Things I Kind of Love

I was perusing Good magazine today, theoretically doing "research" for a story on steak (hard-hitting, I know), when I stumbled upon a service piece about T-shirts, which I tell myself I read because Steve has a T-shirt collection, not because I dig front-of-the-book fluff. They featured eight "T-shirts that make a difference."

The shirt from a company called Rosa Loves caught my eye because it was both affordable ($25) and cute. When I went to the Web site, I fell in love with Rosa myself. The company offers limited edition shirts that support different causes (and by causes, I mean people, like the Sharkar family in rural Bangladesh who live in extreme poverty. "Mr. Girendro Sharkar lived with a growing tumor on his throat," the site says. "He fought this illness until he could no longer eat, drink or speak. Mr. Sharkar passed away leaving behind his wife and five young children in their thatch house with walls patched with newspaper and magazine pages." Rosa Loves stops selling the shirt once enough money is raised for each "cause." Find out more here.


And I read about kiva.org, a microlending site, in Domino. You can buy a gift card for a friend and simultaneously help someone in a third-world country start a business. Once the loan is repaid, the friend can lend the money to help someone else or cash out. I love that idea too.

Here's another, and then I'll stop (I'm getting on my own nerves): Heifer International. Give the gift of a beast of burden. I mean, who doesn't want a water buffalo? And at $250, it sounds like a steal.

2007 Book List

This is the yearly roundup to the best of my recollection. I clearly started more books than I finished. I went through a non-commital phase, but I will find my way back to many of the lovely novels I started but failed to finish. Others (like Don Delillo's The Names) I gave up on two-thirds of the way through and have washed my hands of entirely. Despite the paltry list, this was fun. Shout out to Ciaran who lit a fire under my ass. Happy reading!

Books I read in 2007:

1. Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk
2. The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier
3. The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany
4. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
5. Tex & Sugar: A Big City Kitty Ditty by Barbara Johansen Newman
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by JK Rowling
7. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Books I started but didn't finish:

1. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
2. God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens
3. A Wedding in December by Anita Shreve
4. The Best American Travel Writing 2006 edited by Tim Cahill
5. The Names by Don Delillo
6. Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik
7. In the Eye of the Sun by Ahdaf Soueif
8. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
9. Snow by Orhan Pamuk
10. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Books I listened to on CD:
1. The City of Fallen Angels by John Berendt
2. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini