BW47: F is for .....

 

Happy Sunday! Can you believe there are 6 1/2 weeks left in the year? I can't. Time to start brainstorming for next year.    I've reached F in A.J. Jacob's The Know it All in which he's reading through the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in his quest to become the smartest person in the world. The first entry is Fables, which coincidentally, coincides with the letter of the week and the first thing that popped up in literary terms when I searched the internet.  Synchronicity! Maybe.   

Big F, little F. What begins with F.  Why, Fables, as well as flashbacks, fantasy, foils, free verse, folklore and fairy tales, and feminine rhyme.  Robert Frost is a favorite of mine. I'd also like to dip my toes into stories by Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Flaubert, and Fleming, and well as French, Foyle, and Fyodor to name a few.  

The Flower Boat 

by 

Robert Frost

The fisherman's swapping a yarn for a yarn

Under the hand of the village barber,

And her in the angle of house and barn

His deep-sea dory has found a harbor.

At anchor she rides the sunny sod

As full to the gunnel of flowers growing

As ever she turned her home with cod

From George's bank when winds were blowing.

And I judge from that elysian freight

That all they ask is rougher weather,

And dory and master will sail by fate

To seek the Happy Isles together.

Happy Reading! 

BW46: We Honor You Today by Susan R. Smith

 

We Honor You Today

By

Susan R. Smith

To all of our veterans

Far and near.

We thank you for your service

For all those years.

You sacrificed your time,

And some gave your life.

You preserved our freedom

By willingly paying the price.

Many of you

Were sent overseas.

You were wounded in battle,

With scars and disease.

But courageous and brave,

You weathered the storm.

You faced every battle

With faith and beyond.

We honor you with joy

For all that you've done.

You stood strong for our country,

For our daughters and sons.

So no one stands alone,

We walk hand in hand.

Remember, we are with you.

Together we shall stand.

We salute you today.

Hear what we say.

Let our words speak eloquently

In this special way.

On this day,

Let us express our love and thanks

For the sacrifice you paid.

You served in honor

For many years and days,

And we will never forget

How you were strong and brave.

BW45: Let's take a road trip through through History, Humor, Hobbies and more!

 

Happy Sunday! Let's take a road trip through history, humor, hobbies, and more.  Welcome to Nonfiction November in which we honor and read a wide variety of categories that are fact based.  Or at least we hope so.  When I told my husband I was planning on reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, he said it's fiction.   I disagreed but when I looked it up, found a variety of opinions and the main consensus is Zen is a fictionalized Autobiography in which the author took creative license with the subject matter.  *sigh*  And hubby hated it when he read it way back when.  Thank you for bursting my bubble. I'll make up my own mind what I think of the story when I read it.    A few people who shall remain nameless have fooled me in the past with their fictionalized autobiographies which resulted in me tossing their books across the room in disgust.  However, there is literary nonfiction or creative nonfiction which I love to read which uses literary styles and techniques similar to fiction but is actually based on fact to tell a story, rather than a dry tome regurgitating facts.  

Whether any of the books listed in the links are nonfiction, creative nonfiction, or fictionalized autobiographies, I'll let you be the judge. 

Slate’s List of Best Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 Years

47 Memoirs Everyone Should Read

Humorous Non-Fiction

20 tasty and tantalizing food memoirs

Here are the nonfiction books NPR staffers have loved so far this year

Happy Reading! 

BW44: I is for Intertextuality

 

Happy Sunday! I dove into a rabbit hole and became lost in internet land exploring books about and with intertextuality. What is it? Simply put: the relationship between texts, particularly literary text.  

According to literary terms:

"the fact that they are all intimately interconnected. This applies to all texts: novels, works of philosophy, newspaper articles, films, songs, paintings, etc. In order to understand intertextuality, it’s crucial to understand this broad definition of the word “text.”

Every text is affected by all the texts that came before it, since those texts influenced the author’s thinking and aesthetic choices. Remember: every text (again in the broadest sense) is intertextual."

Each story connects or alludes to the next one in some shape or form. Sounds like synchronicity, doesn't it. Yet, synchronicity finds meaningful coincidences without cause while Intertextuality texts borrow words and meaning from each other. 

Literary Hub's The Joys of Influence: In Praise of Intertextuality

Bibliovaults Books about Intertextuality  - a more scholarly view. 

