Books

Why You'll Have to Pry My Books From My Cold, Dead Hands

August 14, 2015


“I love the book. I love the feel of a book in my hands, the compactness of it, the shape, the size. I love the feel of paper. The sound it makes when I turn a page. I love the beauty of print on paper, the patterns, the shapes, the fonts. I am astonished by the versatility and practicality of The Book. It is so simple. It is so fit for its purpose. It may give me mere content, but no e-reader will ever give me that sort of added pleasure.”—Susan Hill, Howard’s End is on the Landing.

I could have written these words. Like Hill, I am a bibliophile—one who loves and collects books. My books are friends. To have my friends around me is a comforting simple pleasure, a delight. I’m all for living with less—less clutter, less activity, less stress. Except when it comes to my books.

You’ll have to pry my books from my cold, dead hands.

In addition to my ever-growing pile of to-be-read (TBR) books, I have many shelves of books I’ve already read. They’re not valuable first editions, but they’re treasured and priceless to me. I cull them from time to time, but I take so much pleasure in my personal library that it would be painful to disperse it. (If you’d like a peek at my shelves, click here—I was part of Danielle’s Lost in the Stacks Home Edition feature at A Work in Progress.)

I don’t keep every book I buy—only ones I think I’ll reread at least once, books I’ll use for reference and/or inspiration, and books that were once important to me that I can’t quite give up yet.


Some of the books I own I’ve searched for over years, or stumbled upon serendipitously. Less than a handful are autographed by their authors, including a copy of the children’s classic Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day. Many years ago I heard the author, Judith Viorst, speak at my local library, and was completely tongue-tied when I asked her to sign my book afterwards. Just looking at that book reminds me of the entire experience of that night.

My books don’t have to be beautiful, but as I’ve gotten older (and my bookshelves more crowded), I’ve started being pickier about what they look like. It pained me that my second-hand copy of All Passion Spent had an unattractive cover illustration (but not enough for me to turn down the copy that became available on Paperback Swap). I covet the lovely dove-gray Persephone books, though I’ve yet to collect my first one. Perhaps looking for books I think are attractive will slow down the entire acquisition process!

I use books to boost my mood, and it’s comforting to have my favorites at my fingertips. There are certain books I reread frequently—not having them on hand might constitute an emotional crisis.

As William Giraldi writes in “Why We Need Physical Books”: “Across a collector’s bookshelves, upright and alert like uniformed sentinels, are segments of his personal history, segments that he needs to summon in order to ascertain himself fully, which is part of his motive for reading books in the first place—whatever else it is, a life with books is incentive to remember, and in remembering, understand.”

I start every day in my office, where I allow my eyes to play over the titles on my shelves while I drink my morning coffee. So many of the books I’ve kept have left a lasting mark on me, and sometimes I need to see them to remember. I need to pull them off the shelf and flip through them, letting them transport and transform me for a second time. What could be more of a simple pleasure than that?

Do you keep books after you’ve read them? What are your favorites?


Books

Seven for Summer: My Summer 2015 Reading List

June 26, 2015


Despite the hot weather we’ve been enduring for the past two months, the official start of summer was just a week ago Sunday. And you know what that means…it’s time for cool drinks, embracing air conditioning, and a new summer reading list. Sifting through my shelves and list of unread books is one of my favorite simple pleasures.

This year’s list will be long on delight, so I’m choosing books I really want to read, rather than books I “should” read to fulfill a reading challenge or some other self-imposed criterion. After all, come fall, I don’t have to write a paper on what I read during summer break!

So here is a tentative list of the books I want to read this summer:

The Law and the Lady—my summer Wilkie Collins. Looks like a good one—described as “probably the first full-length novel with a woman detective as its heroine.”  There is also a free Kindle version available here.

Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives, Gretchen Rubin. I loved both of Rubin’s books on happiness (The Happiness Project, Happier at Home) and fully expect to love this book, too. In fact, I already have a copy from my library and will probably eventually buy my own. Rubin has helped me understand my own nature better, and she has a knack for breaking down concepts in such a way that you can take action that makes a difference in your life.

Jack of Spades, Joyce Carol Oates. I’m becoming fan of Joyce Carol Oates. I’ve only read a couple of her books, and wow. This one sounds kind of scary, but I’m intrigued. I’m in line behind quite a few people on my library’s hold system, so it may be later in the summer before I can start this one. 

A Writer’s Diary, Virginia Woolf. I love reading diaries, and a writer’s diary by Virginia Woolf? How can I resist? 

My local used bookstore is going out of business (sniffle) and I picked up six books for a dollar there this week (and I wonder why my TBR shelf never gets any less full). I’ve already started The Three Weissmanns of Westport, and I also hope to get to The Bat, by Mary Roberts Rinehart.  

Cotillion, Georgette Heyer. The irresistible lure of romance and humor. 

I could list more—in fact, I’m sure I’ll be reading a few mysteries over the summer, too. But I want to leave some room for meandering, for picking up a book just because it sounds interesting. The last thing I want to do is turn the simple pleasure of reading into a stressful experience. Where’s the delight in that?

What’s on your summer reading list?

