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Book a Week 2020 - BW12: Happy Birthday Billy Collins


Robin M
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Happy Sunday, my lovelies. Thank you for joining us in our virtual parlor for some book talk and a cup of tea or coffee, or wine if you prefer.  April is coming up pretty quickly which means the beginning of our Fellowship of the Rings read along is about to begin. Yeehaw!  Next month is National Poetry month so you may want to considered adding a few poetry books to your virtual shelves.  We are celebrating poet Billy Collins birthday this week and figured we all could enjoy a bit of whimsy today.

 Marginalia

by

Billy Collins

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

 Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
'Nonsense.' 'Please! ' 'HA! ! ' -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
why wrote 'Don't be a ninny'
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls 'Metaphor' next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of 'Irony'
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
'Absolutely,' they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
'Yes.' 'Bull's-eye.' 'My man! '
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

 And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written 'Man vs. Nature'
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

 We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospel
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

 And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.

 

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
'Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love.'

 

Link to week 11

Visit  52 Books in 52 Weeks where you can find all the information on the annual, mini and perpetual challenges, as well as share your book reviews if you like.

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No use crying over spilt milk.  While posting, hubby poured himself a glass of milk, took out a couple eggs, set them on the center cube, all while looking at the newspaper.  Yep, he turned a page and all in slo mo, the glass tipped over,  one egg rolled, and he leaned to stop but couldn't quite reach.  Kuddos to him for not swearing, but laughing as we grabbed a couple bath towels and cleaned up the mess.  Saving the paper towels you know.  Oh well, I needed to mop soon anyway.    Also another oh my gosh, kiddo say's 'what are we going to do if we run out of paper towels.  Well, you see, son. There's this marvelous invention called a sponge and a cloth towel.  😁

I'm currently sipping on Madeliene L'Engle's Walking on Water which is a fabulous read.  

Also reading Patricia Brigg's Smoke Bitten which is also quite good.  

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This week I finished Maxim Gorky's autobiographical My Childhood, which chronicles his miserable Russian life up through age 11, when he was turned out by his last surviving relative to fend for himself. Started the second book, My Apprenticeship. Unfortunately I don't have My Universities, the third in the trilogy, so that's probably going to have to wait for a bit until I can browse the shelves at the used bookstore.

It's historically interesting and well-written -- though hardly Dostoevsky -- but there are strange passages where he reflects on the misery, violence, drunkenness, dishonesty, and oppression that characterize turn-of-the-century rural Russian life, and opines that things will be so much better when we have torn out all this by the roots (implied: when the Socialist revolution comes). It makes me want to find a time machine and bring Gorky a copy of The Gulag Archipelago.

Current standings of the Crown family Quarantine Reading Competition:

Dh: Ivy Compton-Burnett, A Father and His Fate; John Heywood, Johan Johan the Husband
Me: Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul; Lautréamont, Les Chants de Maldoror; Maxim Gorky, My Childhood
Middle Girl: Racine, Britannicus (in French); Molière, L'École des femmes (in French)
Wee Girl: Barbara Sleigh, Carbonel: The King of the Cats; Barbara Sleigh, The Kingdom of Carbonel; Holling C. Holling, Paddle-to-the-Sea; Marguerite De Angeli, The Door in the Wall

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Billy Collins is very approachable! His poem "Books" seems appropriate here and for these times. It starts:

From the heart of this dark, evacuated campus

I can hear the library humming in the night,

a choir of authors murmuring inside their books

along the unlit, alphabetical shelves,

Giovanni Pontano next to Pope, Dumas next to his son,

each one stitched into his own private coat,

together forming a low, gigantic chord of language.

I'm reading and enjoying How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse. I'll come back with a review if the second half lives up to the first half.

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I read Hannah Coulter - 5 Stars - An elderly lady looks back upon her life. What can I say? I just loved this book and everyone in it. This is the second book that I have read by Wendell Berry, and so far, my favorite.

