Literary Exploration Society to Expand Reading (Formerly 52 Books)

Sunday, October 18, 2020

BW42: October by Paul Laurence Dunbar

October

Paul Laurence Dunbar

October is the treasurer of the year,

And all the months pay bounty to her store;

The fields and orchards still their tribute bear,

And fill her brimming coffers more and more.

But she, with youthful lavishness,

Spends all her wealth in gaudy dress,

And decks herself in garments bold

Of scarlet, purple, red, and gold.

She heedeth not how swift the hours fly,

But smiles and sings her happy life along;

She only sees above a shining sky;

She only hears the breezes' voice in song.

Her garments trail the woodlands through,

And gather pearls of early dew

That sparkle, till the roguish Sun

Creeps up and steals them every one.

But what cares she that jewels should be lost,

When all of Nature's bounteous wealth is hers?

Though princely fortunes may have been their cost,

Not one regret her calm demeanor stirs.

Whole-hearted, happy, careless, free,

She lives her life out joyously,

Nor cares when Frost stalks o'er her way

And turns her auburn locks to gray.

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Sunday, October 11, 2020

BW41: 41 things

And now for something completely different!

Welcome to all things forty one this week. People, places, things, dates that have something to do with 41.

Best Books to Read For Ages 41 – 60

41 Books Recommended by Mark Zuckerberg

Read a book about the 41st President: 41 A Portrait of My Father by George W. Bush

Authors born in 1941

Read a book with 41 in the title or 41st book in the series

Best selling and popular books in 1941

President only for 32 days in 1841 - William Henry Harrison

President from 1841 -1845 - John Tyler

Literature in 1741, Books set in 1641, and Took place in 1541.

41 Best Books of 2020 to elevate your reading

41 debut Authors over 40

14 Female authors recommend 41 favorite female authors

41 more books worth reading

What Beatles song repeats the title in the lyrics forty-one times? Let it be. Read a book with Let It Be in the title

Read the 41st book from the lists of Best 100 including Great American Read, Must Read Classics, Best Books of the 21st Century, Greatest Books, Most Influential, BBC's Big Read, or Goodread's listopia of 100 Best.

Have fun following rabbits trails, exploring events and people from 41BC all the way up to 2014.

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Sunday, October 4, 2020

Welcome to our October Spooktacular reading month. It's time to dip your toes into the water and scare yourself silly. Read thrilling stories stocked with the mysterious and shocking, paranormal stories brimming with ghosts and goblins, or urban mysteries packed with vampires and werewolves. If you are anything like me, I can't stand horror books filled with blood and guts. Give me a psychological thriller any day, roiling with nail biting, spine chilling suspense, creepy settings, and characters you certainly wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley.

Choose from a wide variety of classics to the contemporary, or the Hitchcockian and Lovecraftian to Stephen King and his son, Joe Hill, to Dean Koontz, to the men and ladies of suspense.

If you haven't read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, now would be the perfect time. Put away all your preconceived notions from the movies as the book is very different and will shock and amaze you. If you have read it, dip your toes into retellings of the story as well as the reimagining's of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

From the really scary to the mild:

The 20 Most Anticipated Horror Books of 2020

Best Horror of 2020

31 Psychological Thriller Books That Mess with Your Head

Lock Your Doors: 8 Young Adult Thriller Books

2020 Halloween reads for Kids and Teens

Currently on my night stand are Dean Koontz's Devoted, Josh Malerman's Bird Box, Dan Simmon's Hollow Man, and Marisha Pessl's Night Film, to name a few. Hmm! Which should I read first?

~Cheers to a spooktacular reading month~

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Sunday, September 27, 2020

BW39: Freedom to Read

This week we celebrate the freedom to read. Beginning in 210bc with Chinese emperor Shih Huang Ti, to the present, books have been challenged, outright banned and even burned for the thoughts and ideas written in their pages. Challengers have many reasons, afraid their children will be exposed to differences they choose not to acknowledge, afraid they will be exposed to people or language or ideas they don't agree with.

The fear of words, ones that teach and reach right into your very soul and expose you to new ideas, is a powerful thing. Letters on a page. One word, two, a sentence, a paragraph, one building upon another, to a book full of words that motivate, illuminate, educate, and open our eyes, our minds, our hearts and souls to different people, cultures, and worlds, both real and imaginary. Books that lift us up, fill us with joy as well as sorrow, teach us to analyze and debate and think about what if.