Books

Falling in Love With Paris Letters

April 13, 2015

Reading is like dating. There are the books you’re initially infatuated with, but become irritated by as the relationship progresses. There are the books you should love because they’re perfect for you, but you just can’t seem to connect. There are the books you love secretly because they’re no good, and you’d be embarrassed if your friends knew. There are the fix-ups, the “meet cutes,” the love-at-first-sights, and the long-term relationships that grow stronger over time. For me, Janice MacLeod’s Paris Letters was an immediate friendship that grew into love. However, it was a romance that almost never happened.

See below for downloadable stationery*

I initially requested Paris Letters from the library thinking it was a book of artwork, the painted letters from Paris referenced in the title. When it turned out to be memoir, I nearly took it back, because do I really need to read another story of a woman simplifying her life, jetting off to see the world, and finding herself and/or true love? I mean, I’ve read Eat, Pray, Love and many other stories both fictional and non- of that ilk. Still, I decided to read the first few pages just to see…and I connected with MacLeod immediately. I liked her turns of phrase and casual voice. She seemed approachable, down-to-earth, real.  Somehow, this story of a 30-something vegan copywriter who goes to Paris and unexpectedly falls in love with a French-speaking Polish butcher resonated with me.

For MacLeod, it all started with a New Year’s resolution in 2010. She wanted to become an artist, and began journaling nearly every day, following Julia Cameron’s instructions regarding Morning Pages from The Artist’s Way. “Really, I just wanted to create something that made me feel good, because what I was currently creating definitely did not,” MacLeod writes.  What was she creating? Junk mail.

After two months of journaling and complaining about her job, a question emerged: “How much money does it take to quit your job?” In discussing it with a friend, she chose the figure of $100 a day (partly because of the easy math!) multiplied by how many days she did not want to work (at least one year). She spent the next year selling, saving and being vigilant about where her money went, eventually saving $60,000! It helped that she had a good job and was successful investing in the stock market. She quit her job in December with the plan of traveling the world and writing about it. When her money ran out, she would decide what to do next.

The rest of the book follows her journey to Paris, the UK, Italy…and back to Paris to be with “the lovely Cristophe.” She writes humorously about her struggles to communicate with Cristophe, the daunting paperwork required for her visa, and the challenges of (spoiler alert) planning a wedding in a foreign country. The title of the book comes from her unique solution for refilling her dwindling bank account: she would write and illustrate an original letter from Paris, and make personalized copies to sell. (At the time the book was printed, she had sent out more than 10,000 painted letters about life in France.) Some chapters end with copies of her Paris letters, illustrated in black and white (an unfortunate decision made by her publisher). She also includes a list of 100 ways she saved or didn’t spend her $100 a day. You can see (and subscribe to) her illustrated letters here.

Paris Letters was a happy read—and so far, one of my favorite books of 2015.

Have you “dated” any good books lately?

*Click here to download the stationery pictured beneath the book.

Books

Reading About Reading

February 23, 2015


A simple pleasure for many book lovers (including me) is reading about 1) What other people are reading, and 2) Why other people read. I’m quite curious (not to say nosy) about others’ books and reading habits. (If I come to your house and you momentarily lose track of me, you’ll find me poking through your bookshelves.) I extend this to reading books about books and reading, not because I need more recommendations for what to read, but because reading fascinates me, and it adds to my enjoyment to share it with like-minded (and sometimes not-so-like-minded) readers.  Judging by the number of books about books and reading, I’m not the only one. I have a small collection of these on my own shelves (which you are welcome to explore) and a several more on my TBR list.

I bring this up now because I just finished reading Nick Hornby’s  The Polysyllabic Spree, a collection of his “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” columns for The Believer. I enjoyed it so much I’m now on the hunt for the three other collections of his columns: Housekeeping vs. the Dirt, Shakespeare Wrote for Money  and More Baths Less Talking all of which I want to read right now.  I’ve put Shakespeare and More Baths on hold with my library, but they don’t have Housekeeping, unfortunately. I loved Hornby’s chatty and personal tone, and though we mostly read very different types of books, he made me laugh out loud, and there were several passages that resonated with me, including this one: “…I suddenly had a little epiphany: all the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal….with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not.”

The problem with reading books like this is that I always come away with more books to read—an ongoing problem for me, as you all know. I may have checked this one book off my TBR list, but I’ve added at least three more. Oh, well.

But back to books about books, which, if you remember, is the theme of this ever-lengthening post. If, like me, you love reading about others’ reading habits, I offer this incomplete list of books about reading, beginning with books on the subject that I have already read:

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, Anne Fadiman. Eighteen essays, and (oh, dear) a recommended reading list. She writes beautifully, and just looking at the table of contents makes me want to reread this book. These pieces are also compiled from a column written for a magazine, and what I want to know is: how do I get a job writing a column about reading? 

