, everything is cool, nothing bad is gonna happen … la de dah …

You can just hear the Jaws theme music kick in as the tyke began to crawl around the room looking for more stuff to tear up and stumbled upon a gold mine under the bed. Sheets and sheets and sheets of paper. All there for the shredding!

So the kid went at it … ripping and ripping and ripping …

Only this time it wasn’t old books. It was the family’s life savings.

Yeah, I don’t know why they didn’t have it in a bank either. This is China. But I actually know people in the U.S. who keep significant amounts of cash in their homes. What with interest rates being so low and all …

So, yep, the kid ripped the family’s savings all up. They’d been saving up for a new home. It was around $5,000. Which would be bad enough in the U.S. but was a fortune in China.

Luckily, the family found a bank willing to exchange the torn up notes for new ones.

The mom says she’s learned her lesson, saying that she’s put a stop to her son’s “destructive” habit. When you think about it, there should have been much more instruction about what was okay to rip and what wasn’t … though who knows if the kid would have listened.

It’s always amazing to me how smart kids can be though. I once babysat a 2-year-old boy who routinely went into my purse to steal my money. He would bypass the makeup, the gadgets, everything in there … except the cash. Somehow, at 2 years old, he’d figured out that was the most important thing in there.

Kids!

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