BW22: Bookish notes and birthdays

It's time for another round of bookish notes and birthdays.  A potpourri of books and birthdays as we usher out Eastward/Emerald May.

When you think of emeralds, what comes to mind?  How could we forget the emerald Isle's.   How about reading story set in  Emerald Isle, North Carolina or Emerald Isle of Ireland?  Check out Irish Central's Top Ten Irish novelists in History.  Nor should we forget Cleopatra, since emeralds were her favorite gemstone.  I have Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra: A Life currently on my shelves and have been wanting to read Michelle Moran's Cleopatra's Daughter for some time.  Browse through Goodread's list of nonfiction and fiction reads about Cleopatra and delve into her life.

Monday is Memorial Day here in the United States where we honor those who died fighting for our country.  Writer's Relief lists Our Memorial Day Reading list: A Tribute to Those who served.  The Art of Manliness has a great post with 43 Books about War every man (and woman) should read.

On the 50th anniversary of the publication of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Alvaro santana-Acuna ponders in The Atlantic: How It Became a Classic.


Author Birthdays:

May 28 - James Bond novelist - Ian Fleming and Australian Nobel Prize winner for literature - Patrick White

May 29 - Essayist - G.K. Chesterton and British novelist - T.H. White

May 30 - Children's writer - Countee Cullen and Argentine poet - Juan Gelman

May 31 - Essayist - Walt Whitman and poet - Elizabeth Coastworth

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.

BW21: Happy Birthday Ralph Waldo Emerson

May 25, 1803 

This week is the anniversary of Ralph Waldo Emerson's birthday so thought I'd leave you with one of his poems.  His complete works including essays and poems are available online at RWE.ORG.

The House

There is no architect

Can build as the muse can

She is skilful to select

Materials for her plan;

Slow and warily to choose

Rafters of immortal pine,

Or cedar incorruptible,

Worthy her design.

She threads dark Alpine forests,

Or valleys by the sea,

In many lands, with painful steps,

Ere she can find a tree.

She ransacks mines and ledges,

And quarries every rock,

To hew the famous adamant,

For each eternal block.

She lays her beams in music,

In music every one,

To the cadence of the whirling world

Which dances round the sun.

That so they shall not be displaced

By lapses or by wars,

But for the love of happy souls

Outlive the newest stars.

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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.

BW20: Happy Mother's Day

In the Garden - George Goodwin Kilbourne

Happy Mother's day, my lovelies. Whether your child is 6 months, 6, 16, 26 or even 36, you are there for middle of the night feedings to middle of the night heartfelt chats. Motherhood's nest is always open and ever comforting.  And when you need wisdom, a dose of I told you so, a good laugh, a healing cry or a not so patient nudge out the door, you can rely on your mom to know the right thing to do.

Your mission is to read a book about mothers.  There are many different avenues to pursue from essays to humor to self help to real life to fiction. Books about mothering, motherhood, mothers and son or mothers and daughters. Nurturing and creating, cooking and tending.  Relationships and life, rights and wrongs.  Books talking about traditions and different cultures and how mothers are honored around the world.   Find a book with mother in the title or challenge yourself to read several books with one letter in the title to spell out mother.  

Happy reading!

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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.

BW19: W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham - Courtesy of Carl Van Vechten 

It is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything 

but the best, you very often get it. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Our armchair travels are taking us to India as we follow in the footsteps of W. Somerset Maugham. This post is brought to you by Jane, one of our 52 Books Well Trained Mind Book a weeker's, who kindly offered to guest post this week.

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If I had only one word to describe W. Somerset Maugham's writing, it would be "exquisite." Not that I have read everything produced by this prolific novelist and playwright, but those works that I have read never disappointed.

Maugham was a best selling author in his day with many of his novels being made into films. What is often called his masterpiece, Of Human Bondage, was transformed from page to screen three times. The same is true for The Painted Veil. I can't help but wonder if the exotic settings of many of Maugham's novels contributed to his popularity in the teens, twenties and thirties. The Moon and Sixpence, loosely based on the life of painter Paul Gauguin, is set in Paris and Tahiti, The Painted Veil in China. The book we are about to read, The Razor's Edge, will carry us to India. But more on that book later.

Maugham was born in 1874 into a family of lawyers. He lost his mother at age 8, his father two year's later. His childhood under the care of his uncle was dismal and lonely.

Eventually Maugham finds his path. He attends medical school, but on the side he is always writing. London's turn of the century slums where he does medical work provide insight into the human soul.

When WWI begins, Maugham is too old to enlist but joins other literary comrades in the so called Literary Ambulance Corps. Before America's involvement in the war, Hemingway, E.E. Cummings, Archibald MacLeish were among the volunteers. Robert Service and Jerome K Jerome were also among the drivers. (Idea for a 2018 Bingo square: WWI Literary Ambulance Corps author!!)

After the war, Maugham joins British intelligence which leads to another book, Ashenden: Or the British Agent.

The Razor's Edge comes later in this career. Published in 1944, this novel focuses on a wounded WWI veteran who abandons his comfortable American life to pursue truth. From war to the Depression, from Chicago to Paris to India, we shall follow Larry Durrell as he seeks to find the meaning of his life.

I suspect when all is said and done that many of you will also find the writing of W. Somerset Maugham to be exquisite.

Please join me in reading Razor's Edge or the book of your choice by W.Somerset Maugham.

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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.