Tags
Moon smiles at the wind
leaves of the huge oak rustle
whispering secrets
25 Friday Jul 2014
Posted Books & Reading, Haiku my Heart
inTags
Moon smiles at the wind
leaves of the huge oak rustle
whispering secrets
06 Friday Dec 2013
A veela’s dream coils
up a dazed Hogwarts turret
she wakes up smiling
(Edit) What I found out after linking with Haiku my Heart last night made me unusually quiet that if my books and pillows could talk they would have asked what happened. Today I wake up thinking Spadoman will want us to drop the sad faces and cheer up as we move on this journey of life and the life beyond.
That meal made me laugh
I will miss you, Spadoman
soar with the angels!
08 Thursday Nov 2012
Posted Booking Through Thursday, Books & Reading, Thursday Thirteen
inTags
Desmond Guinness, Jane Austen, Jane Austen Book Club, Karen Joy Fowler, Michael Busselle, Simon Sebag Montefiore
In this post: Booking Through Thursday and Thursday Thirteen
How do storms affect your reading? Do you go for comfort reading?
How do you deal with power outages? Do you read by candlelight? Flashlights? Use a self-lit e-reader or tablet? Skip reading altogether for the duration and instead play games with the family?
Let it pour, let the thunder roll, let the lightning crack by the window. The more furious the storm, the more likely I am to bury myself in a book. I experienced using a flashlight but only once or twice and very quickly each time. Back home power outages often occurred as soon as the sun set. I would watch my mother read her Bible with a little gas lamp; moths hover around the light and then drop one by one. We would linger in the living room after vespers waiting for electricity to come back. When it didn’t the parents would play scrabble by candlelight while I would leaf through a book, end up reading a few pages before falling asleep.
Thursday Thirteen: Books I bought just for the delight of owning themThe first four are coffee table books. The rest are bought for the European countryside in them, ancient architecture, ideas for keeping books, Asperger Syndrome, and so on. I’m having a great time with them. These are 13 books I recently added to my bookshelf –
1 A guide to photographing landscapes and gardens (2002) Busselle
2 Irish houses and castles (1971) Desmond Guinness and William Ryan
3 Living with books (1999) Alan Powers
4 Creative Country Decorating (1996) Ward Lock Book
5 Senryu: poem of the people (1991) J.C. Brown
6 Books that changed the world (1983) Robert B. Downs
7 Dear John (2006) Nicholas Sparks
8 Nights in Rodanthe (2002) Nicholas Sparks
9 The Jane Austen book club (2004) Karen Joy Fowler
10 The house of seven gables (1988 Tom Doherty Asso) Nathaniel Hawthorne
11 The brethren (2000) John Grisham
12 The girl with the dragon tattoo (2008) Stieg Larsson
13 Speeches that changed the world (2010) Simon Sebag Montefiore
HAPPY THURSDAY MY FRIENDS 🙂
20 Thursday Sep 2012
Posted Booking Through Thursday
inIn this post: Booking Through Thursday and Thursday Thirteen
Quick–what are you reading right now? Would you recommend it? What’s it about?
Pocket Finance by The Economist Books. Does it count? It’s one of thousands of finance books out there; a “guide that outlines the complexities of financial concepts and practice through essays and alphabetized terms.”
If you are in higher education, Southeast Asia region- finance, accounting, management sort of stuff, you might fancy it for side reading. Come to my nook and we’ll discuss it over tea. Coffee if you like or martini. It’s just that at work there’s talk of gearing up subject content for business undergrads; things like the AEC (Asian Economic Community), etceterati. This is back-up just in case.
Thursday Thirteen: International Book Week
There’s a bit of fun going on around FB in honor of international book week. Bookworms are invited to grab the closest book to them, turn to page 52, and post the 5th sentence as their status. I’m tweaking it for T13 today. Here are thirteen shortened 5th sentences from books littering my bed right now –
1 Capital adequacy. Pocket Finance, The Economist Books
2 I dare say the Colonel will leave her all his fortune. Emma, Jane Austen
3 People always thought he had been to Oxford or Cambridge. Eating People is Wrong, Malcolm Bradbury
4 She’d learned capital optimisation promiscuously. The Lazarus Vault, Tom Harper
5 They recite together the Veni creator spiritus. Ladies in Waiting, Anne Somerset
6 But the beastie vanished into the chestnut wood. Wuthering Bites, Sarah Gray
7 The objective is to have the clubface make contact with the ball slightly. Golf, Bernard Gallacher
8 Provencale style also inspired Sunday’s choices. The Heart Garden, Sunday Reed
9 Choose a stockpot large enough. Postcards from Kitchens Abroad, Diane Holuigue
10 Kolniyatcsh message will drown any that may be uttered. And Even Now, Max Beerbohm
11 Her face was thin and fierce. Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer
12 Robert nodded in agreement. Taste-Berry Tales, Bettie B. Youngs
13 Women in the cells at the other end tell Malachy he’s gorgeous. Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt
18 Tuesday Sep 2012
Posted Booking Through Thursday, Books & Reading, Jane Austen
in“Oh Mary! … find some useful employment!” ~ Mrs Bennet, Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen’s 500-piece 18″ x 14″ jigsaw puzzle looks to me like one heck of useful entertainment. The moment I saw it on a shelf by the check out counter of Asia Books, I decided it was mine even before I read the blurb –
“Settle down for a cozy afternoon with this literary-minded puzzle. Cleverly packaged in a booklike box… it features illustrations from the Regency Era paired with quotes from Jane Austen’s beloved novels.”
