Tell Me Please

What is on your nightstand this summer? What are you reading? Who is your current favorite author? What are your recommendations? Please share your newest reading finds with me.

M. Sasek

Do you read on your commute to work or listen to audio books?

Do you have a special reading spot?

Rembrant's The Philosopher

What genre to you read most often; fiction, biography, self-help...?

Remember those summer reading programs the library always sponsored?

What kind of book do you consider a great read for the beach?



all pictures courtesy of Google images

This is Paris by M. Sasek

I love big picture books. I love wonderful illustrations. I love having tons of reading material for my grandchildren. I want them to remember me for the stories I told them and the books they read at my house.

I just discovered the This is series, by Miroslav Sasek, which was first printed in the 50s and 60s. M. Sasek, as he signed himself, was a Czechoslovakian artist, illustrator and writer. He escaped from Prague and settled in Munich in 1948 when the Communist Party came to power. He was trained as an architect. Later Sasek worked for Radio Free Europe before he wrote his first children's book, This is Paris. His This is series can be described as travelogues for children.


My first purchase this past weekend was so delightful that I immediately ordered 3 more in the series from Amazon.

stacks o'books

I cleaned out a drawer in my bedside table recently. Look what I found. A stash of unread books.

Some I remember where I got them and some I don't have a clue about.

A couple are loaners. I ordered two of the used ones from Amazon after reading something by the same author. Lots were discovered at the thrift store. One is from my daughter and one from my daughter in law. Looks like I have some reading to do.

Have you read any of these? Did you like them or not? Any book reviewers out there?

How about you? Do you stash books in out of the way places waiting to find the time to read them? What's in your stack?

Books, Books, Books

I love the fact that when my granddaughters visit overnight, they always go to bed along with big stacks of reading material. They are in luck here, since I like to think of myself as a first rate bibliophile. As noted elsewhere in this blog, I have stashes of books everywhere in the house.

I thought you might like to see some of the books the girls enjoyed this past week. Almost all of these were school editions that were purged and sold at local thrift stores. I especially love old library books.

The First Book of The Opera by Noel Streatfeild illustrated by Hilary Abrahams copyright 1966

The Tortoise and the Hare adapted and illustrated by Janet Stevens copyright 1984

Dolls by Bettina Ehrlich copyright 1962

Who Wants Willy Wells? by Gina Bell illustrated by Jean Tamburine copyright 1965

This is a Department Store by Louis G. Romano and Nicholas P. Georgiady illustrated by Jim Collins copyright 1662

The Wooden Horse of Troy by Juliet Mozley copyright 1970

They look battered and well loved, but in reality they are still quite sturdy and should stand up to many more years of loving perusal.

On about night 5, I had to look for more challenging reading material for the 7 1/2 year old, as she had already read all of these and more. Both she and her 6 year old sister are very proficient readers. I found an Encyclopedia Brown book as well as a couple of other chapter books for her.

Do you have memories of favorite books you read over and over as a child?

I Love Books

Trish from Nana's Living the Dream challenged me a while back to post 7 interesting/quirky things about myself. I think I will write about my favorite fictional books since I spilled the beans about everything else of interest about myself here previously.

My night table

Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns (1984) is loosely based on the life of Ms. Burns grandfather, who was a Civil War veteran. If you read this Southern classic, you will feel as though you are right there in turn of 20th century Cold Sassy along with all of the Blakeslee family mourning the death of Granny Blakeslee and feeling the shame of Grandpa's remarriage three weeks later. (true story...on the way home from the Smokies 15 or so years ago ex husband and I were tired and stopped to spend the night in a motel right off the freeway in northern GA. Some vague thought nagged at me all night long. In the morning it came to me. We were in Commerce, the actual town that was the basis of Cold Sassy Tree. I was so excited. We drove all over town,which wasn't very large, so I could see the home of my favorite book close up)

The hall bookcase

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton (1948) is set in South Africa and juxtapositions a humble black tribal pastor with a powerful rich white landowner. They are drawn together by a common tragedy. It is a powerful story of love and redemption and while apartheid is not a theme of the book, it does go far to explain the reasons and structures behind the practice. Recently, Robyn of Art Propelled mentioned that her paternal grandmother and the author were first cousins. I wonder how that figures into the six degrees of separation for me?

One of the downstairs bookcases

East Wind, West Wind by Pearl Buck (1930) is the story of a western educated Chinese doctor who is matched with a traditional Chinese woman in an arranged marriage. It's the story of east meet west told from the viewpoint of Kwei-lan, the wife. It is a simple and sweet story that I have loved since I first read it in the 70s or early 80s. I have read most of Ms. Buck's books and have enjoyed all of her tales of the east

Some of my art books and magazines

The Pull of the Moon by Elizabeth Berg (1996) is the story of a middle aged woman who runs away from husband and home to find herself. The reader sees the progression of her thoughts in the things she records in her diary and in her letters to her husband. (I generally like all of Berg's books

Some more how-to books

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry is hands down the best western ever written in my humble opinion. And McMurtry is a genius at the art of writing dialogue. I loved this novel from start to finish. If you've never read it you owe it to yourself

Just a few of my Little Golden books

Papa's Daughter, Dear Papa, Papa's Wife, and This is My Life by Thyra Ferre Bjorn circa early 60s. These sweet books are a mixture of fact and fiction about a Swedish pastor who comes to America with his family. I found these books one by one at the thrift store. Everytime I chanced upon a new one I was delighted to be able to read more about this little family.

