The Read-a-thon is Coming and My Cybils Mega-Read Begins

The Cybils Mega-Read Begins It begins. Public nominations have closed, and author and publisher nominations are open. We are looking at 146 fiction picture book/board book nominations currently, and I've managed to locate and read 54 of these. Whew. I always forget what a huge endeavor this is. Exhausting. But wonderfully fun. Dewey's 24-Hour Read-a-thon is Coming! Dewey's 24-Hour Read-a-thon is coming up on Saturday, October 22, 2016. Could you read for 24 hours straight? How much could you read? Could you win some prizes? Play some book-ish games? Sign up now here. I'll be co-hosting from 2-4 pm CST, so I hope you'll stop in and say hello. What Arrived in My Mailbox This Week Two new board books, Wee Gallery Jungle and Wee Gallery Farm, along with two MG speculative fiction books, A Guide to the Other Side (the main characters are ghosts!) and Children of Exile (a a new trilogy by that wonderful writer Margaret Peterson Haddix) and a new picture book, An Excessive Alphabet (by the team that brought us Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs) all arrived in my mailbox this week.  What I Read This Week I finished Commonwealth just in time for tomorrow night's author event with Ann Patchett in Houston and I finished Train to Crystal City just in time for this Tuesday's book club event. And I read Paths to Happiness and The Power of Meaning cover to cover, so the next time you see me I should be radiating both Happiness and Meaning. Reviews coming soon. What are you reading today? 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. The Sunday Post is a meme hosted by Kimba at Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It's a chance to share news and recap the past week. Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia at The Printed Page. We share books that we found in our mailboxes last week.   It is now being hosted here. Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews in which you can share the books you've acquired. 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! It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is now being hosted at The Book Date.

Too Much Rock Hunting in New Mexico

Ten Books I've Read Because Of Another Book Person

You should feel proud. You led me to these books. If not for you, I'd still be stuck reading the genre books I read when I was young. Thank you.

Gone With the Wind

Recommender: My mom

My mom was my first source of good books. She was also my first source of bad books. That's how it goes, I guess. She generously would bring home a huge stack of books for me each time she visited the public library while I was in school. Gone With the Wind was a huge hit with me. I was, maybe, twelve, and this book was incredible. Later, she got hooked on gothic novels and, to appease her, I would read all the gothics she brought home. I grew really, really tired of gothics, but I will always thank her for GWTW and for sharing her love of reading. Thank you, Mama.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Recommender: Professor teaching Philosophy of Education class

When I was in my second year of college, I signed up for a Philosophy of Education class. When I went to buy the books for the class, I saw there was only one book for the class, ZAMM. I bought it and started reading it the same day. A week later, I learned that not enough people had signed up for the class and it didn't make. I ended up taking a different section of this class with a different professor. By that time, it didn't matter because I'd already read the book and decided it was my favorite book of all time. It still is. Thank you, unknown University of Houston Philosophy of Education professor.

Where the Red Fern Grows

Recommender: My mentor teacher when I student-taught

The semester I student-taught, I worked with a wonderfully creative teacher as my mentor. She read aloud every day for fifteen minutes after lunch. One of the books she read aloud was Where the Red Fern Grows. I'm not a hunter or a huge dog lover; I would have never chosen that book. Yet I read it every year I taught fifth grade and it ended up on my list of favorite reads ever. Thank you, Candy Morgan.

The Secret History

The Gold Bug Variations

Recommender: Helen Hall Library, League City, Tx.

I discovered I could get a library card in the town in which I worked, and thus discovered the Helen Hall Library in League City, Texas. Oh my. I don't know who to thank for the books that were purchased for this library, but the new book shelf became a once-a-week stop for me on my way home from work. These books were light years from the mostly-mystery books my own town's library typically stocked, books that made every major award list in America and England. Thank you, Helen Hall Library.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

Recommender: My online book club

When we first got a home computer and connected to the Internet, I joined an online book club. I was surrounded, metaphorically speaking, for the first time in my life by brilliant readers. Many people who went on to start blogs were people I met through this group. Thank you, online book club.

A Fine Balance

Recommender: My sister. And Oprah.

It was my sister who put me onto the Oprah books. I went on to read (and, almost without exception, to love) every Oprah book. Thank you, Cathy. And Oprah.

