In the Kroger Parking Lot

January 2013

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme 

post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken

 then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky at At Home With Books.

Yet Another It's Monday! What Are You Reading?!

                 

What I Reviewed Last Week Quiet by Susan Cain Shhh! Hey, c’mere. I know, I know, I’m whispering,  but you have to when you are talking about a book like this.  Quiet. It's called...more One for the Books by Joe Queenan Don’t you love books about books? I do.  Books about books is my favorite genre.  I love reading about reading...more Europe on 5 Wrong Turns a Day by Doug Mack Mack’s mom went to Europe when she was a young person,  and her only guide was the now infamous Europe on $5 a Day.  Mack runs across a copy of this classic travel guide and sets off...more Scent of Darkness by Margot Berwin I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book  when it arrived on my doorstep some weeks back. I was worried...more The Blue-Ribbon Jalapeno Society Jubilee by Carolyn Brown Do we have a name for the genre this book falls into?  Women’s Fiction, but that is really too broad.  How about Women’s Fiction About Women Who Join Clubs Together  and Meet to Try to Figure Out Why Their Marriages Failed  and Why Their Kids Are Troubled?  Yes. That might cover it.  And we love these stories, whatever the name of their genre...more Travels with Epicurus by Daniel Klein Daniel Klein is getting on in years.  He’s come to that time in life when you are very, very clear  about what’s small stuff and what’s not.  He decides to spend some time on a Greek island thinking a little  and writing a little about what should matter to us in our last years...more The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate What do you do if you are a gorilla and you live in a cramped cage at a mall?  Ivan the gorilla has befriended a couple of elephants and taken up drawing.  And this is Ivan’s story...more There's No One I Love Like You by Jutta Langreuter Ever want to just leave your mom and dad and find a new home with new parents?  That’s what Little Bunny did. He was fed up...more Lessons in French by Hilary Reyl If you throw Paris or France in a title,  you can know that I will probably seek this book out and give it a read.  And I will probably like it, no matter how it's written.  I just like reading about Paris. Happily...more

What Arrived Last Week Life After Life by Jill McCorkle The 100-Year-Old Man  Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson A Free Man: A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi by Aman Sethi

What I'm Reading Now A Canticle for Leibowitz                   Tales of Old-Time Texas  by Walter M. Miller, Jr.                            by J. Frank Dobie           The Coral Island                                    The Changeover by R. M. Ballantyne                               by Margaret Mahy

What are you reading today?!




It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week…. and anything in between!  This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!

I love being a part of this and I hope you do too! As part of this weekly meme Book Journey loves to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme. Book Journey offers a weekly contest for those who visit 10 or more of the Monday Meme participants and leave a comment telling BJ how many you visited.

My Geek-y Journal

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme 

post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken

 then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky at At Home With Books.

Does It Count?

I've been reading this book, Antifragile, for almost four weeks. I call it reading. I've turned all the pages. I've read all the words. That's reading, right?

Or is it?

I started off pretty well, somehow managing to get my brain around the whole idea of antifragile, a word the author, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, admits he made up. There is no real word in English that properly names this idea. Everyone understands the idea of fragile, something that is destroyed when stressed. But the opposite of fragile is more than just something that survives difficulties. Antifragility, Taleb tells us, is the idea of a phenomenon that goes beyond mere resilience; antifragility is the idea of something that actually improves with difficulties and uncertainty.

Taleb gives us lots of great examples of things that are antifragile: "...evolution, culture, ideas, revolutions, political systems, technological innovation, cultural and economic success, corporate survival, good recipes (say, chicken soup or steak tartare with a drop of cognac), the rise of cities, cultures, legal systems, equatorial forests, bacterial resistance...even our own existence as a species on this planet."

I'm high-five-ing him, right and left...love this idea of antifragile, Taleb.

That was the Prologue, however. Round about the second or third page of Chapter 1, I find that I'm reading along, with no idea what Mr. Taleb is explaining. He tries, he really does, and now and then I read a paragraph and think I'm back on the highway. The Soviet-Harvard Department of Ornithology, for example. (How well do I know that department, the people who lecture to birds about proper techniques for flying, observe and write reports about the birds' flying abilities, and then seek funding to ensure that the lectures will continue!) But, soon I'm back driving in the dark again.

I don't know if I really read this book. Can I add it to my 2013 Book Log? Does it count? Please don't ask me to summarize it or outline it or (heaven forbid!) don't test me on it.

But if I didn't really read it, why did I like it so much? And why can't I stop thinking about it?

Maybe what I did when I read Antifragile was antireading. Maybe antireading is the kind of reading where you turn the pages and read the words, but understand only a smidgen of what's there, and then you think about it for weeks, and come back to the book again and again, and maybe try to reread it, and it tweaks your map about this life, even through you really didn't understand much of what you read to begin with.

Maybe antireading is the best kind of reading of all.

Wilma Rudolph, born prematurely, 20th of 22 kids, had polio when she was four, 

and went on to become one of the world's greatest runners: 

Wilma Rudolph is antifragile, I think.

The Arkenstone of Thrain: Half-Finished

"It shone like silver in the firelight, like water in the sun, 

like snow under the stars, like rain upon the moon...."

