Literally Blogging

As we rest and retire for the weekend, let us pause and think about whether or not we will return to work on Monday. To facilitate this inner dialogue, let Shakespeare’s Hamlet guide us with its famous lines….

To be, or not to be, —that is the question:—
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? —To die, —to sleep,—
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, —’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, —to sleep;—
To sleep! perchance to dream: —ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despis’d love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,—
The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns,—puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know naught of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pitch and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. (Hamlet, III.i)

 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

   Did you know that the temperature to burn books into dust is 451 Degrees Fahrenheit? This is the theme of Ray Bradbury’s masterpiece that involves a dystopia(reverse of utopia) where books are burnt because the government sees them as a tool to disunite society. As you can see, it is a really engaging plot to begin with and I actually bought the book from an online recommendation a few years ago. However, what I want to write about is its conclusion, Bradbury gives readers hope by creating a small society that memorizes books to preserves its ideas before it is burnt. My brain was really tickled by the concept and started thinking about books I would remember for the sake of humanity. My top three would Don Quixote by Cervantes, Roald Dahl’s short stories, and C.S Lewis’s The Last Battle. I have more in mind but I am eager to see what are the books you the reader would save in your memory for the sake of the future.

If you want to know more about Fahrenheit 451, click the link below:

http://www.raybradbury.com/books/fahrenheit451.html

About three months ago, I found a wonderful book club online. Well, maybe book club isn’t the best description. It is like a giant wish list that… well, that’s not really it either. Let me try again. This book club had resources to help me find books that I might be interested in… but that wasn’t all. The name of this site is Book Browse and it is a great Web site for readers who need a little organization and love to hear about new books.

Let’s face it. When you go to your “Local Bookstore,” whether that be in the mall or online, it is hard to find new things to read. It isn’t that they aren’t there. There are tons of new books all of the time. But in our rushed lives, hitting the bookstore at lunch can be less than fulfilling. This site fills in and helps readers find the treasures we might otherwise overlook.

You can search by genre, by theme, country of setting, or even time period. Each book has information from the jacket, excerpts, reader reviews, author interviews and biographies. Many also have reading guides for those wishing to use a certain book in a monthly reading club. There are also quotes from reading critics, which you can read or disregard totally.

Each book also has a link to a site that compares the prices of the book you are interested in, or you can go directly to Amazon and buy from there.

Book Browse has ways to organize book lists, prioritize reading, organize purchasing of books, and if that didn’t provide enough, each book on your personal book list has a box to make comments. It also has a section to mark to remind you why you want the book - a gift, a must read, a want to read, have read, or if you have rejected it as a possibility.

Book Browse is a great site for the casual reader or the serious reader. There is a free membership as well as a premium membership. The customer service is fantastic, the owner of the site is friendly and I think you will be pleased with your membership.

I know a lot of people who love to read, also have some visual challenges. And audio books aren’t cheap - not by a long shot. There are some options online but some of them are pretty pricey as well. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a library of audio books for a reasonable price each month?

I found the perfect solution. It was a moment of pure serendipity. Picture someone stumbling into a doorway and falling flat on their face in the entry hall. That is, in a cyber-kind-of way what happened to me. The Web site is called JiggerBug. It is to audio books, what Netflix is to films.

There are three plans. One allows you to have one audio book at a time. A second plan allows for two at a time, plus a downloadable audio book every 14 days, and another plan allows for five audio books at a time, plus two free instant downloads every 14 days. These are very reasonably priced plans - you can keep the CDs or tapes as long as you need to and it is all postage paid. And there is a two week trial - what more could you need?

Just like Netflix, they have a queue. So I have selected about a dozen books and they will come to me one after the other, as I return them. I chose the two at a time plan; my plan is to be reading one while the other is in transit.

They have classics, plays, genre fiction, popular fiction, nonfiction… you name it and they have it. And if they don’t, they’ll try to get it for you via a convenient request form.

