Independent Literary Awards...Nominate Your Favorites Now!

You are a reader or you wouldn't be here at my blog.  I bet you've read some fantastic books this year, right?

Why not nominate your favorites for an award then?!

What are the Independent Literary Awards?

From the website, here is a little about the award:

The Independent Literary Awards are book awards given by literary bloggers. All judges and panelists for theses awards are completely independent and do not receive compensation for reviews nor their work on the award board. The Independent Literary Awards is currently in its inaugural year and will be presenting the winners for the 2010 calendar year in February of 2011.

What genres may receive awards?

The genres that will be represented and receiving awards for 2010 are:

·         Literary Fiction

·        Non-Fiction

·        Mystery

·        Speculative Fiction 

·         GLBTQ 

What, then, are the rules for making nominations?

■ You must be a literary blogger; and a link to your blog must be provided so we can verify this. (You may not be the author, publisher, or publicist of the book you are nominating).

■ Books nominated must have a 2010 release date.

■ You may nominate a book that has already been listed (the books with the most nominations will be what we add to the Long List).

■ You may nominate books in more than one genre, but only one per genre.

■ Nominations close December 15, 2010.

I'm happy to be serving as a panelist on the Non-Fiction Panel of the Indie Literary Awards!

Serving as Non-Fiction Panelists are:

• Debbie @ Readerbuzz

• Shauna @ the Evergreen Junior High Library

• Florinda @ The 3R’s Blog 

• Betty @ Reflections with Coffee

• Mary @ A Novel Idea 

And serving as Judge for the Non-Fiction Panel is Kim @ Sophisticated Dorkiness 

I am anxious to read some great non-fiction titles over my winter holidays, so please, please, please head over to the links above and nominate some great books. Please share this information on your blog so that other great titles will be nominated. Please tweet about it and Facebook about it. Spread the word, literary bloggers!

Enchanté! from The Literary Blog Hop

 Let me introduce myself.

Bonjour! Enchanté! Bienvenidos!

I am Debnance at Readerbuzz.

I love to read.

I especially love children's books,

travel memoirs,

 literary fiction, 

creative nonfiction,

and books about happiness.

 I'd love to visit your blog. 

If you like, follow me and leave a comment

and I will hop over and follow you.

I also invite you to:

Befriend me at Goodreads.

Follow me at Twitter.

 Befriend me at Facebook. 

I'm happy to be joining in the Literary Blog Hop again this week. It's a hop sponsored by The Blue Bookcase and it's designed for participants who read primarily literary works. Each week a prompt is provided to encourage discussion among literary bloggers.

This week's prompt is from...oh my goodness!....
This week's prompt is from...ME! 

From The Blue Bookcase:

This week's question comes from Debbie Nance at Readerbuzz:

What is the most difficult literary work
you've ever read?

What made it so difficult?

My response:

I'm going to say the most difficult literary work

I've ever read was

The Three Musketeers.

I'm picking TTM as difficult because

I knew nothing about swords,

or French history

and this book has lots of fighting

and French history.

Luckily, I read this book on my Kindle,

with a built-in dictionary!

Quite lovely to easily

look up words I didn't know.

And it also helped that I read this book

with my online bookgroup...lots of support.

Plus, I read it while I was in France!

How cool is that?!

What was your most

difficult literary read?

Green Books Campaign: Stuff! Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Here's the truth.  I'm not that Green these days.  A faint tinge, perhaps, around the edge.

I used to be Green. Here's an old picture of me. See?

I want to be more Green. And I want to live in a world with lots of Green people.

And, so, We Need More Green Picture Books. Like Stuff!

Stuff! doesn't look that Green at first glance. More Blue, really. But take another look. It's a lovely story of a mouse that has too much. He finally is convinced to sell off some of his things. The mouse is astounded to find that having less stuff can be refreshing.

I loved this book. The children at school that I read it with loved this book.

Thank you to Marshall Cavendish for providing me with a copy of this wonderful book. I'll now stay true to the spirit of Greenness by passing this on to my primary school library  (as, please note, I do with every suitable children's picture book I receive for review) where it can be passed on again and again and again.

On Wed., Nov. 10, at 1 p.m., 200 bloggers will simultaneously publish reviews of 200 books printed on environmentally-friendly paper. By turning a spotlight on books printed using greener methods, Eco-Libris aims to raise consumer awareness about considering the environment when making book purchases. This year’s participation of both bloggers and books has doubled from the event’s inception last year.

The 200 books to be reviewed are in a variety of subjects including cooking, poetry, travel, green living, and history, and come from 56 publishers from the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the U.K. that are participating in the Green Books Campaign. This diversified group of publishers includes both small and large presses who all print books on recycled and/or FSC-certified paper.

Eiffel Tower in Purple, Orange, and Green

(Nearly) Ten Most Unfortunate Character Names

A few unfortunate character names come to mind.

(1)  I always felt sorry for poor Ashley Wilkes

 in Gone with the Wind. 

Wimpy.

And stuck with a girl name to boot.

(2)  Okay, I know this is just me,

but it is really, really hard to keep people straight

when reading a book set in Japan.

I get the names confused.

Too many vowel sounds.

(3)  Men in romance novels. 

Bold, one-syllable names that sound

like those of an action hero or

a curse word. Blaze, for example.

And Rock. Ridiculous. 

(4)  Old-fashioned names in classic stories. 

Walter, for example, is Mr. Bridge's first name

in the classic book,

Mr. Bridge by Evan S. Connell.

Walter Bridge sounds silly now, doesn't it?

(5)  Bilbo Baggins.  Please. 