This is the story of Hannah Coulter’s life – her childhood, marriage, family, and about how life goes on. One part that truly resonated with me is her experience and pain when their children leave home. Nothing much happens in this book. No big elaborate story line or plot.

This story has reminded me to live in the present and to be thankful for all of God’s blessings. Since the story moves slowly and the themes would not be relatable to the younger reader, I would only recommend this to those who are thirty-five and older. You have to be at a certain time in your life in order to fully appreciate this.

Here are some of my favorite quotes. There were many. I’m not going to include them all here. More can be found on my Good Reads review

“The chance you had is the life you’ve got. You can make complaints about what people, including you, make of their lives after they have got them, and about what people make of other people’s lives, even about your children being gone, but you mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: Rejoice evermore.

Pray without ceasing.

In every thing give thanks.

I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.”

“When you are old you can look back and see yourself when you were young. It is almost like looking down from Heaven. And you see yourself as a young woman, just a big girl really, half awake to the world.”

This one is something that my husband and I have talked about before:

“Sometimes I imagine another young couple, strong and full of desire, coming quietly into this old house that will be empty again of all that is of any use, and will be stale and silent and dingy with dust, and they will see it shining before them as Nathan and I saw it fifty-two years ago. And I say, ‘Welcome! Love each other. Love this place and use it well. Bless your hearts.’”

9788867083022.jpg

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Some bookish posts ~

The Functionality of Literary Felines: 5 SFF Cats We Love

https://www.tor.com/2020/03/17/the-functionality-of-literary-felines-5-sff-cats-we-love/

Books in Which No Bad Things Happen by Jo Walton

https://www.tor.com/2020/03/20/books-in-which-no-bad-things-happen/comment-page-1/#comment-860195

Six Recent SFF Novels That Give No Effs About Genre Distinctions

https://www.tor.com/2020/03/06/six-recent-sff-novels-that-give-no-effs-about-genre-distinctions/comment-page-1/#comment-857935

Six Genre-Bending Books About Parasites, for Lovers of the Movie Parasite

https://www.tor.com/2020/02/24/six-genre-bending-books-about-parasites-for-lovers-of-the-movie-parasite/

Crimes, Capers, and Gentleman Thieves: 5 Must-Read SFF Heist Novels

https://www.tor.com/2020/02/21/crimes-capers-and-gentleman-thieves-5-must-read-sff-heist-novels/

Top 10 books about imaginary friends

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/26/top-10-books-about-imaginary-friends

Regards,

Kareni

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1 hour ago, Robin M said:

No use crying over spilt milk.  While posting, hubby poured himself a glass of milk, took out a couple eggs, set them on the center cube, all while looking at the newspaper.  Yep, he turned a page and all in slo mo, the glass tipped over,  one egg rolled, and he leaned to stop but couldn't quite reach.  Kuddos to him for not swearing, but laughing as we grabbed a couple bath towels and cleaned up the mess.  Saving the paper towels you know.  Oh well, I needed to mop soon anyway.    Also another oh my gosh, kiddo say's 'what are we going to do if we run out of paper towels.  Well, you see, son. There's this marvelous invention called a sponge and a cloth towel.  😁

I'm currently sipping on Madeliene L'Engle's Walking on Water which is a fabulous read.  

Also reading Patricia Brigg's Smoke Bitten which is also quite good.  

🤣 I am rationing paper towels too.....Ds spilled something yesterday and was reaching for paper towels when both Dh an I called out to use the dish towel and throw it in the laundry.  Years of preserving my dish towels from odd stains gone!  

I am reading Smoke Bitten too!  That smoke monster is so creepy!  
 

I finished a Sharon Sala romance in her Blessings Georgia series.  I have read the first four in the series and enjoyed them all.  