The Book Lovers Sanctuary  - round up of book category intertextuality

Goodreads Intertextual classics (so many I've already read, and will probably reread at some point. Yes, our friend Haruki Murakami is listed.  Plus Goodreads Intertextuality books  - so many interesting stories I'd like to read. How about you? 

Try not to get lost in any rabbit holes. I dare you! :)

BW43: Japanese Literature

 

Happy Sunday! I have been a fan of Japanese literature for a very long time. I usually start the new reading year with stories written by Haruki Murakami which are full of magical realism.  Fortunately he has a new book coming out in November, The City and It's Uncertain Walls. 

"We begin with a nameless young couple: a boy and a girl, teenagers in love. One day, she disappears . . . and her absence haunts him for the rest of his life.

 Thus begins a search for this lost love that takes the man into middle age and on a journey between the real world and an other world – a mysterious, perhaps imaginary, walled town where unicorns roam, where a Gatekeeper determines who can enter and who must remain behind, and where shadows become untethered from their selves. Listening to his own dreams and premonitions, the man leaves his life in Tokyo behind and ventures to a small mountain town, where he becomes the head librarian, only to learn the mysterious circumstances surrounding the gentleman who had the job before him. As the seasons pass and the man grows more uncertain about the porous boundaries between these two worlds, he meets a strange young boy who helps him to see what he’s been missing all along."

I've branched out quite a bit over the years and have acquired many more books written about and by Japanese authors.  From Reading the City series,(I hope to eventually read them all) I have added the Book of Tokyo, A City in Short Fiction, with short stories written by Banana Yoshimoto and more:

"A shape-shifter arrives at Tokyo harbour in human form, set to embark on an unstoppable rampage through the city’s train network… A young woman is accompanied home one night by a reclusive student, and finds herself lured into a flat full of eerie Egyptian artefacts… A man suspects his young wife’s obsession with picnicking every weekend in the city’s parks hides a darker motive… At first, Tokyo appears in these stories as it does to many outsiders: a city of bewildering scale, awe-inspiring modernity, peculiar rules, unknowable secrets and, to some extent, danger. Characters observe their fellow citizens from afar, hesitant to stray from their daily routines to engage with them. But Tokyo being the city it is, random encounters inevitably take place – a naïve book collector, mistaken for a French speaker, is drawn into a world he never knew existed; a woman seeking psychiatric help finds herself in a taxi with an older man wanting to share his own peculiar revelations; a depressed divorcee accepts an unexpected lunch invitation to try Thai food for the very first time… The result in each story is a small but crucial change in perspective, a sampling of the unexpected yet simple pleasure of other people’s company. As one character puts it, ‘The world is full of delicious things, you know."

My family are also big fans of the Godzilla movies created by Toho Studios in Japan which lead to us wanting to eventually travel to Japan.  The closest we have gotten is through our armchair travels which is why I recently picked up Pico Iyer's A Beginners Guide to Japan:

"In A Beginner’s Guide to Japan, Iyer draws on his years of experience—his travels, conversations, readings, and reflections—to craft a playful and profound book of surprising, brief, incisive glimpses into Japanese culture. He recounts his adventures and observations as he travels from a meditation hall to a love hotel, from West Point to Kyoto Station, and from dinner with Meryl Streep to an ill-fated call to the Apple service center in a series of provocations guaranteed to
pique the interest and curiosity of those who don’t know Japan—and to remind those who do of its myriad fascinations."

I enjoy translated books from a variety of countries but there is an emotional richness to Japanese literature, with layers and complexity that will capture your attention. 

Japanese Literature divided into four periods

Why I love Japanese Literature

65 Best Japanese Books of All Time

Contemporary Japanese Literature 

Where to Get Started with 57 Essential Japanese Books in English

Happy Reading! 

BW42: Kunstlerroman vs Bildungsroman

 

Courtesy of Pinterest hudasameh204

Happy Sunday! What is kunstlerroman and what is a Bildungsroman? A bildungsroman is a coming of age story, whilst a kunstlerroman is a sub genre of bildungsroman and follows a character's development as an artist. 

Harry Potter, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Where the Crawdads sing are all examples of bildungsroman. Whereas, A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, The Unknown Masterpiece, or In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower are all examples of kunstlerroman.  

12 Books that Illuminate the Long Road to Becoming an Artist

20 Of The Best Bildungsroman Books

Goodreads Kunstlerroman Books

Goodreads Best Bildungsroman books

Happy Reading! 