Ruined by Reading: A Life in Books, Lynne Sharon Schwartz. I could have written this snippet, so well does it describe what often happens to me:

“In a bookstore, I leaf through the book next to the one I came to buy, and a sentence sets me quivering. I buy that one instead, or as well…. A remark overheard on a bus reminds me of a book I meant to read last month. I hunt it up in the library and glance in passing at the old paperbacks on sale for twenty-five cents. There is the book so talked about in college—it was to have prepared me for life and here I have blundered through decades without it. Snatch it up quickly before it’s too late. And so what we read is as wayward and serendipitous as any taste or desire. Or perhaps randomness is not so random after all. Perhaps at every stage what we read is what we are, or what we are becoming, or desire.”  Oh, and I bought this book for a quarter at my library’s used book store.

So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading, Sara Nelson. Another library bookstore purchase, this chronicles a year in Nelson’s life when she determines to read a book a week and record how reading intermingles with life in the “real world.” 

Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason and Book Lust to Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers,Vagabonds, and Dreamers, Nancy Pearl. Pearl is an author, book reviewer and public librarian. Her lists of books, with short descriptions and critiques, are great fun. Read with caution unless you want your TBR list to explode beyond all reason. It’s too late for me. Save yourself.

The following books are on my TBR list:

Reading in Bed: Personal Essays on the Glories of Reading, Steven Gilbar. I haven’t gotten to this one yet, but plan to read it this year as part of my Mt. TBR challenge.

Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and For Those Who Want to Write Them, Francine Prose. Another book I haven’t read yet, this one is close to the top of my what-to-read-next list because I want to be both a better reader and writer.

A History of Reading, Alberto Manguel. “Manguel brilliantly covers reading as seduction, as rebellion, and as obsession and goes on to trace the quirky and fascinating history of the reader’s progress from clay tablet to scroll, codex to CD-ROM,” according to Amazon.

The Novel Cure, Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin.   I know I’ll end up with another long list of books I want to read when I get around to this one, but I still want to read it.

Bound to Last: 30 Writers on Their Most Cherished Book, Sean Manning (editor). 

My Reading Life, Pat Conroy. 

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading, Nina Sankovitch. 

Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love, Anne Fadiman (editor). Similar to Bound to Last, perhaps, but I want to read this nonetheless.

And, scariest of all to the TBR list, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, Peter Boxall (editor).

I know there are many other books about books—these are just the ones currently on my radar. Dare I ask? What are your favorite books about books?

Children's books

The Story of Ferdinand the Bull

February 04, 2015


Introduction by Ted Kooser: Stories read to us as children can stay with us all our lives. Robert McCloskey’s Lentil was especially influential for me, and other books have helped to shape you. Here’s Matt Mason, who lives in Omaha, with a book that many of you will remember.

The Story of Ferdinand the Bull

Dad would come home after too long at work
and I’d sit on his lap to hear
the story of Ferdinand the Bull; every night,
me handing him the red book until I knew
every word, couldn’t read,
just recite along with drawings
of a gentle bull, frustrated matadors,
the all-important bee, and flowers—
flowers in meadows and flowers
thrown by the Spanish ladies.
Its lesson, really,
about not being what you’re born into
but what you’re born to be,
even if that means
not caring about the capes they wave in your face
or the spears they cut into your shoulders.
And Dad, wonderful Dad, came home
after too long at work
and read to me
the same story every night
until I knew every word, couldn’t read,
                                                                                                  just recite.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2013 by Matt Mason from his most recent book of poems, The Baby That Ate Cincinnati, Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2013. Poem reprinted by permission of Matt Mason and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2014 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Laure Ferlita

Friday This and That, or Yes, I'm Still Here

January 09, 2015

I’ve been so busy with this and that I feel like I’ve been neglecting this blog. Along with my normal, day-to-day stuff, here’s a little bit of what’s been going on:

Tank is lame and I don’t know why. Later today I have an appointment with the farrier to rule out hoof issues. Our current thought is he’s pulled a muscle. If that’s the case, there’s nothing to do but take him for gentle walks and let it heal.

I have an owie.
I’m sketching every day. You can see my sketches on Flickr, but I assure you they’re nothing to make a special trip to see. It’s more about establishing a sketching habit, brushing up and improving my sketching skills and getting over “fear of the blank page.” I’m posting them to keep myself honest. Belle, from Belle, Book and Candle, is sketching with me, and you can see her sketches here. 

I’m helping Laure Ferlita wrap up details for Winter Interrupted: An Artist’s Beach Holiday that will take place Jan. 18-22. (Another good reason to get back in the habit of sketching!) 

Taste testing. It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it.
And, of course, I’m reading—library books mostly, and nothing towards any of my reading challenge goals. Oops.

So what’s new with you?

Books

Announcing the Kathy Book Awards...

December 12, 2014

Photo courtesy Mocanu Bogdan

Oh, you’ve never heard of the Kathys? That’s because I just invented them. I was planning to do a “10 Favorite Reads of 2014” post, when I realized I had nearly twice that many favorites chosen after a quick pass through the list of books I read this year.  These awards are completely personal and subjective, with the main requirement being that I read and loved each book listed in 2014, regardless of when it was published. Sadly, the authors receive nothing but my undying thanks and admiration, and the likelihood that I will recommend and buy their books in future, even if they, the authors, are dead. (I admit this is a fairly questionable honor.) So without further ado, I give you the Kathy Book Awards:

Fiction: Life After Life, Kate Atkinson. 
Runner up: Kind of Cruel, Sophie Hannah. I was surprised and pleased to find this is one in a series.

