Southern France 2014: At the end of the laneway to our gite; the village of Nougein
Saturday Snapshot is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads. To participate in Saturday Snapshot: post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken and then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky at West Metro Mommy Reads.
This week’s word is one that most people are familiar with, but rarely use. In Carol Shields’ Swann: a Literary Mystery
Of course, it’s not a particularly common word. One could go years and years without hearing it. But still he should not have forgotten.
The sporran (/ˈspɒrən/; Scottish Gaelic for “purse”), a traditional part of male Scottish Highland dress, is a pouch that performs the same function as pockets on the pocketless kilt.
Made of leather or fur, the ornamentation of the sporran is chosen to complement the formality of dress worn with it. The sporran is worn on a leather strap or chain, conventionally positioned in front of the groin of the wearer.
When was the last time you used the word sporran?
Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where you can share new words that you’ve encountered or spotlight words you love. It’s hosted by Kathy at Bermuda Onion. Hop on over and see what wondrous words other bloggers have discovered this week.
P.S. The links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.
Southern France 2014: Cows in the yard, in the heart of the village.
Saturday Snapshot is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads. To participate in Saturday Snapshot: post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken and then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky at West Metro Mommy Reads.
Book Beginnings on Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. Hop on over there to get a linky to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.
Opening sentences from Hooperman: a Bookstore Mystery by John M. Daniel
Hooperman Johnson, a tall, skinny, bushy-bearded man of few words, lived that spring and summer of 1972 in a rented room with a bed, a table, and no phone over the ‘At’s Amore Pizza Palace on University Avenue in Palo Alto, California.
My thoughts: Whew! His life story in one sentence. I’m not asking if I should read on, because there’s no way you could stop me. 1972? I remember it well.
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Here’s an entry from page 56 of Hooperman:
“You guys aren’t shipping out as much as you were when that other guy was in charge.”
“That right?” Hoop asked.
“Usually be a box or two every day for the Returns Center. I guess you guys aren’t returning as many books nowadays. I guess that’s a good sign.
“Retu,turns Center? What’s that?”
“You tell me,” Mitch said. “it’s your store, guy. I’m just a mailman.”
My thoughts: This sounds a little sinister to me, so I’m looking for a mystery here. This is first up on my Kindle so I’ll be able to let you know!
The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice.The only rules are to grab a book (any book), turn to page 56 (or 56% in your ereader) and find any sentence or a few (no spoilers) that grabs you and post it.
What do you think? Would you enjoy this book?
P.S. The links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.
This week’s word comes from the first in the Rare Book Murder series, The Dirty Book Murder. The protagonist is visiting his favourite Irish pub:
An informal seisún began in a corner with a fiddler, a bodhran player, and a girl with a pennywhistle. They played “The Bold Fenian Men” and followed that with “Black and Tan” to put the crowd in a fine rebel mood.
seisún: a mostly informal gathering at which people play Irish traditional music. From the Irish sheisiún: session; from Old French session, from Latin sessiō (“a sitting”), from sedeō (“sit”).
bodhran /ˈbôˌrän,-rən/: a shallow one-sided Irish drum typically played with a short two-headed drumstick. Origin: Irish bodhrán. The first known use is 1972.
Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where you can share new words that you’ve encountered or spotlight words you love. It’s hosted by Kathy at Bermuda Onion. Hop on over and see what wondrous words other bloggers have discovered this week.
P.S. The links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.
Southern France – shouldn’t that be ARRÊTEZ?
Saturday Snapshot is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads. To participate in Saturday Snapshot: post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken and then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky at West Metro Mommy Reads.
Book Beginnings on Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. Hop on over there to get a linky to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.
Opening sentences from The Third Son by Julie Wu
My journey began when the Americans bombed us, in 1943, because it was during the bombings that I met the girl.
I was eight years old.
My thoughts: What do you think? Should I read on?
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The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice.The only rules are to grab a book (any book), turn to page 56 (or 56% in your ereader) and find any sentence or a few (no spoilers) that grabs you and post it.
Here’s an entry from page 56 of The Third Son:
I had never known how hard the ground could be.
Oh, wow – that could be the middle of so many things! I am intrigued. What do you think?
P.S. The links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.
This week’s word comes from the first in the Rare Book Murder series, The Dirty Book Murder. And it’s a lovely “book word”.
“There were thirty more books in the two boxes, all related to travel, adventure, or sporting activities such as hunting and fishing. I didn’t expect to find any incunabula, but these beautifully bound editions covered a period from the mid-eighteenth century to the early nineteenth that was in a price zone I could afford.”
incunabula: books produced before 1501, in the earliest stages of printing from movable type.
Incunabula (pronounced in-kyoo-nab-yuh-la) is plural; the singular, of course, is incunabulum. The word originated about 1815-25 and is derived from the Latin: straps holding a baby in a cradle, probably equivalent to *incūnā (re) to place in a cradle + -bula, plural of -bulum
Do you have any other “book words” to share?
Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where you can share new words that you’ve encountered or spotlight words you love. It’s hosted by Kathy at Bermuda Onion. Hop on over and see what wondrous words other bloggers have discovered this week.
P.S. The links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.
