BW30: Miscellaneous Book Musings

A cup of tea and thee,

on a gadabout, a roundabout adventure. 

Let's walk and talk and muse,

About the day, the past, the future.

With a miscellany of essays,

Fictional and fun.

Cheers to Flufferton, 

Frissons of delight and

Fantastical creatures. 

No telling what we'll find,

To fill our minds

When we roam, ramble, and read

whatever comes to light. 

Today we celebrate the birth of George Bernard Shaw, Aldous Huxley, Andre Maurois, Anwar Chairil, Ana María Matute Ausejo, and Lawrence Watt Evans.

Literary Musings

On Jane Austen’s Politics of Walking

An Illustrated Love Letter to Gardening

How literary censorship inspired creativity in Victorian writers

Why are we so interested in Historians?

T. S. Eliot, The Art of Poetry No. 1

The Rise of Science Fiction from Pulp Mags to Cyberpunk

What is your literary Waterloo?

How to Judge a Book by it's cover.


Have fun following rabbit trails!

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BW29: A Girl's Garden

A Girl's Garden

By 

Robert Frost 

A neighbor of mine in the village

Likes to tell how one spring

When she was a girl on the farm, she did

A childlike thing.

One day she asked her father

To give her a garden plot

To plant and tend and reap herself,

And he said, “Why not?”

In casting about for a corner

He thought of an idle bit

Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,

And he said, “Just it.”

And he said, “That ought to make you

An ideal one-girl farm,

And give you a chance to put some strength

On your slim-jim arm.”

It was not enough of a garden,

Her father said, to plough;

So she had to work it all by hand,

But she don’t mind now.

She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow

Along a stretch of road;

But she always ran away and left

Her not-nice load.

And hid from anyone passing.

And then she begged the seed.

She says she thinks she planted one

Of all things but weed.

A hill each of potatoes,

Radishes, lettuce, peas,

Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,

And even fruit trees

And yes, she has long mistrusted

That a cider apple tree

In bearing there to-day is hers,

Or at least may be.

Her crop was a miscellany

When all was said and done,

A little bit of everything,

A great deal of none.

Now when she sees in the village

How village things go,

Just when it seems to come in right,

She says, “I know!

It’s as when I was a farmer——”

Oh, never by way of advice!

And she never sins by telling the tale

To the same person twice.

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BW28: Ode to Socks!

I’m in the mood to play.  Who thought reading about socks could be so much fun?   Shoes, Socks, Slippers, and Sandals, oh my!  Read a book with  socks on the cover, inside your wardrobe, or get creative with 35 Best Socks Books of All Time.  Even read a book about feet under the covers. Wink, wink!  Challenge yourself and read aloud the tongue twister Fox in Sock by Dr. Seuss. I guarantee a barrel of giggles throughout. 

Ode to My Socks

by 

Pablo Neruda 

Maru Mori brought me

a pair

of socks

which she knitted herself

with her sheepherder’s hands,

two socks as soft

as rabbits.

I slipped my feet

into them

as though into

two

cases

knitted

with threads of

twilight

and goatskin.

Violent socks,

my feet were

two fish made

of wool,

two long sharks

sea-blue, shot

through

by one golden thread,

two immense blackbirds,

two cannons:

my feet

were honored

in this way

by

these

heavenly

socks.

They were

so handsome

for the first time

my feet seemed to me

unacceptable

like two decrepit

firemen, firemen

unworthy

of that woven

fire,

of those glowing

socks.

Nevertheless

I resisted

the sharp temptation

to save them somewhere

as schoolboys

keep

fireflies,

as learned men

collect

sacred texts,

I resisted

the mad impulse

to put them

into a golden

cage

and each day give them

birdseed

and pieces of pink melon.

Like explorers

in the jungle who hand

over the very rare

green deer

to the spit

and eat it

with remorse,

I stretched out

my feet

and pulled on

the magnificent

socks

and then my shoes.

The moral

of my ode is this:

beauty is twice

beauty

and what is good is doubly

good

when it is a matter of two socks

made of wool

in winter.

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BW27: 52 Books Bingo - Whodunit Potpourri!

I was looking over our 52 books bingo categories and realized I built in quite a few  crossover categories,  Some of which are quite apropos to the present as well as the past.   So I decided to send you all on a scavenger hunt, from the top of the mountains, to the bottom of the sea. You can go off the grid, look for some enlightenment or something more elemental.  Be predictable or dance in the rain to the rhythm and blues. Explore the universe with Captain Kirk, or learn the ways of the force with Luke Skywalker.  

Choose a locked room mystery with a twenty something, or get a reality check from a femme fatale, who's really groovy, baby. Or maybe get involved with a computer hacker in a case of mistaken identity.  Pick a number and dive into the world of the unpredictable.

But wait!  Include an outlaw, cowboy, lawmen or a soldier, from any different time period, from the past to the future for a whodunit potpourri. Oh, the drama of it all.

Pick an author's name  and plug it into the Literature Map (used Nora Roberts as an example) and choose a different author to explore. Type their name into What Should I Read Next or explore books from their popular subjects lists.  Pick a book at random from your own shelves or use the Random Books for Everyone generator. 

Have fun! 


Please share your book reviews and link to your website, blog, Goodreads, Google+, Tumblers, or Instagram page. If you do not have a social media account, please leave a comment to let us know what you are reading. The link widget closes at the end of each book week.

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