Banned Books Week was created in 1982 by the American Library Association Office of Intellectual Freedom, in response to challenges and requests to ban books from libraries and bookstores due to their content. Eight out of the top ten most challenged books for 2019 were for their LGBTQIA+ content. The last two, the Harry Potter series for exposing children to magic and witchcraft and nefarious characters, and The Handmaid's Tale for vulgarity and sexual overtones. Every year, the ALA receives complaints and requests to remove classic books from the library and/or the curriculum.

How Banning Books Marginalizes Children

Why Your Kid Should Read Banned Books

Parental fear and cultural erasure: The logic behind banning books.

California School District considers ban on classic books.

Who Should Decide What Books Are Allowed In Prison?

Kuwait relaxes book censorship laws after banning thousands of titles

Editorial on Punjab Curriculum and Textbook Board Banning books part I and Part II

Around the globe - A Map of Forbidden Books in 2019

Access a database of 70,000 books banned around the world going back to 1575

Celebrate your freedom to read a banned or challenged book this week!

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Sunday, September 20, 2020

BW38: September Equinox

Time for the changing of the seasonal guard with Autumn marching into view in the Northern Hemisphere and Spring in the Southern Hemisphere. What's the first thing to comes to mind when you think about Autumn or Spring? Either the leaves are changing colors or flowers are beginning to bloom - nature's circle of life. Which brings us to our Fall Reading Mini Challenge.

Read a book with Fall or Spring in the title

Read a book with seasons or weather in the title

Read a book with woods, forests, leaves, or trees on the cover

Read a book with a color in the title

Read a book about colors

Read a book about color guards

Pick a color and pick a book with the color on the cover.

Read a book with a colorful character.

Read a book with a character with color in their name.

Settle in to read one of the New Books for Fall, Oprah's picks for Fall, 12 books to keep you occupied for the rest of 2020 or Books set in the Southern Hemisphere

Challenge yourself to Spell out Equinox, Autumn, Fall, or Spring, using one book for each letter from the title.

Happy Equinox! ~Cheers~

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Saturday, September 12, 2020

BW37: In the Grass by Hamlin Garland

In the Grass

Hamlin Garland

(09/14/1860 to 03/04/1940)

O TO lie in long grasses!

O to dream of the plain!

Where the west wind sings as it passes

A weird and unceasing refrain;

Where the rank grass wallows and tosses,

And the plains’ ring dazzles the eye;

Where hardly a silver cloud bosses

The flashing steel arch of the sky.

To watch the gay gulls as they flutter

Like snowflakes and fall down the sky,

To swoop in the deeps of the hollows,

Where the crow’s-foot tosses awry,

And gnats in the lee of the thickets

Are swirling like waltzers in glee

To the harsh, shrill creak of the crickets,

And the song of the lark and the bee.

O far-off plains of my west land!

O lands of winds and the free,

Swift deer—my mist-clad plain!

From my bed in the heart of the forest,

From the clasp and the girdle of pain

Your light through my darkness passes;

To your meadows in dreaming I fly

To plunge in the deeps of your grasses,

To bask in the light of your sky!

Who is Hamlin Garland, literary creed, stories, homestead, Wisconsin marker 100, and Hamlin Garland's Colorado.

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Sunday, September 6, 2020

BW36: 52 Books Bingo - Antebellum

Courtesy of Realtor.com - Antebellum architecture

Our next 52 Books Bingo category is taking us back to the Antebellum period which took place after the war of 1812 (1812-1815) and before the civil war (1861-1865). A period of time in which American writers wrote about American themes and created the short story genre and the penny press.

Views through Pen and Ink: North Carolina's Antebellum Literature Records an Era

American Literature-American Romantic or Antebellum Era: 1800-60

Women in Antebellum America

Antebellum Era Books

Antebellum Books

North American Slave Narratives

American Literature before 1865

Library of Southern Literature - Antebellum period

Historical Romance Antebellum Books

Read about one or more Presidents who served from 1816 to 1861 from James Madison (1809-1817), James Monroe (1817-1825), John Quincy Adams (1825-1829), Andrew Jackson (1829 - 1837), Martin Van Buren (1837-1841), William Henry Harrison (1841), John Tyler (1841-1845), James Polk (1845-1849), Zachary Taylor (1849-1850), Millard Fillmore (1850-1853), Franklin Pierce (1853-1857), to James Buchanan (1857 - 1861).

