Monthly Archives: August 2010

Teaser Tuesday

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Reading Myself To Sleep
Billy Collins

The house is all in darkness except for this corner bedroom
where the lighthouse of a table lamp is guiding
my eyes through the narrow channels of print,

and the only movement in the night is the slight
swirl of curtains, the easy lift and fall of my breathing,
and the flap of pages as they turn in the wind of my hand.

Is there a more gentle way to go into the night
than to follow an endless rope of sentences
and then to slip drowsily under the surface of a page

into the first tentative flicker of a dream,
passing out of the bright precincts of attention
like cigarette smoke passing through a window screen?

All late readers know this sinking feeling of falling
into the liquid of sleep and then rising again
to the call of a voice that you are holding in your hands,

as if pulled from the sea back into a boat
where a discussion is raging on some subject or other,
on Patagonia or Thoroughbreds or the nature of war.

Is there a better method of departure by night
than this quiet bon voyage with an open book,
the sole companion who has come to see you off,

to wave you into the dark waters beyond language?
I can hear the rush and sweep of fallen leaves outside
where the world lies unconscious, and I can feel myself

dissolving, drifting into a story that will never be written,
letting the book slip to the floor where I will find it
in the morning when I surface, wet and streaked with
daylight.

-from Questions About Angels, poems by Billy Collins

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Teaser Tuesdays is a fun weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. I change the rules a little bit to suit my own purposes: I hand pick the teaser, rather than choose one randomly. I also very frequently post more than two sentences. :)

Teaser Tuesday

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Nobody knows how many whales were killed during the great age of whaling, but one estimate suggests that about 300,000 were slaughtered in the four decades or so to 1870. That may not seem an especially vast number, but then whale numbers were not vast to begin with. In any case, the hunting was enough to drive many species to the edge of extinction. As whale numbers dwindled, whaling voyages grew longer and longer – up to four years became common and five years not unknown – and whalers were driven to search the loneliest corners of the most distant seas. All this translated into greatly increased costs. By the 1850s a gallon of whale oil sold for $2.50 – half an average worker’s weekly wage – yet still the remorseless hunt continued. Many species of whale – possibly all – would have vanished for ever but for a sequence of unlikely events that began in Nova Scotia in 1846 when a man named Abraham Gesner invented what for some time would be the most valuable product on earth.

-From At Home by Bill Bryson, page 129

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Teaser Tuesdays is a fun weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. I change the rules a little bit to suit my own purposes: I hand pick the teaser, rather than choose one randomly. I also very frequently post more than two sentences. :)

Etsy Finds: Bookplates

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I absolutely love bookplates, and looking for them on Etsy is one of my favorite routine “Etsy-checks.”

Today, since it seems like a lovely lazy Sunday afternoon activity, I thought I’d share a few favorites I’ve found lately. I will advise you to proceed with caution though… while compiling this post I bought three different sets. Many bookplates are too cute to consider resisting.

VINTAGE: $15.00 for 30-40, at RetroNorth

HANDMADE: $15.75 for 24 bookplates, blank or personalized, at The Oddest Owl

HANDMADE: $4.00 for 8 bookplates, at adorapop

VINTAGE: $8.00 for 25 bookplates, at Vintageworks

HANDMADE: $15.00 for custom Rubber Stamp, at AsspocketProductions

HANDMADE: $6.00 for 10 bookplates, at phoebe1

VINTAGE: $19.00 for 25 bookplates, at finiHome

VINTAGE: $16.00 for 30 bookplates, at mushroom and moss vintage

VINTAGE: $3.50 for 4 bookplates, from cOveTableCuriOsitIEs

Polysyllabic Spree – July 2010

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Books Purchased:

Books Purchased - July 2010
To Begin Again by M.F.K. Fisher
The Best of Frank O’Connor edited by Julian Barnes
Legendary Ireland: Journey Through Celtic Places and Myths by Eithne Massey
Questions About Angels by Billy Collins
44 Irish Short Stories edited by Devin A. Garrity
The Gentle Art of Domesticity: Stitching, Baking, Nature, Art & the Comforts of Home by Jane Brocket
Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins
Finny by Justin Kramon

Books Read:

Books Read - July 2010
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling  (re-read)
Packing for Mars by Mary Roach
Pride & Prejudice (Graphic Novel) retold by Nancy Butler (library)
Molly Fox’s Birthday by Deirdre Madden (library)
Carnet de Voyage by Craig Thompson (library)
Wilson by Daniel Clowes (library)

Polysyllabic Spree – June 2010

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Books Purchased:
Books Purchased - June 2010
The Bible According to Mark Twain edited by Howard G. Baetzhold & Joseph B. McCullough
The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Books Read:
Books Read - June 2010

The Irresistible Henry House by Lisa Grunwald (library)
How Did You Get This Number by Sloane Crosley
The Lovers by Vendela Vida
The Summer Before by Ann M. Martin (library)
A Secret Map of Ireland by Rosita Boland
I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak
A.D: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld (library)

Ireland

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If you’ve noticed a severe lack of posting around these parts, it’s because I’ve been deep in preparation for my upcoming trip to Ireland. I apologize for the lack of posts here & comments on other blogs. I leave tomorrow, and I am so excited for my road trip around Ireland! I have no idea if I’ll have a chance to post photos here during the trip, but either way, you can look forward to lots of photos & videos from Ireland when I return! For updates during my trip you can follow me on twitter @chowmeyow or @emilylovesbooks.

In the meantime, remember that you can still enter my giveaway to win a signed ARC copy of Packing for Mars by Mary Roach, right here. It will be open until August 18th.

Below are some vintage postcards from Ireland, found on the Library of Congress’s Flickr page.

Sláinte!

[Kylemore. County Galway, Ireland] (LOC)

[Queenstown. County Cork, Ireland] (LOC)

[In the Upper Lake, Killarney. County Kerry, Ireland] (LOC)

[Eagle's Nest Mountain, Killarney. County Kerry, Ireland] (LOC)

Packing for Mars: Review & Giveaway!

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To celebrate tomorrow’s release of Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach, I’m giving away an ARC copy of the book, signed by Mary Roach! Details of the giveaway are below the review.

I had the pleasure of hearing Mary Roach speak at an author breakfast at Book Expo this spring. She is a gifted speaker and tremendously funny. She comes across as very personable and intimate, even when speaking to a room full of hundreds of people. That style comes through in her writing as well, making an essentially scientific book come alive with warmth, humor, and personality.

The focus of Packing for Mars is not on the science of how we space travel, but the science of what happens to humans when we space travel. Topics covered include: selecting astronauts who will thrive in space, motion sickness, hygiene, eating & nutrition, bone loss, surviving malfunctions and re-entry, and (perhaps most humorously) the complications of going to the bathroom in space.

This book is a great read regardless of your level of interest in NASA, space travel, or astronauts. (Although didn’t most of us want to be astronauts at some point?) It’s fascinating to read about the effects being in zero gravity for extended periods of time have on our body and mind. Learning more about how NASA tests these effects on their equipment and astronauts is equally as interesting. And the key selling point to all this is that Mary Roach makes it extremely fun to read.

To read a Teaser Tuesday passage I posted from Packing for Mars, click here.

PACKING FOR MARS GIVEAWAY

To enter to win an review copy signed by Mary Roach, please leave a comment and share what comfort from Earth you would miss most during space travel.

For up to 2 extra chances to win, tweet and/or blog post a link to this giveaway, and leave another comment here with the link(s).

This giveaway will be open through August 18, 2010, and is open worldwide.