‘Read More Books’ challenge: Week 7: 312-363 of the list of 623 of the best books ever!

Are you ready for week seven of our Read More Books challenge? 

Read HERE to learn about it. It’s never too late to join in.

Check the ones you may have missed or want to review:

WEEK ONE   WEEK TWO   WEEK THREE   WEEK FOUR   WEEK FIVE    WEEK SIX

How did you do with your reading? Even if you didn’t finish the book you selected, it counts if you select one for this week to add to your TBR pile.

312. Confessions — by Saint Augustine
313. The Golden Bowl — by Henry James
314. Belle Du Seigneur — by Albert Cohen
315. A Town Like Alice — by Nevil Shute
316. Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch — by Neil Gaiman
317. Three Men in a Boat — by Jerome K. Jerome
318. Leviathan — by Thomas Hobbes
319. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists — by Robert Tressell
320. Bastard Out of Carolina — by Dorothy Allison
321. Hamlet — by William Shakespeare
322. Sister Carrie — by Theodore Dreiser
323. Death Comes for the Archbishop — by Willa Cather
324. The Sea, the Sea — by Iris Murdoch
325. The French Lieutenant’s Woman — by John Fowles
326. The Pillars of The Earth — by Ken Follett
327. Dhalgren — by Samuel R. Delany
328. Swallows and Amazons — by Arthur Ransome
329. History of the Peloponnesian War — by Thucydides
330. The Picture of Dorian Gray — by Oscar Wilde
331. A handful of dust — by Evelyn Waugh
332. The Diary of a Nobody — by George Grossmith
333. The Stain — by Rikki Ducornet
334. Snow Country — by Yasunari Kawabata
335. The Bone People — by Keri Hulme
336. The God of Small Things — by Arundhati Roy
337. Zazie dans le Métro — by Raymond Queneau
338. Lord Jim — by Joseph Conrad
339. Neuromancer — by William Gibson
340. Treasure Island — by Robert Louis Stevenson
341. Ragtime — by E. L. Doctorow
342. The Kite Runner — by Khaled Hosseini
343. Confusion: The Private Papers of Privy Councillor R. von D. — by Stefan Zweig
344. A Wizard of Earthsea — by Ursula K. Le Guin
345. The Warden — by Anthony Trollope
346. The Riddle of the Sands — by Erskine Childers
347. Gormenghast — by Mervyn Peake
348. The Secret History — by Donna Tartt
349. Lookout Cartridge — by Joseph McElroy
350. The Shell Seekers — by Rosamunde Pilcher
351. The BFG — by Roald Dahl
352. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich — by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
353. The Heart of the Matter — by Graham Greene
354. Call it Sleep — by Henry Roth
355. Bonjour Tristesse — by Françoise Sagan
356. Sophie’s World — by Jostein Gaarder
357. The Da Vinci Code — by Dan Brown
358. The Sot-Weed Factor — by John Barth
359. Le Silence de La Mer — by Vercors
360. Bridget Jones’s Diary — by Helen Fielding
361. Deliverance — by James Dickey
362. Genoa — by Paul Metcalf
363. Snow Falling on Cedars — by David Guterson
 
 
I love to hear from you!  From the above list:
  • Which books have you read?
  • Which books do you want to read?
  • Which books are you going to obtain this week?(Even if you are not officially taking the Read More Books challenge I would love to hear about your reading.)

Note: I got permission to share this list on my blog. (Thank you, Stuart!) You could go HERE for the list of “623 of the best books ever written” and see them all at once for yourself, and/or you can follow the list here a few at a time.

There will not be a book list next week because on November 28 we get to read the next installment of Sue Harrison’s writers workshop. This gives us an extra week for reading until week 8’s book reading challenge on December 5.

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! :)

 

Ideas that sometimes work

Not much to tell today.

I have not been feeling well this week (since Sunday), but today I’m better than I have been. It’s my week at Dad’s and I’ve been keeping my distance as much as possible, very grateful for the help we have coming in here.

