Down Under Views

Welcome to this week’s By Any Other Name book game!

We didn’t quite get to the goal number of titles last week, so the goal stays the same…

If you’re new to the challenge, this is a game from my dear friend Calliope that gets us to play with book titles.

The game works like this:

1. Each week I will choose and a book title that features that word.
2. Then it’s your turn to come up with book titles containing the same word, without duplication (yes, that includes my titles). The author would be nice, too, in case I want to check it out.
3. If you make it to the challenge number of titles (make sure you read the challenge section each week because it can change), then I will draw one name from all the participants and that person wins their choice of one book from my giveaway shelf!

It’s really not complicated. I pick a word and you list titles with that word. Easy peasy.

The current challenge:

Titles to Reach: Nineteen
Titles Per Person: Two

What can you win? The winner receives any one of the books on this page along with a bookmark (or two!).

I’ve decided this is a much better way of doing things rather than offering the SAME book over and over. Plus, I will be adding to the giveaway shelf as much as I can, so keep checking in to see what’s on offer.

So if you’d like a chance to win, join in!

If you don’t reach the goal, we’ll try again next week. If you reach the goal, I’ll have a brand new challenge for you next Wednesday where you’ll get another chance to win a book – regardless if you have won a book previously!

The word this week is:

Spring

I Say: It’s Spring by Linda Glaser

You Say…

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

1. Grab your current read.
2. Open to a random page.
3. Share two (or three or four, if you’re me) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page.
4. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
5. Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Gringa in a Strange Land by Linda Dahl

Sitting on the floor of the thatched hut of the Mayan village deep in the state of Yucatan, and understanding imperfectly the translation into Spanish that Alonso is whispering into her ear, Erica Mason thinks: I’m the only American woman in the entire world doing this right now.

Do you read more than one book at one time?

Suggested by Janet:

I’ve seen this quotation in several places lately. It’s from Sven Birkerts’ ‘The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age’:

“To read, when one does so of one’s own free will, is to make a volitional statement, to cast a vote; it is to posit an elsewhere and set off toward it. And like any traveling, reading is at once a movement and a comment of sorts about the place one has left. To open a book voluntarily is at some level to remark the insufficiency either of one’s life or one’s orientation toward it.”

To what extent does this describe you?

Well, that’s certainly an impressive quote to start a conversation off with, isn’t it?

I’m almost sad to say this, but this quote fits me quite well if we can combine reading stories and writing them…

Back when I was in the States, I didn’t have a very happy existence. Oh, there were plenty of good times, but the darker demons were still there. I told stories before I knew how to write and wrote many more once I did learn to write. When I wasn’t writing, my nose was stuck in a book.

If you didn’t see me with a book or a notebook, you could know that I had gotten yet another lecture about how my family viewed me as strange/antisocial for always having a book or a notebook with me.

When I moved to Australia, I adopted a new life. A wonderful life. I still had to get past the demons and whatnot, but I finally felt safe, in control of my life and loved unconditionally. I felt love like I’d never felt before, and I felt happy.

Reading books and writing them dropped off considerably.

Whether moving and my reading/writing dropping off are actually related, I don’t know. I just know that it happened to me.

Welcome to this week’s By Any Other Name book game!

We didn’t quite get to the goal number of titles last week, so the goal stays the same…

If you’re new to the challenge, this is a game from my dear friend Calliope that gets us to play with book titles.

The game works like this:

1. Each week I will choose and a book title that features that word.
2. Then it’s your turn to come up with book titles containing the same word, without duplication (yes, that includes my titles). The author would be nice, too, in case I want to check it out.
3. If you make it to the challenge number of titles (make sure you read the challenge section each week because it can change), then I will draw one name from all the participants and that person wins their choice of one book from my giveaway shelf!

It’s really not complicated. I pick a word and you list titles with that word. Easy peasy.

The current challenge:

Titles to Reach: Nineteen
Titles Per Person: Two

What can you win? The winner receives any one of the books on this page along with a bookmark (or two!).

I’ve decided this is a much better way of doing things rather than offering the SAME book over and over. Plus, I will be adding to the giveaway shelf as much as I can, so keep checking in to see what’s on offer.

So if you’d like a chance to win, join in!

If you don’t reach the goal, we’ll try again next week. If you reach the goal, I’ll have a brand new challenge for you next Wednesday where you’ll get another chance to win a book – regardless if you have won a book previously!

The word this week is:

Cat

I Say: The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Suess

You Say…