This was the hardest category from which to choose a winner. I read a number of really outstanding novels this year. Other favorites included: Old Filth, What Alice Forgot, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and The Little Stranger.

Vintage mystery: The House on the Roof, Mignon G. Eberhart. Great story, and a terrier named Blitz.
Runner up: The Brading Collection, Patricia Wentworth. I figured out whodunit!

Classic: All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque. Surprisingly, All Quiet beat out a horse classic for the honor. The book affected me deeply, and I wrote about it here.
Runner up: My Friend Flicka, Mary O’Hara.

Non-fiction: Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Georgina Howell. Remarkable woman, sometimes called the “female Lawrence of Arabia.”
Runner up: What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets, Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio. Portraits of 80 people from 30 countries with the food they typically eat in one day. Aren’t you curious about how the diet of a Japanese sumo wrestler or a Masai herdswoman compares to your own?

Books on writing: Still Writing, Dani Shapiro. Longer on inspiration than on craft, this book was just what I needed to reignite my love for writing. A favorite among favorites.
Runner up: Around the Writer’s Block, Rosanne Bane. Using brain science to fight resistance—lots of great and practical information.

Reread: How I Got to Be Perfect, Jean Kerr. I adore Jean Kerr’s writing, and a post about her is in the works for the future.
Runner up: It’s Not That I’m Bitter…, Gina Barreca. Read this if you want to laugh out loud.

What were your favorite reads this year? Please share your own version of the Kathys!

All Quiet on the Western Front

Reading Outside My Comfort Zone: All Quiet on the Western Front

October 06, 2014


I usually avoid books on war (and other harrowing topics), but I needed a classic about war to finish my Back to the Classics challenge. I happened to have All Quiet on the Western Front on my TBR shelf, and since on its cover there was a banner proclaiming, “The greatest war novel of all time,” I thought I’d give it a try. And I’m so glad I did. This novel, by Erich Maria Remarque, was beautifully and sensitively written in a way that helped me understand the emotional experience of soldiers at war without overwhelming my emotions. Originally written in German, my copy was translated by A.W. Wheen and I found the writing simple and easy to read.  Some of the most affecting passages for me included the following:

Describing a dying friend: “Under the skin the life no longer pulses, it has already pressed out the boundaries of the body. Death is working from within. It already has command in the eyes. Here lies our comrade. Kemmerich, who a little while ago was roasting horse flesh with us and squatting in the shell-holes. He it is still and yet it is not he any longer. His features have become uncertain and faint, like a photographic plate from which two pictures have been taken. Even his voice sounds like ashes.”

After guarding Russian prisoners of war: “A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends. At some table a document is signed by some persons whom none of us knows, and then for years together that very crime on which formerly the world’s condemnation and severest penalty fall, becomes our highest aim. But who can draw such a distinction when he looks at these quiet men with their childlike faces and apostles’ beards. Any non-commissioned officer is more of an enemy to a recruit, any schoolmaster to a pupil, than they are to us. And yet we would shoot at them again and they at us if they were free.”

Reflecting on the future: “I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another. I see that the keenest brains of the world invent weapons and words to make it yet more refined and enduring. And all men of my age, here and over there, throughout the whole world see these things; all my generation is experiencing these things with me…. Through the years our business has been killing;—it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of us?”

Remarque, who was born in 1898, knew whereof he wrote. He was conscripted into the German army at age 18, and eventually wounded several times. After his discharge, he worked as a teacher, stonecutter and test car driver for a tire company, among other things. All Quiet on the Western Front was first published as Im Westen Nichts Neues in German in 1929, and sold more than a million copies the first year. The English translation, published the same year, was just as successful. The book was subsequently translated into 12 languages and made into a movie in 1930. Unsurprisingly, Remarque’s books were banned in Germany in the 1930s, and publicly burned in 1933.

Remarque wrote nine more novels, though none was as successful as All Quiet. He led quite a colorful life, and died in Switzerland in 1970 from an aneurysm.

All Quiet on the Western Front gives us a peek inside the minds of those who actually fight. Warfare may have changed a lot since 1918, but I imagine those fighting still go through most of the emotions and experiences found in this novel. All Quiet was more than worth the read. I felt sensitized and educated rather than depressed, and would definitely recommend it.

What book(s) have you read that are outside your comfort zone?

Books

What I Read This Summer

September 08, 2014

Here in Florida, summer—at least the weather part of it—won’t be over for another couple of months. However, since kids are back in school and fall decorations fill the stores, I’m going to pretend summer is over and do a summer reading round up. Maybe that will help fall get here sooner?

I broke with my usual summer reading traditions (no Wilkie Collins this summer—I missed him—and no writer’s biography). Instead, I’ve been steadily reading from my own shelves as well as consolidating my massive TBR (“to be read” for the uninitiated) list. As I have time, I’ve been looking up each book on my current list and deciding whether or not I still want to read it. If I do, I’m creating a brand new TBR list.  As I do this, I’m choosing a book here and there from the list to check out of the library. Nerdy as it sounds, it’s been a lot of fun!


