BW39: Freedom to Read

Courtesy of Evellen Deconinck

This week we celebrate our freedom to read.  Books fill our lives and now come in all shapes and forms.  They are inanimate objects until you open one up and read the words on the page.   They educate and illuminate, teach powerful ideas and words, introduce old and new concepts and cultures, exposes the how's, why's and what's of life.  They can lift us up and make us laugh or fill us with sweet joy as well as sorrow. They open our eyes, hearts, souls and minds. We tear them apart and analyze, argue, debate and think about what if.  Books are readily available anywhere from libraries to book stores to grocery stories to the little library at your neighbor's house.  

There are some individuals who find those words and the thoughts created by those individual letters objectionable and seek to prevent others from reading them.  Fortunately, because we are a free country, we have the freedom to read what we want, where we want and when we want. However, with that freedom comes responsibility, especially for parents.  We are tasked individually with deciding not only how we view what we are reading and how it affects us personally, but also when our children are ready and able to understand different words or ideas or thoughts.  What's right for one child may not be right for another and it is up to the parent to decide.  Not anyone else.   We can respectfully agree or disagree with one another, but no one should take away our right to read or not read what we choose.  

Which brings us to Banned Book Week, started 35 years ago by the American Library Association Office of Intellectual Freedom, in response to challenges and requests to ban books from libraries and bookstores due to their content.  Historically, there have been challenges and bans and burnings around the world since 210bc starting with Chinese emperor Shih Huang Ti to the present with ISIS destroying books and historical documents in Mosul. 

Celebrate your freedom to read with one of many challenged books including classics and children's books as well international books banned by various governments.  Check out this article about the  massive list created by Argentine artist Marta Minujín and researchers from the University of Kassel. 

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Please link to your specific  post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you don't have a blog, leave a comment telling us what you have been reading.   Every week I will put up Mr. Linky which will close at the end of each book week.  No matter what book you are reading or reviewing at the time, whether it be # 1 or # 5 or so on, link to the current week's post.

BW38: September Equinox

Nothing Gold Can Stay

By 

Robert Frost 

Nature’s first green is gold, 

Her hardest hue to hold. 

Her early leaf’s a flower; 

But only so an hour. 

Then leaf subsides to leaf. 

So Eden sank to grief, 

So dawn goes down to day. 

Nothing gold can stay. 

It's time to celebrate the changes of the seasons once again with the September Equinox starting on Friday, the 22nd. The beginning of Autumn in the Northern Hemisphere brings on the changing of the leaves and cooler temperatures and Spring in the Southern Hemisphere brings the birth of new wildlife and wildflowers as well as warmer temperatures.

I have the colors of fall on my mind today - gold, green, yellow, red, orange as well as well as purple and blue from the flowers blooming on the morning glory and sagebrush in my yard.  So my challenge to you is two fold: Pick a color and 1) Find the color in the title or find a book about the color and/or  2) choose a book based on the color of the cover.

Such as  Ted Dekker's Circle Trilogy:

Or Clive Cussler's Inca Gold

Or Red: A History of the Redhead

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Please link to your specific  post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you don't have a blog, leave a comment telling us what you have been reading.   Every week I will put up Mr. Linky which will close at the end of each book week.  No matter what book you are reading or reviewing at the time, whether it be # 1 or # 5 or so on, link to the current week's post.

BW37: Happy Birthday Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver - Courtesy of Emily's Poetry Blog

Happy Birthday to poet Mary Oliver who is 81 years old today.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean–

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down–

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?

Find out  more about Mary Oliver as well as learn about Oliver and the Romantic Tradition as well as read her interview with Maria Shriver  and NPR's review of Oliver's selected essays Upstream.

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Please link to your specific post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you don't have a blog, leave a comment telling us what you have been reading. Every week I will put up Mr. Linky which will close at the end of each book week. No matter what book you are reading or reviewing at the time, whether it be # 1 or # 5 or so on, link to the current week's post.

BW36: Sappy September

Logan Sapphire - National Museum of Natural History

Wave a hearty goodbye to August as we greet Sappy September and embrace the royal and romantic Sapphire, our birthstone of the month.   This month we are celebrating Labor Day and Constitution day in the U.S.,  International Literacy,  the Autumn/Spring equinox, and Banned Book Week.  Let's not forget Emma Nutt who became the first woman telephone operator on September 1, 1878 and worked happily for 33 years.  During September we are also celebrating special as well as wacky days including International Bacon day, Grandparents day, No News is Good News day, Hat day, Talk like a Pirate day and World Gratitude day. 

Our birthstone of the month is the Sapphire. You may choose to spell out the word, reading one book per letter or read a book with the name or the colors of the stone in the title.  Or perhaps find an author whose name is Sapphire.   You may decide to find a book set in the time period where the birthstone was discovered or surrounding the myth and lore or set in countries where the birthstone is currently found.

Sapphires were discovered around 800BC and the name comes from the Latin word saphirus and the Greek sapheiors which means blue.   The ancient Greeks believed the stone protected them from envy and  harm. In the 12th century, the stone was believed to guard against witchcraft.  Sir Richard Francis Burton thought the stone brought him good luck. King Solomon wore the ring and many believed it provided them with heavenly blessings.  The ring's symbolism for romance and royalty was reinforced in the 1980's when Prince Charles gave Lady Diana Spencer a blue sapphire engagement ring.  Sapphires come in different shades of blue depending on from which country they are mined. The purest blue come from Kashmir and Burma, darker shades from Wales, Australia, China and Nigeria.  The lighter shades of blue comes from Sri Lanka, which is largest producer of sapphires over 100 carats. 

Our armchair travels are taking us all over the world this month as we dive into the world of Romance.  From G rated to the "oh my god, hide the cover so no one knows what I'm reading" books, there is a wide variety to choose from. 

The Romance genre includes a number of sub genres: 

• Historical
• Contemporary
• Regency
• Paranormal
• Fantasy
• Futuristic
• Time travel 
• Gothic 
• Romantic suspense
• Inspirational 
• Young Adult  
• Erotic   

and our own special category - flufferton abbey - a term coined by Amy from Well Trained mind, which represents more of a writing style, rather than a genre

 Don't know where to start? Check out Dear Author, Literary Escapism, Deadline Dames, Romance Writers of America, Cozy Romantic Mysteries as well as Feedspot's list of Top 100 Romance Books blogs and Websites.  And don't forget Goodread's Listopia of Romance Books. 

Ten of my favorite romance authors:

Nora Robert
Roxanne St. Claire
Jayne Ann Krentz 
Debbie Macomber
Diana Gabaldon
Nalini Singh
Robyn Carr  
Karen Marie Moning
C.E.Murphy
Faith Hunter
M.L. Buchman

Romance writers take us around the worlds as well as out of this world.  Have fun following rabbit trails.  

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Please link to your specific post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you don't have a blog, leave a comment telling us what you have been reading. Every week I will put up Mr. Linky which will close at the end of each book week. No matter what book you are reading or reviewing at the time, whether it be # 1 or # 5 or so on, link to the current week's post.