@Violet Crown  Wee Girl’s reading has really taken off!  I suspect she is working very hard to win the contest,  great idea mom and dad. 🙂

 


 

 

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20 minutes ago, mumto2 said:

 

@Violet Crown  Wee Girl’s reading has really taken off!  I suspect she is working very hard to win the contest,  great idea mom and dad. 🙂

Yes it has! She is the child I am most proud of (shhhhh...), she has come so far with such courage.

Oh and she just finished another book. Must read faster....

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3 hours ago, Robin M said:

...

I'm currently sipping on Madeliene L'Engle's Walking on Water which is a fabulous read.  

...

Robin M, I've never posted on the BAW threads but I do try to skim them.  Just wanted to let you know that Walking on Water is one of my favorite books.  I try to reread it once every few years.  Enjoy!

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Last night I read a short contemporary romance, Ghostwriter of Christmas Past by TA Moore. Yes, clearly March is the obvious time to read a Christmas inspired story! It was a pleasant story but not something I'll be quick to reread. (Adult content)

 "Ever since ghostwriter Jason Burke ended up in loco parentis for his orphaned niece, Mallory, he’s been trying. He goes to parent/teacher events, and he makes packed lunches, so he definitely didn’t mean to forget about Christmas. He just hasn’t celebrated it since he left home under a cloud years ago.

Put on the spot, Jason makes the snap decision to take Mallory to see where he and her father spent their Christmases as kids. The last thing he expects is to run into Tommy, his ex—ex-best friend, ex-boyfriend—who is still living in town… and working as a sheriff’s deputy.

It’s hard to avoid someone in a small town—and maybe Jason doesn’t want to. He got Mallory a Christmas, and maybe now it’s time to get himself a Christmas boyfriend. But first, he owes Tommy some explanations."

 Regards,

Kareni

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6 hours ago, Violet Crown said:

This week I finished Maxim Gorky's autobiographical My Childhood, which chronicles his miserable Russian life up through age 11, when he was turned out by his last surviving relative to fend for himself. Started the second book, My Apprenticeship. Unfortunately I don't have My Universities, the third in the trilogy, so that's probably going to have to wait for a bit until I can browse the shelves at the used bookstore.

It's historically interesting and well-written -- though hardly Dostoevsky -- but there are strange passages where he reflects on the misery, violence, drunkenness, dishonesty, and oppression that characterize turn-of-the-century rural Russian life, and opines that things will be so much better when we have torn out all this by the roots (implied: when the Socialist revolution comes). It makes me want to find a time machine and bring Gorky a copy of The Gulag Archipelago.

Current standings of the Crown family Quarantine Reading Competition:

Dh: Ivy Compton-Burnett, A Father and His Fate; John Heywood, Johan Johan the Husband
Me: Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul; Lautréamont, Les Chants de Maldoror; Maxim Gorky, My Childhood
Middle Girl: Racine, Britannicus (in French); Molière, L'École des femmes (in French)
Wee Girl: Barbara Sleigh, Carbonel: The King of the Cats; Barbara Sleigh, The Kingdom of Carbonel; Holling C. Holling, Paddle-to-the-Sea; Marguerite De Angeli, The Door in the Wall

Wow, I hope I am not offending you....I can not remember the last time I head his name....probably not since my family immigrated to US, which was over 3 decades ago.....

I didn't think anyone outside of USSR / Russian knew who he was

 

On a side note - I haven't read in WEEKS!  I don't know what happened to me 😞

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39 minutes ago, Ali in OR said:

I'm about halfway through both Lost Children Archive and Atomic Habits. They will keep me busy enough this week, then I'll turn to more escapist reading.

How do you like it?  I started it in January (yes, it's embarrassing) and haven't finished it yet but really liked his philosophy

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33 minutes ago, SereneHome said:

How do you like it?  I started it in January (yes, it's embarrassing) and haven't finished it yet but really liked his philosophy

I like it fine. I'm reading it when I walk on the treadmill in the morning, which gives me a time and place to get to it. I think I'm reading about 25 pages a day, so maybe I'll finish this week. I'm reading this topic to try to figure out how you build good habits in other people, like students who could build habits to become better learners of math. There are a few nuggets of information that are helpful.