                                                            ----from The Hobbit   

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme 

post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken

 then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky at At Home With Books.

♥♥♥Love Stories I Love♥♥♥

I hate predictable writing. I cringe at sappy stories. I loathe ooey-gooey books.

Unless said writing is a romance.

So be prepared for some predictable writing on my list of favorite love stories. Be ready for some sappy romances. Get set for some ooey-gooey tales. And forgive me for my reading sins. We all have our flaws.

Here goes:

You probably have The Fault in Our Stars and Sloppy Firsts and The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight and Anna and the French Kiss on your list, too. So I'm not bothering to put these on mine. You already know how wonderful they are. In a Teen Love sort of way.

One for the Money will never be anybody's literature, but you've got to love a story where our main character is in love with two amazingly gorgeous fellows. You know all about this one, so I'm not listing it either.

Should I even both putting Bridget Jones's Diary down? No, I don't think so. Everybody has read this one and, even if you haven't, you've seen the movie.

Okay, enough of what's not on my list. Here are a few that might be a little off your radar:

♥♥♥The Monk Downstairs♥♥♥

♥♥♥Stargirl♥♥♥

♥♥♥Eleanor and Abel♥♥♥

♥♥♥The Gold Bug Variations♥♥♥

♥♥♥Major Pettigrew's Last Stand♥♥♥

♥♥♥Possession♥♥♥

♥♥♥A Kiss for Little Bear♥♥♥

♥♥♥Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak♥♥♥

♥♥♥The Lover's Dictionary♥♥♥

♥♥♥My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead: 

Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro♥♥♥

What do you think? Have you, too, loved any of these? Hated any?

Another It's Monday!

                 

What I Finished Last Week The One and Only Ivan Travels With Epicurus

What Arrived Last Week There's No One I Love Like You The First Four Notes:  Beethoven's Fifth and the Human Imagination My Bookstore The Colour of Milk The Yellow Birds

What I'm Reading Now Lessons in French

What are you reading today?!




It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week…. and anything in between!  This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!

I love being a part of this and I hope you do too! As part of this weekly meme Book Journey loves to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme. Book Journey offers a weekly contest for those who visit 10 or more of the Monday Meme participants and leave a comment telling BJ how many you visited.

I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

The first thing I always do on Tuesday mornings is to post my Top Ten list and then visit other people's blogs to read their Top Ten lists. The prompt this week was "Top Ten Bookish Memories."

The first blog I visited this particular morning was Christina T's Reading Extensively.  Here is her number one Bookish Memory:          
 1. Meeting Ally Carter at a book signing

Crazy, because guess where I was headed this morning? Yes, to see Ally Carter at Manvel Junior High!

Students came from four schools to hear Ally Carter speak.

She spoke about the writing process and answered questions.

I loved her Speed Round.

Two junior high librarians came suitably Gallagher Girl-ishly attired.

Naturally, I had to buy my first Ally Carter book

(can you guess which one?)

and get it autographed.

Some of our Alvin ISD Brazoria Fiction Fiesta librarians at the event,

posing with Ally Carter.

What I loved most:

Three junior high girls dived right into their new Ally Carter books.

I can see why Christina T. chose meeting Ally Carter as one of her favorite bookish memories!

Thank you, Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston, 

for sharing Ally Carter with us and our students!

What is the Sunday Salon? Imagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people---students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them,and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....

That's what happens at the Sunday Salon, except it's all virtual. Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon get together--at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones--and read. And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs. Think of it as an informal, weekly, mini read-a-thon, an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities and fall into a good book. Click here to join the Salon.

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme 

post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken

 then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky at At Home With Books.

Barbed Wire

For more wordless photos,

go to Wordless Wednesday.

Happy Bookish Moments (So Far)

Finding and Reading ZAMM in Yellowstone Park, 1975

Finding and reading a book that changed my life. Saved my life. 

Someday I'll tell this story.

Reading 100+ Books in One Year

Who knew I could read a hundred books in a year?

I'm a Librarian!

And suddenly I'm living my dream. 

Photo by 12thSonOfLama

Happy Meetups with Readers

Bookcrossed a little, shopped in bookstores.

Visited with book friends.
Happy days.

I'm a Cybils Panelist!

2008. Then 2009. And 2010. And 2011. And 2012. Happy.

Astonishing BookCrossing Release Results!

450 books released in one week

at George R. Brown Convention Hall in Houston.

The Texas Book Festival

Fabulous. Every year.

 Authors, Authors Everywhere!

TLA. IRA. Blue Willow Bookstore. My school. Everywhere.

Little Library #2924 in Alvin, Texas is Up and Running!

Vous Ne Pouvez Pas Tout Apprendre à Partir D'un Livre

And, finally, you can't learn everything from a book. Or, as they say in French, Vous ne pouvez pas tout apprendre à partir d'un livre. A bookish-nonbookish moment.

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list that one of our bloggers here at The Broke and the Bookish will answer. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND add your name to the Linky widget so that everyone can check out other bloggers lists! If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Have fun with it! It's a fun way to get to know your fellow bloggers.