I've been on a slow-burn quest to revisit books I haven't read since high school, and current events inspired me to start this one. It's better than I expected given how much I disliked it in class; I think the constant interruptions telling me to BEHOLD the deep symbolism and writerly brilliance! were not conducive to my appreciating the read. Funny-ish, but also messed up, because I was one of the kids who already loved reading and symbolism.

Picked this to read because it was short and well-known, without knowing anything about it but pop culture hearsay, and it was ... not what I expected. Tolerably whimsical until we arrive in Africa and become fixated on white men vs. black men, at which point … definitely influenced by its time period. The writing itself wasn't terrible, at least.

Photo by Zdeněk Macháček

Do you ever start a library hold and wonder what you were thinking when you requested it? I seem to have been on a streak of requesting books without reading reviews first; I blame the insomnia. 😆 I think this came up somewhere as related to another read that I enjoyed, but the lower-rated reviews on Goodreads seem to be right for once: It‘s dull, obvious, and rather illogical. At least it‘s short! So onward...

Thanks for tagging me last week, @Cosmos_Moon. I didn‘t do last week‘s, but I‘m answering this week‘s super on time! 😁

1. I‘m always bad at “guilty pleasure” questions since I generally don‘t feel even a smidge guilty for liking things. 😂 But maybe something frivolous like Strong Girl Bong-Soon or Let‘s Eat?
2. My new-to-me paper shredder and my best friends‘ understanding of my insomnia-induced anxiety fits.

#ThankfulThursday

Thanks for the tag, @alwaysbeenaloverofbooks! Even if I‘m answering late. But tomorrow is Thursday, so let‘s pretend I‘m early. 😆

1. Face painting pirate, knitting pattern tester, stage fighter, fiber artist
2. Digital library checkouts of childhood-favorite books, grocery delivery, and online friends who remember me even after I vanish for a month or two.

@RobStark92 @Squidget @Nicole01070

#ThankfulThursday
@Cosmos_Moon

Another book that‘s going on my list of books to own. Thich Nhat Hanh is intensely eloquent in his suffering.
peace #poetry #ThichNhatHanh

The library is open again! These were my first pickup since the pandemic started. Next time I kind of want to try the curbside pickup — having library books delivered to my car sounds amusing.

“If my circumstances were a wall, then there was a secret door in the wall and the door was a book. Open it.” —Jeanette Winterson

“Now and then, in this workaday world, things do happen in the delightful storybook fashion, and what a comfort it is.”

Celebrating a passed test (not mine; my SO‘s) tonight with some wine and words. 😁

“As my fancies present themselves, I pile them up; now they come pressing in a crowd, now dragging single file. I want people to see my natural and ordinary pace, however off the track it is. I let myself go as I am.”

Michel de Montaigne, “Of Books”

Starting a new haiku journey today, while thinking of a close friend who lost her mother this morning.

#poetry #life

A classic with good reason: funny, intelligent, sensible, quirky, and passionate. Concerned with mastery of fiction as a complex art; it addresses structure and common patterns without encouraging formulaic writing. Also, I think this is the only writing book I‘ve read that contains — right at the end — a reminder that words have power, that a good writer tries to avoid doing harm and tries to inspire readers instead. A definite pick! 👍

“Miss Polly Harrington entered her kitchen a little hurriedly this June morning.”

That‘s the first line, but I think the rest of the paragraph is worth quoting, so to continue...

“Miss Polly did not usually make hurried movements; she specially prided herself on her repose of manner. But to-day she was hurrying—actually hurrying.”

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

Started this today, and two chapters in, I‘m in love! I didn‘t even know previously that David Byrne wrote books, but the way he makes connections and sees patterns makes me feel like I‘m back in college (which is good 😉). So far he‘s covered the idea that music is informed and shaped by its context, and it feels so novel and so true at the same time.

💖✨❤️

De-hermited today to escape upstairs construction noises, and sat by the pool. There was a guy on the other side of the pool deck reading Catch-22 with a shirt draped over his head. Guess it‘s a good afternoon for outdoor reading!

Still meandering through this one, savoring a few poems at a time.

#poetry

Finally chose a case to protect my little reading companion. It semi-matches the classic haiku anthology I started reading last night, too.

@Crazeedi I did it! ☺️

Newest library holds. Yet another book on writing and two more poetry books. Supplementing the to-read stack — wouldn‘t want to run out of library books, would I? 😉

Late night reading while the kitty and the SO are sleeping. Recently I discovered that there are a ton of classics on Kindle Unlimited, and armed with my new Paperwhite, I‘m wading enthusiastically into the fray!

#classics

“To read well, one also needs a certain kind of mastery.”

Enjoying this book so far, but I do tend to like books that start off with some snark and continue by saying that rule-following is overrated. 😁

Loved it! Started a tad slow, and I wondered whether it‘d just use goofy Florida stereotypes as a shallow backdrop for a plot that could have been set anywhere, but halfway through, I was 100% sold. The author and I clearly share a love of natural Florida, and it‘s heartening to see that in print. 💖 Amusing characters, great messages, cute owls, and I‘ll be reading Hiaasen again for sure. 😁

📷: Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

Borrowing this ebook from the library for the “set locally” square of @Honeybeegirl‘s #winterbookbingo challenge. It has burrowing owls in it, so why not? 😁 #bookbingo

I came to this book open to loving it, but it seems I‘m in the “nope” camp. The themes are worth exploring, and I feel for the author; the execution was just too young for me. It felt trite and shallow where I wanted depth and insight.

I‘m curious about the author‘s second book, though. It‘d be interesting to see if her voice has changed as she‘s gotten older.

Restarted this today, since I got a fresh copy of a new edition, and I had only gotten about a chapter into it on my recentish read, anyway...

Still feeling wobbly-brained after yesterday, so I got out an old favorite I bought specifically for times like this. Pineapple green tea on the side, for bonus restorative power. 😁

This book of tiny stories (which just came out on the 5th!) is so quirky. I got my first writing rejection of the year earlier today, and apparently whimsical reading is part of the cure for my disappointment. 💖

#illustratedbooks

A mixed bag. I can see why these books are published as one; the first felt like an extended summary of a self-insertion romance. A lot of it felt forced, halfhearted, or awkward — too much tell, not enough show. To a modern eye, there‘s some cultural insensitivity.

There‘s also humor, though, and some lyrical descriptions like those in The Secret Garden. The story picks up in the second half, and the intense end turned this into a 4/5, barely.

“The outburst was in fact so strongly italicised that she felt the next moment almost as if she had been a little indecent.” 😆

This book feels a bit like the author phoned it in, but it does have moments here and there. I like that the protagonist is described, in an amusingly writerly way, as someone who speaks (and feels!) in italics.

Two library books that I picked up yesterday, plus today‘s new arrival, a book on (I think, without having read it yet 😉) translations and how they influence cultural perceptions.

Maybe I shouldn‘t have started this one right after a Jane Austen ... Who can compete with her for love stories set in England? 😉 But this has been on my TBR for a while, and it was looking at me. So far, I feel like I‘ve read the word “fresh” used to describe people about 20 times (at 28%). Here‘s hoping Part Two is a little less fixated on refreshment...

My Valentine‘s gifts this year were cheese, salami, chocolates, and a Kindle Paperwhite. 😆 (This is a pretty major haul for me, for context...) E-ink is stranger and more wonderful than anticipated. 😁

Happy Valentine‘s Day, Littens! 💕

Ever do that thing where you start a new book on a whim and read almost the whole thing in one sitting? I totally did that thing last night. 😆

Finished this last night. I love the exuberantly reverent nature descriptions and how kind Heidi is always determined to be, and although the ending felt a little sudden, it was the kind of sudden that slows down on re-read. An emotional read in a good way, and one that reminds me to go outside, already.

I think I may have read an abridged version of this as a kid, since some bits were very familiar, and others, not so much...

“Well, the secret to writing is writing. Writing is how you be a writer. It‘s only a secret to people who really don‘t want to hear it.”

Ursula K. Le Guin is, as always in her writing about writing, hilarious. 😆

#writingtips

I haven‘t been reading many novels lately, so last night I picked this one out of my ebook TBR list. Nearly halfway through already; I always seem to be faster with novels than with virtually anything else. 😊

#classics

“It is as if there is a wall between us and the richness of the world around us, and we have become numb toward the healing elements in the world because we cannot touch them.”

This is definitely a place I‘ve been, and I read Thich Nhat Hanh‘s work because it really does help me feel more connected with the world. 💖

#peace #meditation

“In the art of haiku, that which is unspoken often speaks the loudest.”

I didn‘t realize you could make quote graphics right from the Kindle app until last night ... How cool is that?

#kindlequotes

Another new hold from the library, another pretty cover. 😊 (Side note: Shiny books take so much effort to photograph decently...)

💜 “I've come to the conclusion that if you can find the center of your creativity, you can use it to create almost anything.“ 💜

#inspiration

I have a thousand reads in progress right now, but this one was singing its siren song from the top of the stack, and I‘m not sorry I gave in. 😁 Noriko Tanaka is one of those rare poets who makes me WANT to slow down and savor every line and image. (I know I‘m probably always supposed to do that, but realistically, I read fast, often even with poetry. 😅)

#poetry

The third meditation exercise in this book includes notated music, and looking ahead, there‘s more with other exercises! I didn‘t expect that, but it‘s appropriately comforting to me. I have happy memories of reading sheet music, Way Back When. ☺️

I ... did not expect this book to begin with a creation myth. I mean, that‘s definitely the most beginningy beginning I can think of, so it makes a certain kind of sense...

Reading the ginormous introduction to this book already had me primed to expect the unexpected, and still it surprises me. 😆

“There is a repeating motif in my life of trying to do something and being told no.“

I can so identify with that and with a surprising amount of the other stories in this memoir.

It's like an extended version of his stand-up comedy, full of silly tangents, parentheticals, and down-to-earth stories about life, school, childhood, and family. Plus, I'm learning more about everyday things in the UK, which is always interesting.

Today‘s new arrival, a thin little book of tanka with a back blurb that latched onto my mythic sensibilities:

“There is a world beyond the blue sky we only catch glimpses of [...]. Drawn from the five different ‘realms‘ of the sea, the middle country, the underworld, the forests and the country of old, Noriko Tanaka‘s third collection [...] is born of that human longing to somehow explore this unknowable space.”

#poetry

So ... I just made it to the end of the introduction, 20% of the way into the book. The intro alone is almost as long as the book I finished reading last night. 😆

#ChunksterChallenge2020

Fresh from the library! I seem to be stuck in verse mode so far this year; I‘m reading the usual giant fistful of things, but three-quarters of what I‘ve actually finished has been in verse ... and the same goes for what I‘ve managed to finish writing. Hmm...

Multi-tasking: trying to defuse an anxiety attack related to Uncooperative Neighbors Behaving Badly, and to finish this library book so it can go back tomorrow. (Tea pictured in progress. 😁)

“Literature is intimate behavior between strangers.“ — Russell Banks

My birthday was two days ago, and it was a good one, thanks in part to all the good wishes from my wonderful #LitsyLove friends. Thank you so, so much! I don‘t think I‘ve had this many cards since I was a kid. 😁

You. All. Are. AWESOME! 😍🎉💖✨

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