Category: Books

Teaser Tuesday: American Gods and Summer Reading 2015

I – and my students – survived another exam week; this means that school is officially over for the year!

However, as any teacher can tell you, we don’t really get breaks in the summer. Personally, I’ll be updating the curriculum for at least two classes to finish their alignment with state standards by the due date. Fun stuff. (Really!)

The wheel of time has turned in its course to

Teaser TuesdayJust in case you don’t know, Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! All you have to do is grab the book you’re currently reading, open to a random page and share two sentences from that page. But make sure you don’t share any spoilers!*

*I wish I could take credit for this introduction, but I shamelessly stole it from Heather over at bitsnbooks. To help me make amends, you should go check out her blog.

This week I’m reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

I picked a line from page 32, using the supreme logic that 32 is my favorite number:

He reached into his pocket, produced a folded newspaper, 
and handed it to Shadow. "Page seven," he said. "Come on 
back to the bar. You can read it at the table."

American Gods Cover

In Prospect

I haven’t yet solidified my Summer Reading List, but there are several titles sitting on my shelf that need reading. Help me decide what to read next!

Bookshelf Summer 2015
I have:

From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré

Atonement by Ian McEwan

1916: The Easter Rising by Tim Pat Coogan

A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie

The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova

Boneman’s Daughters by Ted Dekker

Living History by Hillary Clinton

A special thanks to the Crone Chronicler for the suggestions of Room by Emma Donoghue and The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery!

Don’t forget to follow me on:

 

Facebook – where I share news stories, articles from other blogs, and various and sundry miscellany that happens to catch my eye. It’s stuff you won’t see here! Well, mostly.

 

Instagram – where I show you my Life in Motion and share quotes and such. The widget only shows my last three photographs – don’t you want to see them all?

 

Twitter – where you can see my thoughts in 140 characters or less. Also, funny retweets.

Teaser Tuesday: Exam Edition 2.0

A mountain of exams threatens my coffee and donuts. To save these delicacies, I must consume them.

Dunkin’ Donuts claims “America Runs on Dunkin” and today I’m doing my part to prove them right.

Unbelievably, the wheel of time has not only turned to, but also passed

Teaser Tuesday

Just in case you don’t know, Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! All you have to do is grab the book you’re currently reading, open to a random page and share two sentences from that page. But make sure you don’t share any spoilers!*

*I wish I could take credit for this introduction, but I shamelessly stole it from Heather over at bitsnbooks. To help me make amends, you should go check out her blog.

Yes, I’m still reading Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia by Fiona Ritchie. It’s really quite good, but end-of-term has intruded into book time.

There have been no funny/wrong answers to share (yet), but I’m 99.99% certain I’ll get some today and tomorrow. Stay tuned.

IMG_3018It took me 3.5 hours to grade 14 Physics tests. Brain = fried.

Not Quite In Retrospect

I decided to give Finnegan’s Wake a pass for now. I’ll try again sometime this summer.

Speaking of summer, do you have any suggestions for my summer reading list? I’m open to (almost) anything.

 

Don’t forget to follow me on:

Facebook – where I share news stories, articles from other blogs, and various and sundry miscellany that happens to catch my eye. It’s stuff you won’t see here! Well, mostly.

Instagram – where I show you my Life in Motion and share quotes and such. The widget only shows my last three photographs – don’t you want to see them all?

Twitter – where you can see my thoughts in 140 characters or less. Also, funny retweets.

Teaser Tuesday: Exam Edition

Assuming that Tropical Storm Ana has moved out of the area, I’m off on another field trip: taking a group of top-fundraising students to a fun park. Maybe I’ll get some interesting photographs for Sunday Snapshots.

Inexorably, the wheel of time has once again turned to

Teaser Tuesday

Just in case you don’t know, Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! All you have to do is grab the book you’re currently reading, open to a random page and share two sentences from that page. But make sure you don’t share any spoilers!*

*I wish I could take credit for this introduction, but I shamelessly stole it from Heather over at bitsnbooks. To help me make amends, you should go check out her blog.

This week I’m still reading Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia by Fiona Ritchie of Thistle and Shamrock fame .

I’m also reading my own work. No, I haven’t finished The Book; I’m reading exams. Here’s a sample from my physics review: 

A .22 rifle weighs 2.49 kg. The bullet has a mass of 2.60 
g and a muzzle velocity of 487.68 m/s. Calculate the 
kinetic energy of both the rifle and the bullet.

What I’d really like to ask is this: 

What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

Test Stack and Coffee Cup

Not Quite In Retrospect

I may have to give Finnegans Wake a pass at this point. I’m not sure why I thought I could knock it out in four weeks at the end of a school year.

 

Don’t forget to follow me on:

Facebook – where I share news stories, articles from other blogs, and various and sundry miscellany that happens to catch my eye. It’s stuff you won’t see here! Well, mostly.

Instagram – where I show you my Life in Motion and share quotes and such. The widget only shows my last three photographs – don’t you want to see them all?

