I Disembark (Finally!) from the Pequod and Head to Utah

I have read Moby Dick. 

Done. Finished. Wow. What a story. I spent all of August aboard the Pequod, but I finally reached the last three chapters where most of the real story takes place, and finished Moby Dick.

Here's my final Moby Dick post: Moby Dick: What I Am Taking Away from Reading This Book. 

Other than Moby Dick, it was a Spanish-themed picture book (did you know that I can read in Spanish?) week for me, just the sort of reading I love. I read five great picture books, all with Spanish themes. ¡Más libros ilustrados en español, por favor!

For my complete reviews, click the links below:

 G is for Golazo: The Ultimate Soccer Alphabet by James Littlejohn illustrated by Matthew Shipley

Salsa Lullaby by Jen Arena and illustrated by Erika Meza

Gobi: Una Perrita Con un Gran Corazon by Dion Leonard and illustrated by Lisa Manuzak

¡Vamos! Let's Go to the Market written and illustrated by Raúl the Third

My Papi Has a Motorcycle by Isabel Quintero and illustrated by Zeke Peña

I'm reading Utah while I travel.

The Cybils are coming. It is time to seek judges for the 2019 Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards. Do you love to read and review children's books or young adult books? I hope you will apply to be a Cybils judge here. (Note: We always have a particularly difficult time finding judges for elementary/middle grade nonfiction, junior high/senior high nonfiction, and poetry.)

Hmmm...this sounds like a job for me: Gwyneth Paltrow's Professional Book Curator. Anyone else need a book curator?

I'm off for a week of hiking and other adventures in Utah. I am supposed to have an Internet connection, but one never knows when one heads out west. Hopefully, all will go well here on Sunday Salon while I am gone.

How was your week?

Did you read any good books? Please share them with us.

What other bookish things did you do? What else is going on in your life?

I'd love to have you to link up here and/or at the Sunday Salon page on Facebook each weekend (Saturday-Sunday-Monday) and let us know what you have been doing. I hope you will visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

If you have other blogging friends, it would be wonderful if you'd tell others about our salon and encourage them to join us.

Other places where you may like to link up are below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

My linkup for Sunday Salon is below. 

Moby Dick: What I Am Taking Away from My Experience Reading This Book

I've been a little obsessed this month. I read Moby Dick.

I'm not an expert. I'm just a regular, ordinary person who loves to read, a person who felt like I should read Moby Dick., and so I did.

It took me all month. I read the book while listening to narration, either from the Moby Dick podcast or the Moby Dick Big Read.

I found myself thinking about Moby Dick. A lot.

Of what did my Moby Dick experience consist?

I read a lot of books about Moby Dick. Kid books. Comic books. Whale nonfiction. Historical fiction about a (possible) relationship between Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. A whole book on why people should read Moby Dick.

I wrote reviews for ten Moby-Dick-related books:

Moby Dick: 10 Minute Classics retold by Philip Edwards and illustrated by Adam Horsepool

Moby Dick (Classics Illustrated, No. 5) Comics - 1943 by Herman Melville

The Whaleship Essex: The True Story of Moby Dick by Jil Fine

Moby Dick retold by Lew Sayre Schwartz, illustrated by Dick Giordano

Why Read Moby Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick

The Whale: A Love Story by Mark Beauregard

Spying on Whales: The Past, Present, and Future of Earth's Most Awesome Creatures by Nick Pyenson

In the Heart of the Sea The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick

The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea by Philip Hoare

The Sea Mammal Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta

 I loved the vocabulary in Moby Dick. I wrote a lot about the wonderful words in the book:

Moby Dick: Great Words to Note and Save and Use

Moby Dick: Odd Words We Should Add to Our Vocabularies Today

Moby Dick: Whale Words and Boat Words

I wrote four other posts about Moby Dick and talked about Moby Dick covers, Moby Dick characters, Moby Dick art, and Moby Dick themes:

But What is Moby Dick About? Why Everyone Should Read Moby Dick

Classic Book Characters from Moby Dick: Who is Your Favorite?

A Sea of Moby Dicks: Who Knew There Were So Many Covers?

Moby Dick: Art

I watched a Moby Dick movie.

I listened to Moby Dick music.

I made a Moby Dick poll: The Moby Dick Character I Like Best. Winner? Queequeg, of course.

I made word art from the complete text of Moby Dick.

What are my take-aways from reading Moby Dick?

1. Many people have told me they have tried to read Moby Dick and came away thinking it was a daunting book or a boring book. Another huge group of people told me they never want to read Moby Dick. It is possible that Moby Dick is the classic that the least number of people ever plan or want to read. 

2. A very small group of people have told me they read Moby and loved this book. Moby Dick has a tiny, but devoted group who are obsessed with this book.

3. Reading Moby Dick is daunting. The Great Gatsby is 7.3 on Accelerated Reader's ATOS readability scale.  Tom Sawyer is 8.1. Anna Karenina is 9.6. War and Peace is 10.1. Moby Dick is 10.3.

4. I thought Moby Dick was the story of a captain who hunted a whale. It is. But Moby Dick is so much more than just the story of a man seeking a whale. It is the story of a man seeking a new life by going to sea. It's the story of man vs. nature. It's the story of whales. It's a story of adventure, drama, and even comedy. 

5. I expected Moby Dick to be structured like a typical adventure novel. It is not. Moby Dick reads like a contemporary novel, with chapters written as plays, with chapters written as soliloquies, with chapters written like nonfiction text, and with paragraphs full of action but intermingled with deeply philosophical thoughts.

