The Queen Died and the King Died

Welcome to the Literary Blog Hop hosted by The Blue Bookcase!

This week's prompt: 

 Discuss your thoughts on sentimentality in literature.

When is emotion in literature effective and when is it superfluous?
Use examples.

My reply:
E. M. Forster wrote: 'A fact is "The queen died and the king died."
A story is "The queen died and the king died of a broken heart."'
I prefer stories.


This blog hop is open to blogs
that primarily feature book reviews of literary fiction,
classic literature, and general literary discussion.

Hoppy Easter Eggstravag​anza Giveaway Hop: Win a $25 Amazon Gift Card or A Box of 15 Fantastic New Fiction Books

Thank You, Followers!

I have two prizes in the Hoppy Easter Eggstravaganza Giveaway Hop!

Entering is easy!

Just:

 (1) follow me and

(2) leave a comment, stating which prize(s) you'd like to win,

and providing an email address where you can be reached.

What are the Prizes?

Prize Package 1...

A Box of 15 New Fantastic Fiction Books!

Last week I went to a Texas librarian conference.

Books, books, books everywhere.

It was fantastic.

I came home with 170 wonderful books.

Now I want to share that experience with you.

I will send you the fifteen amazing new ARCs seen below!

(I'm sorry, but this is only open to bloggers in the US.)

Thank you to HarperCollins, Viking, Little Brown, Random House, Harcourt, and Hachette

for providing all these wonderful ARCs for this giveaway.

Prize Package 2...

Win an Amazon Gift Card!

(This is open to bloggers anywhere Amazon can ship.)

You can enter one or both of these giveaways!
Good luck!

Bonus Entries:

Follow me at Twitter

and leave a comment. +1

Befriend me at Goodreads

and leave a comment. +1

Hoppy Easter Eggstravaganza Giveaway Hop is scheduled
 to begin on Wednesday, April 20th at 12:01 am EST

and end on Monday, April 25th at 11:59 pm EST.

All participating blogs will be linked up through

a Hoppy Easter Eggstravaganza Giveaway Hop linky.

Rewind

This week's prompt is fun.

Top Ten Tuesday Rewind:

Pick a past Top Ten Tuesday that we've done

that you didn't get a chance to participate in.

Look here for past topics.

I missed the first nine prompts.

Of these, I chose this one for this week's Rewind:

Top Ten Most Intimidating Reads

Moby Dick

Middlemarch

Infinite Jest

Ulysses

Gravity's Rainbow

The Magic Mountain

The Sound and the Fury

 Proust's In Search of Lost Time

Beloved

War and Peace

 

 

Foolishly, I vowed to try to read the last two titles this year.

 

How about you?  What titles intimidate you?

Any suggestions about how to get through these?

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!

TLA 2011: A Photoblog Post

There is nothing like

the Texas Library Association Conference.

And there is nothing like going to TLA

in Austin!

Austin, Texas!

From my hotel window.

TLA always means fantastic authors.

And various odd creatures,

ready and eager to come to your library.

Even Wonder Woman,

making an appearance at the Capstone Breakfast.

Here we librarians sit,

awaiting the bats

arising from under a bridge over Town Lake.

My first political rally!

Two thousand librarians

on the steps of the Texas Capitol,

pleading with the legislators

to think about children.

My haul:

56 posters,

3 t-shirts,

12 tote bags,

2 stuffed animals,

1 puppet,

and...

170 books!

TOP TEN BOOKS I'D LIKE TO SEE MADE INTO MOVIES

TOP TEN BOOKS I'D LIKE TO SEE MADE INTO MOVIES

I almost never see a wonderful book made into a wonderful movie.

I hesitate, then, to condemn a great book

to new life as a bad movie.

I'm afraid I have to say that

I'd rather keep my wonderful books

as wonderful books.

My short answer is none.

How about you?

Are there movies you would, bravely,

have made from your favorite books?

Dewey's 24-Hour-Readathon in New York, New York

 My favorite reading event of the year, Dewey's 24-Hour-Readathon!

This year, I read New York City
to prepare for my first trip there this summer.

A photo for inspiration:

Wow...New York City....

The books I collected for this readathon...

I added my location to our Google map of readers,

joined in on the collaborative story,

and popped in on a few blogs.

I wrote a little about my favorite classic.
I read for ten hours before
hitting the wall,
and stopping to eat dinner,
enjoy a movie, and go to sleep.

And I finished ten books:

New York: 365 Days

Here is New York by E. B. White

New York: The Big City by Will Eisner (graphic novel)

Miffy Loves New York City by Dick Bruna

The Inside-Outside Book of New York City by Roxie Munro

Dear Primo: A Letter to My Cousin by Duncan Tonatiuh

New York City: An Illustrated History of the Big Apple

Pale Male: Citizen Hawk of New York City

Rosy Cole's Worst Ever, Best Yet Tour of New York City

Top Ten Book Covers I Wish I Could Redesign, or Don't Judge These Books by Their Covers, and the 2011 Indie Lit Awards

Top Ten Book Covers I Wish I Could Redesign

I could pull almost any book off my shelf and

shake my head when I see its cover design.

