Tagged: bibliophilia

04
Jun
2011

ENTERTAINING MY BROTHER

I wasn’t going to post today because I didn’t really feel like I had that much to say, but my brother is stuck in a hospital room 3.5 hours from home with his wife, who is under observation to make sure her contractions have stopped, so they don’t have a 6.5-week preemie. They had just started their vacation when she started having the contractions and ended up in the hospital. He has books to read (in German) and a TV in the room (in German) but not much else, and Simone can’t even sit up so they’re pretty stuck. She...

16
Jan
2011

TORTURE

Is there anything more agonizing to a rabid book lover than re-reading a huge long series of books that one loves in order to read the latest one in the series and finishing it only to remember that not only have all the story lines been left hanging but the next book isn’t even PUBLISHED yet? I’ve spent the entire weekend (with a few breaks for walking, showering, eating, laundry) immersed in reading. I feel like I’ve just come up for air. And now I have to start the book club book which we’re meeting on Thursday about and try...

19
Sep
2010

SLEEPY SUNNY SUNDAY

The kids forced me to read 3 chapters of The Hunger Games to them today; no hardship since I want to know what happens next as much as they do. We only have 6 more chapters left: we’ll be done long before the discussion date which is set for October 13th. I suspect by then I’ll have been badgered into ordering the next 2 books and we’ll have read them as well. Karin has never been as much of a reader as Martin, but she gets excited by a good story, too. I don’t know that I would call this...

20
May
2010

WHERE WE ARE

Spring has been sneaking up on us. We had a beautiful April until the volcano blew and for nearly three weeks we’ve been shivering and turning up our collars and sneaking betrayed looks at the cloud cover. Today: glorious summer! Though I was at work, head bent to my PC, frantically pounding out task after task, trying to keep abreast of the mountain of work that threatens to slide and consume, so I couldn’t really enjoy it properly. Karin called around 3 p.m. asking if she could get the sprinkler out to play with. They put it under the trampoline...

25
Apr
2010

NO ENTERTAINMENT IS SO CHEAP AS READING; NOR ANY PLEASURE SO LASTING*

When the kids were little, we read to them nearly every night, as part of the bedtime routine. Sometimes Anders would read to them both, sometimes I would, and sometimes each of us would be reading to one child. They picked the books, from the several shelves of picture books we had: English books sent to us from my mom, birthday present books, much-loved and somewhat battered copies from my own collection of children’s books, and Swedish books purchased monthly from the 2 mail-order book clubs we belonged to then: Go’Boken and Bonniers Barnbokklubb. Most of the latter are long-gone...

06
Apr
2010

PUT ONE WORD IN FRONT OF THE OTHER AND SOON YOU’LL BE WRITING OUT THE DOOR

Quit’cher bellyachin’ and write! is what my inner author keeps yelling at me. All day I’ve been ignoring it, trying to cover it over with one part of my mental mantle. If you want to write, just write. Put your (figurative) pen to (virtual) paper and let come what may. As a wise commenter said (short of slapping me and yelling “Snap out of it!”): Words are never wasted. There were these things today, things I noticed: the way the water cleared and cleaned the pot I made soup in, the scarlet strip of sunset out across the fields. Pheasants...

10
Jan
2010

NO ONE NEEDS A VACATION MORE THAN THE PERSON WHO JUST HAD ONE

The wind has been scouring Skåne for days now. It’s blown all the frozen snow away from every surface and left the fields bare. Driving at night, you could see the wind pouring like water across the surface of the asphalt, only better because it was blowing snow along with it: white wind, white water. Today, mom and I went to the grocery store and as we got in the car, I looked down at the blown-up drifts around the driveway and thought, hmmm…that’s weird, the snow looks kind of…beige. And as we drove out of the neighborhood, it got...

07
Jan
2010

MINDS ALIVE ON THE SHELVES*

If you have the chance, I urge you not to miss out on the magical goodness that is the Squam Art Workshops. Elizabeth (Bluepoppy) has outdone herself with the wonderful weekends on offer for those able to take advantage of any of the five…count ’em, FIVE! different workshops that are spaced throughout 2010: go! GO! I’ve totally agreed to work the Swedish version when Elizabeth gets around to planning SAW, European style! If there is anyway in the world I can get to the Reader’s Retreat, I would be over the moon. Since I’ve already started the New Year out...

12
Dec
2009

DEPTH RESISTANCE & BOOK BOUNTY

Sometimes I feel like I’m living on the surface; skimming surely over the top without ever managing to puncture through and end up submerged. I can go for long periods of time living up here, skating along. It makes it hard to write. It makes it hard to come up with a true story; no description is deep enough for veracity. Maybe it’s the wintertime, the darkness, the sluggish response to everything. Maybe it’s the way my eyes slide along the surface, too. I don’t see things or I don’t stop for them, the way I do in the spring...

16
Oct
2009

I DON’T KNOW WHERE I’M GOING BUT I’M ON MY WAY*

It’s Friday night. It’s 10 p.m. I have nothing in particular to say, but I’m sure if I just keep typing long enough I will find at the end that enough words have unreeled from my brain to my fingers to warrant the title of post. I keep thinking about that Lizardek’s Worldview-forming Booklist that I mentioned offhand a few posts back and which a few people then said they would like to see. But not yet enough to put it together. I think I need to do some more digging in my book-memory to be able to come up...

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