I am thrilled. I love to knit, which is why I am usually hanging out at Hankering For Yarn, my primary blog. And there are times I want to read but I can’t do both! Movies I can at least listen to, but I have a HUGE stack of books to read. Now I can knit and read simultaneously. I have been doing the happy dance ever since I found JiggerBug.

JiggerBug

Hello! My name is Adelle and I am so excited to be here as a part of “Literally Blogging.” I can think of few things I love and enjoy more than books. Classics, contemporary lit, science fiction (hey, we all have our weaknesses), non-fiction… my list of favorites goes on and on. I am really interested in hearing what your favorites are!

I have been writing professionally for about a decade now. In my “previous life,” I was a nurse but fortunately, I also studied journalism and have had an interest in literature, both American and European, since… well, forever. When I left nursing, I decided to just chase my own dream and stepped out on the proverbial limb and began writing for a living. There are days I can’t believe how fortunate I am and there are days I fight for every word. I have written freelance for several publications, a textbook publisher and have one book on the market about autism. I now am blogging about the things that I love the most and wish to share.

I define myself as a woman, a widow who was once a wife (and still is in some sort of spiritual sense), a mother, a daughter, and a friend. I enjoy reading, knitting, my cats, sewing, violin (I’m just a beginner though) and a myriad of other things that I never have enough time to do. I enjoy good music, ice cream, hot summer days, and snowy winter nights, and my favorite time of the year is autumn when the days are crisp and the memories are crisper.

I am looking forward to sharing with you our love for literature; I love the exchange and hearing from readers, and I hope you will comment and/or email me. I am sure this blog will evolve over time; a blog is merely a reflection of the individual writing it and people change, so it stands to reason that our blogs will change with us. I hope to inspire you, tell you about books you may not know about, share a wee bit of literary gossip, and touch your life in some way that makes for enjoyable reading.

Adelle Tilton Biography

The only honest-to-goodness hissy fit I ever threw was when I was nine years old, in the library. I’d just put my stack of books on the checkout counter and waited happily for my orgy of reading to begin.

The old lady librarian, with a powdered cleavage and gooey red lipstick, frowned and peered over the top of her glasses at Pet Semetary, one of the books I’d chosen.

She shook her head. “Only adults can check out this book.”

“I have an adult card.” I proudly flashed the blue rectangle at her.

“I’ll need a permission note from your mother. You’re too young to read this.”

”Give me my book.” My voice had a tone that even scared me a little.

She started to put Pet Semetary on the cart behind her, to be reshelved.

I slammed my fists on the counter and screeched: “Give it to me! It’s my book!”

She stared at me, mouth agape, red lipstick creeping into the tiny lines around her mouth, spreading out like cracks in glass.

I got the book. And it was good, too.

This could develop into a diatribe on censorship, but what I’m concerned with here is, What books are we ‘supposed’ to be reading? And who decides that?

One of my favorite scenes on the television show “Friends,” is when Rachel convinces Joey to read Little Women, and he loves it; he’s even heartbroken when Beth dies. Nobody expects Joey to be the type of guy to enjoy Little Women, which just goes to show you, all books are for everyone.

In my eleventh grade homeroom, there was this blond guy named Brian, who would spend the fifteen minutes hunched over at his desk, fervently reading a book he clutched so tightly, his knuckles turned white. It was a romance book. Not a romance like, say, Wuthering Heights, which he could’ve blamed his English teacher for making him read, but a bodice ripper. In fact, there was a woman in a ripped bodice on the cover, with a brightly-colored Fabio looming over her.

The books kept rotating: he’d finish one, start another. Every day in homeroom (and twice that I saw in the lunchroom) there he’d be, hunched over somebody’s “heaving white breasts” or “stirring manhood.”

His name was Brian, but I always thought of him as Harlequin Boy. He took a lot of crap for what he read. But he’d just ignore the insults and burrow deeper into his book.

So what is acceptable? Can’t a guy read a romance book, a child read a horror novel, a girl read Autoextremist magazine?

Were there any books someone tried to keep you from reading? Did you read them anyway?

This one’s for you, Harlequin Boy. I wish I’d known then how cool you really were.

A lesson for us all.