Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Le Jardin du Luxembourg



Le Jardin du Luxembourg (June 2010)

Le Jardin du Luxembourg (painting at the Louvre)


For more wordless photos, go to Wordless Wednesday.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by West Metro Mommy ReadsTo 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.

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where we share new (to us) words
that we’ve encountered in our reading.
If you want to play along, grab the button,
write a post and come back and add your link to Mr. Linky at Bermuda Onion!


Book Characters Who Are Readers, Too

I've been reading since I was two years old. My favorite friends in the real world have often been my fellow readers. It seems natural that I would adore book characters who are readers, too.

Here are some of my favorites:




The Old Lady Who Loved to Read





Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird





Jo March in Little Women





Anne of Green Gables





Matilda





Don Quixote





Klaus Baudelaire in A Series of Unfortunate Events





Emma Bovary


Charles Wallace in A Wrinkle in Time





Guy Montag in Fahrenheit 451






Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list that one of our bloggers here at The Broke and the Bookish will answer. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND add your name to the Linky widget so that everyone can check out other bloggers lists! If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Have fun with it! It's a fun way to get to know your fellow bloggers.

Sunday, July 26, 2015

Off to Yellowstone!

I'm headed to Yellowstone Park on Tuesday. I worked in the park forty years ago, so this is a highly anticipated return visit. I'll be gone for most of the next two weeks, but I hope to blog a bit while I'm off in the wilds of Wyoming. For now, I've reviewed everything I've read recently.


What I Finished Recently






covertitleauthorreview
New Slow City: Living Simply in the World's Fastest City
In New Slow City, William Powers, after living happily and simply in a twelve-by-twelve cabin (a story recounted in the appropriately named Twelve-by-...more 

Troy
I started out a little hesitant about this story. I wasn't sure what I thought about the oh-so-human gods popping into the story, but it gradually wor...more 

Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That's Transforming Education
Ken Robinson is determined to help education, and I think Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That's Transforming Education is his best effort...more 

O's Little Book of Happiness
O's Little Book of Happiness is exactly what the title states: little stories about everyday happinesses. I swear that I could physically feel little ...more 

Eight Hundred Grapes
Eight hundred grapes. That’s how many grapes it takes to make a bottle of wine. Georgia Ford should know this; she grew up in her family’s vineyard. A...more 

Lists of Note
It doesn’t get better than this: a collection of memorable and not-so-memorable lists, clever and pedestrian lists, surprising and poignant lists from ...more 

In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette
Is In the Kingdom of Ice the best nonfiction I’ve read this year? you ask.

It just might be.

But how can that be? you continue. Didn’t you also read t
 ...more 


Crêpes by Suzette‎
It was the Paris setting that persuaded me to review my first-ever book app.

Crêpes by Suzette is a book app that was developed from
the children's pic
 ...more 


Go Set a Watchman
I’ll go ahead and say it: I like it. Of course I am disappointed in Atticus; on the other hand, he is a bit more human. Of course I see that the writi ...more 

Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris
If you have never had the experience of reading the prose of one of those old, amazing newspapermen, Liebling is your fellow. And where does he take y...more 
Paris by Pastry: Stalking the Sweet Life on the Streets of Paris
Do you need a guide to the best pastries of Paris? There can be no guide more complete than this one. Mind the copyright date, of course, but give thi...more 

The Little Paris Bookshop
Sometimes books are begun with a fabulous idea. That, I think, is the way this one began. Here’s the idea: A man sells therapeutic books from his boat...more 

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (The Wolves Chronicles, #1)
Whew. Wolves attacking railway cars. Wolves attacking people. Wolves everywhere.

But that’s just one plot point and it’s not the main one. The main sto
 ...more


Harriet the Spy (Harriet the Spy #1)
Harriet loves to write down everything in her notebook. Some of it is nice. Some of it is not-so-nice.

And then Harriet loses her notebook.