6. I thought if I read far enough into the novel I would grow to love it, and that happened. I did. I loved Moby Dick, but it took me 655 pages to decide that. In the process of reading it, I also disliked huge portions of it. I can't imagine that I will reread it, but I'm terribly glad I read it.

Have you read Moby Dick? 

Moby Dick Art

It's ridiculous, I know, but suddenly everything reminds me of Moby Dick. A storm blew in the other night, and the sky was huge and black and ominous, and I told my husband that it looked like Moby Dick was outside. He looked back at me (probably the way you are looking at me now) and said, "I think you've had a bit too much of that whale."

He's right. And you are probably thinking the same thing.

One of the things I loved about reading Moby Dick (and I admit it: I loved reading Moby Dick) was following along in the book while I listened to various readers take on chapters at Moby Dick Big Read. Each chapter was accompanied by a photo or a video of something that nominally represented the chapter. The art added much to the story. I thought I'd share a few with you.

Chapter 5 Breakfast

Nourish. Boyd Webb, 1984

Chapter 6 The Street

Queequeg, 45 1/2 x 12 1/2 x 5 in. , oil paint on aluminum, 2010

Chapter 13 Wheelbarrow

Proposal for Memorial, 2011

Chapter 33 The Specksynder

DRAWING RESTRAINT 9, 2005, Production Still

Chapter 53 The Gam

Whale Stamps 2012

Chapter 108 Ahab and the Carpenter

Art for Omnivore, 8.5″ x 11″ Digital photograph www.broadsidedpress.org February 1, 2012

Chapter 113 The Forge

The bond in between the things

For more wordless photos, go to Wordless Wednesday.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by A Web of Stories. To participate in Saturday Snapshot: post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken and then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky at A Web of Stories.

Books I’ve Read That I Keep In My Personal Library

At one time, I counted over 6,000 books in my personal library. I had twelve huge bookshelves crammed full of books.

I've been downsizing for some time now. I keep very few books now. I only hang onto those that I feel I might read again.

Here is my single shelf of keepers* (l-r, and then on top):

Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

Love is a Wild Assault by Elithe Hamilton Kirkland (historical fiction set in the county where I live)

Independent People by Halldor Laxness

The Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

The Secret History by Donna Tart

The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

Possession by A. S. Byatt

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Watership Down by Richard Adams

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (in English, Spanish, and French)

The World is Not Enough by Zoé Oldenbourg (my favorite historical fiction)

The Windup Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

I, Claudius by Robert Graves

My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok

Happenstance by Carol Shields

The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Moby Dick by Herman Melville** 

What fiction titles do you keep? Do you have any overlap with your shelf and mine? Have you read any of these? Are there any you want to read? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

*This, of course, is only a shelf of fiction that I keep. I also have many shelves of nonfiction, poetry, and reference books. So don't admire me for my restraint yet.

**Would you look and see what has ended up on my Keeper Shelf?! Yeah, it took me a month and 655 pages, but I've finally managed to fall for the old whale book. Glory be.



Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.

Women in Translation Month, the Inprint Margaret Root Brown Reading Series, and, Yes, Moby Dick

August is Women in Translation Month, an event hosted by Bibliobio. The event is designed to encourage more books by women who live outside English-speaking countries to be translated into English. I finally got around to reading three of my 1001 Children's Books that are written by women and that have been translated into English: Aldabra: The Tortoise Who Loved Shakespeare by Italian author Silvana Gandolfi, A Letter to the King by Dutch author Tonte Dragt, and The Big Sister by Swedish author Six Widerberg.  I have a selfish reason for wanting to encourage more English translations of works by women: many of the 1001 Children's Books (and I'm trying to read all 1001) have not been translated into English. You still have time to join in. Visit Bibliobio to read a book or two before the end of August. 

Yep. Moby Dick. Just 4% to go.

I wrote about Moby this week:

But What is Moby Dick About? Why Everyone Should Read Moby Dick

Moby Dick: Whale Words and Boat Words

The poll is still open to vote for your favorite Moby Dick character. Vote here: 

The Moby Dick Character I Like Best

I'll be wrapping up Moby Dick this week, with a couple of final posts. 

I'm terribly excited about the 2019-2020 Inprint Margaret Root Brown Reading Series in Houston. Do you recognize any of the faces on this poster? Authors who will be reading from and discussing their writings this year are Ta-Nehisi Coates, Colson Whitehead, Louise Erdrich, Carmen Maria Machado, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Emily St. John Mandel, Natalie Diaz, Carolyn Forché, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Colum McCann. If you live in the Houston area, you can buy season tickets here. 

The Cybils are coming! It is time to seek judges for the 2019 Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards. Do you love to read and review children's books or young adult books? Apply to be a Cybils judge here.

My sister and her husband and my husband and I have a little film club where we get together at our houses, eat pizza, and watch and discuss a movie together on Sunday evenings. We alternate the responsibility for choosing the movie. Last Sunday I chose Grand Canyon. I had forgotten how violent the story is, but it was as thoughtful a flick as I remembered it being; I'm still thinking about it. The loneliness and isolation of the characters felt tragic and it was only when they took action to connect  with others that things went better for them. Have you seen this movie? What movies would you suggest we show in our film club? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

How was your week?

Did you read any good books? Please share them with us.

What other bookish things did you do? What else is going on in your life?

I'd love to have you to link up here and/or at the Sunday Salon page on Facebook each weekend (Saturday-Sunday-Monday) and let us know what you have been doing. I hope you will visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

If you have other blogging friends, it would be wonderful if you'd tell others about our salon and encourage them to join us.

Other places where you may like to link up are below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

My linkup for Sunday Salon is below.