BW41: October Author of the Month: Nora Roberts

 

Happy Sunday! Our Author of the Month is Nora Roberts and this week, October 10th,  just so happens to be her birthday.  Roberts is the diva of romance, romantic suspense, action and adventure, and supernatural thrillers.  I discovered her books back in 2007 and fell in lurve.  I have one very full bookcase dedicated to all her books. She is a prolific writer and has written 242 novels which include multiple trilogies and stand alone books. All of which are unique and interesting.  She writes stories that are full of world building, settings, and characters I have fallen in love with and makes me want to reread them over and over again. She also has written a unique futuristic police procedural under the pseudonym of J.D. Robb and recently published the 55th book in the ongoing series. I've reread them a number of times as well. 

Roberts and her husband also own a bookstore in Maine called Turn the Page and a historic inn called Inn Boonsboro with rooms named after literary characters including Eve and Roark from the In Death series.  

Interesting tidbits from her website:

Nora Roberts’ books are published in over 34 countries.

There are enough Nora Roberts books in print to fill the seats of Wrigley Field over 9,900 times (selling out Cubs’ home games for more than 124 seasons).

If you place all Nora’s books top to bottom, they would stretch across the United States from New York to Los Angeles 18 times.

Her official blog, Fall Into The Story, contains updates on books, conversations with readers and insights into Nora’s home life.

Although romance is an element of most of her stories, she has written a number of books that are spooky, thrilling, chilling, and include ghosts or are post apocalyptic such as The Sign of Seven Trilogy or Chronicles of The One.  All good choices for our October Spooktacular. 

Big L, Little L, what begins with L? Why Love, of course. As well as literary, library, letters, and lullaby.

Happy Reading! 

BW40: October Spooktacular

 

Happy Sunday! Are you ready for our October Spooktacular? What spooks you, gives you goosebumps, sends a chill up your spine, keeps you up reading late into night?  Horror, thrillers, dark comedy, science fiction,  supernatural thrillers, speculative fiction, true crime stories, books with morally grey characters.  Perhaps cozy reads or paranormal reads with ghosts, vampires, werewolves, or mummies. There is something for everyone, even if you like spooky lite. Boo!

16 Spooky Halloween Books for Adults

Spooky Books to Read Every October

31 Halloween Books to Read This October

Goodreads all inclusive Spooky Book Lists

And for those who aren't into the spookiness, our fall reading challenge will be ongoing until Winter. Plus I think we should extended banned books week through October because I still want to read Grapes of Wrath along with Steinbeck's Working Days: The Journal of the Grapes of Wrath. I also want to read Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits which is also on the Top 100 Banned Books List. 

Which brings us to our letter of the week - M- which stands for magical realism, memoirs, motifs, marginalia, and metaphors.  

Happy reading! 

BW39: I have a Notion it is Fall!

 

Happy Sunday! I've got a notion it's Fall. Well, in the Northern Hemisphere at least. Those of you in the Southern Hemisphere are ushering in Spring.  Either way, nature is painting the landscape with vivid and vibrant colors.  Which means, it's time for our Fall Reading Challenge or mission or journey or whatever you want to call it. 

Read a book with, which is, or about (But not all inclusive)

• Leaves, trees, or nature of some sort on the cover. 
• Fall colors on the cover. 
• Fall in the title.
• Set in Fall or Autumn
• Someone who could possibly fall, whether physically or metaphorically.
• Released in September, October, or November.
• A cozy full of murder and mayhem.
• Full of pumpkins
• About someone who transforms.
• Is magical or mystical.
• About Halloween, Samhain, Octoberfest, Día de Muertos, Diwali, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, 

The Ultimate Fall 2024 Reading List which is a round up of list from around the internet.   Haruki Murakami's latest - The City and Its Uncertain Walls will be out on November 19th. Louise Penney's #19 in the Gamache series - The Grey Wolf - will be out on October 29th.  Nora Roberts 2nd book in The Lost Bridge Trilogy - The Mirror - will be out on November 19th. 

The Queen's Reading room - Season 15 includes Geraldine Brooks Horse, E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia, Tan Twan Eng's The House of Doors, and Robert Harris's Archangel.  

Have fun filling up your TBR stacks. 

Oh! And it's Banned Book Week so read some challenged books 

Happy reading! 

BW38: O is for Oulipo

 

Happy Sunday!  O is for Oulipo and also stands for odd so bear with me.   

