It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Share what you (are, have been, are about to, hope to be) reading or reviewing this week. Sign Mr Linky at Book Journey and visit other Monday reading roundups.

What I read and posted about reading over the last week is pretty well covered in my Saturday Banned Book Week Wrapup post.  So I won't  repeat it again here.  I will just talk about what I've been reading since Saturday and what I plan to read in the next week.

Twilight Series:
I'm 2/3 thru New Moon

Since Saturday I've continued reading New Moon the second book of the Twilight series and reached page 362 before my eyes quit on me in the wee hours this morning.  Can you believe I had to quit in the middle of the scene where Belle jumps off the cliff?!!  And haven't picked it up again yet because I knew I would get nothing else done today if I did.

I have 40 odd items out of the library but most of my reading over the last week for BBW were from books without due dates either owned by me or like the Twilight series borrowed from friend or family.  I hope to return to chasing the due dates this week but I don't think I'll set aside Twilight now that I've started it.  And as my sister pointed out to me they are after all borrowed as well and my poor niece has been waiting nearly two years!  Getting them read and returned to her will also free up premium space on my shelves!

A Prayer for Owen Meany
by John Irving

I will probably take a short break from Twilight after finishing Bk 2 tonight as I want to try to read and review A Prayer for Owen Meany for Wordshakers this week.  I ordered it from the library several weeks ago but won't get  my hands on it until after midnight tonight when my husband gets home from work.  He was stopping to pick up library holds on his way to work this afternoon.

Another novel I hope to get back to ASAP is East of Eden which I started last week the same day I started Twilight and went back and forth for awhile and then settled down with Twilight because I needed an easy, light read to counter all the serious, heavy stuff I was encountering in Chaucer,Milton, Boccaccio, Aristophanes and Whitman.  Like mentioned in one post, sometimes it felt like I was reading algebra.

And of course I will continue to browse among all the fable/fairytale/myth items both owned and borrowed as my obsession with them has not let up.

Read more...

It's Monday! What are You Reading? #36 [Banned Book Week]

Share what you (are, have been, are about to, hope to be) reading or reviewing this week. Sign Mr Linky at Book Journey and visit other Monday reading roundups.

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.  ~Voltaire

This being Banned Book Week I'm hoping to make the majority of my reading choices from a pool of once banned or challenged books which I currently have in my possession.

You'll notice an abundance of classics in the list.  That is because so many of them are included in the Britannica Great Book set I own and others are in my collection of free online reads or downloads.  I have linked the titles to a good online source where I know of one:


John Milton's Areopagitica is a classic that helped establish a free press both by cogent arguments in its favor but also by being published without permission (license) in defiance of the British laws at the time requiring official state sanction for every publication.
--included in my Britannica Great Books Set.  It is not long and I  would like to read it this week in honor of BBW

Lysistrata - by Aristophanes
A Greek Tragedy written circa 400 BC there was a U.S. import ban until 1930
--included in my Britannica Great Books Set.  I would like to read it in honor of BBW


Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
--I used to own a copy, a much loved paperback lost in our last move, but now resort to either library copies or online copies like the one the one linked above.  It is one I've long intended to download so I can read when not online.  Maybe I'll make that a task for this week and while I'm at it read a few poems.

Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
banned for decades in the U.S. under the Comstock
Law of 1873, also known as the Federal Anti-Obscenity Act, which banned the mailing of
“lewd,” “indecent,” “filthy,” or “obscene” materials.
--I had this checked out of the library awhile back and when I had to return it I searched out links for reading online. I might visit it to read another story from it this week. And while I'm at it go ahead and download a copy I can read while off line

Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
frequently banned for objectionable sexual content
--included in my Britannica Great Books set.  I hope to read one tale this week.

The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm,
 1994 - restricted to sixth through eighth graders at Kyrene, Arizona elementary schools for “excessive violence,
negative portrayals of female characters, and anti-semitic references.”
--as part of my current myth/fable obsession I have the Modern Library edition checked out of my public library and have been reading it off and on for several weeks.  I've also linked here to an online version.

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
2009 - a parent object to language and portrayal of sexuality resulting the removal from the summer reading list for the Pelham, Massachusetts school district.
--I have a copy being held for me at the library which will be picked up on Monday.  I watched the movie, Simon Birch, based on this novel the other night.  I sent for this when Sheila named it as this month's Wordshakers book club selection and would like to begin it soon.


