Book Love Art – Honoring Styron’s Quote

June 30, 2012 at 7:56 pm (The Whim) (, , , , )

“A good book should leave you….slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.” – William Styron

I love a fantastic book, I love a fantastic quote, but I also love the way people choose to honor their favorites with their art.  If you know the original artists of any of the pieces I include, please comment and let me know who they are, its been a tough time finding their names in the land of cyberspace.  Along the same vein, Styron is sometimes quoted as saying ” a good book” and “a great book.”  Which is it?

Visit: http://thelensoflife.blogspot.com/2012/04/quotes-of-bookmarks.html

Permalink 4 Comments

The Ravenous Beast

June 29, 2012 at 5:20 pm (Reviews) (, , , , , , , )

Title: The Ravenous Beast

Author: Niamh Sharkey

Publisher: Walker Books

Genre: Board Book

I originally bought The Ravenous Beast for the color scheme (its cover is purple, turquoise, and an orangy- yellow) and illustrations.  And the fact that Ayla fell in love with it in the bookstore.  That was a while back, and now our once new board book is chaffed, worn, and has a cracked spine.  Sharkey’s book has become one of her favorites.  It gets read at the table during lunch (my favorite time to read it), at night before bed from time to time, and every once in a while I read it at Half Price Books’ story time while the kids chow down on crackers.

If you make sure to do all the different voices and include the exclamation marks while reading, the book is always well received by children, despite the slightly disturbing end where The Ravenous Beast eats ALL the other characters.  I suppose the disturbing factor is lost on kids anyway because they all think its the funniest thing ever.  Truth be told, it is rather funny.  The whale is my personal favorite, but Ayla prefers the cat and the crocodile.

Sharkey is a well-known and accomplished children’s illustrator, not only does she write and illustrate popular children’s books like The Ravenous Beast, she is the Children’s Laureate of Ireland and is now collaborating with Brown Bag Films and Disney to create a show based on her book I’m A Happy Hugglewug.  Learn more about her and all her ventures on her blog: http://niamhsharkey.blogspot.com

Permalink Leave a Comment

Weekly Low Down on Kids Books 6/26/12

June 27, 2012 at 12:51 am (Reviews) (, , , , , , , , )

One Watermelon Seed by Celia Barker Lottridge and Karen Patkau is a breath of fresh air in the world of children’s counting books – almost literally.  All about planting a garden and counting first the number of seeds planted for each plant type and then the number of items harvested from each plant, One Watermelon Seed not only teaches counting from 1 to 10 and counting by tens, a kid can also learn what certain plants look like.  See not just a tomato plant, but enjoy a look at the tomato and its inside as well.  I loved it, Ayla loved it (she’s really into numbers and counting right now), and over all its a winner.

One Watermelon Seed reminded me of another recent favorite:Seed Savers: Treasure.  If you are a mom of kids in various age groups, I recommend using both these books (Seed Savers for middle grade students, One Watermelon Seed for small children learning to count and identify plants) as introductions to the world of botany.  Both books are great for creating interest in starting a back yard garden, and would be a great way to get your kids exciting about being involved in the gardening life.

Permalink 1 Comment

June 26, 2012 at 7:13 pm (Uncategorized)

I am constantly adding biographies to my list when I truly do not need anything else on my plate. What is so captivating about awesome people!?

Permalink Leave a Comment

Knowledge is… what exactly?

June 26, 2012 at 7:05 pm (Education, In So Many Words) (, , , , )

Despite that old saying that knowledge is power, lately I have found that the more knowledge I obtain, the less I feel I know about anything at all.  Sit down and read a book, immediately you are bombarded with at least ten other books you now need to read.  Les Miserables part one and two led me on a month-long adventure studying Napoleon.  While reading Napoleon, I felt like I didn’t understand much about any of the French wars.  I started buying up all sorts of French history despite the fact that I don’t really care much for French history, I just feel the need to know.

Well, that was last month.  This month something sparked an old interest, an idea I had about ten years ago that I never pursued.  I want to discover where the fine line between historical and relevant Astrology and the horoscope divination stuff actually lies.  I think the planets influence the world at large in a ‘the universe is one well oiled machine that works somewhat as one’ kind of way.  But divination and prophecies kind of give me the willy-nillies.  So I found myself reading The Case for Astrology by John Anthony West.  Of course, he is incredibly detailed and I realized I didn’t have a clue about half of what he was talking about.  So I started with the basics and picked up Dava Sobel’s The Planets, a couple of Stargazer books that I will hold onto for the kiddo (all great stuff for about age ten), and a number of other things.  So here I am now, reading anything and everything I can get my hands on from Astronomy to the mythology and literature that are the star’s namesakes.

Frankly, as exciting as it is to learn something new – it’s also a bit exhausting.  Each new little piece of the puzzle reveals 1000 pieces you never knew existed.  It’s the same in any subject.  When I was studying Egyptology I buried myself in Ancient Egypt everything for nearly a year.  12 months of research later, all I managed to uncover was how much more there was to research.  Even now in my Astrology/Astronomy stint, I’m uncovering how interconnected much of it is to Egyptian history, myth, and mystery, that it’s just added another 20 books to my TBR pile.

It is endless.

And when it all ends, when I die, where does all this knowledge go?  Unless I become a world renown writer (doubtful) or some kind of famous historian (highly doubtful), it will all be lost.

That could be a really depressing thought.  Except for one tiny little detail: It’s not so much about the knowledge, but the journey.