Here are just a few highlights of my summer’s reading:

From my own shelves:

The appropriately-titled So Many Books, So Little Time, by Sara Nelson. Nelson’s chronicle of a year’s worth of reading a book a week woven into the events of her private life. I loved this and have added it to my shelf of “books about books.”

Old Filth, Jane Gardam. New-to-me author, and so good! I read about this on Danielle Simpson’s blog, and had picked up this copy at my library’s bookstore for a dollar. I will be reading more of Gardam’s work.

Cleopatra, by Stacy Schiff, was another library bookstore purchase. This fascinating biography had me from the first page: “Among the most famous women to have lived, Cleopatra VII ruled Egypt for twenty-two years. She lost a kingdom once, regained it, nearly lost it again, amassed an empire, lost it all. A goddess as a child, a queen at eighteen, a celebrity soon thereafter, she was an object of speculation and veneration, gossip and legend, even in her own time.”

From my enormous TBR list:

The Awakening of Miss Prim, Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera. I was disappointed in this book. It sounded like the perfect read for me, but I was left with an overall feeling of “meh.” Still, it did have this lovely passage: “Miss Prim sipped her tea and nestled down into the storeroom armchair. She too believed in the value of the little things. Her first coffee in the morning drunk from her Limoges porcelain cup. Sunlight filtering through the shutters of her room, casting shadows on the floor. Dozing off over a book on a summer’s afternoon. The look in the children’s eyes when they told you about some fact they’d just learned. It was from the little things that the big ones were made, it definitely was.”

The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters. Just the right amount of spooky, and a story I keep thinking about.

And I just finished Still Life With Bread Crumbs, by Anna Quindlen, which I loved. From page 223: “One day she had been out walking and she had wondered whether she’d become a different person in the last year, maybe because of what Paige Whittington had said about the dog pictures. Then when she really thought about it she realized she’d been becoming different people for as long as she could remember but had never really noticed, or had put it down to moods, or marriage, or motherhood. The problem was that she’d thought that at a certain point she would be a finished product. Now she wasn’t sure what that might be, especially when she considered how sure she had been about it at various times in the past, and how wrong she’d been.”

And while I didn’t read a writer’s biography, I did read Agatha Christie at Home—and now I want to visit Greenway, her home in Devon!

There were also comfort rereads: Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders and Death in the Air (also known as Death in the Clouds), and This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart. (I forgot all about The Crystal Cave…still need to check that out at the library.)

As far as reading challenges go, aside from the Mount TBR challenge, I’ve been slacking. Time to get back to the classics and the Vintage Mystery Challenge.

What were your favorite reads this summer?

Gretchen Rubin

Link Love, Self-promotion Edition!

August 08, 2014



I have a travel essay entered in the WeSaidGo essay contest! You can read “The Bits and Pieces Tour” here. Please stop by and take a look.

Elsewhere on the internet:

Change your password, change your life! What a great idea. Read about how the lowly password can remind you of what you want more (or less) of in your life. 

Don’t let these habits steal your happiness. 

Want more reading time? Check out Gretchen Rubin’s “13 Tips for Getting More Reading Done.” 

Interesting piece on how getting rid of expectations can help you “master the art of living.” 

These made me laugh (and almost made me miss working in an office). 

Visit A Blog Made Vibrant for a free downloadable “Emergency Mood Booster” worksheet.

Have a happy Friday!

Alan Bennett

The Best Moments in Reading

July 30, 2014



“The best moments in reading are when you come across something—a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things—which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours”
—Alan Bennett, The History Boys

Are there any writers you feel this way about?

Automobiles

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

June 23, 2014

“Books are the plane, the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.”
—Anna Quindlen

I picked up Agatha Christie’s Death in the Air last week because I had a sudden urge for one of her books (and I can use it for the Vintage Mystery Challenge). That got me thinking about books in which planes, trains and automobiles figure as settings or are otherwise integral to the story. Below is an incomplete list of transportation-related titles. Given my love for mysteries, crimes figure in many of these stories (and trains seem to be especially lethal!). Some of these I’ve read (in bold), and others I discovered in my research for this post. Many of these books have been made into movies, if you prefer your transportation stories on the screen.

Planes
Death in the Air (alternate title, Death in the Clouds), Agatha Christie. Poisoned darts and Hercule Poirot.
The Flight of the Phoenix, Elleston Trevor. A plane crash in the Sahara—how will the surviving passengers make it out alive?
I Was Amelia Earhart, Jane Mendelsohn. A “brilliantly-imagined” telling of what happened after Earhart and her navigator disappeared near New Guinea.
“The Langoliers,” a novella found in Four Past Midnight, Stephen King. And you already thought airplane travel was nightmarish.
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint Exupery. Described as “a fable of love and loneliness,” this involves another plane crash in the Sahara.
Non-fiction bonus: Listen! The Wind and North to the Orient, Anne Morrow Lindberg
When I Fell From the Sky, Juliane Koepcke


Trains
The Lady Vanishes, Lina Ethel White. Where is Miss Froy? And why does no one except Iris remember her?
Strangers on a Train, Patricia Highsmith. Explores the dark psychological forces under the surface of everyday life.
Murder on the Orient Express and What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw! (Also known as 4:50 From Paddington), Agatha Christie. Two lethal train rides.
Murder on the Ballarat Train, Kerry Greenwood. Yup. Stay off the train.
The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars, Maurice Dekobra. More adventure on the Orient Express.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, John Godey. Peril on a subway train.
Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne. Boats, trains and hot air balloons!
Non-fiction bonus: The Railway Man, Eric Lomax
Riding the Iron Rooster and The Great Railway Bazaar, Paul Theroux.

