Books, Family, Random
Happy Leap Year!
Don’t forget, we start Cloud Atlas tomorrow…
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Today is the last day of the month and that means…
POETRY!
Kailana has the sign in, or will? And Lu is the other co-conspirator to make the last day of every month a celebration of poetry.
I thought about copying down a few Tennyson poems that were featured in the Byatt novella I just finished late last night, Morpho Eugenia (so good!) but. I’m not sure where I put the book. *lookingaroundroom*
THEN, I had the brilliant idea to go google for Leap Day poems but wasn’t inspired.
So, then I went and did some chores and am right now avoiding other chores and sat down to see if I could compose anything myself,with my poet-hat on. I do my best poetm-writing when I just sit and see what pops into my head.
.
☆
I wish, I wish upon a star
But then wonder, can I do that?
It’s daylight, no stars in the sky at the moment,
And I’m obviously borrowing a line from someone else’s poem,
Is that stealing?
What is my wish?
World peace, I toast; I wish for cheerfulness and kindness.
I wish for easy decisions and less hassles,
Realizing immediately that my first world problems are silly.
Silliness but they are my sillinesses. My world.
Silly should be reserved for giggles and frivolity
not judging the quality of petty problems, anyway.
I wish I could find a swing and sail into the sky,
the sunny daytime starless sky.
☆
Well? How’d I do? Happy February Poetry Day!
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Mailbox Monday 2.27.12
Mailbox Monday is a Meme currently hosted by MetroReader.
I picked up the following at Goodwill on Saturday so not quite ‘mailbox’ but more like New-Books-In-the-House:
I really enjoyed Oryx and Crake.
Seems to be one of those books you should read cuz everyone has.
I’m sure this will be grittier than the movie.
Now for a LetterMo report. Three days to go! Still time for me to write you a letter if you want one. Or want to receive an ARTFUL postcard! Just DM me your snail-addy to @BkClubCare or e/m to BkClubCare [at] GMail.
I have written/sent (not including today tomorrow and Leap Day (Wednesday)) 75 pieces of mail. Twenty of these pieces were to family, most likely Valentine’s Day cards – I have 11 Nieces and Nephews. I sent 12 birthday cards and 11 postcards. I wrote 9 letters to 6 other LetterMo participants. Thirteen thank-you cards were mailed thanking various kindnesses; one bereavement card. I received a sad and moving thank-you back for that bereavement card. Only one of the birthday cards has been acknowledged. No judging; just the facts.
Postcards seem to generate the most responses — tweets, Facebook acknowledgements, emails, etc.
In all, I received 13 pieces of mail (not counting a bookmooched book; but I sent a thank-you to the nice person who mailed it to me.) I received a gift of a heart-shaped bottle opener – and immediately sent a thank-you. I received some cool postcards, a bookmark and a lovely haiku. One LetterMo letter did not have a return address on so I am sadly unable to reply. One LetterMo letter (to Winnipeg) I intend on writing tomorrow.
I received two Valentine’s Day cards myself; a text message of ‘Thank You’ came from the mother on behalf one niece. (What about the nephew, same household?)
I have sent letters to California, Ohio, Kansas, Colorado, Alabama, Massachusetts (to an address just around the corner from me), Illinois, Indiana, Texas, Virginia, Missouri, Florida, Connecticut, New York, Nebraska, Mississippi, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Canada: Nova Scotia, Toronto and Calgary Alberta. Overseas in both directions: Belgium and the Netherlands, South Korea and the Philippines.
I wrote one author a fan letter.
THANK YOU EVERYONE who has offered me their addresses, have requested to receive mail and/or let me know it arrived! I do NOT do this so I can get mail back necessarily, but it IS nice to know something sent was received. Did I miss you?! I do feel like I’ve failed someone but can’t figure it out…
I know 12 people who celebrate birthdays in March and I intend to mail them each a card.
.
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Alyce of At Home With Books hosts a meme called Saturday Snapshot; this is my first time to participate.
Awhile back, Jenners informed me that I was required by the Blogger’s Handbook to post about my prom. Thought the time was right for me to share. Enjoy. I am hiding the identity of the guy we shall henceforth refer to as “Steve”.
I hated prom. H.A.T.E.D. Prom. The whole concept of prom, the whole idea of prom, the whole ‘gotta find a freakin’ date for prom, prom crap.
Do I look like I’m enjoying myself? I wasn’t.
I hated my dress. I was embarrassed that I felt I had to go. I didn’t want to go. I hated that I was peer pressured into actually going to prom because I didn’t have the guts to (be goth and) NOT go to prom. (not that ‘goth’ was around in 1983 Kansas; I was a “good girl”.)
My mother made that horrid hot pink mess of a nasty dress. Keep in mind that in 1983, the Gone-With-the-Wind hoop skirts were “in”.
I’m getting all worked up just writing about this.
Steve was a boy I knew from church who went to a different high school and was nice enough to go to prom with me when I asked him. I took him to a nice restaurant – he drove, I paid – and we attended PROM. It was at the school. I have no idea what the theme was.
I was home by 11 pm.
THAT was my prom.
The next time I attended a formal-dance-like event was with my husband – we were only dating then – in my 5th year of college, at a sorority formal. I never attended ANY of my sorority (or anybody else’s) formals until I was an “Alum’.
My husband was my first boyfriend.
I’m still married to my first boyfriend; twenty-three years and counting.
Am I done now? Did I fulfill the Blogger’s Handbook obligation, Jenners?!?