Take some time to armchair travel through history this year!

Please share your book reviews and link to your website, blog, Goodreads, Google+, Tumblers, or Instagram page. If you do not have a social media account, please leave a comment to let us know what you are reading. The link widget closes at the end of each book week.

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Saturday, August 29, 2020

BW35: Ladies of Fiction Bookology - Sarah Dunant

Welcome to September and our celebration of Library Card sign up month, Be Kind to Writers and Editors Month, Classical Music Month, and Hispanic Heritage Month. Don't forget to Be Late for Something Day (9/5), Read a Book Day (9/6), or help someone to read on International literacy Day (9/8). Remember the fallen on 9/11, honor your grandparents on 9/13, appreciate being a citizen of the U.S. and read the constitution on 9/17. Talk like a pirate on 9/19, celebrate the equinox and think like a hobbit on 9/22, and read a banned or challenged book during Banned Book Week starting September 27th. Wow, busy month.

We are also celebrating the writings of our Ladies of Fiction Bookology author, Sarah Dunant, writer of thrillers and historical fiction set during the renaissance. The british writer recently turned 70 and currently splits her time between London and Florence.

There are a number of ways to complete the bookology challenge, including but not limited to:

Spell out the author's name - one book per letter from the title on the cover.
Read one or more books written by the author.
Read a book written in the country or time period of the author.

Learn more about Sarah through history you can see and smell, The answers history gives us depend on the questions we ask it’ and fashion and fiction.

~Cheers and happy reading!

Please share your book reviews and link to your website, blog, Goodreads, Google+, Tumblers, or Instagram page. If you do not have a social media account, please leave a comment to let us know what you are reading. The link widget closes at the end of each book week.

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Sunday, August 23, 2020

BW34: Our Singing Strength by Robert Frost

Our Singing Strength

by

Robert Frost

It snowed in spring on earth so dry and warm
The flakes could find no landing place to form.
Hordes spent themselves to make it wet and cold,
And still they failed of any lasting hold.
They made no white impression on the black.
They disappeared as if earth sent them back.
Not till from separate flakes they changed at night
To almost strips and tapes of ragged white
Did grass and garden ground confess it snowed,
And all go back to winter but the road.
Next day the scene was piled and puffed and dead.
The grass lay flattened under one great tread.
Borne down until the end almost took root,
The rangey bough anticipated fruit
With snowball cupped in every opening bud.
The road alone maintained itself in mud,
Whatever its secret was of greater heat
From inward fires or brush of passing feet.

In spring more mortal singers than belong
To any one place cover us with song.
Thrush, bluebird, blackbird, sparrow, and robin throng;
Some to go further north to Hudson's Bay,
Some that have come too far north back away,
Really a very few to build and stay.
Now was seen how these liked belated snow.
the field had nowhere left for them to go;
They'd soon exhausted all there was in flying;
The trees they'd had enough of with once trying
And setting off their heavy powder load.
They could find nothing open but the road.
So there they let their lives be narrowed in
By thousands the bad weather made akin.
The road became a channel running flocks
Of glossy birds like ripples over rocks.
I drove them under foot in bits of flight
That kept the ground, almost disputing right
Of way with me from apathy of wing,
A talking twitter all they had to sing.
A few I must have driven to despair
Made quick asides, but having done in air
A whir among white branches great and small
As in some too much carven marble hall
Where one false wing beat would have brought down all,
Came tamely back in front of me, the Drover,
To suffer the same driven nightmare over.
One such storm in a lifetime couldn't teach them
That back behind pursuit it couldn't reach them;
None flew behind me to be left alone.

Well, something for a snowstorm to have shown
The country's singing strength thus brought together,
That though repressed and moody with the weather
Was none the less there ready to be freed
And sing the wildflowers up from root and seed.