East of Eden by John Steinbeck
--I just recently watched the movie staring James Dean and then sent for the novel via my public library and currently have it at home.  I've been dying to start it but other books have earlier due dates.  Maybe BBW is a good excuse to move it up in line.


Twilight series by Stephenie H. Meyer
2009 banned in Austrailian primary and junior schools for sexual and religious content
--I have had all four volumes on my shelf for nearly a year loaned to me by my niece.  I read the first couple chapters of the first one almost immediately after she handed them over and would have kept going if I hadn't been in the awkward position I'd put myself in to reach the shelf I meant to keep them on.  I went ahead and shelved them so I could shake out a cramp in my foot and there they have sat.  Maybe BBW can be my excuse to shove aside the three dozen library books?  I bet if I pulled the first one out and restarted it while sitting comfortably I find myself on page 100 before I could blink twice.

Three more in my possession but which I confess to doubting I will get to this week.

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
--I have a copy thanks to my sister who picked one up at a yard sale for me


A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle
frequently banned in schools for objectionable religious content ie references to crystal balls and witches
--I'm in possession of a copy my sister mailed to me several years ago after she had finished reading it to her son. This was one of my favorite novels as a preteen and L'Engle remains one of my favorite authors to this day

Ulysses - James Joyce
--I used to own a physical copy but currently have only an electronic one.

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Here are a few bookish events going on for BBW:

Hosted by Bookjourney

Get on the BANNED WAGON!

Giveaways, a scavenger hunt and links to participating blog's BBW reviews are some of what's happening at Sheila's BookJourney this week.  Along with her own reviews of banned or challenged books and of course her daily Morning Meanerings post.

Banned Books Week Giveaway Hop

Banned Books Week Hop

Giveaways galore and lots of participating blog's to visit and comment on.

Banned Book Week Virtual Read Out

Banned Books Week Virtual Read-Out

The annual BBW readout traditionally conducted in public at bookstores and libraries where individuals read aloud form a banned book has now gone digital. Now you can video record yourself reading a banned book and upload to a YouTube channel

Read more...

It's Monday! What are You Reading? #34

Share what you (are, have been, are about to, hope to be) reading or reviewing this week. Sign Mr Linky at Book Journey and visit other Monday reading roundups.


I've read more in the last two weeks than I have in months. I have finished four novels in the last ten days and am well into a fifth. Among the finished are:

Of Bees and Mist by Erick Setiawan
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
Speak by Laurie Halse Andersen
Haunting Bombay by Shilpa Agarwal

The novel I'm currently reading is Illumination by Keven Brockmeier.

I'm also reading several short story collections, and some fable/folklore collections.

Among the NF I have been giving attention to, probably getting the most is Francine Proses' Reading Like a Writer.

i

Of Bees and Mist
by Erick Setiawan

This has got to be one of the best novels I've read in years.  It is so unique it is hard to pin down its genre.  It has the flavor of a fable but no fable I've ever heard was several hundred pages in length.

Raised in a sepulchral house where ghosts dwell in mirrors, Meridia grows up lonely and miserable. But at age sixteen, she has a chance at happiness when she falls in love with Daniel-a caring and naive young man. Soon they marry, and Meridia can finally escape to live with her husband's family, unaware that they harbor dark secrets of their own. There is a grave hidden in the garden, there are two sisters groomed from birth to despise each other, and there is Eva-the formidable matriarch and the wickedest mother-in-law imaginable-whose grievances swarm the air in an army of bees. As Meridia struggles to keep her life and marriage together, she discovers long-buried secrets about her own past as well as shocking truths about her new family that inexorably push her love, courage, and sanity to the brink.
 Of Bees and Mist is an engrossing fable that chronicles three generations of women under one family tree over a period of thirty years-their galvanic love and passion, their shifting alliances, their superstitions and complex domestic politics-and places them in a mythical town where spirits and spells, witchcraft and demons, and prophets and clairvoyance are an everyday reality. Erick Setiawan's astonishing debut is a richly atmospheric and tumultuous ride of hope and heartbreak that is altogether touching, truthful, and entirely memorable.

Haunting Bombay
 by Shilpa Agarwal

A haunting story about the things that haunt a home, a family, a life--the ghosts of the past, secrets, regrets, history.