(6)  Every Debbie I've ever read about

is a bubble-headed dimwit.

Or worse.

Surely we could have a story about a beautiful and clever

college professor named Debbie?  For once.

Well, that's all I could come up with today. I'm off to see what you thought of....

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists 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 complete with one of our bloggers answers. 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 sign Mister Linky at the bottom to share with us and all those who are participating. If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Don't worry if you can't come up with ten every time..just post what you can!

Sunday Salon: War and P...oetry (and Happiness)

Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo

I don't think we who have not been in military combat have much notion of what a war is like. Private Peaceful is a very powerful story. We in America seem to have the belief that Vietnam was a uniquely horrific war experience, that other wars were somehow "purer" wars. I don't think a person could read this book and continue to think so.

I grew up in the sixties, a time of hope and optimism about the world. I had expected that by this century people would have developed ways to solve conflict without resorting to sending young people to kill other young people.

I wonder if the stories of war, however brilliantly written, are not always much less horrific than actual combat....

And for anyone who enjoyed Private Peaceful and wants to read more, I suggest The Things They Carried.

Carry a Poem

How often do you go out to your mailbox and find a package has arrived from Kathmandu, Nepal?!

That happened to me this week. Inside the package was the delightful sliver of a book, Carry a Poem. Thousands of free copies of this book were given away in Edinburgh, Scotland during the Carry a Book Project, to “get you reading poetry.” I received it in a bookring through BookCrossing. The book consists of about twenty stories of people and the poems they love. Many of my favorites are here: “Warning” (perhaps better recognized by its opening line: “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple”), an e. e. cummings (“i carry your heart with me”), and even the poem I’d considered adding to the card file accompanying the book, “Sunlight in the Garden”.

I decided to go with a beloved poem, “Orange”. I include it here:

The Orange by Wendy Cope

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange —

The size of it made us all laugh.

I peeled and shared it with Robert and Dave —

They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,

As ordinary things often do

Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.

This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.

I did all the jobs on my list

And enjoyed them and had some time over.

I love you. I’m glad I exist.

I plan to do a Carry a Poem Project of my own at school in the spring.

Hector and the Search for Happiness by François Lelord

I participated this week in the first ever Literary Blog Hop. I visited many blogs.

At almost every blog, bloggers took on the task of defining the word «literary».

Most bloggers were in agreement ; I saw lots of «thoughtful» and many «beautifully written».

Some bloggers felt literary must be, by definition, difficult.

I say no and Hector and the Search for Happiness is a good example.

Hector is a delightfully simple read, but it is nevertheless quite literary. Thoughtful. Wildly clever. Certainly beautifully written.

I must say that I obtained great happiness from reading this book. Definitely simple, however, if that puts you off it.

A Literary Blog Hop: Share a Favorite Literary Book

I'm happily joining in the Literary Blog Hop this weekend!

What is the Literary Blog Hop? From the hosting blog, The Blue Bookshelf: This blog hop is open to blogs that primarily feature reviews of literary fiction, classic literature, and general literary discussion.

If you are a literary blogger, I invite you to join in.

Here the question designed to provoke discussion:
Please highlight one of your favorite books and why you would consider it 'literary.'

As a teen and young adult, I confined myself to genre fiction. Then, as now, I read a lot of books, but back then I read almost exclusively mysteries and science fiction. (Not at the same time, mind you. I went through a long sci fi phase followed by a long mystery phase.)

Then I discovered a public library in a town just down the road from me. I did a lot of work at the time on the road, enough to enable me to get a library card there. I wish I knew who selected current fiction there, because she made daring choices for a small town library. I started reading Anne Tyler and Carol Shields and other writers who bridged the gap between popular fiction and literary fiction.

And then I discovered Bookgrouplist. It was an online book club with members from all over the world who read and discussed two books a month.

Suddenly I was reading thoughtful books that surprised me,

that led me places I'd no idea that I needed to go,

with amazing characters and clever plots

and beautifully written passages.

That is, literary fiction.

Along the way, I ran across My Name is Asher Lev.  It is a powerful read.  It is the story of Asher Lev, an Orthodox Jew who longs to draw and paint. His art deeply offends his fellow Jews, including his family, but he cannot stop. I cheered for Asher Lev. I cried for Asher Lev. Such mixed feelings. Was he doing the right thing in continuing to paint?  Or was his art an act of blasphemy? I still think about this book.

How did you find your way to literary fiction?

Wordless Wednesday: My Mississippi Roots

Wordless Wednesday

Books That Made Me Cry

The Top Ten Books That Made Me Cry

Window by Jeannie Baker

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor

The Good Earth by Pearl Buck

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevich

Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse

My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok

Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell

The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

And the Pursuit of Happiness by Maira Kalman

Do you know Maira Kalman?

I like her writing.

This week I only finished one book, but it was a good one. And the Pursuit of Happiness by Maira Kalman.

I often check out books from the library, read them, and return them. Even when I buy books, I usually give them away.

I buy Maira Kalman books and keep them. I read them and then I read them again.

She writes children's picture books as well as grownup books. Honestly, her books for grownups are really just grownup picture books.

A new genre, maybe.

I hope this is okay, but I can't really show you how wonderful Maira Kalman is without showing you a few pages from her books.

Do you see what I mean?

I saw Maira Kalman at the Texas Book Festival. I would have been very sad if I had not gotten to hear her speak. She was not as I'd imagined. I'd expected a morose person. No. She actually laughed a lot. And told funny stories.

She seemed quite wise.

"Reality was never part of our household," she said.