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10 hours ago, SereneHome said:

I hope I am not offending you....I can not remember the last time I head his name....probably not since my family immigrated to US, which was over 3 decades ago.....

I didn't think anyone outside of USSR / Russian knew who he was

No offense at all! Americans my age became aware of his name through the early-80s Cold War spy thriller "Gorky Park." But I don't think he was read much even back then. My impression was that "Russian literature" in the Cold War meant Doctor Zhivago, both the book (50s) and the movie (60s--my mom used to play the love theme from the movie on the piano), and Solzhenitsyn, favored by paleo-conservatives like my dad.

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Hi all! Hope everyone is feeling ok!

I finally finished my book a couple days ago - The House at Sea's End by Ruth Griffiths. While I like the main character, Ruth, I couldn't really get into the mystery and just found it underwhelming. Not sure if I'll continue with the series.

Almost done with moving out of my old house. Several of my daughters have been sick so it is just me and the two youngest doing all the cleaning and moving the last minute bits and bobs and it is taking foreverrrrr. At least we have the rest of the month to finish everything up! 

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13 hours ago, SereneHome said:

On a side note - I haven't read in WEEKS!  I don't know what happened to me 😞

I'm struggling too. Do you want to do a mini-challenge with me? We can encourage each other. 🙂 Let's try to pick up a book we want to read and do ten pages today. I want to read but simply have so much trouble focusing right now. 

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1 hour ago, aggieamy said:

 

I'm struggling too. Do you want to do a mini-challenge with me? We can encourage each other. 🙂 Let's try to pick up a book we want to read and do ten pages today. I want to read but simply have so much trouble focusing right now. 

Yes!!!! I would love that.

I am picking up the Lost city of Z that I also started in Jan. I am going to re-read ch 3 and read ch 4!

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@Kareni - your PhD research in the other thread sounded fascinating.  I always wished that I had continued on to get my PhD.  Maybe someday, I'll go back. 🙂

@Robin M - you always share the most beautiful poems.  For some reason, my brain just doesn't "get" poetry but I still enjoy reading the words.  "Getting it" is a skill I hope to work on someday.  Along with my late-in-life PhD.  😉 🙂

@Mothersweets - was it you who was mentioning the Ruth Galloway mysteries in a previous thread?  Or was it @mumto2?  Or someone else?  I just downloaded the first one today and I'm hoping to start it soon.  So thank you to whomever (whoever?) it was!  Not that I actually needed another book to start right now.  I need to FINISH some of the dozen or so that I've already started before I forget what I've already read and have to start again!

And I won a book from Good Reads! 🙂  I never win ANYTHING!  I put my name in the draw for Philippa Gregory's new book "Tidelands" over a month ago and promptly forgot about it.  Today, it arrived in the mail!  So now I have ANOTHER book to start!  Terrible, terrible problems, I know. 😄 

 

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9 hours ago, SereneHome said:

Yes!!!! I would love that.

I am picking up the Lost city of Z that I also started in Jan. I am going to re-read ch 3 and read ch 4!

I'm happy for you! I read about a chapter in a book I started a long time ago and promised an IRL friend I would read because she just knows I will love it. That always makes me nervous. I never know what to say if I hate the book and I'm too opinionated to keep my mouth shut. 

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@Dicentra  and @Mothersweets  Yes, I have read all the Ruth Galloway mysteries.  I really enjoy them and have read them since the first one was published....I found them by accident.  I think there is a new release soon.  Dicentra I hope you enjoy it!

I got my sewing machine out today and finished a quilt top for a friends grandson..........and listened to my audiobook.   I had sort of a normal me day which felt good.  Started a contemporary romance called The Austin Playbook by Lucy Parker. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42279630-the-austen-playbook

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8 hours ago, aggieamy said:

I'm happy for you! I read about a chapter in a book I started a long time ago and promised an IRL friend I would read because she just knows I will love it. That always makes me nervous. I never know what to say if I hate the book and I'm too opinionated to keep my mouth shut. 