Isaac's Storm

Recommender: My husband

When I first met my husband-to-be, he claimed he was reading the exact same book I was. Pretty strong recommendation for a husband. Since that time, he has read very few books. Sadly. But one book he read and shared with me was Isaac's Storm. I went on to read every book by Erik Larson. Every book was excellent. Thank you, my love.

Mrs. Mike

Recommender: A fellow blogger

Bloggers are my best source for good book recommendations these days. You know who you are. Thank you, my fellow bloggers.

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.

A Week in Which My Mailbox is Full and I Read a Lot of Books

What Arrived Last Week Lots of goodies in my mailbox this week: Poetry for Kids: Emily Dickinson; Hap-pea All Year; The 15th Anniversary Edition of The Bread Baker's Apprentice; Be Light Like a Bird; The Power of Meaning; Paths to Happiness; and The Night Gardener. What I Read (or Re-read) Last Week I read (or re-read) all of these books in the last couple of weeks so I would have some great books to nominate for the Cybils Awards. I actually started fifteen others, but these were the ones I liked best out of all the possibilities I requested from my library: My Book of Birds, La Madre Goose, The Reader, Les Miserables: BabyLit, Bubonic Panic, Bad Girls of Fashion, and Kid Beowulf. No reviews yet, but soon, I hope. Nominate Your Favorite Children and YA Books  for the Cybils Awards Now! Have you read some wonderful children's books this year? Fabulous YA books? Did you know that anyone can nominate a wonderful children's book or a fabulous YA book for the Cybils Awards? The details about nominating are here, and the guidelines for each category are here, but basically the book you nominate must be published in the US or Canada between Oct. 16, 2015 and Oct. 15, 2016. You can nominate one book per category. The categories are Audiobooks, Board Books, Early Chapter Books, Easy Readers, Elementary Nonfiction, Elementary/Middle Grade Graphic Novels, Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction, Fiction Picture Books, Juvenile Nonfiction, Middle Grade Fiction, Middle Grade Nonfiction, Poetry, Young Adult Fiction, Young Adult Graphic Novels, Young Adult Nonfiction, and Young Adult Speculative Fiction. (If you are an author or a publisher, please wait until after October 15 to nominate your book.)  It's easy to nominate a favorite children's or YA book published in the last year. Go here and nominate away! So that's it for the week from here. I anticipate diving into the Cybils nominees full force next week.  What are you reading today? 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. The Sunday Post is a meme hosted by Kimba at Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It's a chance to share news and recap the past week. Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia at The Printed Page. We share books that we found in our mailboxes last week.   It is now being hosted here. Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews in which you can share the books you've acquired. 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! It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is now being hosted at The Book Date.

Jonathan Safron Foer: Loved the Author, Hated the Book

I am off to the first of our Houston author reading series. This year I decided to subscribe to the entire series. One of the bonuses of doing that is receiving a free book, Jonathan Safran Foer's latest, Here I Am. Everyone loves a free book.

Oh, how I wanted to like this book. I adored Foer's second book, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. And this was a free copy. And I got to see the author. Couldn't wait to hear him speak. And then to read the book.

I pick up my copy before the reading.

Good grief. Look what season tickets gets you. I take my seat about fifteen minutes before the start time. Right behind the author. I try to unobtrusively lean in and listen in to and take notes on Foer's pre-reading chit-chat with the moderator of the event. I hear lots of witty back-and-forth. Authors really are the most clever of people.

Then Foer is introduced and reads from his book. He reads a scene from a urinal. His main character thinks he sees (and I mean, SEES) Steven Spielberg there. It's brilliant writing. And incredibly crude. This is a huge book. Foer could have read anything to us. He reads us a scene from a urinal. I'm beginning to feel a little worried.

Foer talks about the themes of his book. The disintegration of a marriage. Our struggle to be present in our own lives. The paradoxes we must live through---be a parent or be an individual, live by our religious values or our secular values, taking risks or playing it safe. I feel like I'm on higher ground. The urinal scene, when read in context, will have meaning, I'm sure.

Foer answers questions after his reading. He speaks to the hypervigilence of our modern existence. How small things can ruin a life. Paying attention. I'm eager again to get to the book.

The reading is over. I pull out my book first thing when I get home and read, even though it's an hour past my normal bedtime and I've got a full day tomorrow at work. I read and I read and I read, and I feel like I'm reading pages and pages of nothing, like I've eaten a full dinner of whipped cream. Tomorrow, I think. I'll try again then.