Alas! I have had the misfortune of not having touched this most prized possession since I bought it last year. Therefore this is one good reason to look forward to rainy afternoons at home on that russet hardwood dining table. If only I were home.
08 Saturday Sep 2012
Tags
On the daydreams department: Inkwood Books, an “indie bookstore in a cozy old Hyde Park bungalow” is for sale. My dream is alive with more than just black and white as I buy the book bungalow in a page-turn.
The rich becomes richer: had the U.S. State Department not withdrawn a $16.5 million contract to provide Kindle Touches for its overseas language education program, that would have been the case with Amazon . The reconsideration now gives all vendors opportunities to respond to the Department’s requirements for mobile learning. Yay to sharing the pie.
A positive state of bookstore affairs: Oblong Books & Music (New York) renovates. Here’s wishing them traffic flow increase. Politics and Prose (Washington, D.C.) changes their store layout. A toast to events that draw larger audiences. Builders Booksource (California) re-sizes to a cozier space. May they have continued relief from high rental costs. Book Rack Bookstore (Massachusetts) has a changeover focusing on aesthetics. Patrons find it fantastic, they report.
I find all this especially good to muse about after singing a bookshop dirge earlier.
30 Thursday Aug 2012
When books die do they go to heaven? I like to think they do. Earlier I lamented the gradual departure of bookshops here and there. It is bittersweet to succumb to book depression. Then something came up which made me think that in a traditional book lover’s space this would be perfect – “a heavenly library.” Or at least the look of it. Young & Battaglia is the creative genius behind this bookshelf wallpaper idea showcased by Design Year Book.
“White books on white shelves.” How peaceful is that! And to me it is quite a comfort to see reminders of traditional books like this if they have to be driven off our lives by e-readers. On a fashionista note, it looks like an intelligent sort of background for a photoshoot with a dark-clad reading model, does it not?
Let’s go to Budapest. Just a 5-second show that may stretch your fascination to five minutes or more: If you have encountered these bookish delights earlier somewhere, well, it was fun sharing them again with you in my nook.
24 Friday Aug 2012
“Lace is a thing like hope. It is beauty; it is grace.
It was never meant to destroy so many lives.”
Lace also usually associates well with tenderness, delicateness. But how does it end up destroying lives? Author Iris Anthony weaves a story of “fleeting beauty, mad obsession and ephemeral hope.” Ruins of Lace is for historical fiction fans, and is going to be published on October 1st 2012. More info here.
*****
Remember Pip, the orphan who rose to wealth, and got affected by the improvement of his circumstances? If you think you have seen Pip somewhere in the news last week, I don’t blame you. The novel was written long before our grandparents’ parents existed. But don’t we all mind a good story about being humbled after a stint with arrogance? Published in 1860 Great Expectations by Charles Dickens depicts life in Victorian England.
If you like old English masterpieces, chances are you did not miss the 1998 film adaptation of this book. A 2012 version is just around the corner, and is packed with a stellar cast – Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Robbie Coltrane, along with a couple of promising newcomers. Mike Newell directs.
Canada will be first to watch it in September. New Zealand, Ireland and the UK will follow in November; Germany in December and Russia – January 2013. Check the trailer –
18 Saturday Aug 2012
In the world of books and authors and the business people among them, things and people come and go just like everywhere else. Stephen Covey, familiar isn’t he?, of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People fame passed away at 79 last month, July 16th. Bookseller Irving Oaklander, is also dead at 88 on August 8th. I am not very familiar with Oaklander but certain words in a tribute written for him by Steven Heller endears me to the kind of person he was –
“… he kept a booth at the Greenwich Village Antiquarian Book Fair… beckoning all passersby to feast their eyes as they page through the material…. He invited me to his Upper West Side book business… the main bookcase -the spines said it all. Indeed, Irving had them all. Every classic and many obscure volumes that I would have died for then… Irving was the Trader Joe of rare design books.”
