BW35: Ladies of Fiction Bookology - Sarah Dunant

Welcome to September and our celebration of Library Card sign up month, Be Kind to Writers and Editors Month, Classical Music Month, and Hispanic Heritage Month.  Don't forget to Be Late for Something Day (9/5), Read a Book Day (9/6), or help someone to read on International literacy Day (9/8).   Remember the fallen on 9/11, honor your grandparents on 9/13, appreciate being a citizen of the U.S. and read the constitution on 9/17. Talk like a pirate on 9/19, celebrate the equinox and think like a hobbit on 9/22, and read a banned or challenged book during Banned Book Week starting September 27th.  Wow, busy month. 

We are also celebrating the writings of our Ladies of Fiction Bookology author, Sarah Dunant, writer of thrillers and historical fiction set during the renaissance.  The british writer recently turned 70 and currently splits her time between London and Florence.  

There are a number of ways to complete the bookology challenge, including but not limited to:

Spell out the author's name - one book per letter from the title on the cover.
Read one or more books written by the author.
Read a book written in the country or time period of the author.

Learn more about Sarah through history you can see and smell, The answers history gives us depend on the questions we ask it’ and fashion and fiction.

~Cheers and happy reading! 

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BW34: Our Singing Strength by Robert Frost

Our Singing Strength

by 

 Robert Frost

It snowed in spring on earth so dry and warm
The flakes could find no landing place to form.
Hordes spent themselves to make it wet and cold,
And still they failed of any lasting hold.
They made no white impression on the black.
They disappeared as if earth sent them back.
Not till from separate flakes they changed at night
To almost strips and tapes of ragged white
Did grass and garden ground confess it snowed,
And all go back to winter but the road.
Next day the scene was piled and puffed and dead.
The grass lay flattened under one great tread.
Borne down until the end almost took root,
The rangey bough anticipated fruit
With snowball cupped in every opening bud.
The road alone maintained itself in mud,
Whatever its secret was of greater heat
From inward fires or brush of passing feet.

In spring more mortal singers than belong
To any one place cover us with song.
Thrush, bluebird, blackbird, sparrow, and robin throng;
Some to go further north to Hudson's Bay,
Some that have come too far north back away,
Really a very few to build and stay.
Now was seen how these liked belated snow.
the field had nowhere left for them to go;
They'd soon exhausted all there was in flying;
The trees they'd had enough of with once trying
And setting off their heavy powder load.
They could find nothing open but the road.
So there they let their lives be narrowed in
By thousands the bad weather made akin.
The road became a channel running flocks
Of glossy birds like ripples over rocks.
I drove them under foot in bits of flight
That kept the ground, almost disputing right
Of way with me from apathy of wing,
A talking twitter all they had to sing.
A few I must have driven to despair
Made quick asides, but having done in air
A whir among white branches great and small
As in some too much carven marble hall
Where one false wing beat would have brought down all,
Came tamely back in front of me, the Drover,
To suffer the same driven nightmare over.
One such storm in a lifetime couldn't teach them
That back behind pursuit it couldn't reach them;
None flew behind me to be left alone.

Well, something for a snowstorm to have shown
The country's singing strength thus brought together,
That though repressed and moody with the weather
Was none the less there ready to be freed
And sing the wildflowers up from root and seed.

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BW33: Pick a book by the cover

Are you ready for a mini challenge?  Me too!  Book covers that are dark and haunting, colorful and bold, a mystery, the challenge it presents intrigues me. Sometimes it the title alone that draws my eye.  Use to be I only looked for books by familiar authors.  Then, several years ago I joined a challenge in which one of the tasks was to pick a book by its cover. The hard part - don't read the blurb and find out what it is about beforehand.   

I discovered the temptation to read the synopsis, then a few pages to see if it drew me in impossible to resist.  Especially in person.  However, I could resist when looking at books online.   Since then I have chosen books a few times using this method and usually end up with something excellent.  Also, I couldn't pick books by authors I've already read. 

Utilizing Amazon's new releases I wondered through their virtual literature and fiction section and the following covers are what drew my eye this time. 

I added C.J. Archer's first book in her Clock and Steel series, Witchmaker's Daughter to my virtual stacks. All her covers are intriguing.  The rest have been added to my wish list. 

So your mission this week is to pick a book by it's cover.  Have fun, be bold, let your eyes feast and see what tickles your fancy.  

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BW32: 52 Books Bingo - Noir

Our next 52 Books Bingo Category is taking us into the world of Noir where it can be dark and deadly with mysterious and flawed characters, and right and wrong aren't clearly defined.

The genre is defined as "Books made up of stories that contain elements of crime, eroticism, cynicism, moral ambiguity, cruelty, strangeness, and fatalism. The stories are often set in remote areas in urban, rural, and/or out of the way settings or non-distinct settings, like the open road. Noir genre books may or may not include a private eye, detective, or femme fatale. The stories often have an elusive phenomenon or have something that’s just out of reach of the main characters."

The Best Noir Authors

12 Crime Noir Books That Will Have You Reaching for Your Trench Coat

The Rise of Rural Noir 

Guide to Nordic Noir

Noir from around the globe 

Pages of Noir: The Books that Became Film Noir

Hardboiled World: Four Creative Noir Traditions From Around the Globe

"The Noir Genre Helps Mediate between Reality and Fiction”: An Interview with José Salvador Ruiz

Mystery & Detective Novels by Women of Color

Le Chat Noir—Black Cats on the Cover

Have fun exploring the world of Noir.