I like, “This would be a great book for those who like this kind of thing!!1!”

Somehow though people are not taken in by this crafty phrasing.

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11 hours ago, Mothersweets said:

@Dicentra Yes! I've started reading the series recently but I think Mum has read them, too. Interested to hear what you think!

 

10 hours ago, mumto2 said:

@Dicentra  and @Mothersweets  Yes, I have read all the Ruth Galloway mysteries.  I really enjoy them and have read them since the first one was published....I found them by accident.  I think there is a new release soon.  Dicentra I hope you enjoy it!

I got my sewing machine out today and finished a quilt top for a friends grandson..........and listened to my audiobook.   I had sort of a normal me day which felt good.  Started a contemporary romance called The Austin Playbook by Lucy Parker. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42279630-the-austen-playbook

 

I started reading The Crossing Places last night.  I'm liking it! 🙂

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6 minutes ago, aggieamy said:

@SereneHome (and anyone else that's having difficulty focusing on reading right now) - Did you get some reading in today?

So, I started and re-read ch 3 and that was it. You?? 

Yeah, I just haven't been into reading at all, but I need to force myself bc frankly, this is like the perfect time. My hours at work were cut and I am not going anywhere so - perfect time, right??

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Great idea, @aggieamy and @SereneHome You gave me an idea. I have an unplug challenge for you. I need an internet break. Please join me.   At the top of the hour, unplug, grab a book and read or grab pen and paper and write for an hour, work on a puzzle, crafts, whatever suits your fancy.   I'll meet you back here when the time is up and we'll talk about what we're reading and writing.  Set your timers! 😘  Whatever time you happen to read this, start at the top of the hour and then let us know what you did.   I'm going to suggest this in the main forum too and see how many take me up on it. 

😘

Edited by Robin M
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32 minutes ago, Robin M said:

Great idea, @aggieamy and @SereneHome You gave me an idea. I have an unplug challenge for you. I need an internet break. Please join me.   At the top of the hour, unplug, grab a book and read or grab pen and paper and write for an hour, work on a puzzle, crafts, whatever suits your fancy.   I'll meet you back here when the time is up and we'll talk about what we're reading and writing.  Set your timers! 😘  Whatever time you happen to read this, start at the top of the hour and then let us know what you did.   I'm going to suggest this in the main forum too and see how many take me up on it. 

😘

Just seeing this now at 6.19 EST.

Will do this at 7pm - 8pm EST

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1 hour ago, SereneHome said:

Just seeing this now at 6.19 EST.

Will do this at 7pm - 8pm EST

Great!   

I started to reread Mercedes Lackey Arrows of the Queen. It's been 20 years or thereabouts so don't remember much.  Just as good.  Working on writing poems and now about to do some blog posting.  Urged James to go read so he disappeared into the bedroom to read Star Wars Rise of Skywalker. As soon as he's done, it's my turn.

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On 3/22/2020 at 12:50 PM, Violet Crown said:

This week I finished Maxim Gorky's autobiographical My Childhood, which chronicles his miserable Russian life up through age 11, when he was turned out by his last surviving relative to fend for himself. Started the second book, My Apprenticeship. Unfortunately I don't have My Universities, the third in the trilogy, so that's probably going to have to wait for a bit until I can browse the shelves at the used bookstore.

It's historically interesting and well-written -- though hardly Dostoevsky -- but there are strange passages where he reflects on the misery, violence, drunkenness, dishonesty, and oppression that characterize turn-of-the-century rural Russian life, and opines that things will be so much better when we have torn out all this by the roots (implied: when the Socialist revolution comes). It makes me want to find a time machine and bring Gorky a copy of The Gulag Archipelago.