This link-up is hosted by Books Are My Favourite and Best, and was inspired by Hungarian writer and poet Frigyes Karinthy. In his 1929 short story, “Chains”, Karinthy coined the phrase ‘six degrees of separation’. The phrase was popularized by a 1990 play written by John Guare, which was later made into a film starring Stockard Channing.
On the first Saturday of every month, Kate chooses a book as a starting point and links that book to six others forming a chain. Bloggers and readers are invited to join in and the beauty of this mini-challenge is that I can decide how and why I make the links in my chain.
May’s starting book is Perfume – the Story of a Murderer.
1. I haven’t read Perfume but I understand that it is translated from German, as is Thomas Mann’s classic of modern literature, The Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family, first published in Germany in 1900. I read this in my pre-blogging days for our local book club, The Loquacious Compendium.
2. The Mountain and the Valley by Ernest Buckler, a modern classic in its own right, also documents the decline of a family over three generations of farming people in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia. The tale culminates in the story of David Canaan who wants to leave the family farm to devote himself to writing.
3. Loyal Blood, the main character in Annie Proulx’ Postcards also leaves the farm – this one in post WWII Vermont, and for an entirely different reason. Loyal has unintentionally killed his fiancee – the literal girl next door, hastily buried her body, and fled in the night leaving a note to say that he and she have run off together. Afraid to ever leave a trail, over the years Loyal sends heart-wrenching barely-literate postcards from across the USA to his family, but remains unable to receive news from them.
4. The postcards in Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence are of a different type. They are part of an artistic correspondence documented in this incredibly imagined & illustrated book. (Click on the title to see my 2012 review.
5. The topic of illustration put me in mind of The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury which I also reviewed in 2012.
6. And Bradbury leads me to my sixth and last link in the chain: Dandelion Wine, Bradbury’s enchanting tale of twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding and the summer of 1928. I read (and reread) and loved this book as a teenager. It holds its magic still.
So that’s my chain: not as strong as I’d like but leading from the slums of 18th century France to the small town of Green Town, Illinois two centuries later. Do you have any suggestions for me? Why not visit Kate’s blog and see how she made the final connection to The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters.
P.S. The links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.
Book Beginnings on Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. Hop on over there to get a linky to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.
Opening sentence from The Automobile Club of Egypt by Alaa Al Aswany:
My wife finally understood I needed some time on my own . . .
My thoughts: hmmm – what’s he up to? Would you read on?
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The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice.The only rules are to grab a book (any book), turn to page 56 (or 56% in your ereader) and find any sentence or a few (no spoilers) that grabs you and post it.
Here’s an entry from page 56 of The Automobile Club of Egypt:
My life stretched before me like a long road, but I could see where it led. Then, suddenly, it changed course. It is strange how that can happen unexpectedly due to some small matter or a passing word, going down some street at a particular hour or turning right instead of left or appearing late for work and bumping into someone–any such thing has the potential to change everything.
Intriguing! What are your thoughts?
P.S. The links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This is the first time I’ve joined in and I picked a week with a topic that I’ve struggled with. The Broke and the Bookish explain that these characters might be someone I’d like to read about in a novella or something to see what they grew up to be. I couldn’t get to ten – but I got half-way!
1. Rush Melendy, one of the four Melendy children whose story I read and reread in Elizabeth Enright’s The Saturdays, The Four-Story Mistake, and Then There Were Five. I loved all the Melendys but I had a real crush on Rush, right into my teens.
Never mind the novella: I’d like to meet him in person and catch up with what he and his siblings (Mona, Randy & Oliver) have been doing for the last 50 years!
2. Trixie Belden, young heroine of the eponymous series, only 13 books long (the first six by Julie Campbell, and the next seven by Kathryn Kenny) when I was young and reading them. but since taken into syndication. Trixie and I were soul-mates, except that she was athletic, had big brothers, and had rich friends. Okay – I liked to solve mysteries, neither of us were rich, and I thought she was down-to-earth. That’s more of a connection than I made with Nancy Drew.
And, again, never mind the book, I’d like to have dinner with the older Trixie and find out about her brothers, Brian, Mart and Bobby, and her friends Honey Wheeler, Jim Frayne and Diana Lynch.
3. Holly Hollister of the Happy Hollisters series by Jerry West. (Again, the series was a lot shorter in the early ’60s.) There were five kids in the Hollister family (just like mine!) and we grew up in the same era. I should have identified with Pam because she was the oldest, but Holly had braids just like mine.
I’d love to read a novella set in the ’80s and then present day to see how they all turned out.
4. Nan and Burt Bobbsey, the older set of Laura Lee Hope’s Bobbsey twins. I suppose I could hear about how Freddie and Flossie made out too.
The first 15 original Bobbsey Twins books were published between 1904 and 1922 (on Kindle for .77 cents) so I guess something set between 1950 and 1980 would catch them up.
5. Laura Ingalls Wilder from her own Little House series. This one’s a little trickier because Laura was a real person and we know how her life turned out. But rather than read what someone else has said, I’d like to have had her version of events after The First Four Years.
So that’s all I could come up with. Who have I missed? Who from your childhood reading would you like to catch up with?
P.S. The links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.