And then Ha
 ...more 


Find the Good: Unexpected Life Lessons from a Small-Town Obituary Writer
Heather Lende writes obituaries in her little town in Alaska. Through interviewing the deceased’s survivors, Lende has learned all the important thing ...more 

Rising Strong
Brene Brown has stoked up the conversation about the power of vulnerability. In Rising Strong, Brown reminds us of the downside of vulnerability: when...more 

Anna, Banana, and the Monkey in the Middle (Anna, Banana book 2)
Oh my. Here we go...imagine this: a children’s story in which the main characters have a conflict and they (are you ready?) work. it. out. themselves....more 

The Summer of Good Intentions
I can’t remember when I have ever read a book in which the characters all work out their difficulties by talking about their problems together and try...more 

What are you reading today?!



What is the Sunday SalonImagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them,and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....That's what happens at the Sunday Salon, except it's all virtual. Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon get together--at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones--and read. And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs. Think of it as an informal, weekly, mini read-a-thon, an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities and fall into a good book. Click here to join the Salon.

The Sunday Post is a meme hosted by Kimba at Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It's a chance to share news and recap the past week.


Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Repas Préférés in France (Favorite Meals in France)



Picnic at the Eiffel Tower

Home cooked meal in Provence

Meal with Louise in Paris

Cafe in Paris

For more wordless photos, go to Wordless Wednesday.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by West Metro Mommy ReadsTo 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.

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where we share new (to us) words
that we’ve encountered in our reading.
If you want to play along, grab the button,
write a post and come back and add your link to Mr. Linky at Bermuda Onion!

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Reading Books that Celebrate Diversity: Let's Not Be Blinkered

It's easy to become insular. Insular, as in "ignorant of or uninterested in cultures, ideas, or peoples outside one's own experience." Insular, with synonyms of "narrow-minded, small-minded, inward-looking, parochial, provincial, small-town, shortsighted, hidebound, blinkered." Shudder. Certainly not what we readers want to be.

Just as it's comfortable to stay in one's own small world, it's comfortable to stay in one's own small book world. But, oh, what we miss when we do.

I joined a challenge several years ago to move me out of that comfort zone: Around the World in 80 Books. I'm close to my goal; I've read books from seventy-one different countries. During this challenge I've visited not only places with which I'm somewhat familiar like Canada and Mexico, but I've also traveled to places I had only the vaguest notion of, including Borneo and Iceland and Cameroon.

If you are like me and want to get out of your cultural comfort zone, here are some books I recommend:



We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevich (Rwanda)



The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera (New Zealand)



Independent People by Halldor Laxness (Iceland)



Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry (India)



An Evening Among Headhunters by Lawrence Millman (Tonga)



Dreamers by Knut Hamsun (Norway)



A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park (Korea)



The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany (Egypt)



Place Where the Sea Remembers by Sandra Benitez (Mexico)



The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu (Ethiopia)



“I am only one, but I am one. I can't do everything, but I can do something." 

                                                         ---Edward Everett Hale 





Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list that one of our bloggers here at The Broke and the Bookish will answer. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND add your name to the Linky widget so that everyone can check out other bloggers lists! If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Have fun with it! It's a fun way to get to know your fellow bloggers.

Sunday, July 19, 2015

Continuons à Lire Paris!







What I Read Last Week


I spent most of last week in Paris:
The Little Paris Bookshop
Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris
Paris by Pastry 


What Arrived in the Mail



 Two new early chapter books: Anna, Banana, and the Friendship Split
and Anna, Banana, and the Monkey in the Middle

One perfect-for-summer novel: The Summer of Good Intentions



What I'm Reading Now

  
The new Brene Brown book, Rising Strong,
and the new Harper Lee book (who'd have ever thought I'd be saying that!)

                   



What are you reading today?!






And I hope you'll stop by and throw your name in the hat
to win a finished hardback of Eight Hundred Grapes 
along with a clever little EHG coffee mug. 
Stop by here to win!





What is the Sunday SalonImagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them,and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....That's what happens at the Sunday Salon, except it's all virtual. Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon get together--at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones--and read. And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs. Think of it as an informal, weekly, mini read-a-thon, an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities and fall into a good book. Click here to join the Salon.

The Sunday Post is a meme hosted by Kimba at Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It's a chance to share news and recap the past week.

Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia at The Printed Page. We share books that we found in our mailboxes last week.  It is now being hosted here.

Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews in which you can share the books you've acquired.