Automobiles
On the Road, Jack Kerouac. “The Bible of the Beat Generation.”
Christine, Stephen King. A boy’s first car, as imagined by Stephen King.
Sideways, Rex Pickett. A wine country road trip.
The Pull of the Moon, Elizabeth Berg. Who hasn’t wanted to get in her car and just go?
The Long Way Home, Karen McQuestion. Four women on a road trip from Wisconsin to Las Vegas.
Non-fiction bonus: The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson
Travels With Charley, John Steinbeck.

I see several titles here I want to read (I can’t believe I’ve never read Around the World in 80 Days or Travels With Charley, for example). As I said, I know this list is incomplete—have I left out your favorites? Please share!

Books

Summer Rerun--Book Junkie

June 09, 2014

Note: I'm taking a more relaxed approach to blogging this summer, so occasionally I'm going to rerun a previous post. I hope you enjoy this one, from 2010. I have made a few minor edits, including updating the photos, since it last appeared, and I've added an author's note regarding the progress (or lack thereof) I'm making on my TBR piles.


I confess. I’m a book junkie. In this electronic age, I’m utterly and completely addicted to books: reading them, buying them, browsing through them in a bookstore or library. When I inhale the smell of a bookstore, especially a used bookstore, my heart flutters and adrenaline surges through me.

Libraries also give me a rush. All those books waiting to be opened—and they’re free. I know my 14-digit library card number by heart, and I adore searching the online catalog and putting books on hold. With one click of a mouse, I can feed my habit with books from libraries all over my county.

And buying books online? While it lacks the sensuality of the bookstore, online book buying gives me an additional fix: endless titles and both familiar and obscure-but-fascinating authors to explore. I can spend hours wandering through Amazon or Abe Books or Half.com. Not only is there the thrill of finding a bargain book (May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude for a penny!), but the additional pleasure of anticipating the arrival of that book in the mail.

My addiction is such that I read at every opportunity, and in every type of surrounding. Along with more traditional places, such as doctors’ waiting rooms or the bathtub, I read while in the gas station car wash (and once while pumping gas), while in line at the drive through at the pharmacy or bank, while blow drying my hair, while nursing my baby in the middle of the night, and between halves at that baby’s football games (he’s 19 now). I once tried to read in a Jacuzzi spa, but found the jets splashed too much water on the book.

I usually read at least three books at one time—fiction, non-fiction, self-help, humor, spirituality…I’ve got a book for every mood. I read books about books (one of my favorites was aptly titled Leave Me Alone I’m Reading) and keep a log of the books I read each year. Once, I made a New Year’s resolution to read less. When I pack for a vacation, I choose what books to take as carefully as I choose my clothing.

I confess that I feed my husband’s addiction as well. Aside from the pleasure I know reading gives him, if he doesn’t have something good to read, then I won’t be able to…he’ll need conversation or meals or (ahem) “marital attention” when I want to read. (Does that make me a pusher?)

I like to blame my mother for my dilemma. I inherited my love of reading from her, but she may have just the slightest addiction problem herself: she once got a traffic ticket for reading while sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic. She had opened a book on the seat beside her, snatching sentences while the traffic remained at a standstill. The motorcycle cop who ticketed her did not approve.

Books started out as my innocent companions—my solace in a rather lonely childhood, their characters my friends and comforters. Coming home to an empty house after school wasn’t quite so bad when I could roam the fields and woods of Prince Edward Island with Anne of Green Gables or feel the wind on my face as Alec raced with the Black Stallion. Books taught me about everything from puberty to how to bake brownies. My desire to travel was first awakened by reading James Herriot’s Yorkshire.

Books have enriched my life more than I can say—but somehow, I crossed the line from relaxing hobby to addiction. For years, I kidded myself, denying I had a problem—until we recently remodeled our bedroom closet and my addiction became something I could no longer ignore. On a free-standing bookcase in our closet, I had stored my stash of purchased-but-not-yet-read books. When I moved them to make room for the new closet system, I found I had 52 unread books. That’s a whole year’s worth if I manage to read one a week!

So now I’m in rehab. I can’t buy any more books and I must curtail my library habit until I read some of the ones I actually own. I’ve sifted through the books in the closet and made the hard decision to get rid of a few. As they’ve lingered in the stack, I’ve realized that I’m just not going to read some of them. (Henry James’ The Golden Bowl comes to mind. I’ve begun that book three times and haven’t been able to make it out of the first chapter.)