It’s about the diligence it takes to sift through information and catalogue not just the facts but thoughts about those facts.  It’s about using your mind and thinking through reality and your world view of that reality.  It’s about understanding human nature and God’s nature well enough to be the best possible human you can be.  It’s about knowing that when you die, you spent your time wisely, keeping your eyes open to the nuances and the tiny details of everything.

It doesn’t matter what I die not knowing when it comes to factoids and dates and the names of things.  It matters that I lived a life of pursuit.

Permalink 1 Comment

Good Old Fashioned Research

June 22, 2012 at 4:26 am (In So Many Words) (, , , )

Permalink Leave a Comment

Story Time Party With M.G. King

June 22, 2012 at 3:55 am (Events) (, , , , , , , , )

With summer in full gear, story time at Half Price Books in Humble has become a force to be reckoned with, but mostly because M.G. King is quite possibly one of the coolest ladies I’ve ever met and she was kind enough to do a reading and book signing in place of the usual kid’s story time on Wednesday.

There was a fun little song, a reading of Librarian on the Roof! and literary activities like making your very own poof book.  King brought colored paper, markers, and all the knowledge, skill, and friendliness to manage excited children while chatting to their parents and signing copies of her book.  Everyone had loads of fun, and got to walk away with the experience of having met a real live author of a book no kid can forget.

Make your own poof book! http://www.vickiblackwell.com/makingbooks/poofbook.htm

Read my review of Librarian on the Roof! https://anakalianwhims.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/weekly-low-down-on-kids-books-31312/

Permalink Leave a Comment

A Weekend With Murderers

June 22, 2012 at 3:15 am (Reviews) (, , , , , , , , )

Its been an interesting, though depressing weekend of books, while I was away from the computer. Since my modem had burned up and we were patiently waiting for a new one, I decided to sit down and have as much as a reading marathon as possible with a toddler in my midst. So between a whole lot of picture and board books, I was on a mission to tick some loitering TBRs off my end table…

…Starting with Native Son by Richard Wright. I didn’t make it. I had to stop after book one, about a hundred pages into the novel. The book seriously stressed me out, and although I plan to finish it one day, I think it will take me many months of sitting down with twenty or so pages at a time. I don’t think I would have made it reading it as a student for class, so I’m thankful it was never part of my own required reading. Keep in mind, I tried to sit down with this book immediately after finishing Of Mice and Men. Clearly too much needless killing for one sitting.

So I set it aside, but moved onto to the worst choice ever: Albert Camus’ The Stranger was next on the list, the first time in my life not reading the back cover has bit me in the butt. So I go from one fear killing to another fear killing dipped in racism and onto just plain killing with no rhyme or reason. Good thing The Stranger is only about 150 pages long, or it would have been cast aside with Bigger.

All these “helpless” humans killing other humans. I got really irritated, more than a little sad, and switched over to some nonfiction where I polished the weekend off with a whole lot of Astrology and Astronomy books for a little research project. As someone who personally knows someone in prison for two accounts of attempted murder, I just have a hard time buying into the helpless unintentional killings, unless we’re talking self defense or the mentally disabled (like in Of Mice and Men).

What have you been reading?

Permalink Leave a Comment

The Planets

June 22, 2012 at 2:29 am (Reviews) (, , , , , , , )

Title: The Planets
Author: Dava Sobel

I’m impressed with how accessible Dava Sobel has made Astronomy.  As a New York Times journalist, she brings all the important information to the table.  As a writer, she’s a story teller of the highest degree.  Beautiful, fluid, and full of all the ancient romance of the stars, The Planets is full of history, poetry, and all the most relevant of scientific discoveries.  Sobel’s  work is not only a pleasurable read, but the dream-find for a homeschooling mom intent on classically educating her child.

With Sobel’s newspaper background, the book is very readable; a proficient sixth grader shouldn’t have a problem with it.  I plan to use this for my child’s eleven year old Astronomy lessons, along with a middle grade level study of Ancient History, as Sobel has filled the book with quotes from or about many of the Greats.  “Pythagoras believed the cosmic order obeyed the same mathematical rules and proportions as the tones on the musical scale,” (pg. 163.) introduces an entire chapter dedicated to man’s fascination with the planets and how that has been celebrated through the centuries through the art of music.

Always presented to me in school as a pitiable underdog, small and petite, Pluto was my favorite planet.  Even more so when it was first threatened by the idea of being stripped of its planetary status, I became indignant, an uneducated supporter of allowing it keep its rank in the sky and in our textbooks.  Like an older sibling protecting a small child, I felt like it was a personal attack to say Pluto wasn’t really a planet.  I was angered that someone had decided to take back all I had been taught and strip this little planet of a description I thought it had earned.  After reading Sobel’s explanation of Pluto’s discovery, history and status and then a chapter on Uranus, I think I may be sold on the reasons why Pluto title as the 9th planet is threatened and that Uranus is actually my new favorite.  So heavily tied to the literary works of Shakespeare in name and attitude with such a unique history, my new knowledge of Uranus now pales my previous love for Pluto – a childish emotion of elementary proportions, tied to an association with the Disney dog.

I have other books by Sobel lurking around in my library, and I can’t wait to dive into those when I’ve exhausted this particular topic.  I look forward to reading Longitude and see if she attacks the subject of geography with the same fervor as she did Astronomy.

Permalink Leave a Comment

June 15, 2012 at 7:12 pm (Uncategorized)

I have mountains of notebooks and journals, both dated and topical. They keep me sane, keep me studying, and help me process. This is a wonderful post about something that is very dear to me.

Permalink Leave a Comment

Next page »