It’s #NonFicNov month: we’re encouraged to read non-fiction (or analyze past non-fiction reads). To ease the way, Shelf Aware, Doing Dewey, Julz Reads, and What’s Nonfiction have some cool weekly prompts to ponder.
This week we bring up books about any particular theme, and one theme I’m very interested in is: how to live a good, happy life.
Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every Tuesday, you pick ten books on that week’s topic. And this week’s topic is just about any spin-off on books with animals.
So I decided to spotlight book-famous animals who may not be the heroes or their typical sidekicks, but who are pretty integral to the hero’s journey. Here goes the list!
Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every Tuesday, you pick ten books on that week’s topic. And this week, we get to share book titles remind us of songs.
My spin on this: books with songs in their titles. I’m taking this rather literally — the easy way out, you know!
Previous Top 10 Tuesday posts can be found HERE!
It’s #NonFicNov month: we’re encouraged to read non-fiction (or analyze past non-fiction reads). To ease the way, Shelf Aware, Doing Dewey, Julz Reads, and What’s Nonfiction have some cool weekly prompts to ponder.
This week we pair up a fiction book with a related non-fiction one. Here are my suggestions!
If you like The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood …
… Try out Homer’s The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson
Each one gives a different twist, a new perspective to the Odyssey, and uses a musical / poetic lens for that. Penelopiad gives voice to Odysseus’s neglected wife Penelope, and Wilson gives a new spin to existing biases in this Greek epic.
It’s month: we’re encouraged to read non-fiction (or analyze past non-fiction reads). To ease the way, Shelf Aware, Doing Dewey, Julz Reads, and What’s Nonfiction have some cool weekly prompts to ponder.
Four questions for the first week into :
My answers below in slideshow (because I’m still new to WordPress and wanted to give it a try):
It’s time for #6degrees. Start at the same place as other wonderful readers, add six books, and see where you end up. Inspired by the Six Degrees of Separation Meme hosted every month at Books are my Favorite and Best.
Last month, I chose Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820) as the last book in my #SixDegrees chain.
Ichabod Crane, a schoolteacher, came to Tarry Town in the glen of Sleepy Hollow to ply his trade in educating young minds. He was a gullible and excitable fellow, often so terrified by locals’ stories of ghosts that he would hurry through the woods on his way home, singing to keep from hysterics. Until late one night, he finds that maybe they’re not just stories. What is that dark, menacing figure riding behind him on a horse? And what does it have in its hands? And why wasn’t schoolteacher Crane ever seen in Sleepy Hollow again?
reminds me of all things slumberous, hidden, forgotten and deathly. Not surprising, since the Halloween Full Moon just turned the corner, eh?
Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every Tuesday, you pick ten books on that week’s topic. And this week, we get to share our top 10 non-bookish hobbies (this is really difficult!).
Full Disclosure: I really don’t read much of non-fiction. But that’s something I want to correct during this Non-Fiction November challenge (hosted HERE and HERE). Below are the top 10 Non-Fiction Books from my TBR pile. Wish me luck!
1] Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell
I’ve been a huge fan of Gladwell since the Outliers days. So is definitely up: “Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world.“
I found a really fun book tag created by the wonderfully witty Emily: The Spoopy Memes Book Tag (v.2). Thanks to Caffeine and Books and Kristin Kraves Books, who helped me discover my first Book Tag.
Top 5 Tuesday is a monthly-weekly meme hosted by MeeghanReads. This Tuesday’s topic is “Top 5 Books with Witches“. It’s October, after all!
Baba Yaga lived in a hut standing on chicken legs, in the middle of a dark forest. If you’ve read Russian folklore before, you know that Baba Yaga was often the stepmother’s wicked and wise relative, who would put the heroine to the test. If the heroine failed, she would be dinner. Baba Yaga remains the quintessential Witch for me.
Rachel Morgan in Kim Harrison’s The Hollows Series. Rachel Morgan is a witch who works as a runner (police officer) for Inderland Security (IS). The IS is the police for the paranormal species of society, like weres, vampires, banshees, pixies, witches, demons, etc. The IS was established some 40 years ago, when a virus outbreak caused mayhem (when doesn’t it?) and forced the paranormal community into light. If you’re interested in the darker UF genre, The Hollows is your next series.
Laura Chant, in Margaret Mahy’s The Changeover. I wonder why Changeover is not better known. It won the Carnegie Medal in 1984 and since then, has also been made into a fairly decent movie (trailer below). Laura Chant’s toddler brother is possessed by an unnervingly wicked goblin-esque creature. Laura has only one way out: to change over and claim her “witchy” powers.
Elizabeth Proctor, in The Crucible by Arthur Miller. There are few tales as horrifying and enduring as that of the Salem Witch trials in The Crucible – and that, a 1953 play, no less. Witch-hunting is a theme that has been portrayed in countless books and shows, including Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. But Crucible stands out, for exposing the hypocrisy and devastating power of socially-sanctioned violence. Here’s Miller on why he wrote The Crucible.
Good Witch of the North and Wicked Witch of the East, in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. These were probably the first witches I ever read about (outside of Disney, I mean). Without the Good Witch, there would be no Yellow Brick Road, and without the Bad Witch, there would be no Silver Shoes. I think I’m not making any sense… But really, there’s no tale like The Wizard of Oz.