HAUNTING BOMBAY is a literary ghost story set in 1960’s India that tells the tale of three generations of the wealthy Mittal family who have buried a tragic history and the ghosts of the past who rise up to haunt them.
This award-winning novel weaves together mysticism, mystery, and haunting supernatural spirits in a luminous story of power and powerlessness, voice and silence in post-colonial India.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
 by John Boyne

This story also has the flavor of a fable. It is written for preteens while being quite readable by adults without any sense of having to come down to a lower level. I had watched the movie based on it earlier this summer so I knew the nightmare ending from the first page and yet I was compelled by the voice of the narrator to keep turning the pages.

 Set during WWII the story follows the events in the life of a young boy whose father is commandant of one of Hitler's death camps. Having been yanked out of his life in Berlin and from his school and friends he is lonely and begins to wander the countryside following a mysterious fence taller than their three story house. One day he spots a boy his age on the other side of the fence, a boy wearing strange striped pajamas. The two boys develop a friendship over the following months. I can't say much more without giving away too much.

Speak
by Laurie Halse Andersen

Set in a modern American high school this is the story, told in first person in a disjointed journal like manner, of a girl's freshman year following a traumatic encounter with a senior boy the month before school starts.  For almost the entire school year she walks the halls of school and the days of her life in a haze speaking as minimally as possible to classmates, teachers and parents--especially when she is bullied, badmouthed,  unjustly accused, taken advantage of or misunderstood.  One teacher is able to reach her by introducing her to expressing herself via art and eventually she is able to speak up again, to stand up for herself.

The Illumination
by Kevin Brockmeier

What if your pain and your wounds were visible to all as light and theirs to you? Shimmering, shining, sparking, coruscating, the cuts, bruises, fear, tension, disease and trauma are blazoned upon the skin for all to see.

What if our pain was the most beautiful thing about us? From best-selling and award-winning author Kevin Brockmeier: a new novel of stunning artistry and imagination about the wounds we bear and the light that radiates from us all. 

At 8:17 on a Friday night, the Illumination commences. Every wound begins to shine, every bruise to glow and shimmer. And in the aftermath of a fatal car accident, a private journal of love notes, written by a husband to his wife, passes into the keeping of a hospital patient and from there through the hands of five other suffering people, touching each of them uniquely.

I love the soft blue veins on your wrist. I love your lopsided smile. I love watching TV and shelling sunflower seeds with you.

The six recipients—a data analyst, a photojournalist, a schoolchild, a missionary, a writer, and a street vendor—inhabit an acutely observed, beautifully familiar yet particularly strange universe, as only Kevin Brockmeier could imagine it: a world in which human pain is expressed as illumination, so that one’s wounds glitter, fluoresce, and blaze with light. As we follow the journey of the book from stranger to stranger, we come to understand how intricately and brilliantly they are connected, in all their human injury and experience.

Reading Like a Writer
 by Francine Prose

From the cover flap:

Long before there were creative-writing workshops and degrees, how did aspiring writers learn to write? By reading the work of their predecessors and contemporaries, says Francine Prose.

In Reading Like a Writer, Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters. She reads the work of the very best writers—Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Kafka, Austen, Dickens, Woolf, Chekhov—and discovers why their work has endured. She takes pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; she is deeply moved by the brilliant characterization in George Eliot's Middlemarch. She looks to John Le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue, to Flannery O'Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail, and to James Joyce and Katherine Mansfield for clever examples of how to employ gesture to create character. She cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which literature is crafted.

Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart.

Read more...

Thursday 13 ~ 7/21/11

Join the 13 things meme

13 Of My Crocheted Bookmark Patterns and Their Variations

1. This was the first. The one Mom taught me in April 2009 5 months after her stroke when her aphasia was still pronounced. She studied a bookmark I found in one of my Dad's books after he died and reverse-engineered it and then demonstrated for a row or two and then watched me try...and try...and try...

Everything you find on this site regarding crochet and my crochet WIP all stemmed from that first bookmark. It's not pictured as it was gifted that same month to my MIL.




2. A few weeks after mastering that first pattern I designed my first one using the same stitch--the double crochet--that had made up the first one.



2 B. I'm grouping this with the ones above it because it is nothing but the center section standing alone. I've made this one twice as long but no longer have it to photograph. The one pictured is about 4 inches without the ribbon.




3. My second new pattern and design. Still using only the chain and the double crochet. This one too is about 4 inches sans ribbon and I've also made it longer.





4. These four and the two below are variations on the first bookmark I made following a pattern. The original is not shown as it has been gifted. Here I've learned a new stitch called the cross-stitch but it is still two double crochets crossed.