Current standings of the Crown family Quarantine Reading Competition:

Dh: Ivy Compton-Burnett, A Father and His Fate; John Heywood, Johan Johan the Husband
Me: Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul; Lautréamont, Les Chants de Maldoror; Maxim Gorky, My Childhood
Middle Girl: Racine, Britannicus (in French); Molière, L'École des femmes (in French)
Wee Girl: Barbara Sleigh, Carbonel: The King of the Cats; Barbara Sleigh, The Kingdom of Carbonel; Holling C. Holling, Paddle-to-the-Sea; Marguerite De Angeli, The Door in the Wall

Awesome job with the competition so far.  I loved Paddle to the Sea and discussing it with James. So much fun.

On 3/22/2020 at 1:02 PM, SusanC said:

Billy Collins is very approachable! His poem "Books" seems appropriate here and for these times. It starts:

From the heart of this dark, evacuated campus

I can hear the library humming in the night,

a choir of authors murmuring inside their books

along the unlit, alphabetical shelves,

Giovanni Pontano next to Pope, Dumas next to his son,

each one stitched into his own private coat,

together forming a low, gigantic chord of language.

I'm reading and enjoying How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse. I'll come back with a review if the second half lives up to the first half.

I almost picked this one to highlight so I'm glad you quoted it.  

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I am checking in........I finished listening to Poppy Redfern https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44057135-poppy-redfern-and-the-midnight-murders which I actually ended up quite liking.  @aggieamy both you and Dd would probably like this one.  I wasn’t crazy about the narrator so the actual book might be better!  Anyway I finish cutting out pieces for a quilt while listening so my internet break was productive!

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On 3/22/2020 at 4:21 PM, Quarter Note said:

Robin M, I've never posted on the BAW threads but I do try to skim them.  Just wanted to let you know that Walking on Water is one of my favorite books.  I try to reread it once every few years.  Enjoy!

Hi Quarternote.  Happy you stopped by to let me know.  So many tidbits in this book that make me stop and contemplate.  Reading it slowly. 

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9 minutes ago, mumto2 said:

I am checking in........I finished listening to Poppy Redfern https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44057135-poppy-redfern-and-the-midnight-murders which I actually ended up quite liking.  @aggieamy both you and Dd would probably like this one.  I wasn’t crazy about the narrator so the actual book might be better!  Anyway I finish cutting out pieces for a quilt while listening so my internet break was productive!

Yeah!

I finished Smoke Bitten.  Yes, lots of creepy in this story. 

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@Violet Crown  Before I forget Paddle to the Sea was a movie school children in the Great Lakes area watched multiple times growing up. I loved it...........it can be watched for free via a Canadian website someone on WtM linked recently.  MaybeWee Girl would enjoy the movie.

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22 hours ago, Dicentra said:

@Robin M - you always share the most beautiful poems.  For some reason, my brain just doesn't "get" poetry but I still enjoy reading the words.  "Getting it" is a skill I hope to work on someday.  Along with my late-in-life PhD.  😉 🙂

 

For the longest time I didn't get poetry either and there is still some I don't enjoy.  Robert Frost, Billy Collins and other poets like them are ones that I 'get' because on the surface they tell a story and don't have to strain my brain trying to figure out the symbolic meaning unless I chose too. 

21 hours ago, Pen said:

I am about to finish A Share in Death.

What did you think? 

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1 hour ago, Robin M said:

Great!   

I started to reread Mercedes Lackey Arrows of the Queen. It's been 20 years or thereabouts so don't remember much.  Just as good.  Working on writing poems and now about to do some blog posting.  Urged James to go read so he disappeared into the bedroom to read Star Wars Rise of Skywalker. As soon as he's done, it's my turn.

I finished How not to Die - again, another one I started in Feb, I think

I find it fascinating how so many doctors write nutrition books and how quite a few of them offer completely opposite advice. I think I am done with "nutrition" for awhile!!

Thank yoy @Robin M for a great idea!!

