Butterflies

Photos of some of the butterflies I've taken this spring 

for the Texas Butterfly Monitoring study. 

Do you see any of these where you live? 

Which one do you think is the most beautiful?

For more wordless photos, go to Wordless Wednesday.

Book Titles That Are Complete Sentences

Okay, today will share book titles that form complete sentences. I love this prompt which allows me to show off my extensive (and useless) knowledge of English grammar.

I carefully examined the titles of the 6,045 books I've read and reviewed at Goodreads. It quickly became apparent that it's rare to find a title that forms a complete sentence. 

On the other hand, there are lots of book titles that begin with present participles, like Dancing With the Witchdoctor or Writing Down the Bones or Shooting the Boh or Regarding the Fountain.

A good many titles are prepositional phrases like Across the Nightingale Floor and Beneath a Scarlet Sky and On the Plain of Snakes and Around the World in 80 Days.

None of these, though, are complete sentences. Let's take a close look at those that do form complete sentences, shall we?

A lot of titles are commands, with an understood subject. Is there something about a command that somehow orders you to read the book, too?

Call the Midwife

Comfort Me With Apples

See You on Down the Road

Leave Only Footprints

Let the Great World Spin

Look Both Ways

Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven

I saw lots of children's book titles that are exclamatory sentences. There's a certain amount of joy in a title with an exclamation mark in it.

Today I Will Fly!

Follow That Frog!

There is a Bird on Your Head!

Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

Mind Your Manners, Alice Roosevelt!

This Beach is Loud!

Zombies Don’t Eat Veggies!

Give Me Back My Bones!

There are a number of interrogatory sentences, too.

Are We There Yet?

Where Is the Green Sheep?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Are You a Cat?

What Would Cleopatra Do?

Where’d You Go, Bernadette

One title has two sentences, an interrogatory and a declarative. Pretty clever.

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret

Some titles are short sentences.

Go, Dog, Go

Rabbit, Run

I Am David

Bless Me, Ultima

Everyone’s Awake 

That Sounds Fun

God Save Texas

Some are wordy.

You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons

I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelf

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten 

C Jumped Over Three Pots and a Pan and Landed Smack in the Garbage Pan

Don't be deceived. This is not a complete sentence. It's a run-on. Shame on you.

Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come

Some are bold philosophical statements.

There Are No Shortcuts

Love is a Wild Assault

It’s All Relative

The World is Not Enough

Things Fall Apart

You Can’t Go Home Again

The Sun Also Rises

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

A Good Man is Hard to Find

The Rules Do Not Apply

You Can’t Get There from Here

Let me share the rest of my (quite lengthy) list of titles that form complete sentences. 

King Bidgood’s in the Bathtub

Only You Can Save Mankind

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened

The Lord God Made Them All

Let’s Take the Long Way Home

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight 

It’s Not About the Bike

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person

It All Changed in an Instant

With Any Luck, I’ll Drive a Truck

This is Not a Book

There’s an Alien in Your Book

We Are All Fine Here

There’s a Bear on My Chair

There’s No One I Love Like You

There’s Only One You

There Goes Ted Williams

Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

My Name is Asher Lev

Death Comes for the Archbishop

My Papi Has a Motorcycle

God Got a Dog

Llama Unleashes the Apocalypse

These is My Words

Tender is the Night

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Whew! Did you find any of the same titles I did? Some of these make me want to open the book and read it to find out what the title is all about. Which is your favorite? Did you find some that you love more than these? Please share them.

Thank you for sharing this fun idea for a list, Jessica @ A Cocoon of Books.

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.

Leonard and Hungry Paul; The Lion; and How to Love the World

 

I have been wanting to read Leonard and Hungry Paul for over a year now, and I finally got a copy and read it last week. If you like action in your stories, skip this one, but if you think you might like a gently humorous story about two men in their thirties who still live at home with their parents and are friends, you should look for it.