5. This one is a riff on a scarf pattern. Still all double crochet but variations on it use half-double or single crochet. I've made over a dozen in various lengths but few have had their fringes put on yet. I'm terrible at those finishing touches. You'll see a lot of start and finish tails still awaiting tucking into the stitches in the following pics.




6. This was also based on a scarf pattern. These use single crochet, triple crochet, double triple crochet and the trinity stitch for the border. The one on top has the border in a third color while the one below repeats the center color. The top one is cotton size 10 and the bottom one is bamboo size 10


7. Here I continue to use the triple in the middle and the trinity for the border but the rows to either side of the center are my first bobble stitches.



8. Here the trinity stitch makes up the body. The top has a picot border. The bottom has no border.



9. This is the Solomon's Knot aka Love Knot. Top to bottom: bamboo size 10, white cotton size 30, Lizbeth's Egyptian cotton size 20. FYI as the size number increases the thread size decreases. I've used sizes 50 and 100 as well. 100 is not much different in size than sewing thread but it's stronger.



10. This is called, by some books, a chain mesh. It is basically the same stitch I'm using int the bridal purse as seen in yesterday's post. But here it was three chains then a single crochet into the middle chain of the 3 chain directly below. Here it's five chains with a slip stitch in the 3rd or middle chain of the 5 chain below.

This is hand painted silk thread. I was practicing the stitch I thot I was going to use on my MIL's shawl. But then I saw the Love Knot and used it instead. Technically I suppose this one should have preceded the one above.



11. This is the interweave stitch aka the post stitch where a stitch above wraps around the post of the stitch below it instead being worked into the top of the stitch as normal. when you use contrasting colors the effect can be striking. The border is my first picot attempts.

I used this stitch in the baby afghan for my grand-nephew born in January. It was 36X30 inches with white alternating with 5 pastels in bamboo size 10 thread. I made several bookmarks using the bamboo thread and the same colors to practice the stitch and work out the order of the pastel rows. I should have included one here but didn't think of it.




12. The top two with interlocking circlets using a stitch I made up and still haven't found describe in any of the books. It is based on the triple but I take the loops off 1 than 2 than 3 instead of the 2-2-2 of the triple crochet. The top one is actually being made for the shoulder strap of the rainbow tote I'm making for myself. The blues and purples below it is for my sister's B-day. Both are still on the hook as are the group below.

13. The two in the middle are using the chevron or zig-zag stitch. It can be done with any of the stitche from single through double triple but here I'm using single crochet.

The one on the bottom is really a variation on the scarf pattern seen in 5 only with single crochet and square sections. I'm intending to fringe it but a tassel would work as well. Also if I make the squares bigger I could do riffs on the concept below.



This is unfinished. It should have been grouped with #4 as it was a riff on the cross stitch rows alternating with double or half double rows. I began it a year ago and had it off the hook but did not like the way the triangle on the right pointed inward instead of out like the first one. I had meant to flip it. I went ahead and added the three rows of purple cross stitch and took it off the hook but I could never convince myself to like it. So I took off the purple rows and plan to make the yellow triangle in green a diamond and then add a triangle pointing out at the end. This will be one of a kind tho as from now on when I do shapes I will use single crochet instead of the half-double seen here and I won't be using those cross stitch rows.



I had some unwanted help during the photo shoot. I'm currently staying at my Mom's and my nephew's cat Bradley kept insisting that my lay out space was a bed or a playpen. I had to shut him in the stair well for awhile.

During the photo shoot I misplaced two of the bookmarks and was blaming Bradley but when they turned up after a ninety minute search they were in places that made it obvious that I was at fault.

Read more...

Writing Is...

i haz a write  2 B hurd

Yesterday I was browsing blogs I've neglected to visit for a long time and saw mention of a meme on West of Mars in which one is to fill in the blank: Writing is like ______

Well that stuck with me over the next several hours as I worked at the sorting and packing of my crochet projects for Sunday's trip. Several possible answers came to me as I mulled and mused. I was drawn to listing them and soon I was writing a poem. The first one in ages. I can't even remember the last one.

Apparently in the space between reading the blog post and starting to write I had lost the word 'like'. After returning to Susan Helene's blog for the link I noticed that and went back to my poem to insert 'like' before each verb int he first line of each verse but it changed too much in several cases--the rhythm, the meaning, the immediacy. So I left it as I wrote it.

Writing Is

Writing is dreaming,

taking you away to other

where, giving glimpses into

that expanding vastness that

is your spirit.