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Another from Nancy! (read her thoughts on this memoir –>here<–)
My Thoughts 
Fire Season by Philip Connors, ecco – an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2011, 248 pages
Tradeback ARC – a gift from Nancy the BookFool; Nonfiction: Memoir, Wilderness Management (and oxymoron?)
“The creation of “managed wilderness” is one of our culture’s fundamental paradoxes, and defining why we value it, and how we ought to relate to it, will remain an unfinished project.” -p.133
What kind of person takes the job of being way off-road watching for fire? Read this book and find out. Some of the negative reviews made it sound like Mr. Connors was narcissistic and only wanted to hear himself spout witticisms about nature along with the true greats of literature who did the same. I didn’t find that at all. I really liked the guy and was impressed with his use of language and what he chose to share in way of fire history, lands management history, the wild west, thoughts and experiences of famous writers who also spent time as lookouts, current and future issues with ecology, personal stuff, and well, stuff. I enjoyed every bit of it. He eloquently conveys sense of time and space and the din in his head and the absence of such.
“Time shapes itself around me in that silence, shape-shifts from mistress to shade, caressing and haunting by turn.” -p.33
If I thought he was on Apache Peak Lookout right now, I would write him a letter for this month’s #LetterMo.com challenge! (I don’t think he is there, though.) I almost sent the goodreads.com form email to recruit him to log on. But I didn’t. Somehow, I feel that he has already contemplated it and said no, not his style.
Watch this video: Philip Connors Lookout
So if you like your memoirs to have personality, history, plenty of miscellaneous facts on a particular subject the author is passionate about, and/or have interest in the United States forest lands, I would recommend this one.
Finally, a FIVE STAR read after some enjoyable but not earth-shattering experiences. I loved this one and was impressed on every facet.
“Sunset brings colors to make a man tremble, colors without names – names would only defile such colors. I sit in the tower mute as a stone.” -p.237
.
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Thoughts 
BossyPants by Tina Fey, Hachette Audio? (Can’t figure out from my downloaded files where to find all this information.)
updated: 5 hours and 35 minutes…
AudioBook via Audibles FREE download for 2 wk trial onto my iPad, Nonfiction: memoir, humor.
This was only a bit better than just OK for me. I enjoyed many parts and laughed a lot and admire Ms. Fey for her attitudes and gumptions.
Please, for a terrific review, DO visit Trish at Love,Laughter&Insanity or explore the very many reviews found at Fyrefly’s blogosphere search.
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Thoughts 
Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife, Viking Penguin 2000, 248 pages.
Hardback; from the library. Nonfiction: Science genre.
FIRST Sentence: “Zero hit the USS Yorktown like a torpedo.”
I loved that this started with a story of how a computer program includes a zero where a zero should never be: in the denominator of a fraction; in a “CANNOT-HAPPEN” equation that attempts to divide something by zero. Program fails, engines seize, big boat stops. In this case, a billion-dollar missile cruiser stuck on the open seas.
The history was fascinating but a little over-bearing and repetitive that “zero was bad.” A few uninteresting tidbits that stopped the narrative for me and made me question why these tidbits were included. Sure, a fair share of complicated mathematical concepts that didn’t inspire me to think at all.
RECOMMENDED for math geeks and ‘odd subject’ historians; possibly for fans of the Big Bang Theory TV show.
FINAL Thought(s): One of the more difficult to write reviews because I fail to find the words for why this didn’t captivate me as much as I had hoped.
RATING: Three slices of pie. Coconut pie because it seems you either love coconut or hate it. Infinity or zero.
OTHER Reviews: Eva at A Striped Armchair mentions this in a lengthy post from 2009.
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The post you’ve all been waiting for…
When I first moved to New England and we were in decorating mode; I wanted a shower curtain to match my bathroom color scheme. I looked at all the major retail stores and some minor ones but nothing captured the colors I was envisioning. So I went online.
Sometimes, shopping online can be even more tedious and obscure than finding something in a store. Until I found a website promising custom order options. I was VERY excited.
But first, I must back up and tell you a story.
One time long ago, I went to one of those charity-fundraiser house tours of fancy homes in Bellevue Nebraska. One of the more awesome and luxurious places had a theme to ALL the bathrooms – and I think there were at least eight. The theme was…
.
.
oooo (wait for it)
.
.
Each bathroom or powder room featured nude art.
Either a painting or a sculpture, usually quite tasteful and my friend Katrina and I thought it hilarious. We, too, wanted naked people in our bathrooms!
So I hired b.mclane to paint me a shower curtain using my requested colors. I can’t get a better photo because the size of the room is tiny.
Either click on the photo — we named our nude “Doris” — or click here –> showercurtainart.com, and you can get your very own cool shower curtain, too.
OK, that is all. Carry on.
I need to do a review of BossyPants by Tina Fey and Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife and soon will have finished Fire Season by Philip Connors so must prep that post, too. I’ve got physical therapy for my back and a visit to a friend planned later. What fun things do you have to do today?
Tulips! Hub brought me some bulbs back from Amsterdam in January.
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CLOUD ATLAS by David Mitchell. Join us?From David Mitchell, the Booker Prize nominee, award-winning writer and one of the featured authors in Granta’s “Best of Young British Novelists 2003” issue, comes his highly anticipated third novel, a work of mind-bending imagination and scope. ✫ A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan’s California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified “dinery server” on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation — the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other’s echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small. ✫ In his captivating third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity’ s dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us.
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I’ve been tagged by Ms. Trisha at Eclectic-Eccentric. Here goes.
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