One of the piles
It’s been several months since I confronted my problem. I haven’t been completely successful in reining in my book habit, but the unread books in my closet now number only 28. Hey, it’s a start.

Author's note: Since I wrote this post, things have only gotten worse. I currently have even MORE than 52 unread books on my shelves, despite participating in two Mount TBR Challenges. In 2014 I have limited my book acquisition to books received from Paperback Swap, purchased from my library's book shop or with my credit at a local used book shop. I'm still acquiring books, but at a slower rate. I don't think I'll ever come to the end of my TBR piles, but my goal is just to get them down to a manageable size so that I won't feel like a hoarder every time I enter my closet.

Books

She Didn't Come to Stay...

June 04, 2014

But while she was here, she had a profound influence on so many.

I heard Maya Angelou speak in Tampa a few years ago, and while I don’t remember her exact words, I remember the feeling I left with—the feeling that life was a precious gift, and we should live it to the fullest. She was funny and wise and just…amazing.

I’ve only read the first volume of her autobiography (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings), but I have a couple more on my TBR shelf (the title of this post is a variation on the last line of her final autobiographical volume, A Song Flung Up to Heaven) and a volume of her poetry.

In remembrance of Maya Angelou, who died May 28 at age 86, here are a few of my favorite quotes:

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

“I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.”

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

“All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are more alike than we are unalike.”

“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”

“Some critics will write, ‘Maya Angelou is a natural writer’—which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.”

“I believe the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity, is daring to dare.”

 Click below to see Dr. Angelou recite her poem, “Still I Rise.”


Happiness

Oh, No--It's Summer!

May 30, 2014

I feel like I’m the opposite of most people because I dread summer, and my summer plans mostly involve figuring out how to stay inside as much as possible. If I could hibernate during summer, I would! But since I can’t, I’m going to make the best of the new season by finding ways to make summer fun instead of a time to be endured. I’m going to work less, have more fun, shake up the routine, and just generally be more relaxed. Here are some of the things I want to do this summer when Florida’s temperatures and humidity make hibernating look appealing:

  • Institute Friday movie nights—my husband and I plan to pop some popcorn and rewatch some old favorites—like My Cousin Vinny and The Princess Bride. (I’m going to slip in Mama Mia! and My Life in Ruins, but I doubt I’ll get him to watch those with me! He can watch something more manly while I’m reveling in Greek scenery and romance.)
  • Spend time with friends. I have two friends coming in from out of town this summer, and I’m going to make the time to be with them, even if I have to—gasp!—let my normal work slide. I’m also going to make more time for getting together with local friends—I’ve been missing our long breakfasts/lunches/coffee dates
  • Reinstate “Summer Reruns” on the blog—once a month I’ll rerun a favorite post from a previous year.
  • Read at whim, regardless of bookish challenges. I want to read Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave, but that’s about as far as I’ve gotten in making summer reading plans. Fear not, though—I’ll be reading plenty, hopefully while relaxing on a chaise lounge and sipping some cold iced tea. (Note to self: make iced tea.)
If you ask nicely, I might move.
You’ll notice that not one of those things would fit on a traditional to-do list. I’ve got more than enough of those floating around—in fact, I should add “discard projects and goals” to the above list so I can indulge in my summer plans with no guilt feelings. Too often when I find life a little uncomfortable, I mope around feeling sorry for myself or helpless to make things better instead of looking for ways to add simple pleasures to my days. You can see from the above list that it doesn’t take much to make me feel happier—and you’re probably the same. So this summer I’m going to actively pursue my favorite simple pleasures—and maybe a few everyday adventures—instead of letting the hot, humid weather get me down.

What are some of your summer plans?

Pretty but HOT

Books

Death of a Storyteller

May 19, 2014

I just learned that one of my all-time favorite writers, Mary Stewart, passed away May 9 at age 97. My copies of her books are practically falling apart, mostly because I’ve had them since I was a teenager, but also because I’ve reread them many times. My mom introduced me to her books, and she is still one of my favorite writers. I often turn to her when I need a comfort read.

Mary Florence Elinor Rainbow (!) was born Sept. 17, 1916 in the town of Sunderland, England. She attended Durham University and received a First Class Honours B.A. in English. In 1941, she accepted a post at Durham where she lectured on English Language and Literature. It was here she later met the man who would become her husband, Frederick Henry Stewart (later Sir Frederick). They married in 1945, and eventually moved to Edinburgh, Scotland in 1956, where he became the chairman of the geology department at Edinburgh University.

According to her obituary in The Guardian, Mary Stewart began writing novels “in the mid-1950s [because of] an ectopic pregnancy and consequent operation which meant she could not have children.” Her first book, Madam, Will You Talk?, was published in 1954. She was most popular in the late 60s, 70s and 80s, and one of her books, The Moon-Spinners, was made into a Disney movie (the movie is quite different from the book).

In addition to her novels, she also wrote several children’s books and one book of poetry.  My favorites have always been her “superior romantic thrillers,” especially This Rough Magic, My Brother Michael, and The Moon-Spinners, but she is also well-known for her Merlin/Arthur books, The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills and The Last Enchantment. I’ve never read any of these, because I’ve never been much interested in the King Arthur legend, but I think I’ll pick up at least The Crystal Cave to see what these are like. (She later wrote two more books in the series, The Wicked Day and The Prince and the Pilgrim.)