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BW31: Ladies of Fiction Bookology - Nalini Singh

Courtesy of Nalini Singh 

Welcome to August and the dog days of Summer and Admit Your Happy Month, Peach Month, and National Picnic month. It's also Romance Awareness Month and a great time to dive into the fictional and not so fictional world of Romance which is vast and varied, from Flufferton Abbey to  Pawsitively cute to the Funny to Outer Space. Or explore the world of Romanticism or contemporary poets or why we love.

One of my favorite paranormal romance authors is Nalini Singh who just happens to be our Ladies of Fiction author of the month.  She was born in 1977 in Fiji and has lived the majority of her life in New Zealand. At the age of 25, she sold her first novel and has gone on to write multi novel paranormal romance series including Psy/Changeling, PsyChaneling/Trinity, and Guild Hunter as well as contemporary romance and thriller novels.  

There are a number of ways to complete the bookology challenge, including but not limited to:

Spell out the author's name - one book per letter from the title on the cover.
Read one or more books written by the author.
Read a book written in the country or time period of the author.

I've read and reread her series several times and am currently reading A Madness of Sunshine: 

"On the rugged West Coast of New Zealand, Golden Cove is more than just a town where people live. The adults are more than neighbors; the children, more than schoolmates. 

That is until one fateful summer—and several vanished bodies—shatters the trust holding Golden Cove together. All that’s left are whispers behind closed doors, broken friendships, and a silent agreement to not look back. But they can’t run from the past forever. 

Eight years later, a beautiful young woman disappears without a trace, and the residents of Golden Cove wonder if their home shelters something far more dangerous than an unforgiving landscape.  

It’s not long before the dark past collides with the haunting present and deadly secrets come to light."

Learn more about Nalini Singh through  khalia Strong's NZ Newsroom interview, Coffeetime Romance, and Entertainment Weekly. 

~Cheers and happy reading! 

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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! 


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BW26: Ladies of Fiction - M.M. Kaye

July is upon the horizon. Can you believe we're halfway through the year already? I think everyone's excited as we've been hearing lots of fireworks in our area. Are you making progress, whittling down your books, reading from your own shelves or adding more to your stacks? My virtual and physical TBR pile seems to be growing. Are you expanding your reading range, diving into new genres and cultures or enjoying revisiting old friends. 

 I've been unable to settle down with new reads and have been diving back into comfort reads. Do any of you remember the old Mervyn's commercial with the woman waiting in front of the closed store, with her nose pressed to the window, chanting open, open, open? New books are sitting on the shelf, waiting impatiently, whispering in my ear, read me, read me, read me.

I'm excited about this month's Ladies of Fiction Bookology author and artist, M.M. Kaye, who was born and raised in Shimla, India and wrote a wide variety of historical fiction, suspense novels, children's stories (written and illustrated) as well as radio plays.

There are a number of ways to complete the bookology challenge, including but not limited to:

• Spell out the author's name - one book per letter from the title on the cover.
• Read one or more books written by the author.
• Read a book written in the country or time period of the author.

I'm looking forward to reading The Far Pavilions:



"A magnificent romantic/historical/adventure novel set in India at the time of mutiny. The Far Pavilions is a story of 19th Century India, when the thin patina of English rule held down dangerously turbulent undercurrents. It is a story about and English man - Ashton Pelham-Martyn - brought up as a Hindu and his passionate, but dangerous love for an Indian princess. It's a story of divided loyalties, of tender camaraderie, of greedy imperialism and of the clash between east and west."

Learn more about M.M. Kaye through New York Times Behind the Best Sellers, Summer of the Child of Raj, and A tribute to MM Kaye, Shimla-born British writer.

“What could be more entrancing than a carefree nomadic existence 

camping, moving, exploring strange places and the ruins of 

forgotten empires, sleeping under canvas or the open sky, and giving no 

thought to the conventions and restriction of the modern world?”

Far Pavilions - M.M. Kaye

Happy reading!


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BW25: Happy Father's Day

Exhibit of Bil Keane in the McCormick-Stillman Railroad park in Scottsdale, Az

My Dad

By

Vicky Frye

If I could write a story,

It would be the greatest ever told.

I’d write about my daddy,

For he had a heart of gold.

My dad, he was no hero

Known around this world.

He was everything to me,

For I was his baby girl.

I’d write about the lessons.

He taught me right from wrong.

He instilled in me the values

That one day I’d be strong.

He taught me to face my fears,

Take each day as it comes,

For there are things that we can’t change.

He would say what’s done is done.

He would say hold your head up high,

Carry yourself with pride.

Thanks to him, I am somebody,

I will never run and hide.

If I could write a story,

It would be the greatest ever told.

I’d write about my daddy,

For he had a heart of gold.

History of Father's Day , Lesser-known ways dads improve children’s lives, Fatherly Advice Given From Famous Dads in Literature, 30 most memorable literary fathers, and 20 Father’s Day Books That Cover All of Your Dad’s Interests

Happy Father's Day to all our dads.

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BW24: June Solstice

The June Solstice is upon us as of the 20th and we are beginning either summertime or winter, depending on your location. Today is also Flag day, the start of National Flag Week, so please take a moment to pause for the Pledge and how the underappreciated flag provides messages of Unity and those who risked it all for old glory.

Books to broaden your horizons, by Hilary Mantel, Simon Schama, Lisa Taddeo and more

Books Like Us: Introducing a New Own Voices Video Series

9 Books We’re Reading to Educate Ourselves on Anti-Racism

Civil Unrest, Civil War, Fantasy, Fiction | What We're Reading and Watching

Using a book as a bridge to bring people together

9 Books that Will Give You Hope in Uncertain Times

31 Books That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity

The 25 Best Beach Reads to Add to Your Summer Reading List

The 17 Must-Read Books of Winter 2020

“Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops at all.”

― Emily Dickinson

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