Writing is grieving

for the lost ones, the lost dreams

giving substance to memories,

recovering that sense of

your life's meaning

Writing is weaving

words of golden wisdom from

all your pain and joy to find

hope, like a nova, in the

palm of your hand

Writing is dancing

on fluffy dandelions

spreading their seeds among weeds

whose proliferate leaves ooze

a healing balm

Writing is pitting

your own self against your self

daring to face the challenge

of giving all that you are

without reserve

Writing is looking

deep within the beating heart

of your dankest self loathing,

dissipating its fog with

reason's bright light

Writing is seeking

a knowing of the other

and a quest to be known

by someone acknowledging

you as worthy

Writing is exalting

in the heat of creative

passion that brings forth out of

nothing but thought and yearning

a new being

Writing is journeying

far from the familiar

greeting yourself in the eye

of the raging storm that is

your own desire

Writing is questing

with the heart of a hero

for the prize in the depths of

the pulsing shadows guarded

by fierce dragons

Writing is yearning

for a world of wonders

of mystery, of power, of awe,

which is not to be had lest

we dare chase it

Writing is streaming

the mind of the universe

bringing the brilliant spinning

galaxies circling in a

baroque gavotte

________________________

Now back to the packing. Though not for long as I've had two hours of sleep since Tuesday afternoon. I'm determined to avoid leaving her Sunday morning having already been awake over 24 hours as is my habit. I can't afford to as my sister is leaving town on Monday morning which puts me on duty with Mom only twelve or so hours after I arrive.

Read more...

It's Monday, What Are You Reading? #29

Share what you (are, have been, are about to, hope to be) reading or reviewing this week. Sign Mr Linky at Book Journey and visit other Monday reading roundups.

This week I need to put most of my focus on two library books whose renewals have been used up:

The novel, Take One Candle, Light a Room by Susan Straight which I raved about here two Monday's ago and in a subsequent Friday's Forays in Fiction post and which I actually managed to start more than two weeks before it was due (a rarity) but which I am still less than fifty pages in.

Sigh.

One might think I thrive on stressing deadlines to the breaking point.

Then there is Blogging for Dummies by Susannah Gardner and Shiane Birley which isn't due until the 28th but which entails more than just reading like taking notes and making lists of tasks which apply its suggestions to my own blogging habits.

It's a daunting task trying to get everything I may need. Probably I need my own copy of this on my reference shelf.




After I finish Take One Candle, the novel I pick up next will probably be Elizabeth Berg's The Last Time I Saw You which is the current Word Shaker's read at Book Journey and which I just discovered has a hold on it so won't renew once more on the 28th as I expected. Thank goodness it is a large print edition as that makes it much easier to read for longer stretches and faster to boot.

Read more...

Library Loot: March 9 to 15

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries!

Marg has Mr Linky this week



Telling the truth: the Gospel as tragedy, comedy, and fairy tale by Frederick Buechner

In these first two theologian/preacher/novelist frederick Buechner muses on the gospel as story and use of storytelling techniques to communicate its message and the role of literature in faith and faith in the creation of literature.

The Clown in the Belfry: Writings on Faith and Fiction by Buechner, Frederick, 1926-


Chapter titles from The Clown hint at the content:

Faith and fiction -- Good books as a good book -- Paul sends his love -- Emerald city : a commencement address -- Flannery O'Connor --Opening of veins -- Adolescence and the stewardship of pain -- Advice to the next generation -- Clown in the belfry -- Light and dark -- Truth of stories -- Growing up -- Church -- Kingdom of God.


From Jesus to Christianity: How Four Generations of Visionaries & Storytellers Created the New Testament and Christian Faith by L. Michael White

A scholar of antiquities tells the story of the origins of Christianity as revealed via scholarly analysis of contemporary artifacts and manuscripts. With special attention paid to the role storytelling played in the propagation of the new faith.



A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen.

I checked out the sequel to this at the Ashland branch a couple weeks ago. They are explorations of the impact human culture has on the environment with a strong emphasis on humanity's tendency towards violence as a means of control whether of other humans, other species, or the land itself.




Every Visible Thing by Lisa Carey

I saw this novel on a blog a couple of weeks ago and sent for it and now can't remember whose blog or why I was interested or even a glimmer of what it is about and I can't get to it right now to look as it is on the shelf on the other side of my sleeping husband.


Ocean Sea by Alessandro Baricco

This novel I sent for after watching the film The Legend of 1900 and then discovering in my research about it afterward that the screenplay had been an adaptation of his theatrical monologue Novecento. When I checked to see what our library system had of this Italian novelist/performer/director I found a half dozen short novels and chose this one to begin with as it seemed most closely related to The Legend of 1900 if only because they both are set on the sea.