Lots of very sad book covers out there.

So here's a list of some of my favorite books with awful covers:

Civility by Stephen L. Carter

Not only a bad cover, but a boring title.

Who's gonna read this fantastic book

with a cover and a title like these?

Sandkings by George R. R. Martin

I really don't know why I picked up

this beautifully written science fiction novel

with a scary cover like this.

.

One Man's Meat by E. B. White

If you didn't recognize the author from Charlotte's Web

and know that he wrote brilliant essays (some of which

are in this book), you'd never choose this book.

 The World is Not Enough by Zoe Oldenbourg

Certainly doesn't look like the best historical fiction ever written,

does it?

No, it looks more like a history book about war.

Into That Good Night by Ron Rozelle

Such an amazing memoir that it was published

by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux,

but they certainly didn't spend much on the cover.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

You'd never guess this is a fantastic and mysterious thriller from the cover.

Who wants to read a book with a statue on the cover?

Finally, the type of cover I hate most is...

Book Covers with the Author's Name Written Bigger than the Title!

(Does that bother anyone else,

or is it just me,

growing increasingly cranky with age?)

I'm going to stop here,

because I'm starting to rant a little

and that's never pretty.

So what did you choose?

What book covers do you wish you could redesign?

Before you move on,

let me share with you a wonderful blog event

that will be taking place at the end of this year,

the Indie Lit Awards.

This year in 2011, like last year,

I'll be serving on the panel to choose the best

nonfiction of the year.

I'm a little worried this year, as

they've pulled Memoir into a separate category.

So, please, please, start sending me

titles of deserving nonfiction (non-memoir only, please)

published in 2011

so that I can start reading!

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!

Spring Fever

  Do you ever have days when you want to do, well, nothing?   That's me today.   I'm sitting here in my rocker on my front porch, listening to the sounds of kids playing on the next street, birds chirping, my windchimes gently ringing, and bikers whizzing by on their Sunday morning ride. I'm looking at the brilliant green world around me: green leaves, green grass, green everywhere.   It makes me feel so happy that I don't want to do anything.   I finished Heidi last week. An absolutely refreshing read. Heidi is the Mary Poppins of her world, bringing comfort to an aged and blind grandmother, teaching the incorrigible Peter to read, befriending and healing a lonely lame girl. All with the simple gifts of the spirit found in a young child. Makes me want to go live in a hut in Switzerland on the side of a mountain. Then again perhaps I am doing just that.   And, perfect for today, I'm reading the twelfth book in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective series, The Double Comfort Safari Club. I love the way our hero, the No. 1 Ladies' Detective herself, Mma. Precious Ramotswe, lives her life, enjoying the small moments and treating everyone with great respect.    I'm even contemplating skipping church today. I'm thinking that sitting here on my front porch, with a cup of coffee, might be the ideal spot to thank God for his many blessings. It just might be.   What are you up to 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. See below for how to join the Salon.

Top Ten Authors that Deserve More Recognition

In no particular order...

Wallace Stegner

Truman Capote

Carol Shields

William Steig

V. S. Naipaul

James Thurber

Louis Sachar

Marilynne Robinson

Chaim Potok

Anne Tyler

Who are authors you see as neglected?

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created here 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.

Eating Snails at McDonald's

I'm reading an amazing book.

(Good. I see you streaming in.

Lots of you.

You want to know what I'm reading

that is so amazing, right?)

It's a book of poetry.

(Well, that did it.

 Cleared the room with one word.)

Wait. Stop. Give me one more minute of your time.

(Thank you for stopping,

even if you are standing at the open door.)

The book is called Crossing State Lines: An American Renga.

A renga is an old Japanese poetic form.

You know haiku?

A renga is similar to a haiku,

only it is done collaboratively.

(Are you still there? One more minute.)

This book is a collaborative effort of fifty-four of

America's greatest living poets.

Everybody is here...Robert Pinsky...Billy Collins...

Adrienne Rich...Edward Hirsch...David Lehman...Rita Dove...

(If you've waited this long, let me reward you with a taste.)

"We're not them,"

the man at Verizon

Help Desk says.

"Okay," I say, "who is 'them'?"

"There is no 'them,'" he says.

Epiphany. A sign

outside Prince Realty:

Need Help? Inquire Within.

All the dry stiff Christmas trees

tip to trunk along the curb.

(So what do you think? she asks, a little too eagerly.

Like it?

If you are rubbing your head in confusion,

read it one more time.

Remember: Poetry isn't a McDonald's hamburger.

If you liked this little part,

just imagine a whole book of it.

And all of it linked together.

And written by some brilliant poets.

If you've left the room

or if you've stayed, but you are still rubbing your head,

that's okay, too.

Just promise me you'll try a bite or two of poetry

on another day.

Think of poetry like snails.

You've got to take it in small nibbles.

And you ain't gonna hear anyone say it tastes like chicken.

Stop thinking that you are eating snails;

just enjoy the incredible taste.)

Thank you to publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux for sharing this advanced reader copy with me.

Other books read and reviewed this week, all fabulous reads as well:

If you'd like to learn more about Sunday Salon, click here.