The bookcase in the den

Sorry Trish, I can't make it through all seven. I've got tons to do tonight and so I've got to cut my post short. Sufice it to say, I love books. Almost every room has either a bookcase or a pile of books or magazines in it. I have collected over 350 Little Golden books (bought 3 new ones today) and I still have all of my girlhood collection of mystery books too. I enjoy mystery, spy thrillers (Robert Ludlum was my favorite author in this genre), biography, self-help, chick lit, almost any type of non-fiction...you name it, I probably like some of it. I also collect old grammar and high school literature and history text books. Any type of art book calls my name. I am a danger to my checking account if loosed in a bookstore.

Bookcase in my computer room

Reading is my favorite hobby.

I Feel Bad About My Neck

I just finished reading this book by Nora Ephron. She has written a witty but true account of being a woman who is getting older. It is something that we never think about when we are young, but once we pass our early middle years the body begins to turn on us. She points out the amount of time we now have to spend just maintaining our looks. The book is a very funny account of what it means to be a woman of a "certain age".

You know I've been looking in the mirror and I feel bad about my neck too.

Food for Thought

Do you like to read books about food or cooking?

Some people collect cookbooks. Thumbing through recipes or making meal plans is a hobby for them. I cannot honestly say that I am one of these people although I do tear out the occasional recipe from a lady's magazine or print out one from the internet. I especially like the ones that someone else has recommended. Some of my favorite recipes have been torn from our local Wednesday Food Section of the paper.

I wish I had some of my grandmother's recipes. She made a delicious Orange Cake. She baked it in an angel food cake pan and when it came out of the oven she would drizzle a sugary glaze over it. Our whole family remembers it with the fondest of memories, but alas the recipe died with her. She made it from memory. I wonder if any of my cooking will be legendary in my children's minds after I am gone.

Me and Grandmother on my 1st Birthday

I did learn to make Chicken and Dumplings from Grandmother. These instructions weren't written down either. I stood beside her in the kitchen and watched her mix the ingredients, roll out the dough, drop the dumplings into the broth one by one, gentling swirling the pot to cover each dumpling as it floated in the savory broth. My grandmother has been gone for over 15 years now. By request of my youngest son, I prepared this dish as part of his birthday meal a couple of years ago. My daddy took one taste and asked me if this was his mother's recipe. I knew I had the recipe right.

Me and Grandmother when she was about 80

Two Fat Ladies was my favorite cooking show from the first moment I laid eyes on those two motorcycle and sidecar riding ladies, Clarrisa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson. What a hoot and what an education...pommes frites rather than french fries does sound ever so posh. And with all the butter and cream they used, well their dishes surely had to be tasty didn't they? I loved it that they served these meals to such diverse groups as the Scottish Fireman's Brigade and to the students of a boy's prep school.

Have you ever wondered why a recipe might also be called a receipt? Well since this inquiring mind wanted to know, I looked it up.

Receipt is an old form that means the same as recipe. Both derive from Latin recipere, to receive or take. Receipt was first used in medieval English as a formula or prescription for a medicinal preparation (Chaucer is the first known user, in the Canterbury Tales of about 1386). The sense of “a written statement saying that money or goods have been received” only arrived at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Recipe is the imperative, “take!”, from the same Latin verb. It was traditionally the first word in a prescription, heading the list of ingredients. This was often abbreviated to a letter R with a bar Recipe has been used alongside receipt since the eighteenth century in the sense of cookery instructions, gradually replacing it over time.

Hence Rx for a prescription. Cool.

I think we should use more culinary words and phrases in our everyday speech; like gustatory, epicurean, gourmand, gastronome, repast, provender, potable, having to eat one's own words, having an attitude like sour grapes, enjoying life with relish and gusto....

No one writes about food like Ruth Reichl. I first read her Tender At The Bone a number of years ago. This book is her semi-autobiographical ode to her love affair with food and her journey from her childhood kitchen to her work as the editor of Gourmet magazine. Her descriptive food vocabulary is so exact the reader almost tastes the dish along with her. She has since written Comfort Me With Apples and Garlic and Sapphires.

