Book Blogger Hop: 3/10/23

Today's Book Blogger Hop topic is: do you listen to audiobooks with earbuds or headphones?

Short Answer: No.  And yes!

Long Answer:  I spend most of my days at home alone, and I listen to one or two audiobooks a week as a result.  I just plug my iPod or phone into a portable speaker for use when doing housework and for when I shower, with no need for earbuds then.  In the evenings, I listen to audiobooks in the living room while I cross stitch.  If my husband is reading or watching something, then I use my earbuds; otherwise, it doesn't bother him, and he even listens some, as well.  In the car, no earbuds, of course, as that is super dangerous, but I never go into a store alone without them in and an audiobook playing.  At bedtime, I generally listen to the Psalms as I go to sleep, and I use earbuds then, too.  I listen to audiobooks more without than with, but definitely need a working set at all times.

What about you?  Do you listen to audiobooks?  If so, what is your typical way?

The Book Blogger Hop is a weekly feature hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.  A bookish prompt is given, for the dual purpose of giving the blogger a topic to discuss, and a way to find other book blogs to read and follow.

Shelf Control: Kon-Tiki

edit: Oh the embarrassment!  I was so excited to share this story, that I published it a day early.  Shelf Control is a Wednesday feature by Literary Potpourri; I'll get it right next week!

Shelf Control is a weekly feature hosted by Literary Potpourri to discuss unread books sitting in our to-be-read piles.

One spring, when I was a young teen, I borrowed Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl* from my teacher's classroom library.  Kon-Tiki is the recounting of the 1947 journey taken by Heyerdahl and five companions, as they travelled across the Pacific Ocean on a balsa log raft.  Their trip from Peru to the Polynesian island of Puka Puka took them 4,300 nautical miles and three months. (insert astonished verbalizations here)

I packed this most promising read in a basket along with a snack and a throw rug, and took off through the woods across from my house, ending in the meadow.  I sat down on the rug, ate my snack, and enjoyed the sunshine.  Then, packed everything up -- book unopened -- went back home and promptly forgot about the book in the basket.

At the end of the school year, I was stunned to get a note from the teacher addressed to Mom, saying that I had never returned Kon-Tiki and must either do so or pay for the replacement.  I had no clue where the book was, had forgotten it's very existence, and cried hard over the horror of a lost book.  Mom paid up, no problem there, and the incident was dismissed.

Until, that is, I got out that basket over summer break, and discovered the missing book.  Imagine my shock, embarrassment, and dismay.

This same copy (see below) has been on my shelves for over thirty years now, waiting to be read.  Maybe it's time?

What about you?  Have you read Kon-Tiki?  Got any books on your TBR with interesting stories?

*Goodreads link

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish People I'd Like to Meet

Today's Top Ten Tuesday topic is  a "bookish people I'd like to meet", with the instructions to pick authors, characters, bloggers, or anyone related to the bookish world.   

no caption needed

Characters:

• Sherlock Holmes: First and foremost would be Holmes.  I would, no doubt, find him extremely irritating, but it's a risk I'm willing to take.
• Morrolan e'Drien: This is a character from Steven Brust's Dragaeran Empire novels, both the Vlad Taltos series, and others.  He is a layered character, with much history and equal amounts of charisma, pride, and personality.  
• Brother Cadfael: Ellis Peters created such a wonderful character with this humble, wise, worldly, and kind monk.  I'd love to spend an hour chatting in his herb garden.
• Allan Quatermain: H. Rider Haggard's adventurer is a surprisingly multi-faceted character with a tragic past, a great deal of valor and a strongly likable personality.  
• Henry V: I don't mean the historical King Henry, though I'm sure he was a fine fellow, but Shakespeare's creation.  It's my favorite of the Bard's plays, because of Henry's charm, magnetism, valor, and open, raw emotions. 

a young John Donne

Authors:

• John Donne: (1572-1631) His romantic poems are to die for, but his metaphysical religious sonnets are just as impressive.  I fully believe that his intellect and wit would have made him a highly agreeable conversationalist.
• George MacDonald: (1824-1905) I have so many questions about his two allegories, Lilith and Phantastes!
• Angela Thirkell: (1890-1961) It would be fun to hear vignettes of her interesting life, but her snarky, sly humor would be the major draw.
• C.S. Lewis: (1898-1963) Another witty intellectual, Lewis must have been an amazing person to know.  Plus, I'd like to get some answers about parts of Till We Have Faces.
• James Burke: (b.1936) This may be bending the rules a bit, as he's a published science historian, and not exactly "bookish", but I am such a fangirl that I must include him in any list of people I'd like to meet.  He is witty, funny, and intelligent, and I know dinner with him would be a blast.  

