Meme and Other Things

Over at Pea's place yesterday, and at Susie's place today, they did the Book Cover Meme.

***Rule (there is only one): Go to the advanced book search on Amazon, type your first name into the Title field, and post the most interesting/amusing cover that shows up.

When I entered "Dawn" into the Title field, I had a choice of 222,840 books. That's a lot of books! Of course, most of them had to do with the time of day, dawn of the morning. But a few were about a person named Dawn.

In her fine new Virginia school, Dawn Longchamp feels happy and safe. But nothing is what it seems...

Now Dawn and her older brother Jimmy have a chance for a decent, respectable life, and Dawn's secret, precious hope to study singing can come true. Philip Cutler, the handsomest boy in school, sets Dawn's heart on fire. She is deeply devoted to her brooding brother; but with Philip, she imagines a lovely dream of romance...

Then Dawn's mother suddenly dies, and her entire world begins to crumble. After a terrible new shock, she is thrust into a different family and an evil web of unspoken sins. Her sweet innocence lost, humiliated and scorned, Dawn is desperate to find Jimmy again and...strip away the wicked lies that will change all their lives forever!

Dawn has always thought there was a secret passage hidden in her house. But she never thought there was a ghost...until now. All kinds of creepy things go whenever Dawn's at home. There are even spooky noises behind her bedroom wall! Dawn is sure there's a ghost in her house. And so are the other BSC Members. But they are so busy with their baby sitting jobs that they hardly have time for a ghost hunt. Will Dawn and her friends solve the spooky mystery or will Dawn have to share her house...with a ghost?

I don't think there's chance I would read either of these books, but it was fun to see what was out there.

That leads me to talk about my name a bit. Do you like your name? I didn't like mine when I was a kid. It was too different. I had so many friends named Mary and Linda and Sue and Carol. I wondered why I couldn't have a more common name. My parents named their first 4 kids very unusual names, at least for that time and place. My biggest issue was people thinking it was a boy's name. I would say, "Not if you say it right!" I still have this problem to this day.

One of my dearest friends, a co-worker for 10 years, would answer the phone. I'd hear her say, "Did you want to talk to the man or the woman?" What she meant was - there was a Don and a Dawn in our office. I would get on her case every time. But she honestly couldn't differentiate between the two names phonetically. I would tell her, "How do you say the word for the grass outside? It's lawn, not lon. How do you say what you do when you're tired and yawn, not yon. How about the word for when you need some money and you take something in and get a loan? It's pawn, not pon." She never did hear the difference.

I love the way people from New York say my name - kind of like Duwan. I love how southerners say my name - Dauun. It's hard to spell phonetically, but maybe you get the point.

I have made peace with my name. But I still want it pronounced correctly - Don said with "AWE."

I couldn't resist another totally different sunrise this morning.

Then I had to get in my car and catch these shots as the sun set over the mountains. I just love those silver linings!

I'm sorry - I just can't resist posting them all - I couldn't decide which one to leave out!