Has anyone read The Lion by Joseph Kessel? I'd love to hear your thoughts. It's a book from my 1001 Children's Books list, and---wow---what a story. It's an old book, and it's set in Africa, and the narrator is an upper-class elitist typical of his day. Despite these limitations, there is an energy that runs through the characters that is strikingly similar to the energies found in the natural world, and I read the story almost hypnotically to the inevitable conclusion.

Poetry is powerful. But it often focuses on the pain in life and the troubles people face. Want to read something from another point of view? I offer How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope.

How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope (Poems) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Lion: A Novel by Joseph Kessel (1001 Children's Books) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Syllabus by Lynda Barry (Writing) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Leonard and Hungry Paul: A Novel (Mood-Boosting) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Annie Lumsden: The Girl from the Sea by David Almond (Children's Book) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Driving Hungry: A Memoir (Foodie) ⭐⭐⭐

The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman (Nonfiction Challenge)...42%

Yes, and...Daily Meditations by Richard Rohr (Daily Meditation Reading)...85%

100 Poems to Break Your Heart (National Poetry Month)...Waiting on the return of this book from the library

Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz (Chapter-a-Day Read)...33%

Favorite Folktales from Around the World collected by Jane Yolen (Classics Club Spin)...48%

Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants (Naturalist Book Club)...7%

I shared my list of favorite bird books, Birds of a Feather Flock Together, last week, and I got lots of wonderful recommendations for bird books I should read next.

For Wondrous Words Wednesday, I spoke about the trials for this American of reading British English: When English is (Really) English.

Good Thing #1: We saw two kinds of huge Swallowtails during our Butterfly Monitoring last week. 

Good Thing #2: Our garden is full of cherry tomatoes and kale and green beans and jalapenos.

Good Thing #3: Last week we spent a day with our g-kids, Annie and Wyatt. Here's a photo of Annie and me making cookies, while, unbeknownst to us, Wyatt is sneaking a bit of dough.

I'm happy you found your way to the Sunday Salon. Sunday Salon is a place for us to link up and to share what we have been doing during the week. It's a great way to visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

Some of the things we often talk about at the Sunday Salon:

• What was your week like?
• Read any good books? Tell us about them.
• What other bookish things did you do? 
• What else is going on in your life?

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

My linkup for Sunday Salon is below. 

Wondrous Words: When English is (Really) English

 

I often see new, wonderful books coming out in Canada or Australia or England, and I'm sad to see they are not coming here to the US any time soon. 

I wonder if part of that has to do with vocabulary. Words. Wondrous words, if you will.

I just finished a fabulous book. Leonard and Hungry Paul. My review is here.

It's the first book of Irish writer Rónán Hession. Ireland was, for a long time, part of the UK. So this book is written in English, and that's about as English as you can get.

Why, then, are there so many words that look funny to me?

There are the words that just look misspelled, like colours and neighbour and favours and encyclopaedias and maths and pyjamas. 

There are words that I know but are used in different ways, like boot and jumper and bloody and biscuit.

And then there are new words I've never spoken, like loo and queued and funfair and pub. 

This is English. Right?

It certainly explains why it's tricky to publish books in the US that were originally published elsewhere. Even books originally published in English.

 

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where you can share new words that you’ve encountered, or spotlight words you love.  Feel free to get creative! It was first created by Kathy over at Bermuda Onion and is now hosted at Elza Reads.

Birds of a Feather Flock Together: Best Bird Books

You may have noticed that I have been a bit...well, I guess the word is obsessed...obsessed about birds lately. I love nature. I've always loved nature. But it is birds that have recently caught my eye...and my heart.

Maybe you are interested in reading some good books about birds. Here are a few of my favorites.