Like Water for Chocolate is another one of those books that melds food and fantasy with an almost invisible line connecting the two. While reading I felt myself being transported into the Mexican kitchen of her story so that I could chop chilies along with the other characters in the book.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul -Plato

Language and words are like food to me. Food for thought. Big bites of life. Flavor for a day to day world. Tasty experiences and savory memories. Mmmmmmm.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

I watched a thought provoking movie tonight. It is the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby a former editor of the French magazine Elle. He was left with locked-in syndrome after waking from a 3 week coma that was a result of a stroke. Completely paralyzed except for one eye, he dictated his book, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by blinking his left eye to choose each letter as the alphabet was read to him. As is usual after watching a movie that has been based on a book, I now am compelled to read the book in order to apprehend the complete picture...to know his thoughts....to try to understand his intrepid spirit in the face of such a debilitating life event.

The human spirit can be so resilient. People can be subjected to the most crippling circumstances and not only survive, but thrive. I am intensely interested in these people.

How about you? Are you interesting in these types of stories or do they depress you? I find that I am inspired, but not so sure that I would be able to endure with their resolve and determination and even vitality.

Click here to see the movie trailer.

Friends

These books are some of my life long friends.


This is a page from one of my cut and paste journals about the Mockingbird production in Monroeville.

Soul Food From Southern Voices

I've been in a melancholy, pensive mood this week. When I feel this way I like to listen to sad music. When I'm sad I like to feed the feeling I suppose. Gosh, when I feel this way I like to feed myself. I've been remembering things, things that make me sadder, but things that have shaped who I am today.

While driving home listening to sad music and thinking my sad thoughts I began to muse about Southern writers and soul food. Southern writers seem to have more to say about life, happy or sad than almost any others. Their writing feeds your soul. It is rich with the gravy of life and love.

We know we've come home to where we're known best when we read Lee Smith. We feel part of a genuine community when we read Fannie Flagg. William Faulkner is a visit to the psychiatrist's couch for a look into the psyche (although no Southerner worth her salt would ever let anyone know she needed THAT type of help). We finish a Tennessee Williams' story knowing we are not the most dysfunctional family in the neighborhood. Dorie Sanders writes wise fairy tales of simple dreams come true. Harper Lee teaches us to value and respect all human life. Anne Rice adds the gothic touch that reflects the brutish and macabre in us. Kaye Gibbons writes about confusion and pain and the triumph over both. We are more profound because of Eudora Welty; her vision is so perceptive.

These writers remind us of our heritage, our unique voice, our history, our worst selves and our best selves. Their books are like a meal of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, greens and cornbread. When we finish reading their words we are satisfied and content.

Do you have a favorite Southern writer or book? How does it feed your soul?

Just Finished This Book

....."We were Birds Without Wings. You were a robin and I was a blackbird. And there were some who were eagles or vultures or pretty gold finches, but none of us had wings. For birds with wings nothing changes. They fly where they will and they know nothing about borders and their quarrels are very small. But we are always confined to earth, no matter how much we climb to the high places and flap our arms. Because we cannot fly we are condemned to do things that do not agree with us. Because we have no wings we are pushed into struggles and abominations that we did not seek and then after all that, the years go by. The mountains are leveled. The valleys rise. The rivers are blocked by sand and the cliffs fall into the sea." -Louis De Berniere

Book on CD-read by Hugh Bonneville

Hamish Macbeth

Recently, a friend suggested I read a novel by M.C. Beaton featuring a cast of lovable Scottish characters. I was hooked on these light mystery stories after just one book. The protagonist is Hamish Macbeth who is the constable of the small highland village of Lochdubh.

" the idea for the first Hamish Macbeth novel came to Chesney while she was learning to fly cast for salmon at a fishing school in northern Scotland. Macbeth is the town constable in Lochdubh, a small village in the Scottish Highlands. He keeps a low profile, preferring to have people assume he’s of limited competence and intelligence. But, despite the intervention of more high-powered police officials, he’s able to solve crimes by careful observation of the people involved. Hamish Macbeth’s quiet but steady process of investigation has lead one reviewer to say of a novel in this series, “The pleasures of the book are akin to those of a good gossip session with a perceptive old friend.”

If like me you try these books and enjoy them, you will be pleased to know that M. C. is quite prolific. There is also a British TV series based on the Macbeth character, but I've been told the books are more satisfying.

• Death of a Gossip (1985)
• Death of a Cad (1986)
• Death of an Outsider (1988)
• Death of a Perfect Wife (1989)
• Death of a Hussy (1991)
• Death of a Snob (1992 )
• Death of a Prankster (1992)
• Death of a Glutton (1993)
• Death of a Travelling Man (1993)
• Death of a Charming Man (1994)
• Death of a Nag (1995)
• Death of a Macho Man (1996)
• Death of a Dentist (1997)
• Death of a Scriptwriter (1998)
• Death of an Addict (1999)
• A Highland Christmas (1999)
• Death of a Dustman (2001)
• Death of a Celebrity (2002)
• Death of a Village (2003)
• Death of a Poison Pen (2004)
• Death of a Bore (2005)
• Death of a Dreamer (2006)
• Death of a Maid (2007)
• Death of a Gentle Lady (2008)

So if you are in the market for something new, you might want to give M. C. a whirl.