*sigh*  Even though all the above is true, I can’t use that as an excuse for not writing. It’s a shame, too, because I can really build on that! I actually have quite an active imagination. Well, I have been writing, just not anything worth mentioning on my novel – only a few words. I did add a third idea for yesterday and one today for PiBoIdMo. That gives me 29 ideas by day 20. Yay! A few of them might even be good enough to work into manuscripts. There’s one I particularly like about gum. (Remember, this is for picture books. 🙂 )

I have all kinds of ideas, really. My mind seems to be working all the time, it’s just that I don’t always pay attention to what is going on in there. You know … I see but I don’t observe, I hear but I don’t listen, I go about my day filtering out way too much. I have to focus on taking in more little things that can add up to big things, little things that usually go unnoticed, such as the sound and appearance of water dripping, how snow flurries swirl around in the wind, what the little birds are pecking at or where the squirrel is hiding the peanuts. Things that we see but don’t pay much attention to can work into stories that fascinate a child. By the middle of PiBoIdMo (Note #35 on my blog list) I am thinking more that way again.  (Thanks, Tara!)

piboidmo2013-lightbulb-happy-200x254

Have you noticed something that you had not paid attention to before, something that grew into a big idea for a story of some kind?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings!

Are you stuck somewhere in your NaNo Novel? Need some help?

It is no secret I’ve been stuck in my Nano novel for most of this month … stuck in that I have not written to bring my story to a satisfactory end. I stopped last November at a place where the reader should be eager to turn the page to see what comes next. My sister was when she read my very rough unedited first draft after the last NaNoWriMo ended. In fact, she told me she was perplexed and wondering where is the rest of it! She thought I had skipped a page in my binder — I write longhand — but no, it just wasn’t there. I had purposely stopped there, unsure how the story would proceed, anyway, but I had run out of November and had to lay down my pen to finalize my word count.  I left off where a mystery box had been discovered. “Laurice took the key, put it into the keyhole, and turned. It clicked.”  You see why she was perplexed? There was such a tension build-up to this point, and then … nothing more to read. Mean me. 😉

piboidmo2013-lightbulb-unsure-200x254

Now, here I am with less than two weeks to go in NaNo 2013 and I still don’t know how to end this story, or how to move from the cliffhanger and on toward the solved mystery and sensible end. I’m sure it is there waiting to be found, I just have to LISTEN and write what I hear and see.

I tend to be a very visual person; I often see words as they are spoken, and when I write I see what I hear in my mind – not only in words but in scenes. Sometimes I see it and then have to listen for the words to go with it. Is that bizarre?

I thought maybe someone else might be in the same predicament – stuck in their NaNo novel (or any writing they’re trying to work through) – so on the odd chance one of my readers fits that category I am posting here something that might help you. I’m even testing it out right now.

Are you a writer who likes background noise or do you prefer absolute quiet? Do you like the murmur of voices or it is music that helps you write? I have, during the past NaNos, usually preferred QUIET but sometimes low instrumental music or some other nice calming music. Nature sounds come to mind. Somewhere, was it on the NaNoWriMo website? I can’t recall, I found Coffitivity – a free link for people who would like to do their writing in coffee shops or cafes but can have the same background ‘noise’ without going there. What you get is the sound of people talking and laughing but you don’t ever catch what they’re saying, so there is no distraction of conversation. It’s a constant hum and rise and fall of voices along with the occasional clink of a cup or spoon or the clatter of dishes being cleared. Interesting, but it has been proven to actually help people in their creative thought. It seems there is a level of such sound that doesn’t hinder but helps people think better. Of course it doesn’t work that way for everyone, but if you are stuck give it a try!

