From a Book Lover
An unnamed Guest Blogger allowed me to share this…
I have always been a fan of EB White’s children’s books. This is a great biography of him and is beautifully illustrated, too. EB White truly respected children as persons. Here is one of my favorite passages from the book:
“Much of what he wrote was not for children, yet many consider Charlotte’s Web not only White’s magnum opus but one of the best children’s books ever written. Did EB White ever wish he’d written a masterpiece for adults? His stepson Roger Angell said that the thought would not have occurred to him. Andy (EB White) once said, “Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth….. Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words and they backhand them over the net.”
Dear Duncan Jones…
Title: The Zebra Just Couldn’t Decide
Author/ Illustrator: Duncan Jones
We had the pleasure of receiving a new Duncan Jones picture book in the mail. Years ago, we were privy to his first book. My kiddo attended a book signing of his at Half Price Books in Humble. She has been wearing t-shirts he designed ever since. Needless to say, she was pretty thrilled to discover he had sent her a NEW book.
“Dear Duncan Jones,
I think it’s a silly a book because every single animal wants to be the color that they already are. The flamingo wants to be pink and the flamingo IS pink. All rhinos are gray, people know that. The green snake already is a green snake. The wildebeest wants to be brown like the ground and he already is brown like the ground. The zebra just can’t decide and I’m kinda glad he can’t decide, because if he chose the color that he already was, he’d be as crazy as the others. I don’t know why the others want to be the color they already are. I think it’s a pretty silly book, but I like it. And thank you for writing it.
Love, silly me” [Ayla, age 6]
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Title: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Author: Neil Gaiman
Review by Guest Blogger Elis
abeth K. Simmons
There’s no right way to love a book. For me, there are books I am in love with because of their story and there are books I am in love with because of the figurative and literal places in my life I ended up reading them. The Ocean At The End Of The Lane is brain-fluff wrapped up in too many truths about growing up. Because of that paradox, and the fact that I’m currently ignoring that I am technically an adult, I fell in love with it immediately.
The week I found it was one of the longest weeks of my new adult life. I worked 30 hours in closing shifts at work in six consecutive nights on top of going to school four days in a row and all the homework that comes with it. I was in no way looking for something to occupy my time. There was none to spare.
In between class and work, I walked into Book People in Austin just a couple blocks down from my campus. This two-story bookstore has become my new happy place in between responsibilities since it is large enough to wander and contains hundreds of books to leaf through. Usually I pick a book at random, read a couple chapters and put it back on the shelf when I leave. I haven’t wasted my time and a book gets to feel loved.
On my second day of work, I wanted something easy. I didn’t want to wander, I just wanted to hide. In this particular bookstore, Neil Gaiman’s works have their own shelf and almost every book, its own personal review by the booksellers. Without pausing to even read the synopsis of The Ocean At The End Of The Lane, I grabbed it and rushed to hide in the chair resting up against the classics section with a cup of coffee.
And I disappeared.
Gaiman has this magical simplicity to his writing where a 19-year-old college student can cancel out the constant foot traffic of a busy bookstore and be emotionally invested in the life of a 7-year-old boy who grew up suddenly and quickly after he met the strange Lettie Hempstock at the end of the lane with her ocean. The story is told in a flashback of a middle-aged man who you can tell never quite felt young. Innocent maybe, but he didn’t know that until he no longer was.
When I came back to reality an hour later, I decided this book was what I needed that week. I couldn’t have even told you why, but there wasn’t any way I could’ve left without it.
I didn’t pick it up again for several days. Work and school got the better of me and I might have gone insane a few times over the course of the weekend. Sunday night was night 6 of 6 of closing and after serving angry people their coffee, I had an insane craving for diner food. I wanted coffee and waffles and the kind of food coma that comes shortly after. And I wanted a place to read my magically simple book and not worry about having to leave.
So Magnolia’s it was. A 24 hour diner in the middle of Austin with omelets and giant pancakes sounded wonderful at 9 pm on a Sunday. Little did I know that the last day of the Austin City Limits music festival was just letting out.
As I pulled into the parking lot, I looked behind me and saw the multitudes waiting to cross the street and wait for hours for the same pancakes and omelets. My mission then changed from finding diner food to racing the masses for a table. They had won Magnolia’s, but there was the 24 Diner off of 6th Street that they wouldn’t have time to walk to. I raced to the heart of downtown Austin and beat the majority of the masses.
After saying it was just me, the hostess smiled at me and said there were several spots open on the bar if I wanted to eat immediately. I had beaten the swarm people. I had my spot. And I was not moving. Busy people behind the bar gave me menus and I told the waitress I just wanted a cup of black coffee and a waffle. 10 minutes later, I had a giant waffle in front of my face and the ACL crowd had begun to take over, yelling drink orders over my shoulder and squeezing in the 6 inches of air available at the bar. I did not care. I had my spot. I was not moving.
I opened my book and disappeared again. I met the villainous Ursula Monkton and her twisted desires and methods of making everyone happy. She was a Dolores Umbridge-like character that you hated simply because there are too many controlling, manipulative, and oppressive people like her in real life. I got to know the Hempstocks better and found out they were the family everyone wishes they had as friends growing up. The kind that just took care of things and knew enough to make you think they knew everything.