I was introduced to the form of Oulipo in a writing class years ago and found it quite intriguing.  Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle or OULIPO was founded by French Mathematician Francois de Lionnais and writer Raymond Queneau in 1960.   Basically it is introducing a constraint such as not using a certain letter, and other oddities, while writing a poem, creating a short story, or a lipogram.  

A few years back I experimented with creating an OULIPO using Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken which took an interesting turn.   I tried the N + 7 route which is to replace the major nouns with another noun which is the 7th one below it in the dictionary.   However the first line ending up being 

Two Robbers diverged in a Women

Hmmm! Once I quit laughing, I got the bright idea to take book titles and transform them into a story, but got as far as a weird poem.

Figured I'd better stick to reading books by authors using the technique.  

Italo Calvino is one author who liked to experiment with his stories.  In "if on a winter's night a traveler"  is written in both second person so the you is the reader, yourself, and an alternative narrator in alternating chapters which makes for an intriguing and creative story. 

"if on a winter's night a traveler is a feat of striking ingenuity and intelligence, exploring how our reading choices can shape and transform our lives. Originally published in 1979, Italo Calvino's singular novel crafted a postmodern narrative like never seen before—offering not one novel but ten, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together, the stories form a labyrinth of literature known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers pursue the story lines that intrigue them and try to read each other. Deeply profound and surprisingly romantic, this classic is a beautiful meditation on the transformative power of reading and the ways we make meaning in our lives."

I've read "if on a winter's night" as well as "Invisible Cities" and will be delving into "The Complete Cosmocomics" soon. 

"Italo Calvino’s beloved cosmicomics cross planets and traverse galaxies, speed up time or slow it down to the particles of an instant. Through the eyes of an ageless guide named Qfwfq, Calvino explores natural phenomena and tells the story of the origins of the universe. Poignant, fantastical, and wise, these thirty-four dazzling stories—collected here in one definitive anthology—relate complex scientific and mathematical concepts to our everyday world. They are an indelible (and unfailingly delightful) literary achievement."

Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar is another strange one with two ways to read the book - straight forward or in a Hopscotch manner jumping into 'expendable' chapters the author had written which are supposed to add to or explain some of what was going on.  I hopscotched around, letting the number at the end of each chapter tell me what to read next.  But you have to pay close attention if you want to find the end of the story. 

Explore some books using Oulipo constraints from Goodreads round up of Oulipo Books or Literary Salon's Index. 

Blogatini – The Adventurous Writer – The Oulipo Movement

Who Are the Women of Oulipo?

Have fun exploring! 

  

BW37: Pseudonym

 

Happy Sunday!  Big P, little p, what begins with P.   Passion, poetry, peace, patient, parallels, park, progress, and pseudonym to name a few.  Your task this week is to find a book written by an author under a pseudonym or pen name. 

I'm currently reading Passion in Death by J.D. Robb which is another pen name for Nora Roberts.  I just stumbled upon Rules of Engagement written by Selene Montgomery which happens to be the pen name for Stacey Abrams who previously served as a state representative for Georgia. Dean Koontz is another favorite author who wrote under several pen names including David Axton, K. R. Dwyer, Richard Paige, and others. Stephen King used Richard Bachman as another pen name while Anne Rice used A.N. Roquelaure or Anne Rampling.   Fantasy author Charles De Lint wrote dark fantasy novels aka horror under the name of Samuel Key which were scary good. 

It's always fun to search out books written under a different pen name by authors because you'll never know what amazing stories you'll find.  

10 Contemporary Authors Writing Under More Than One Name

12 Modern Writers who use a Pen name

10 Famous Author Pseudonyms And Why They Were Chosen

Have fun!

BW36: September Author of the Month - Steve Berry

Happy Sunday!  Welcome to September in which we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, Classical Music Month, Baby Safety Month, as well as National Courtesy Month.  This month we celebrate Labor Day, anticipate the beginning of Fall, and commemorate 911 and those we lost as well as the heroes of the day. 

Our author of the Month is Steve Berry who writes action packed mystery thrillers mixed with history.   He is best known for his Cotton Malone series consisting of 19 books so far. He also has written several stand alone books, plus has teamed up with different authors including M.J. Rose in the Cassiopeia Vitt adventure series as well as Grant Blackwood in the Luke Daniels historical adventures. 

Our letter of the week is Q which is appropriate since Berry's books take us on different quests.  Q is also for question, quagmires, queens, and quotes. 

Happy reading! 

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