This morning two of my girls were chatting about their cats, comparing notes and cutesy things they do, which gave me Idea #25 for PiBoIdMo! Yeah! Just now something happened here at Dad’s regarding a chiming clock and my daughter taking a picture of it, and her tale of woe regarding a mouse … ideas #26 and #27! Gosh! I’m on a roll~ Maybe this link works! or my daughters inspire me.   Yeah, that. 🙂

And now my post for NaBloPoMo is done. On to NaNoWriMo with the hope I can break through the block and help my characters find the resolution to their dilemmas. And mine!

piboidmo2013-lightbulb-laugh-200x254

If you try Coffitivity, please let me know does it work for you? What tricks do you use to help you write?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings!  🙂

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s quote – one worth pondering

“She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it).”
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

 

I read the above quote recently and saved it because it seemed a good one to ponder. As a young girl I read Alice in Wonderland more than once. At the time this quote didn’t set itself apart but reading it again I can relate to it.

I quite often give very good advice  – to others and myself. None of us give my advice the full respect it deserves.

The advice I give myself most often leans heavily toward being more organized and on schedule. It doesn’t work out very well, though, mostly because I balk at being stuck in routine. I like my routine to have wide boundaries, flimsy (pliable) structure for when I feel like changing things up, and varied so that I … don’t feel stuck.

Does that make me a bit of a rebel? Perhaps. But maybe that is why I like to NOT be like everybody else. Not too different and out there, but not a carbon copy of everything around me. 

How about you? Do you – like Alice – give yourself very good advice? And do you follow it? Or do you find yourself chasing the white rabbit now and again, just trying to find out what oddity lies ahead? 

Nano at a standstill; one more idea for PiBoIdMo making my total 24 ideas for day 18.

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings!

Who was born on your birthday?

My writing update: the usual ‘nothing more’ for NaNo, but I got one more idea for PiBoIdMo today, making my total 23 ideas for day 17.

piboidmo2013-lightbulb-happy-200x254

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve still got the ‘warm fuzzies’ from the love that came my way on my special day, including e-cards, emails, phone calls, a parcel in the mail – some of them a little early which adds to the fun. Because I’m still on a bit of an emotional high from all the festivities Saturday, I would like to tell you about a link I found awhile ago.

It’s called:  Who was born on your birthday?

When you click on the link above and enter your birthday month and date it will bring up names of famous people born on your birthday. It also will show the year of their birth.

For mine, November 16, I learned of four famous people born on that date:

Who was born on your birthday?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings!  🙂

 

 

Birthday surprises!

Nothing to report regarding NaNo, but I have added one more idea to my PiBoIdMo list of ideas now totalling 22 on day 16.

Today when I got up I walked into the living-room and there were … um …  many…  pink balloons tied up by pink cord and strung in the living-room and dining-room. My husband got them put up as a birthday surprise for me.

My sister and I went to a wonderful craft fair this morning where I bought a few Christmas presents. Then later my family had a birthday supper for me at Dad’s … thirteen of us there … and lots of special birthday balloons, bouquets of flowers, cards and gifts. The one they all contributed to is an album full of pictures and memories. They had me crying from the start when I first opened the album. There were pictures of Mum and me; Mum passed away five days after Christmas of 1997. Each page was for a member of my family .. and me. So sweet and special. I love them all! Plus, we face-timed with my daughter who lives in Alberta, so she was part of it with us.

Today was a special birthday and a very special day. 🙂

Do you have special days like that?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings!

 

Longhand or computer?

It is late. I will be “calling it a day” soon .. another day in which I got no writing done. I feel as if I have this dark cloud around me through which I get little glimmers of inspiration … but not enough to motivate me. blah! Some would call it writer’s block, but I call it oppressive tiredness. I hope tomorrow (my new year) is better!

NaNo novel — zilch for yesterday and today.

PiBoIdMo – one idea for yesterday and one for today = 21 ideas so far

Here is a better link than the one I posted a couple of days ago, and what I was wanting. Thanks, Jamie! The link I posted stopped working, anyway. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/  On this one you’ll find a new picture daily.

I have some questions for you writers.

  • When you are working on your story, do you write longhand or do you type?
  • If longhand, do you use pen or pencil?
  • If you type, do you strictly use a computer? did you ever use a typewriter?

I write longhand, usually using a pen. I have yet to type the very lengthy very rough draft of my novel over onto computer. That is going to take a long time to do!

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings!  🙂