Read more...

It's Monday, What Are You Reading? #28

This past week I said good-bye to a slew of library books spending some last minute quality time with them on their last days with me. A few I even held past their due dates. These were from the last of the large batches of books with their renewals used up. After that particular week around 9 weeks ago I began to slow down on checking out. Partly due to the flu but as much because it was so disheartening to be chasing due dates and feeling chased by them and so often eagerly awaiting a certain book's turn only to not have time to finish it once its turn arrived. So many novels have gone back with bookmarks somewhere between the end of chapter one and the end of the book in the last six or eight months! I do that intentionally with NF but I really hate when I'm in the middle of a novel when it comes due.

'Think on my Words': Exploring Shakespeare's Language by David Crystal was one that came due last Thursday which I held over the weekend to spend a bit more time with.

I also held back Lives Like Loaded Guns, the biography of Emily Dikenson and the audio book of 2666 by Robert Bolano.

Also, and this one might have hurt the worst as I'm still working to implement the system: Getting Things Done by David Allen--which surprised me by not renewing again when I expected it to.





Meanwhile, I'm neglecting the novel which I started last Monday two full weeks before it was due and am now going to feel the pressure as next Monday advances on me.

I discussed Take One Candle, Light a Room in both last Monday's and Friday's post so I won't reiterate all of that here. Suffice it to say, it is a stunningly written story at both the level of the language and the level of plot and character. I would like to be able to get lost in it but have been reading in snatches of paragraphs here and there between other tasks. Such as while waiting for something to download or something to heat up in the microwave.

Or I might pick it up as I'm preparing to lay down thinking I'll get a good twenty or thirty minutes but end up having to stop after one or two pages.

Now it is unlikely I'll have time to also read the other novel coming due next Monday and out of renewals: Dracula in Love which is the Dracula story told through the eyes of the young woman who is the object of the Count's affection and supposedly isn't all that grateful to the men who took it upon themselves to be her rescuers. An interesting take I was eager to explore.

Also out of renewals and due next Monday is The War on Welfare: Family, Poverty and Politics in Modern America by Marisa Chappell. A NF so the pressure isn't too great. I just need to try to stop at a natural break.









Now this one is due on Sunday. A rare due date as our Phoenix branch is open only Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. But this is one of the books I checked out on that visit to the Ashland library two weeks ago when our internet connection was having problems and we went to use their WIFI.

Most of the other books I checked out there that day will renew for me but Toward a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World's Religions Can Come Together by The Dalai Lama, was off the Hot of the Press shelf--books that can neither be held nor renewed.

I knew this and yet still have not managed to find time for it since the day after I brought it home feeling so pleased that I happened to catch it while it was on the shelf.

Read more...

Friday Forays in Fiction: Book Beginnings

It is probably the best known, most often emphasized advice from authors, teachers, and editors that the opening sentences of a story must grab the reader and pull them in or they will never see the second page. So I thought I would take the opportunity of Friday Forays in Fiction to introduce a new meme that fits right into the theme of reading and writing fiction:

Book Beginnings is hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages. Share the first lines of the book you are reading. Then, share your impressions of that beginning.

The first lines of Take One Candle, Light a Room by Susan Straight:

I keep the two photos on the ebony sideboard in my small dining room.

The first is black-and-white, but has taken on that edgy silvery-brown look of a gelatin print. It is Louisiana, 1958. The five young women stand beside a truck with a curved hood, the word Apache in chrome letters beside my mother's hip.

They are sixteen. They are leaving their homes.

Yeah, I know, that was a few more than a couple first lines. But a few weeks ago in Library Loot I shared the entire following paragraph, calling it the clincher that caused me to add this book to my already burgeoning stack after I'd stood right there in front of the new books shelf and read the entire first chapter. That paragraph was a description of the girls in the photo that not only made you see them as though you held that photo in your hand but made you feel like you knew them. I was remembering that as I began this post, thinking that was the paragraph I would be sharing here. I'd forgotten there were lines preceding it.

That gave me pause at first but then I realized that those first lines, as I quoted them above, had drawn me into that paragraph by setting the context and winding up its walloping punch.

Susan Straight is a master of the beginning.

Even so that book has sat on the shelf for over six weeks as I chased due dates of items checked out in previous weeks. And fulfilled other commitments. This week is its turn.

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