You might know that I read- a LOT.
It all started in one of my parents laps, and in first grade when my teacher dared me to read a book a day for a year and I did.
It continued in the library and the bookmobile (the first kind of mobile word magic) and in every kind of nook, corner and bed I could lie down in.
I kept it up on trains, planes and even sometimes in cars until I felt wobbly dizzy.
I read books while I lived inside the bookshelves at Shakespeare & Company bookstore in Paris, behind a purple velvet curtain.
Books are my best (not human) friends.
Then of course I write and publish books too. I’ve published 18, have created several that are in various stages, and have sketched out ideas for the next 50.
I’m doing more loving and living than book writing these days, and it feels good. If slow is the new fast, then I’m as fast as ever.
I’ve been slowly writing a new book in between naps- thank you to everyone who has asked! I’m envisioning a really new kind of way to share my new book, and you’ll be hearing more about that.
Do you love books? What are you reading? Let me know- I’m curious.
Also, do you like reading ebooks or actual? Or a mixture? Do you like listening to books?
Ah, it’s difficult to pick just 3!
I’ll say 3 for just right now.
Drinking From the River of Light
By Mark Nepo
“With that, he made me realize that as we only see a dolphin when it breaks surface,
because it spends most of its life out of view in the deep, so it is with the poet and the artist and the lover aching to be loved.”
Big Magic
By Elizabeth Gilbert
“The patron goddess of creative success can sometimes seem like a rich capricious old lady who lives in a giant mansion on a distant hill and who makes really weird decisions about who gets her fortune. She sometimes rewards charlatans and ignores the gifted. She cuts people out of her will loyalty served her for their entire lives, and then gives a Mercedes to that cute boy who cut her lawn once. She changes her mind about things. We try to divine her motives but they remain occult. She is never obliged to explain herself to us. In short, the goddess of creative success may show up for you, or she may not. Probably best, then, if you don’t count on her, or attach your definition of personal happiness to her whims.
Maybe better to reconsider your definition of success, period.”
Figuring
By Maria Popova
“Each that we lose takes part of us;
A crescent still abides,
Which like the moon, some turbid night,
Is summoned by the tides.”
Emily Dickinson
And you? Do you have books or passages to share? Send and I will read and savor.
Love,
for writing about that.
One of my favorite book passages is from Harpo Marx’s autobiography, ‘Harpo Speaks’,
in which when Harpo and his brothers were kids, Harpo found or was given a pocket watch.It was very special to him,so to prevent his brother, Chico from stealing and selling it,he removed the hands.He would wind it everyday,and carry it in his pocket and pull it out and hold it next to his ear and listen to it tick.
I’m into music the way You are into reading and writing, and I remember lyrics better than book passages. My all time favorite is this one by Hank Williams Sr.
The silence of the falling star lights up the purple sky.
Another lyric I really like is by The Rousers, a local rock band from Madison, Wisconsin
On the 4th of July the sparklers glare underneath the avocado tree.
And then I was just thinking about this last night-Buddy had this song called You’re The One- a radio dj interviewing him made a bet with Buddy that he couldn’t write a song in one minute.Buddy won the bet and performed the song right on the radio. The refrain goes:
Sometimes You make me
feel so bad,
You make me cry deep in my heart,
I feel like an actor in a play
Who doesn’t fit the part
Buddy Holly came up with that in less than one minute on live radio on a bet!
Irish philosopher, poet John O’Donohue’s book Beauty, The Invisible Embrace.
The Celtic lyric of his writing both in poetry and books merges the human soul with the spirit of Nature.
“Beauty does not linger, it only visits.
Yet beauty’s visitation affects us and invites us into its rhythm,
it calls us to feel, think, and act beautifully in the world:
to create and live a life that awakens the Beautiful.
Beauty is a gentle but urgent call to awaken.”
O’Donohue opens our eyes, hearts, and minds to the wonder of our own relationship with beauty by exposing the infinity and mystery of its breadth. His words return us to the dignity of silence, profundity of stillness, power of thought and perception, and the eternal grace and generosity of beauty’s presence. …encourages our greater intimacy with beauty and celebrates it for what it really is: a homecoming of the human spirit. By focusing on the classical, medieval, and Celtic traditions of art, music, literature, nature and language, O’Donohue reveals how beauty’s invisible embrace invites us toward new heights of passion and creativity, even in these uncertain times of global conflict and crisis.
This book is a retreat I come back to again and again and invites my own musings into expression. If I was down the street from you, I’d drop everything and run a copy down to you this very minutes :-} Blissings and Blessings! Dawn
Just can’t get enough reading or books . They are my universe!
I am reading Tea and Cake with Demons: A Buddhist Guide to Feeling Worthy by Adreanna Limbach. It’s inviting me to widen my perspective(s). A can’t-put-down book that I ration like the best chocolate I have ever tasted. Rationing enables revisiting again and again before moving deeper. From the cover, “…Adreanna Limbach shares a down-to-earth, often humorous and delightfully insightful discussion of Buddhism through the lens of modern life.” And more, Adreanna’s writing “…will help you learn to befriend all of yourself–even those pesky demons–and realize your fundamental, untouchable, and true self-worth.”
Thanks for this question.
West of Kabul, East of New York by Tamim Ansary is a page-turner. It gave me a view of the world from the East looking West. It was the only history I have come across from that perspective, Lots has happened that wasn’t Europe or US-centric.
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben brought the world around me to life. It opened my eyes to things I never noticed. It is science-based but written in a social format that lent itself to applying my life and family in a much speeded up way. It ‘s kind of how birding made me alive to things previously unnoticed. I wish I could find a book on rocks that opens that world up.
Noir by Christopher Moore was an irreverent hoot. The way he writes makes me laugh. It is absurd and bizarre. I listened to it via Hoopla from the library and the reader was very good.
I find reading difficult these days so I tend to listen to audiobooks. I miss being able to read an actual book and the feel of the paper as I turn the pages but multiple concussions have made that no longer possible.
The last audiobook I listened to was Johnathan Van Ness’ autobiography: “Over the Top;A raw journey to self love”.