Tag: Books

Experience the power of BookBooks!

I think I’m back in fashion! You know, if you hold onto things long enough, they come back into trend?

Today I am sharing with you a You.Tube video .. an IKEA ad .. that is so well done. It’s both amusing and right on the mark. I hope you enjoy it.

Click here for the VIDEO and experience the power of bookbooks and join the revolution.

Now, what do you think? Are YOU back in fashion, too?  🙂

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 

Can you help me find a book?

When I was a little girl (many years ago) in elementary school we didn’t have a local library. The bookmobile is what I remember, and for the small, very shy young girl I was, it was scary and intimidating. The other children were excited to climb on board, pushing their way to the shelves of books, but I would hang back in awe and hesitation.

When I was successfully coaxed into the bus with the other children, the smell of those many books captivated me. How would I ever choose a book? What did I even look for on those floor to ceiling shelves? Oh my! It was amazing and overwhelming.

I wish I could recall the name of the book I was given to read and that I grew to love. Being a slow reader at that time, devouring every word and scene and visualizing everything as I went along, the book I borrowed I never got to finish. It had to go back after awhile so others could enjoy it. What a disappointment! I don’t think it ever came back around to my school, although I timidly asked several times.

Even yet, how much I wish I could find that book again. Now I wonder if I were to put out my very vague descriptions is there anyone out there who will take what I can share and know what I am talking about?

It could be that my memories are of two books combined in my mind, two books that stirred up my imagination and wonder. Here’s all I can remember of them now: 

  • a child looking at herself in the mirror discovered the child looking back at her was not really herself but someone else, and seeing her from a different world she could come to her through the mirror. It seems to me that meant trouble, mischief, but I can’t recall what happened.
  • I think – maybe  in another book – there was a peculiar little man who came to help care for children and he could fly somehow and take them on adventures. He also was dearly loved by the children because he was fun and safe and adventurous. His name may have begun with a P .. but I’m unsure about that;
  • I think the children’s parents would not always agree with what he allowed, even though it was not dangerous or anything;
  • He also only stayed a certain amount of time and then had to move on, maybe because the children had outgrown him so he was going to others to care for them.

Does any of this sound familiar? Oh, how I wish I could remember what those book titles were! I would so love to find them now, especially the one about Mister … somebody, but with only the above to go by it is probably impossible. I have more impressions than memories I can put into words about it. Know what I mean?

If you think you might be able to help me I would be delighted! and very happy. 🙂 Please let me know.

Is there a book you wish you could find from … way back when?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings!  🙂

‘Read More Books’ challenge: Week 3: 104-155 of the list of 623 best books ever!

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

Read HERE to learn about it. It’s not too late to join in.

Check WEEK ONE and WEEK TWO of the list.

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.

NOTE: Next Thursday, Part 10 of Sue Harrison’s writers workshop will be the highlight. Come back October 31 for part four of the reading challenge. This gives you more time to read until the next list of books. 🙂

Here is week three’s list:

104. The Heart is A Lonely Hunter — by Carson McCullers
105. Vanity Fair — by William Makepeace Thackeray
106. Commedia — by Dante Alighieri
107. The Count of Monte Cristo — by Alexandre Dumas
108. An American Tragedy — by Theodore Dreiser
109. White Noise — by Don DeLillo
110. The World According to Garp — by John Irving
111. Atonement — by Ian McEwan
112. Nostromo — by Joseph Conrad
113. The House of Mirth — by Edith Wharton
114. The Brothers Karamazov — by Fyodor Dostoevsky
115. The Good Soldier — by Ford Madox Ford
116. The Name of the Rose — by Umberto Eco
117. The Shipping News — by Annie Proulx
118. The Woman in White — by Wilkie Collins
119. Herzog — by Saul Bellow
120. The Counterfeiters — by Andre Gide
121. My Antonia — by Willa Cather
122. Scoop — by Evelyn Waugh
123. A Room with a View — by E. M. Forster
124. Bible: King James Version
125. Wide Sargasso Sea — by Jean Rhys
126. Love in The Time of Cholera — by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
127. The Remains of the day — by Kazuo Ishiguro
128. The Big Sleep — by Raymond Chandler
129. I, Claudius — by Robert Graves
130. Tropic of Cancer — by Henry Miller
131. Tender is the Night — by F. Scott Fitzgerald
132. Journey to the End of the Night — by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
133. The War of the Worlds — by H. G. Wells
134. A Suitable Boy — by Vikram Seth
135. Possession — by A. S. Byatt
136. A Confederacy of Dunces — by John Kennedy Toole
137. The Bell Jar — by Sylvia Plath
138. Waiting for Godot — by Samuel Beckett
139. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao — by Junot Diaz
140. Being and Nothingness — by Jean-Paul Sartre
141. A Thousand Acres — by Jane Smiley
142. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay — by Michael Chabon
143. The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation — by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
144. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — by Roald Dahl
145. Lady Chatterley’s Lover — by D. H. Lawrence
146. JR — by William Gaddis
147. The Histories — by Herodotus
148. Doctor Zhivago — by Boris Pasternak
149. Lucky Jim — by Kingsley Amis
150. Underworld — by Don DeLillo
151. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler — by Italo Calvino
152. Life — by Georges Perec
153. The Master and Margarita — by Mikhail Bulgakov
154. The Good Earth — by Pearl S. Buck
155. Henderson the Rain King — by Saul Bellow
 
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.

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

‘Read More Books’ Challenge: Week 2: 53-103 of the list of 623 of the best books ever!

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

Read HERE to learn about it. It’s not too late to join in.

Check WEEK ONE of the list if you missed it.

There were a few responses to week one’s challenge. 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.

Here is week two’s list of 52 books:

53. A Prayer for Owen Meany — by John Irving
54. Emma — by Jane Austen
55. David Copperfield — by Charles Dickens
56. The Portrait of a Lady — by Henry James
57. The Trial — by Franz Kafka
58. Crime and Punishment — by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
59. A Clockwork Orange — by Anthony Burgess
60. The Age of Innocence — by Edith Wharton
61. Don Quixote — by Miguel de Cervantes
62. As I Lay Dying — by William Faulkner
63. His Dark Materials — by Philip Pullman
64. Brideshead Revisited — by Evelyn Waugh
65. The Golden Notebook — by Doris Lessing
66. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — by Mark Twain
67. Things Fall Apart — by Chinua Achebe
68. Tom Jones — by Henry Fielding
69. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone — by J. K. Rowling
70. Song of Solomon — by Toni Morrison
71. Molloy; Malone Dies; The Unnamable — by Samuel Beckett
72. Finnegans Wake — by James Joyce
73. Absalom, Absalom! — by William Faulkner
74. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman — by Laurence Sterne
75. Charlotte’s Web — by E. B. White
76. The Ambassadors — by Henry James
77. Sons and Lovers — by D. H. Lawrence
78. A Farewell to Arms — by Ernest Hemingway
79. Women in Love — by D. H. Lawrence
80. Birdsong — by Sebastian Faulks
81. Gulliver’s Travels — by Jonathan Swift
82. Watership Down — by Richard Adams
83. Gravity’s Rainbow — by Thomas Pynchon
84. Frankenstein — by Mary Shelley
85. Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady — by Samuel Richardson
86. The Old Man and the Sea — by Ernest Hemingway
87. Dune — by Frank Herbert
88. The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe — by Daniel Defoe
89. Go Tell It on the Mountain — by James Baldwin
90. All the King’s Men — by Robert Penn Warren
91. The Magic Mountain — by Thomas Mann
92. The Call of the Wild — by Jack London
93. The Tin Drum — by Gunter Grass
94. The 42nd Parallel — by John Dos Passos
95. Under the Volcano — by Malcolm Lowry
96. Disgrace — by J. M. Coetzee
97. The Diary of a Young Girl — by Anne Frank
98. Bleak House — by Charles Dickens
99. Light in August — by William Faulkner
100. Scarlet Letter — by Nathaniel Hawthorne
101. Pale Fire — by Vladimir Nabokov
102. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin — by Louis de Bernieres
103. Howards End — by E. M. Forster
 
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.

