Good morning, readers and book lovers! We have no contributing diarist this morning, so we’ll have an open forum instead. But before we begin with today’s burning question, please allow me to point out that November contains five Fridays and this is the second of them. A member has kindly volunteered to contribute a diary for November 29th, so we need diaries for November 15th and 22nd.
But everyone else--swallow those energy pills, throw the TV out the window, and unhook the wi-fi connection so you can write a diary about a book that changed your life! Here’s how:
In the first paragraph, all you need to do is introduce the title of the book and the author, and mention the circumstances in which you encountered it—did you buy it, borrow it, or receive it as a gift? How old were you? Were you at school still or working?
In the second paragraph, you could provide a quote from the book, or briefly describe the contents, or tell something about the author. If it’s a classic and has been reproduced on line as part of The Gutenberg Project, you could provide a link. Or if there’s an entry in Wikipedia about it, you could link to that.
In the third paragraph, you would state how reading the book changed your life—by making you aware of politics, or history, or seeing the world beyond your own cosmos of home, family, friends, and school, or thinking about things in a new way.
You will need to add at least three tags to the bottom of your diary: Readers and Book Lovers, R&BLers, and Books That Changed My Life. Feel free to add more, according to your subject.
So which book changed YOUR life?
The Anarchist's Cookbook? REALLY? Oh, wait, no, perhaps you really meant
The Dangerous Book for Boys. You can talk about any book, even
The Care and Feeding of Dragons.
Please kosmail me and tell me you’ll do a diary in November so this series won’t shrivel and die like the zinnias out back!
For breakfast this morning, as we’re now in November, how about “Morning-After Cranberry Muffins”? I plot and scheme all during Thanksgiving week to have enough cranberry sauce left over to make these for the morning of Black Friday. The recipe ends with this instruction: “Break off that seductive muffin top and inhale the rest!” What’s not to like about that? You’ll find butter, vegan margarine, and cream cheese over there in the corner by the muffin basket, and coffee (Pumpkin Spice) in the urn in the corner. There’s half-and-half, soymilk, Stevia, and demerara sugar too, according to your preference. Help yourself and enjoy!
Now, let’s say it’s Saturday afternoon. You’ve completed all your Saturday morning chores. There is nothing further to do in the garden, because you’ve already taken care of everything; or if you live in an apartment, you’ve done everything possible for your plants, including bringing them in, covering their little bottoms, and trimming their hair.
So now as the shadows lengthen and you begin to think of putting the kettle on for tea, what kind of book will you read when you curl up by the fire, or relax in the recliner next the woodstove, or sprawl on the sofa with two cats, an afghan, and a glance at the fake flames flickering cheerfully in the electric heater that’s cleverly designed to look like a black woodstove with a latticed glass door?
On slow afternoons like this I don’t want my usual fare of spy thrillers, I want a “cozy”—either a nice mystery or some kind of chick lit. I just read The House at Tyneford, by Natasha Solomons, which was a rattling good read. World War II is “my” war—that is, it interests me more than the other wars because I was born during it. Any novel that deals with life during that period is usually going to get my attention. Sometimes I choose humorous books, like Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm, which is as readable today as it was when it was published in the 1930s.
What’s YOUR choice on a slow Saturday afternoon? What do YOU read and enjoy, when you know there won’t be any dinner to worry about because your Dearly Beloved is going to take you out to the taco house or nuke something in the microwave?
Lean back, stretch out, and tell us about your favorite weekend book!
Readers & Book Lovers Series Schedule: