Monday's Quote

“My library

Was dukedom large enough.”

William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611)

Weekly Geeks 3/7/09

This week’s Weekly Geeks is to post a quote a day for a week. This is one of my favorite w.g. activities. My quotes for this week will be coming from a great book called Speaking of Books: The Best Things Ever Said About Books and Book Collecting by Rob Kaplan and Harold Rabinowitz.

Bibliomaniac: A victim of the obsessive-compulsive neurosis characterized by a congested library and an atrophied bank account.

-Maurice Dunbar, Hooked on Books (1997)

Judge a book by its cover

This week's Weekly Geeks assignment is to:

Pick a book--any book, really--and search out multiple book cover images for that book. They could span a decade or two (or more)...Or they could span several countries. Which cover is your favorite? Which one is your least favorite? Which one best 'captures' what the book is about?

I think this is a great assignment. I'm the type of person who loves looking at book covers. I would rather pay more for a hardcover edition of a book if the cover looks a lot better than the paperback version. Most of the time I buy a book primarily because of the cover and a few good reviews. I'm paying for that outlook now.

I picked Markus Zusak's The Book Thief because it's one of my favorite reads. This is the cover I have on my hardcover copy. I checked Amazon.ca and found the same cover for both hardcover and paperback.

I searched around and found this vastly different color at Amazon Denmark. It's creepy and I like it better, but it does misrepresents Death. He's not some creepy bloodthirsty creature. He's pretty sweet with a hard job and no vacation from it.





This cover I found at Amazon.uk. It does not fit the theme of the book at all. Liesel, the main character, is not just reading books in the novel. She's living her life and learning so much about loyalty and trust, the meaning of family, and how strong love is and how hard loss can be.


I've seen the French cover before but it's creepier than the Denmark version. Liesel dancing with Death? Not exactly.

So which one do you prefer? Do you judge a book harshly by its cover?

Weekly Geeks 2009-03: Classics

It feels so good to be back participating in Dewey's Weekly Geeks! This week's assignment:

1) How do you feel about classic literature? Are you intimidated by it? Love it? Not sure because you never actually tried it? Don't get why anyone reads anything else? Which classics, if any, have you truly loved? Which would you recommend for someone who has very little experience reading older books? Go all out, sell us on it!

3) Let's say you're vacationing with your dear cousin Myrtle, and she forgot to bring a book. The two of you venture into the hip independent bookstore around the corner, where she primly announces that she only reads classic literature. If you don't find her a book, she'll never let you get any reading done! What contemporary book/s with classic appeal would you pull off the shelf for her?

I have to admit that it's rare for me to read a classic for fun. Being an English major I get assigned to read them often and I usually hate assigned reading. Not because of the material but because it's assigned, there's a deadline and a several-hundred word required essay involved. . .

There are classics I love like To Kill A Mockingbird, East of Eden, Of Mice and Men, The Bluest Eye, and The Tempest. I have little experience reading classics but being a blogger, you can't help but want to read them after reading the great reviews of your blogging friends. So I have books by Austen, Bronte, Wells, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Eliot, and others on my TBR list and shelves.

My cousin wouldn't be named Myrtle but probably something starting with a "T" because my mother and many aunts were going through a "T" phase in the 1970s and '80s, so all seven or eight of us girls have names that sound alike. . . That's another story I'll tell you guys one day. But if my cousin wanted me to find her a book that I think have classical appeal it would be The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. I read it two years ago and it is still the only book that had me talking to myself about the plot and characters when I wasn't reading it.

Friday's Quote

"Loving a baby or child is a circular business, a kind of feedback loop. The more you give, the more you get, and the more you get, the more you feel like giving."
-Penelope Leach

Three of my favorite blogs

Dewey is hosting a great contest by giving away five copies of five different books. One of her requests is for participants to tell us what are three of their favorite blogs are. I have more than fifty blogs bookmarked on my list, so I'm not going to give you my top three but just three random blogs.

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. On her blog Gretchen shares with her readers all the happiness techniques that she spent a year learning about and testing driving out. One of my favorite posts by Gretchen is a recent one about trying to come to terms with who you are and all the things you want to do and be but can't.

37 Days. The generous, intelligent, and caring Patti Digh is the author of this blog. 37 Days comes from the title of her book, Life is a Verb: 37 days to wake up, be mindful, and live intentionally. Five years ago Patti's stepfather was diagnosed with lung cancer and passed only 37 days later. Patti's blog always makes my day so much brighter. Go and over and browse her archives. I found out about both the book and the blog through the blog Head Butler.

Head Butler is hosted by Jesse K. The purpose of this blog: to tell you about the great movies, music, and books that Jesse thinks you'll probably enjoy. I am forever thankful to Jesse for blogging about Ann Hood's eloquent memoir Comfort, about the death of Hood's daughter.

Wednesday's Quote

“If a child lives with approval, he learns to like himself.” -Dorothy Law Nolte

Tuesday's quote

I shall pass through
this world but once.
Any good therefore
that i can do or any
kindness that I can
show to any fellow
creature, let me do it now.
Let me not defer or
neglect it for I shall
not pass this way
again.

-Grellet


I think this will be my literary tattoo.

Monday's Quote

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart…Try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

-MLK Jr.

Sunday's quote

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart…Try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Weekly Geeks #23

This week's Weekly Geeks assignment is to repeat a previous w.g. assignment. I chose #17, which is posting a quote every day. I really enjoyed looking for new and old quotes during this assignment. I found today's quote in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's memoir Living to Tell the Tale.

"From a very early age I've had to interrupt my education to go to school."-George Bernard Shaw

Now I'm off to complete my daily word count for Nanowrimo.

Weekly Geeks #19

This week's Weekly Geeks we have to make a list of our favorite reads that were published in 2008. Sad to say, I didn't like most of the books I read that were published this year. But my favorites:

1. The Book of Other People: short stories edited by Zadie Smith

2. The Geography of Love - Glenda Burges (memoir)

3. The Way back Home - Oliver Jeffers (children's)

4. What now? - Ann Patchett

There are several 2008 books I expect to read this year:

1. Awesome - Jack Pendarvis

2. Just After Sunset - Stephen King

3. The Graveyard book - Neil Gaiman

4. Best American Short Stories 2008

5. A Broom of One's Own: Words on Writing,

Housecleaning, and Life - Nancy Peacock

6. Death with Interruptions - Jose Saramago

7. The Entropy of Aaron Rosclatt - James Sandham

8. Fables Vol. 11 - Bill Willingham

Did you see that? After giving up so many challenges this year, I went and made a list. It's a very flexible list but still, it's a list.

Weekly Geeks #18

I really should be studying but I have just too much energy. So I've been doing everything else: taking care of the kids, cleaning the house, daydreaming . . . I'll get to studying soon. I think the kids feel the same way because I asked them to take a nap hours ago and they're still up. I give up.

This week's Weekly Geeks is about catching up. Catch up on whatever it is you need to catch up on: book reviews, TBR pile, library books . . .

So this week I will be catching up on a number of things.

At last count I was signed up for about thirty challenges. Now with school and everything else in my life, I think I will cut my challenges down to about five total for the rest of the year. I have a challenges notebook that I use so I can remember what challenge deadlines are coming up and what books to read but it still feels like a chore. So I am going to go through my notebook and my five favorite ones I will keep.

I also need to update my TBR pile. I am so tired of looking at my TBR bookcase. I need to start reading the books now and give them away. I will definitely be giving some away for Dewey's 24-Hour Read-a-thon in October. If you haven't heard of this great challenge already, go on over to The Hidden Side of the Leaf and read all about it.

I also need to catch up on my homework. I have a ton of classes and for the last two weeks on and off I have been sick. It's crazy having the flu and it's about 80 degrees today in California. If I haven't been the sick one then it's been one of the kids. So "catch up" will be my new name for the next week.

Wish me luck.

Saturday's Quote

"When you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue-you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night-there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book."

-Christopher Morley

Friday's Quote

"What is reading but silent conversation?"

-Walter Savage Landor, "Aristoleles and Callisthenes," Imaginary Conversations (1876)

Thursday's Quote

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."

-Ray Bradbury

Wednesday's Quote

"Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one."
-Augustine Birrell, "Book-Buying," Obiter Dicta (1887)

Tuesday's Quote

"Wear the old coat and buy the new book."
-Austin Phelps

Monday's Quote

"When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes."
-Desiderius Erasmys

This is so true. I only buy clothes and food because of my kids.

Weekly Geeks #17

Dewey came up with the great idea for this week's Weekly Geeks assignment to be a quote a day. I am two days behind because of studying so I will be posting quotes until next Sunday.

"There are some people. . . who constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. they wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing."

-H.L. Mencken