It’s not just book people leaving. Bookshops are too. With the full-blown utilization of the internet our reading lives have been revolutionized by e-readers. Amazon, what a giant! We see traditional bookshops disappearing. We mourn, yes and then what? Mourning does not exactly resurrect dead bookshops.
Fortunately everything is not dead or lost yet. Hope is alive as there are still a few bookstores existing around us. This is where we are advised to invest in our hope. In other words stop lamenting and put your money behind what you love. When a bookstore is in danger of being closed down, do something.
St Mark’s Bookshop in New York is in danger of being closed down due to high rental costs. Karen the Small Press Librarian lists ten reasons why people should help the bookshop survive. The scenario is not so different from the future of other bookstores anywhere else in the world. There is one among Karen’s reasons that I think we can relate with – the bookshop is “not just a place that sells (and curates) culture and history, it IS living history.” Isn’t it quite compelling when put like that? Any book lover in his right mind and heart would not be willing to part with such a thing of beauty as a bookshop without first putting up a fight, i.e. investing in hope.
09 Thursday Aug 2012
In this post: Booking Through Thursday and Thursday Thirteen
Amy asks:
Name a book you love in a genre you normally don’t care for. What made you decide to read it? Did it make you want to try more in that genre?
Harry Potter, and I ended up reading all seven books in the series. Broomsticks and cauldrons, wands and potions, what in the name of Merlin’s beard are they?…. I recall my own snigger at these things; look up my book shelf where the books are lovingly piled, and think of telling the sister-in-law how she influenced me to read HP.
Because I’m sure she has no idea what she’s done. She was holding a wineglass in one hand and HP2 in the other over a meal during one family get-together. The cover I saw was of Harry dangling from the flying car above the Yorkshire Moors. I wouldn’t have been curious if she was a ninth grader, but she’s a medical doctor. Okay, she’s a globe trotter too so maybe it was a book she did not finish from some trans-atlantic flight, but what business would a decent dermatologist have with petrificus totalus or wingardium leviosa?
That got my nostrils on the magical pages of HP for long, delightful hours and almost tempted me to steal a chapter or two at work. Curiosity could have killed the cat.
Bookish Sarah asks an interesting assortment of questions:
What genre do you avoid reading and why?
Erotica and dark fantasy (some call it a sub-genre) – I don’t last long in these genres. I get bored easily and then I go particular with money value.
Thursday Thirteen: I write like…
A haiku poet invited me to join his haiku meme. I went strolling around his site, and found a charmingly interesting widget that says he writes like Charles Dickens. There was a link so I hopped over there, and as I’m no writer, you could imagine what fun I got out of checking
“which famous writer I write like with this statistical analysis tool, which analyzes word choice and writing style and compares them with those of the famous writers.”
Here we go —
1. As I’m someone who still loves having traditional books around, I say that’s the spirit! ~ E-books v. printed books, and whether a Kindle loaded with a thousand books would weigh heavier than one with only a hundred books.
I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!
2 Utmost love most pure / divinely capable of / crimson sacrifice ~ Love at Calvary (an Easter haiku)
I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!
3 In Hua Hin Hills visitors can tour vineyards in a way you normally can’t in Burgundy or Tuscany: riding on an elephant. Vineyards of Thailand
I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!
4. Built in world war two / the Spanish house stood / along the road /
Capiz shells made up its windows… / Out came “yakan, yaweh…” ~ Casa Embrujada, a free verse written for Halloween
I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!
5 It miffed my mother who was worried it was senility progressing… she sways her hips to imaginary music. ~ Waltzing Rosario, about my waltz-loving Grandma
I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!
6. I’ll pass those up…. My money is getting spent on time-tested quality entertainment – ballet and opera. ~ on Lady Gaga’s Bad Bangkok Romance
I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!
7 Those nights of Wuthering Heights chain-smoking til 3 a.m…. and as enigmatic as Enigma. ~ reminiscing Mea Culpa
I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!
8 Just when I was about to send it over, I realized that if I were offered a place, the very topic I built a case on would send me back to Thailand for data-gathering. ~ Austenuating Jane Austen
I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!
9 “A quality haiku. Just the right amount of zest” says a published UK novelist/poet of my first attempt at a meme called Haiku Heights. ~ Pirouette
I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!
10 He congratulated her for passing some national exam. They bumped into each other at the luncheon that followed… ~ Christmas without you
I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!
11 “Austenuating a fire in my head” – an old tagline
I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!
12 If it’s made by Shangri-la and no other I’d actually eat it. This one looks like a throat clogger. I won’t take the risk. ~ on being shown a hideous fruit cake and asked if I would eat it
I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!
13 It is a truth universally acknowledged that a blogger in possession of a Jane Austen addiction must be in want of more Jane Austen adaptations. Now isn’t this obvious?
I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!