Twitter – where you can see my thoughts in 140 characters or less. Also, funny retweets.

Teaser Tuesday: Wayfaring Strangers

As the school year races on at breakneck speed towards final exams, graduation, and – ultimately – summer break, I’m finding less time to read and blog.

Be that as it may, the wheel of time has once again turned to

Teaser Tuesday

Just in case you don’t know, Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! All you have to do is grab the book you’re currently reading, open to a random page and share two sentences from that page. But make sure you don’t share any spoilers!*

*I wish I could take credit for this introduction, but I shamelessly stole it from Heather over at bitsnbooks. To help me make amends, you should go check out her blog.

This week I’m reading Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia by Fiona Ritchie of Thistle and Shamrock fame . 

For example, Scots and Ulster Scots are likely to 
feel a strong yearning for the sea. This is, for 
most Appalachian people, a long-forgotten emotion 
preserved only through ballads.

As an added bonus, the book comes with a twenty-track accompaniment CD, allowing me to listen to the music I’m reading about! Honestly, every book should come with its own soundtrack, and this one does not disappoint.

Wayfaring Strangers cover

In Retrospect

I gave Sam Kean’s The Violinist’s Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code 3 out of 5 stars for his vitriol towards religion and religious scientists as well as his unvarnished presentism.

 

Don’t forget to follow me on:

Facebook – where I share news stories, articles from other blogs, and various and sundry miscellany that happens to catch my eye. It’s stuff you won’t see here! Well, mostly.

Instagram – where I show you my Life in Motion and share quotes and such. The widget only shows my last three photographs – don’t you want to see them all?

Twitter – where you can see my thoughts in 140 characters or less. Also, funny retweets.

Lost in Translation

The other day I decided to have some fun by running book titles through the Bad Translator engine.

One of the first I did was Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things: Short Stories and Wonders, which changed to

You Can Write A Secret Medical History of Miracles

I found it funny, tweeted it, and went about my day. Imagine my surprise several hours later when I went back to Twitter and found close to an hundred notifications. How did this happen? How did this little tweet gain such traction?

The answer was not found on Twitter; instead, it was in my inbox:

Neil Gaiman Retweeted MeThat’s right; Neil Gaiman – the author himself – retweeted me! This means that I have now been retweeted by both Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer. To me, that’s epic.

Other titles I ran through the translator and their new titles are:

Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances (Neil Gaiman)

An Experience to Report to the Police

The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help (Amanda Palmer)

This Basis may not be According to Plan, but there is a Way, as You Know, of Fear.

The Silkworm (J.K. Rowling aka Robert Galbraith)

Insects, Of Course

The Cuckoo’s Calling (J.K. Rowling aka Robert Galbraith)

People say Crazy Things

From the Earth to the Moon (Jules Verne)

A Few Months Ago

A Pocket Full of Rye (Agatha Christie)

Large Sports Bag

Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn)

Come On, Guys!

What about you? What titles can you mangle?

 

Don’t forget to follow me on:

Facebook – where I share news stories, articles from other blogs, and various and sundry miscellany that happens to catch my eye. It’s stuff you won’t see here! Well, mostly.

Instagram – where I show you my Life in Motion and share quotes and such. The widget only shows my last three photographs – don’t you want to see them all?

Twitter – where you can see my thoughts in 140 characters or less. Also, funny retweets.

Teaser Tuesday: The Violinist’s Thumb

The past few days have been . . . not normal. I’ll post about that a bit later on.

Nonetheless, the wheel of time has once again turned to

Teaser Tuesday

Just in case you don’t know, Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! All you have to do is grab the book you’re currently reading, open to a random page and share two sentences from that page. But make sure you don’t share any spoilers!*

*I wish I could take credit for this introduction, but I shamelessly stole it from Heather over at bitsnbooks. To help me make amends, you should go check out her blog.

This week I’m reading The Violinist’s Thumb by Sam Kean (the same Kean who wrote The Disappearing Spoon). 

They gnawed the cartilage off bones and 
sucked the marrow out, and cooked up all 
the fleshy victuals - the heart, kidneys, 
brain, and, most succulent of all, the
liver.  And with that meal, in a
godforsaken cabin at eighty degrees north
latitude, European explorers first learned
a hard lesson about genetics - a lesson
other stubborn Arctic explorers would 
have to keep learning over and over, a
lesson scientists would not understand 
fully for centuries.

Violinist's Thumb Cover

In Retrospect

I gave Neil Gaiman’s Trigger Warning 5/5 stars. My favorite story was “The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury.”

 

Don’t forget to follow me on:

Facebook – where I share news stories, articles from other blogs, and various and sundry miscellany that happens to catch my eye. It’s stuff you won’t see here! Well, mostly.

Instagram – where I show you my Life in Motion and share quotes and such. The widget only shows my last three photographs – don’t you want to see them all?

Twitter – where you can see my thoughts in 140 characters or less. Also, funny retweets.

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