IS THERE LIFE AFTER WORLD BOOK NIGHT?

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Chris Cleave, Literature, Little Bee, Northwest CT YMCA, postaweek2012, reading, Stonewall Kitchen in Avon, stories, World Book Night, YMCA

World Book Night was an enchiridion of joy.  A Blue-Book Elegant Success.

I gave away 20 copies of Chris Cleave‘s Little Bee and experienced  a blizzard of endorphins with every encounter.

Everyone loved the idea of World Book Night.  Faces lit up.  Smiles appeared.

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Here’s what my day looked like  ~

The chef of the Farm Table in Avon took some copies for his kitchen staff. He’s starting a book group!

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Working long hours at Stonewall Kitchen in Avon makes it tough to get to the library. The clerk and her colleague plan to read Little Bee during breaks and share their thoughts.

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Here’s the pin I wore ~ it’s so CSA. (CSA is text for cool, sweet, and awesome.)

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Next stop ~ downtown Torrington at the YMCA.

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Armed with books, I met some members, residents, and workers who enjoy reading.  They were just an uppercase great bunch..and I wished I had more books to share.

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I did have enough book marks, even for …

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…. the Shy Reader.

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World Book Night 2012 is over.  But the tweets and messages and emails keep coming from givers and readers alike.  And a half million more people own a book today than yesterday.  No-strings-attached perfection, I’d say.

So..What about you?  Were you a giver?  A reader?  Share your experience here …or read about the event on https://www.facebook.com/worldbooknightusa

Toni 4/25/12

SILVA RERUM : SOMETHING TO GNAW ON

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Commonplace book, Henry David Thoreau, Literature, November Poem a Day Challenge, poetry, Poland, postaweek2011, Robert Lee Brewer, silva rerum, what's in my journal, William Stafford, writing

Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round your life…. know your own bone: gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw at it still.                        ~Thoreau

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Henry David Thoreau kept a journal, filling it with observations and reflections, literary excerpts and personal comments. Journal-keeping isn’t new. It used to be called commonplacing. The journal, or commonplace book, had yet another name, silva rerum, meaning “a forest of things”.  A silva rerum was a multigenerational family journal kept by members of Polish nobility in the 16th-18th centuries. In Poland, the silva rerum is a writing tradition, and excerpts from notable examples are, er, commonplace.

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Commonplace books were a popular way for people to record striking passages they found in their reading. Remember the electrifying effect that some thoughts had on you when you encountered them for the first time?

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The commonplace book is a way of memorializing those striking passages that you can return to for renewed inspiration. I’m too disorganized to have my own commonplace book. But I do jot down quotes, poems, ideas and lists in one notebook or another, on a post-it or across the back of the nearest envelope or cereal box.

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The poet William Stafford sat down with a pen and paper, took a look out the window, and waited for something to occur to him. He filled his journals with entries about simple things like farms and dead deer and winter. He wrote about the West and his parents and cottonwood trees. He even wrote a poem about …. his journal.

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What’s in My Journal

Odd things, like a button drawer.

MeanThings, fishhooks, barbs in your hand.

But marbles too. A genius for being agreeable.
Junkyard crucifixes, voluptuous
discards. Space for knickknacks, and for
Alaska. Evidence to hang me, or to beatify.
Clues that lead nowhere, that never connected
anyway. Deliberate obfuscation, the kind
that takes genius. Chasms in character.
Loud omissions. Mornings that yawn above
a new grave. Pages you know exist
but you can’t find them. Someone’s terribly
inevitable life story, maybe mine.

 

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These days, there’s online versions of commonplace books.  (I wonder, do they call them an e-commpnplaces?)  http://www.poets.org has a new feature called Notebooks where you can create online anthologies to share. You can also made special notebooks for friends.  http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/544

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Hmm, lots of places to collect the poems you are submitting to the November Poem A Day Challenge. Here’s the prompt for Day 6. You can find whatever day you’re looking for under Editor’s Blog, Poetic Asides. On his blog, Robert Lee Brewer says poets are more than welcome to jump in and start poeming along, even if they’re a day or week late to the party. The more the merrier, and you’ll still be just as qualified to send a chapbook in December. So get poeming!

http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides/poetry-prompts/2011-november-pad-chapbook-challenge-day-6

Imagine  ~  a book of thoughts, ideas, and poems being called commonplace.

Gnaw on that.

Toni 11/6/11

Miss Cambridge Pulls Me Out of the Doldrum: Grade 4

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a teacher who reads aloud, Edward Eager, Half Magic, Literature, read-aloud creates community, The Borrowers by Mary Norton

I hadn’t read all summer.

So I was up for 4th grade with Miss Cambridge.

This is what she did on the Very First Day as soon as the attendance person gets back from ferrying the absentee list to the office.

She comes out from behind her desk with a book in her hands. She stokes it like she’s patting a cat.

Class, I want to introduce you to four brothers and sisters. She opens Half Magic by Edgar Eager.  Martha was the youngest, and very difficult. Katherine would keep boasting about what a comfort she was, and how docile, until Jane declared she would utter a piercing shriek and fall over dead if she heard another word about it.  Mark thought he was the smartest because he was the boy, and Miss C. sniffs at that.

Jane, Mark, Katherine, and Martha are bored. It’s summer and they have nothing to do. Their father died years ago and their mother cannot stay at home with them.  They find a coin that looks like an ordinary nickel but when they hold it up close, they see strange runes carved onto it.  Before they know it–and at first without their knowing it–the four children are sucked into adventure, full of halves and doubles and knights and jousts and being half-there and half-not. It is full of lessons and love and learning what it means to become a happy family.

Miss Cambridge throws herself into the reading.  She uses voices.  She pauses and clasps the open book to her bosom at the scary parts.  She closes her eyes and stays silent when something “Big” happens.  She cries.  She belly-laughs. Sometimes she laughs so hard and long she has to put the book down, take off her glasses and wipe her eyes.  She wonders aloud.  She frowns.

I can’t wait to go to school each day. While other classes are dragging through the morning routines of attendance and homework pass-ins and stragglers, our class is seated and ready for the next chapter.

And then it ends. As she reads the last line, Miss Cambridge closes the book gently and smoothes the book jacket. She tucks the end flaps back inside as if they were the clasps on a treasure chest.

Miss Cambridge looks at us and says, I’m always sad when a good book ends, aren’t you?

And all 40 of us 4th graders–all of us tied together in a grand literary community–we nod.

Then, after this solemn,wee interval, Miss Cambridge opens another book, The Borrowers by Mary Norton. Arithmetic can wait today she says. We’ll just start this first chapter.  

That’s how it is when you’re a reader. Some things just have to wait.

Patty

8/28/11

PS  The 50th-anniversary edition of Half Magic features a special green ribbon place-marker that matches the enchanting green-ink drawings by N. M. Bodecker. These are the companion books: