BW17: Bingo Quest: Quirky

 

Happy Sunday! This post will be short but sweet since I'm rebuilding our business website because I accidently took it down when changed a setting with our new servicer and our current website disappeared completely.    OY! 

Our next bingo quest is to find a book with a quirk which is something odd or unusual about the book cover itself or the story or a character or however you define it.  

 My Favorite Quirky Literary Characters

40 Charming, Heart-Warming, and Quirky Books

22 Quirky, Awkward Books That Prove We’re All Weird

Most Unique Female Characters

Have fun! 

BW16: National Poetry Month: The Chance by Arthur Sze

 

Happy Sunday! Since April is National Poetry Month leaving you with The Chance by Arthur Sze which is excerpted on the poster above. 

The Chance 

The blue-black mountains are etched

   with ice. I drive south in fading light.

   The lights of my car set out before

   me, and disappear before my very eyes.

   And as I approach thirty, the distances

   are shorter than I guess? The mind

   travels at the speed of light. But for

   how many people are the passions

   ironwood, ironwood that hardens and hardens?

   Take the ex-musician, insurance salesman,

   who sells himself a policy on his own life;

   or the magician who has himself locked

   in a chest and thrown into the sea,

   only to discover he is caught in his own chains.

   I want a passion that grows and grows.

   To feel, think, act, and be defined

   by your actions, thoughts, feelings.

   As in the bones of a hand in an X-ray,

   I want the clear white light to work

   against the fuzzy blurred edges of the darkness:

   even if the darkness precedes and follows

   us, we have a chance, briefly, to shine.

BW15: Opportunities

 

Happy Sunday! I'm in Arizona again helping my dad out and realized that no matter what age you are, opportunity is our friend. You just have to reach out and grab it.  Same with books since they present limitless opportunity.  So reach out and grab the books that has been calling your name and find your next opportunity! 

"A day dawns, quite like other days; in it a single hour comes, quite like other hours; but in that day and in that hour the chance of a lifetime faces us. To face every opportunity of life thoughtfully and ask its meaning bravely and earnestly, is the only way to meet the supreme opportunities when they come, whether open-faced or disguised. ~Maltbie Davenport Babcock (1858–1901)"

Happy Reading! 

BW14: Author bookology - Ariel Lawhon

 

Happy Sunday!   Our contemporary author choice for the month of April is Ariel Lawhon.  Last year, I read The Frozen River and couldn't put it down. 

“A gripping historical mystery inspired by the life and diary of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history. 

Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own.

Over the course of one winter, as the trial nears, and whispers and prejudices mount, Martha doggedly pursues the truth. Her diary soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves, and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie.

Clever, layered, and subversive, Ariel Lawhon's newest offering introduced an unsung heroine who refused to accept anything less than justice at a time when women were considered best seen and not heard. The story was  a thrilling, tense, and tender story about a remarkable woman who left an unparalleled legacy yet remains nearly forgotten to this day.”

I have since added Code Name Helene to my stacks which am taking with me on the plane to read while visiting my father again.   I thoroughly enjoy World War II historical fiction especially when it involves women spies.  Kristen Hannah's The Nightingale enthralled and kept me reading long into the night.  Hopefully this one will be equally mesmerizing.  

Be sure to check out Ariel Lawhon's other books!