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1 hour ago, Robin M said:

For the longest time I didn't get poetry either and there is still some I don't enjoy.  Robert Frost, Billy Collins and other poets like them are ones that I 'get' because on the surface they tell a story and don't have to strain my brain trying to figure out the symbolic meaning unless I chose too. 

What did you think? 

 

I like it a lot!  I want to continue with more of the series. 

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Good morning! Today is the first day since we've been home from NOLA where I've been up and out of bed feeling (physically) pretty good. Hurrah! Perhaps it's because I've went to bed early and read last night. 

Here's the bad news: I'm not enjoying the book my friend recommended for me at all. I can see why she thought I'd enjoy it. It reads like a Regency book set in modern fairyland (it's called the Nether in the book, I don't know if that's a common term or not but I'll mention it here in case it makes sense to others) with a little bit of intrigue. Except ... I don't read anything with fantasy elements and it's simply not my thing. Apparently my imagination is too old and broken to shut down reality for fiction in this circumstances. 

I'm going to have to channel my inner VC and be tactful with my response when I finish it.

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13 hours ago, mumto2 said:

@Violet Crown  Before I forget Paddle to the Sea was a movie school children in the Great Lakes area watched multiple times growing up. I loved it...........it can be watched for free via a Canadian website someone on WtM linked recently.  MaybeWee Girl would enjoy the movie.

I wasn't the other member 🙂 but I figured it had to be on the National Film Board website - and it is. 🙂

https://www.nfb.ca/explore-all-films/?language=en&sort_order=alphabetical&production_year_min=1917&production_year_max=2020&duration_min=0&duration_max=13865&format=all_formats&download_type=all_download_types&alpha_filter=P&genre=all_genres

That's the link to the "P" films and it's listed first.

If anyone is interested in some classically weird Canadian animation 😉 😄 , here are some awesome quick films to watch:

Getting Started  (Anyone who has ever had trouble getting started on something they KNOW they need to get started on will appreciate this.)

https://www.nfb.ca/film/getting_started/

The Cat Came Back  (Cordell Barker is brilliant.  That is all.)

https://www.nfb.ca/film/the-cat-came-back/

The Big Snit  (More Richard Condie.  This is about the end of the world.  But so weirdly Canadian.)

https://www.nfb.ca/film/big_snit/

Log Driver's Waltz  (Every Canadian kid worth their maple syrup can sing along to this.  It was on the CBC often when I was growing up.)

https://www.nfb.ca/film/log_drivers_waltz/

Blackfly  (This is where I live.  Yes - it does get this bad. 😛 )

https://www.nfb.ca/film/blackfly/

So many other good documentaries, films, and animations to check out for free!

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@Dicentra  Thank you for finding the link!  Maybe I will entertain myself with Canadian film tonight........Dh just gave Dd an early birthday present,  can’t remember the exact title but it’s basically the Best of Red Green,  so Canadian TV is happening in my house currently.🙂   We lived near Detroit for years and watched a great deal of Canadian television including Red Green which is hilarious.      Just found the first episode on YouTube if anyone wants to watch it  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUXPuYZ4DEQ.  I just sent the link to a friend in who is very bored.

 

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2 hours ago, aggieamy said:

Good morning! Today is the first day since we've been home from NOLA where I've been up and out of bed feeling (physically) pretty good. Hurrah! Perhaps it's because I've went to bed early and read last night. 

Here's the bad news: I'm not enjoying the book my friend recommended for me at all. I can see why she thought I'd enjoy it. It reads like a Regency book set in modern fairyland (it's called the Nether in the book, I don't know if that's a common term or not but I'll mention it here in case it makes sense to others) with a little bit of intrigue. Except ... I don't read anything with fantasy elements and it's simply not my thing. Apparently my imagination is too old and broken to shut down reality for fiction in this circumstances. 

I'm going to have to channel my inner VC and be tactful with my response when I finish it.

"I'm such a terrible judge of fantasy in the best of times. And right now of course I just can't settle into fiction so as to enjoy it properly."

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