I do, and it doesn't get better for me. Nothing. The characters are appalling, all of them, even the children. They don't connect with each other, and they do appalling things, though, oddly, all the things they do are not real acts but virtual ones, and still that doesn't make the appalling things less appalling.

In the end, I give up. A hundred and fifty pages in, but I can't bear reading on.

You read on for me, will you? Let me know what I missed, and tell me if I gave up too early.





For more wordless photos, go to Wordless Wednesday.

Saturday Snapshot is now hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads. To participate in Saturday Snapshot: 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 below. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. 

Vile Villains: The Worst of Fairy Tale Characters

We have been reading fairy tales at my primary school library. Last week I shared Jack and the Beanstalk with my classes. The children at my school were struck by the vileness of the ogre in the story. The ogre's wife warns Jack that his favorite meal is "broiled boys on toast." (gasp!) And look at this ogre:

Pretty scary stuff.

We were talking about the qualities of a fairy tale last week. One common element is that characters are often extremely good or extremely bad. I began to think about whether some of our vilest villains in literature might be in fairy tales.

There is the witch in Hansel and Gretel. She builds a house of candy so as to capture children to eat.

Rumpelstiltskin wants to keep the queen's son as his own child.

Wolves are always bad. There's the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood...

...and the Big Bad Wolf in The Three Little Pigs. They always want to eat our heroes and heroines. 

Stepmothers are horrible, too. Remember the stepmother and stepsisters from Cinderella?

The stepmother from Snow White is trying to poison her own stepdaughter.

It's the parents in Hansel and Gretel that strike me as the most vile villains, I think, people who willingly abandon their children in the woods to starve.

Did I forget any vile villains of fairy tales? What do you think? Are the vilest villains in fairy tales?

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.

Nominate Your Favorite Children's & YA Books for the Cybils, Dewey's 24-Hour Read-a-thon is Coming, and Win Free Books for Life

Nominate Your Favorite Children and YA Books for the Cybils Awards Now! Have you read some wonderful children's books this year? Fabulous YA books? Did you know that anyone can nominate a wonderful children's book or a fabulous YA book for the Cybils Awards? The details about nominating are here, and the guidelines for each category are here, but basically the book you nominate must be published in the US or Canada between Oct. 16, 2015 and Oct. 15, 2016. You can nominate one book per category. The categories are Audiobooks, Board Books, Early Chapter Books, Easy Readers, Elementary Nonfiction, Elementary/Middle Grade Graphic Novels, Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction, Fiction Picture Books, Juvenile Nonfiction, Middle Grade Fiction, Middle Grade Nonfiction, Poetry, Young Adult Fiction, Young Adult Graphic Novels, Young Adult Nonfiction, and Young Adult Speculative Fiction. (If you are an author or a publisher, please wait until after October 15 to nominate your book.)  This is my tenth year working with the Cybils. Over the years, I've nominated many, many books in many, many categories, but I'm proud to say that eight of my nominees have been finalists and one book was the winner in its category.  It's easy to nominate a favorite children's or YA book published in the last year. Go here and nominate away! Dewey's 24-Hour Read-a-thon is Coming! Have you ever tried reading in Dewey's 24-Hour Read-a-thon? Dewey's Read-a-thon was the first blogging event I participated in, way, way back in 2008. I visited other blogs, "met" other bloggers, played book-ish games, won book-ish prizes, read books, and blogged. It was over-the-top fun.  Since then, I've participated in lots of read-a-thons. I've only read for twenty-four hours one time, but I've won lots of prizes and had oodles of fun.  Dewey's 24-Hour Read-a-thon is coming up on Saturday, October 22, 2016. Could you read for 24 hours straight? How much could you read? Could you win some prizes? Play some book-ish games? Sign up now here. Win Free Books for Life! I don't play the lottery, but this giveaway made my heart go pitter-patter and I had to share it with you. Heywood Hill Bookshop in London is giving away free books for life. To celebrate the shop's 80th anniversary, Heywood Hill is giving one person the chance to win a recently published hardcover book each month for the rest of his/her life. The giveaway is open to anyone in the entire world. To enter, go here. The contest is open until the end of October. What are you reading today? 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. The Sunday Post is a meme hosted by Kimba at Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It's a chance to share news and recap the past week. Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia at The Printed Page. We share books that we found in our mailboxes last week.   It is now being hosted here. Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews in which you can share the books you've acquired. 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! It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is now being hosted at The Book Date.