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Sunday, August 16, 2020

BW33: Pick a book by the cover

Are you ready for a mini challenge? Me too! Book covers that are dark and haunting, colorful and bold, a mystery, the challenge it presents intrigues me. Sometimes it the title alone that draws my eye. Use to be I only looked for books by familiar authors. Then, several years ago I joined a challenge in which one of the tasks was to pick a book by its cover. The hard part - don't read the blurb and find out what it is about beforehand.

I discovered the temptation to read the synopsis, then a few pages to see if it drew me in impossible to resist. Especially in person. However, I could resist when looking at books online. Since then I have chosen books a few times using this method and usually end up with something excellent. Also, I couldn't pick books by authors I've already read.

Utilizing Amazon's new releases I wondered through their virtual literature and fiction section and the following covers are what drew my eye this time.

I added C.J. Archer's first book in her Clock and Steel series, Witchmaker's Daughter to my virtual stacks. All her covers are intriguing. The rest have been added to my wish list.

So your mission this week is to pick a book by it's cover. Have fun, be bold, let your eyes feast and see what tickles your fancy.

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Sunday, August 9, 2020

BW32: 52 Books Bingo - Noir

Our next 52 Books Bingo Category is taking us into the world of Noir where it can be dark and deadly with mysterious and flawed characters, and right and wrong aren't clearly defined.

The genre is defined as "Books made up of stories that contain elements of crime, eroticism, cynicism, moral ambiguity, cruelty, strangeness, and fatalism. The stories are often set in remote areas in urban, rural, and/or out of the way settings or non-distinct settings, like the open road. Noir genre books may or may not include a private eye, detective, or femme fatale. The stories often have an elusive phenomenon or have something that’s just out of reach of the main characters."

The Best Noir Authors

12 Crime Noir Books That Will Have You Reaching for Your Trench Coat

The Rise of Rural Noir

Guide to Nordic Noir

Noir from around the globe

Pages of Noir: The Books that Became Film Noir

Hardboiled World: Four Creative Noir Traditions From Around the Globe

"The Noir Genre Helps Mediate between Reality and Fiction”: An Interview with José Salvador Ruiz

Mystery & Detective Novels by Women of Color

Le Chat Noir—Black Cats on the Cover

Have fun exploring the world of Noir.

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Sunday, August 2, 2020

BW31: Ladies of Fiction Bookology - Nalini Singh

Courtesy of Nalini Singh

Welcome to August and the dog days of Summer and Admit Your Happy Month, Peach Month, and National Picnic month. It's also Romance Awareness Month and a great time to dive into the fictional and not so fictional world of Romance which is vast and varied, from Flufferton Abbey to Pawsitively cute to the Funny to Outer Space. Or explore the world of Romanticism or contemporary poets or why we love.

One of my favorite paranormal romance authors is Nalini Singh who just happens to be our Ladies of Fiction author of the month. She was born in 1977 in Fiji and has lived the majority of her life in New Zealand. At the age of 25, she sold her first novel and has gone on to write multi novel paranormal romance series including Psy/Changeling, PsyChaneling/Trinity, and Guild Hunter as well as contemporary romance and thriller novels.

There are a number of ways to complete the bookology challenge, including but not limited to:

Spell out the author's name - one book per letter from the title on the cover.
Read one or more books written by the author.
Read a book written in the country or time period of the author.

I've read and reread her series several times and am currently reading A Madness of Sunshine:

"On the rugged West Coast of New Zealand, Golden Cove is more than just a town where people live. The adults are more than neighbors; the children, more than schoolmates.

That is until one fateful summer—and several vanished bodies—shatters the trust holding Golden Cove together. All that’s left are whispers behind closed doors, broken friendships, and a silent agreement to not look back. But they can’t run from the past forever.

Eight years later, a beautiful young woman disappears without a trace, and the residents of Golden Cove wonder if their home shelters something far more dangerous than an unforgiving landscape.

It’s not long before the dark past collides with the haunting present and deadly secrets come to light."

Learn more about Nalini Singh through khalia Strong's NZ Newsroom interview, Coffeetime Romance, and Entertainment Weekly.

~Cheers and happy reading!

Please share your book reviews and link to your website, blog, Goodreads, Google+, Tumblers, or Instagram page. If you do not have a social media account, please leave a comment to let us know what you are reading. The link widget closes at the end of each book week.

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