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

‘Read More Books’ Challenge: Week 1: 1-52 of the list of 623 of the best books ever!

Are you ready for the challenge?

Thanks to Erik of This Kid Reviews Books, my challenge now has a name: Read More Books Challenge.

Please go to THIS SHORT POST first if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

MY OFFER

Because I know you love to read – or read and write – I have decided to give you the list I found, and I got permission to do so. (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.

The reason I thought you might enjoy the list in sections is so that you can see which ones you have already read – a few at a time – and then —

MY CHALLENGE

… you will have a week to buy or borrow the ones you want to read before my next installment of more of the list. I was going to divide it between six posts, but changed that to twelve posts because the shorter lists are easier to work with if you want to shop for a book each week. How’s that for a little incentive for those of us who can find time to read more often? Besides, it might be fun! 🙂 And who doesn’t appreciate an excuse to book shop?

Each Thursday I will post another portion of the list of “623 of the best books ever written” until we get to the end of twelve posts. NOTE: On the fourth Thursday of each month it will not be posted because we have Sue Harrison’s writers workshop that day – and I don’t want to mess with a good thing!

Here are the first 52 books of “623 of the best books ever written” as compiled and listed on a list of books website.

  1. The Great Gatsby — by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  2. The Grapes of Wrath — by John Steinbeck
  3. Nineteen Eighty-Four — by George Orwell
  4. Ulysses — by James Joyce
  5. Lolita — by Vladimir Nabokov
  6. Catch-22 — by Joseph Heller
  7. The Catcher in the Rye — by J. D. Salinger
  8. Beloved — by Toni Morrison
  9. The Sound and the Fury — by William Faulkner
  10. To Kill a Mockingbird — by Harper Lee
  11. The Lord of the Rings — by J. R. R. Tolkien
  12. One Hundred Years of Solitude — by Gabriel Garcia Márquez
  13. Brave New World — by Aldous Huxley
  14. To The Lighthouse — by Virginia Woolf
  15. Invisible Man — by Ralph Ellison
  16. Gone With The Wind — by Margaret Mitchell
  17. Jane Eyre — by Charlotte Brontë
  18. On The Road — by Jack Kerouac
  19. Pride and Prejudice — by Jane Austen
  20. Lord of the Flies — by William Golding
  21. Middle March — by George Eliot
  22. Anna Karenina — by Leo Tolstoy
  23. Animal Farm — by George Orwell
  24. A Passage to India — by E. M. Forster
  25. In Search of Lost Time — by Marcel Proust
  26. Wuthering Heights — by Emily Brontë
  27. The Chronicles of Narnia — by C. S. Lewis
  28. The Color Purple — by Alice Walker
  29. Midnight’s Children — by Salman Rushdie
  30. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man — by James Joyce
  31. Winnie-the-Pooh — by A. A. Milne
  32. Heart of Darkness — by Joseph Conrad
  33. Mrs Dalloway — by Virginia Woolf
  34. Slaughterhouse-Five — by Kurt Vonnegut
  35. War and Peace — by Leo Tolstoy
  36. Of Mice and Men — by John Steinbeck
  37. Moby-Dick — by Herman Melville
  38. Little Women — by Louisa Mae Alcott
  39. Native Son — by Richard Wright
  40. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — by Douglas Adams
  41. Great Expectations — by Charles Dickens
  42. The Sun Also Rises — by Ernest Hemingway
  43. Rebecca — by Daphne du Maurier
  44. The Stranger — by Albert Camus
  45. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass — by Lewis Carroll
  46. For Whom the Bell Tolls — by Ernest Hemingway
  47. The Hobbit — by J. R. R. Tolkien
  48. Madame Bovary — by Gustave Flaubert
  49. The Wind in the Willows — by Kenneth Grahame
  50. The Handmaid’s Tale — by Margaret Atwood
  51. Tess of the D’Urbervilles — by Thomas Hardy
  52. Their Eyes Were Watching God — by Zora Neale Hurston

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 taking the challenge I would love to hear about your reading.)

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Are you up for a reading challenge?

Are you up for a challenge?

As you may know …

I   love   books.   I love to read books.   I love to collect books to read.

MY DISCOVERY

This week, when I did a search for the best books ever, I found a website with lists of books. Only lists of books!

Books you can’t live without.

Books that are best sellers.

Books that are the greatest of all time.

The list consists of a compilation of 13 lists of top 100 books, a list totalling 623 books! (It’s the odd number 623 because some titles were on more than one list so only mentioned once when the lists were condensed into one. Make sense?)

NOTE: Unfortunately, most of the 623 books are more for adults and only a few are for young readers.

I was disappointed and a little surprised to discover I have read only 21 books on that combined list! But, there are a few books I had started and didn’t finish (I have to dig those ones out and start over) and there are many more I want to read. 

I would be interested in knowing how you size up when it comes to what on the list you have read and if you plan to read others on there. Sooooo …. I decided to offer you a challenge!  Yes, a reading challenge!  Are you up for it?

Starting October 3, once a week a new part of the list will be here for you to see and let me know how you are doing. Until then I will be getting those posts of lists ready and scheduled. I also have set up the Milestone widget so you can see the notice and reminders of upcoming installments, and I will include links each week to past posts of the list in case you miss any.

I know this time of year is very busy for most of us, and I think we have to learn to de-stress. When you need a break for a little time to yourself what is better than curling up with a good book … even for fifteen minutes or half an hour?

Now that I think about it, I should take on this challenge myself! I have so many books on hand to read and some of them are on the list I will be sharing with you. Shall we do it?

Who is willing to join me in this reading challenge?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

It’s Banned Books Week: here’s a list of 100 banned books

This is Banned Books Week. It seems the last time I posted anything about this was in 2010, so I think it is time to mention it again with a list of 100 banned books. I know if a book is banned … or challenged, as it is usually called in the USA … it is drawn into focus more than it would have been if left alone.

The following paragraph and list is from modernlibrary.com which you may wish to check out.

On July 21, 1998, the Radcliffe Publishing Course compiled and released its own list of the century’s top 100 novels, at the request of the Modern Library editorial board.

  1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
  6. Ulysses by James Joyce
  7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
  8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
  9. 1984 by George Orwell
  10. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
  11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
  12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
  13. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
  14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
  15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
  16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  17. Animal Farm by George Orwell
  18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
  19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
  20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
  21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
  22. Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
  23. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
  24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
  25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
  26. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
  27. Native Son by Richard Wright
  28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
  29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
  31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
  32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
  33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
  34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
  35. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
  36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
  37. The World According to Garp by John Irving
  38. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
  39. A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
  40. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
  41. Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally
  42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
  43. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
  44. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
  45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
  46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
  47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
  48. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
  49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
  50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
  51. My Antonia by Willa Cather
  52. Howards End by E.M. Forster
  53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
  54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
  55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
  56. Jazz by Toni Morrison
  57. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
  58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
  59. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
  60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
  61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
  62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
  64. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
  65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
  66. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
  67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
  68. Light in August by William Faulkner
  69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
  70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
  71. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
  72. A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
  73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
  74. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
  75. Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
  76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
  77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
  78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Tokias by Gertrude Stein
  79. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
  80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
  81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
  82. White Noise by Don DeLillo
  83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
  84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
  85. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
  86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
  87. The Bostonians by Henry James
  88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
  89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
  90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
  91. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
  93. The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
  94. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
  95. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
  96. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
  98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster
  99. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
  100. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

For someone who loves to read my record is poor: six I have read, seven I have seen as movies, eight I have on hand to read – four of those I started.

Have you read any of these? Do you agree with any of them being banned, or do you believe banning books is a bad practice?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