I was vaguely aware people being replaced with more people on my left and on my right, but I couldn’t tell you how many. The bartenders ignored me entirely, leaving my sticky plate as a marker that I deserved to sit there, only interrupting me to ask if I wanted more coffee. I looked up and it was 11:15. Neil Gaiman had done the impossible and canceled out a swarm of ACL attenders.
The next day, I had no brain function. I went to class and stumbled through the day just waiting for when I could disappear again. I made it to Mozart’s on Lake Austin and fought my way through the line of fellow Austinites to buy a bottomless cup of coffee and made my plan to disappear.
I discovered that oceans can be put in buckets, if you ask nicely enough, and that there are some people whose hearts just need more time to grow back. Different people remember events in different ways and some things are best forgotten.
And then it ended.
I felt like I had gotten pulled out of a dream by having a bucket of ice water dumped on my head. I had not planned on it ending and now that it had I was a little lost. The only thing I could think to do was write a thank you note to Neil Gaiman and share it with everyone. Whether he will ever see it is anyone’s guess, but anyone who can make a week like mine slightly less defeating deserves some recognition.
Tidbits from Miss Golightly Make a Come Back…
“In a small square on the left bank of the Seine, the door to a green-fronted bookshop beckoned…”
Another swell recommendation from Andi Kay and Emily. Sally likes it too, y’all.
Texas Earth Day Tour Recap
In her own words, sans my interjections: Texas Earth Day Tour Recap
It wasn’t a blog tour, it was a real tour. We left on April 9 and returned–on schedule–May 1. A rental car we wished we could keep carried us safely through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada as we attended the wedding of a niece and appeared in bookstores and schools in Texas. I met great folks in fifteen bookstores in Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas. I wrote with students at Claughton Middle School in the Spring district (Houston area) and watched in awe the presentation of projects made by students in response to an assignment after the class read Seed Savers:Treasure at Austin Jewish Academy. I am so sorry that many of the photos from that visit did not come out for one reason or another…
I met for the first time my biggest fan in Texas and had dinner with a…
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A Tidbit from Miss Golightly
A Thoreau quote is a good way to start a novel. Also, sometimes it’s good to choose a book based on its cover, and it’s nearly always good to have coffee and chocolate while reading. (at Cultivar Coffee & Tea Co.)
– Miss Golightly
I will be joining Miss Golightly in reading this book this week. You can join us too and discuss later! – Anakalian Whims
MORNING COFFEE: FRIDAY EDITION
Photo compliments of Hannah from Coffee Scribble. (Formerly known as Musings from the TARDIS.)
A Tidbit from Miss Golightly
I was made for yellow tea sets, books about books and the people who read and write them, brown branches, painted bookshelves, brightly colored rugs and papasan chairs, and rooms filled with sunlight. The afternoon hours of today in Dallas, TX are sublime. – Jennifer Joy Golightly
Blood Myth – A Book Review
from Guest Blogger Angelina JoiAnn
Title: Blood Myth
Author: Stacy Moran
I did not know there was a glossary at the end of the book because I tend to just jump into books… I don’t even read the back cover. So at first it took me awhile to understand what was going on. (Words of Wisdom = Read the glossary first)
It was very interesting and unique. I enjoyed the dom/sub relationship, the broken past that Zakan had and dealt with, and the passion. While reading my kept going back to Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James. The mystical parts with witches and shape shifters, “little rabbit” blood and gore took my mind to the Anita Blake series by Laurel K. Hamilton. (If you like those books, you’ll like this one)
There is definitely a lot going on in this book. Not just the dominate/ submissive relationship, but good vs. evil, sex, violence, drama, myth, family history, and more.
It took some time for me to wrap my head around everything that was happening, but it did end with a decent shock. And the best way I could describe Blood Myth is “interesting.”
Whispers for the Soul
Title: Whispers in the Dark
Poets: Ashley Nemer, Stacy Moran, Torie N. James
Genre: Poetry
A Product of The Art of Safkhet
A Guest Review by Angelina JoiAnn
As I was reading Whispers of the Heart by Ashley Nemer I felt depressed at the beginning by reading words like cry, darkness, kill, and beat. The first poem “They Say” gave me hope with “angel, strength and spirit.” I did not understand why “I walk and feel wetness” is in the “Darkness” poem – I am guessing it is raining, but to me darkness is not wet. Rain is more of a cleansing – a way to feel alive – not isolated. The the depression goes into a vampire and human relationship with “Forever you are mine” and “Immortal Love.” I can picture a vampire saying/writing those words after biting a human. I kind of get the darkness feeling going into the Vampire poems but after that I get thrown off with memories, dog, and grandpa.
While reading Whispers in the Storm by Stacy A. Moran I felt like the section would have been more aptly named Whispers of the Soul. It felt like the poet was writing poems from different growths of her soul, and perhaps had even lost a child. The poetry seemed to speak from a child to a woman, from a woman to a mother and so on. I would have liked to see them organized from love to heart break, but I felt a lot of growth over all and really enjoyed this section.
Whispering Flames by Torie N. James has to be my favorite. I felt like a phoenix flying out of the fire. I felt free while reading the different poems – as though the weight of the first two sections were being lifted off my shoulders.
Overall, I was taken on different feelings and journeys throughout the book and felt the different aspects and growth from the souls of the writers. I did feel that each section had a weird, random organization, and that the poems could have been better placed within each author’s portions, but that’s just my OCD. I enjoyed peeking into each poet’s lives.
Anakalian Whims 