Lost Among the Birds: Accidentally Finding Myself in One Very Big Year

Bird Therapy

H is for Hawk

The Genius of Birds

Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill: A Love Story with Wings

North on the Wing: Travels with the Songbird Migration of Spring

How to Attract Birds to Your Garden

Vesper Flights

The Thing With Feathers

How to Be a (Bad) Birdwatcher by Simon Barnes

A Bad Birdwatcher's Companion by Simon Barnes

One Wild Bird at a Time: Portraits of Individual Lives

Migrations: A Novel

World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments

What It's Like to Be a Bird by David Allen Sibley

The Armchair Birder: Discovering the Secret Lives of Familiar Birds

Snapper by Brian Kimberling (novel)

I had to share some kid books about birds, too.

My Book of Birds

Bird Talk: What Birds are Saying and Why 

Just Ducks!

Hoot by Carl Hiaasen (fiction)

The Day I Became a Bird (fiction) 

An Egg is Quiet

The Duck in the Gun (fiction)

The Puffing Patrol

Make Way for Ducklings (fiction)

Look, Birds! 

Bird Count

Pale Male: Citizen Hawk of New York City

Did you especially like any of these? 

Do you have any recommendations for me? 

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.

Outdoor Adventures: Birds, Snakes, and Alligators, Plus a Little Reading

 

The weather here was sunny and cool, and I enjoyed a lot of reading and adventuring outside.

I finished six books. I 💗Parnassus on Wheels, and if you like books and strong women, I think you will, too. Should I read the sequel? 

I also 💗Latinitas, and I urge you to seek this one out, too. 

My friend Rae shared Searching for God Knows What, and we both agree you may like it if you like Anne Lamott. In Bird Therapy, Joe Harkness tells the story of how birding became a balm for his depression. Float Plan is exactly what the cover would lead you to believe. And I'd say skip Discworld Graphic Novels and read the books themselves.

The Poetry of Strangers: What I Learned Traveling America With a Typewriter (National Poetry Month)

Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley (Classics Club)

The Discworld Graphic Novels by Terry Pratchett (Graphic Novel)

Float Plan by Trish Doller (Fiction)

Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller (Spirituality)

Latinitas: Celebrating 40 Big Dreamers by Juliet Menendez (Children's Nonfiction)

Bird Therapy by Joe Harkness (Birding; Happiness)

The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman (Nonfiction Challenge)...37%

Yes, and...Daily Meditations by Richard Rohr (Daily Meditation Reading)...73%

100 Poems to Break Your Heart (National Poetry Month)...Waiting on the return of this book from the library

Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz (Chapter-a-Day Read)...28%

Favorite Folktales from Around the World collected by Jane Yolen (Classics Club Spin)...17%

How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope (National Poetry Month)...25%

Aaron Yang: Voracious Reader or Giant Pain to Librarians? There are more than 9,000 public libraries in the US, and Aaron Yang is trying to win as many prizes as he can in their summer reading programs. Right or wrong?

Why I love BookCrossing: I leave a book at the Strand in Galveston in 2009, and twelve years later, someone in Pennsylvania finds it and reads it. It's lovely to contemplate.

We spent all four days of the City Nature Challenge taking photos of animals and plants and uploading them into iNaturalist. The first day we looked in our own backyard as it was raining, and day two we spent at a city park. The third day we ventured down to a nearby county park, and we spent the last day at the San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge. Fabuloso.

Good Thing #1

I ended up finding almost 100 different species of animals and plants, including this fellow here.

Good Thing #2

I took photos of several new-to-me birds and butterflies and flowers, including this Snowy Egret and this Plegadis Ibis.

Good Thing #3

We see a Watch for Snakes sign at Camp Mohawk and what do we see next to it? A snake! 

I'm happy you found your way to the Sunday Salon. Sunday Salon is a place for us to link up and to share what we have been doing during the week. It's a great way to visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

Some of the things we often talk about at the Sunday Salon:

• What was your week like?
• Read any good books? Tell us about them.
• What other bookish things did you do? 
• What else is going on in your life?

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

My linkup for Sunday Salon is below.