I love her books for the writing itself, but also because of her heroines. They’re ordinary young women, often traveling alone in places I’d love to visit, who prove themselves when they’re thrown into adventure. They leave their comfort zones, and through their courage and fortitude solve the mystery and win the heart of the hero. The stories are just plain fun.

One of the biggest thrills of my life was visiting Delphi in Greece, with my copy of My Brother Michael as company. I even saw the statue of the Charioteer mentioned in the book in the museum there. Here he is:


If you’re a Mary Stewart fan, I’m sure you don’t need any urging to read or re-read one of her books. If you’ve never read her, I hope you’ll give her a try. To learn more about Mary Stewart and her books, check out marystewartnovels.com.

Literature

Happy Birthday, Mr. Shakespeare

April 23, 2014

By In Helmolt, H.F., ed. History of the World. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1902. Author unknown, but the portrait has several centuries [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Though no one knows for sure, it seems likely that April 23 marks the day William Shakespeare was born in 1564, 450 years ago. Shakespeare, one of the most influential writers of all time, wrote poetry and plays that have influenced the English language in many ways. According to Poets.org, “In his poems and plays, Shakespeare invented thousands of words, often combining or contorting Latin, French and native roots. His impressive expansion of the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, includes such words as: arch-villain, birthplace, bloodsucking, courtship, dewdrop, downstairs, fanged, heartsore, hunchbacked, leapfrog, misquote, pageantry, radiance, schoolboy, stillborn, watchdog, and zany.”

As I was looking for an appropriate Shakespeare quote for today, I was surprised at how many quotes and phrases I’m familiar with but didn’t always realize came from his writing, such as:

To thine own self be true (the line continues: And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.) 

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

I would challenge you to a battle of wits, but I see you are unarmed.

What’s past is prologue.

Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.

The course of true love never did run smooth.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

I’ve read very little Shakespeare, unfortunately, but perhaps now is the time to do a little exploring. I have a copy of The Sonnets of William Shakespeare I bought when I was a romantic teenager which I plan to dip into it in the next few weeks, and perhaps I’ll start watching movie versions of Shakespeare’s plays. I love a man who plays with language.

Do you have a favorite poem, quotation or play by Shakespeare? If so, please share.

Allie Brosh

Random Acts of Reading

March 14, 2014


Did you know it’s National Reading Month in the United States? For me, every month is reading month. As I’ve mentioned frequently (possibly far too frequently), reading is one of my favorite simple pleasures. And I’ve been doing a lot of it, as usual. I’m determined to get a handle on the number of unread books I own, so I’ve been reading primarily from my own stacks, and trying, with mixed success, to curtail book purchasing. (So far this year I’ve spent only $3.75 on books—not counting books I’ve obtained through Paperback Swap and by using a credit at my local used bookstore.)

But I digress. The point (and I do have one) is that I’ve been reading from my own stacks while simultaneously trying not to rebuild them. I’ve read 11 books out of my 36-book goal so far. I thought I’d share a few bits and pieces from this year’s reads.

The first book I read this year, What Alice Forgot, was so delightful that I kept it in my library instead of passing it on. Alice Love thinks she’s 29 and pregnant with her first child when she regains consciousness after a fall at the gym. Turns out, she’s actually 39, the mother of three and about to be divorced. What happened during that missing 10 years? This book was fun to read, and also thought provoking: Is your life what you expected it to be 10 years ago?  

Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, was my first classic of the year. I had never read anything by this writer, and wasn’t sure what to expect. I enjoyed this book very much. Set in Florida, it follows Janie Crawford’s search for real love and her true self, and isn’t that what we’re all looking for? A tiny teaser:

“She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels….mostly she lived between her hat and her heels, with her emotional disturbances like shade patterns in the woods—come and gone with the sun.”

Interesting fact: Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in only seven weeks!

Take the Cannoli, a book of essays by Sarah Vowell, was an impulse buy at my library’s book store. I’d read one other book by Vowell, who is also a contributor to radio’s “This American Life,” and I love her quirky writing voice. One of my favorite passages from Cannoli:

“Heaven, such as it is, is right here on earth. Behold: my revelation: I stand at the door in the morning, and lo, there is a newspaper, in sight like unto an emerald. And holy, holy is the coffee, which was, and is to come. And hark, I hear the voice of an angel round about the radio, saying, ‘Since my baby left me I found a new place to dwell.’ And lo, after this I beheld a great multitude, which no man could number, of shoes….”

(And speaking of “voice,” I just learned that Vowell was the voice of Violet in one of my favorite animated movies, The Incredibles.)

Hyperbole and a Half, by Allie Brosh, was a library book, I admit, but I couldn’t resist it. Brosh can make me laugh till I cry. The book contains original material, but some of it can be found on her blog. Check out these posts, also found in the book, for a taste of Brosh’s humor: “Dogs Don’t Understand the Basic Concept of Moving” or “The Party”.

What have you been reading? Any new discoveries?