New Page: Where in the World

I added a new page to the tabs at the top, and had a great deal of fun going through all my past reviews to do so!

This neat idea was borrowed from Cindy's Book Corner.

Word(s) of the Week: Brobdingnagian and Heirloom

For this week's "Word of the Week"*, here's one I encountered a few days ago, while reading A Monstrous Regiment of Women (by Laurie R. King):

I recognized it, knew it's meaning, and even knew it was from Gulliver's Travels (by Johnathan Swift), but not the details.  According to Merriam-Webster, "Brobdingnagian" (always capitalized) means "marked by tremendous size".  It comes from the land of Brobdingnag, peopled by giants and (again from Merriam-Webster), within two years of the novel's publication, "Brobdingnagian" was being used to mean something enormous or gigantic.  I've never used it -- it's a mouthful -- but might try incorporating it in writing some point in the future.

As a bonus, here's another word of interest from the past week: heirloom.  Now what, you might ask, could be interesting about such a common word?  I wanted to know something about it from long before it became a legal term: what "loom" referred to in heirloom.  I checked the etymology and, apparently (according to various sources), before it meant a specific machine, the word "loom" (a shortened form of the Old English word "geloma" meaning tool or utensil) meant a tool in general, though in it's broader, original meaning, it could be any item or article.  Hence, an heirloom could be as humble as the tool of the trade of one's father.  It may not be interesting to anyone else, but I found it to be so.

*"Word of the Week" is a meme hosted by the Plain-Spoken Pen on Mondays in which we share a word that we find entertaining, enlightening, edifying, or just plain fun to say! 

The Classics Club (Redux)

The point of The Classics Club is to make a list of fifty classics and read them over the course of five years. I attempted this for the second time in 2016, with a goal of finishing in June 2021. I read thirty of those I had listed, though the last one wasn't marked off my list until May 2022. (You can see the old list and discussions here). 

I'm going to adapt the rules to my personal needs this time, and for that reason, will not be adding myself to the official Classics Club list.

Here are the basic rules of The Classics Club:
choose the 50+ classics that you plan to read, and make a list of them

I started making my new list for this challenge, spent days picking out the fifty I planned to read, then when finished, suddenly felt overwhelmed, stressed, and anxious about having a required reading list. Yes, I want to read fifty classics in five years.  No, I don't want to make myself stick to a list of any sort. It may sound silly, but at this time in my life, I can't handle being boxed in, even if it's just with a reading list.  

So, my personalized adaptation of this rule is that over the next five years, I will read (or re-read) fifty classics, but they will be unplanned and spontaneous, not written down in advance.

Note: Some that I read may appear to belong to the category of "classic" only loosely, but the Classics Club emphasizes that the term "classic" is to be used at the reader's discretion.

list the classics you plan to read 
Instead, I will list each classic after I have read it, with a link to the discussion/review.

choose a reading completion goal date up to five years in the future and note that date on your classics list of 50+ titles

My new completion goal date is March 2028.

write about each title on your list as you finish reading it, and link it to your main list
Though the purpose of this is not necessarily to write reviews, but to discuss "your reading thoughts", there will be times that those thoughts will be in the form of a review.  I reserve that right.

Classics Read:

1. coming soon

Book Blogger Hop: 3/3/23

The Book Blogger Hop is a weekly feature hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.  A bookish prompt is given, for the dual purpose of giving the blogger a topic to discuss, and a way to find other book blogs to read and follow.

This week's prompt asks "Have you joined Libby"?  Short answer: Heck, yeah!

Long answer:  Libby is a app used by library systems for the free loaning of e-books and digital audiobooks.  Overdrive is the classic version, where audiobooks are actually downloaded to the PC, then uploaded on an mp3 device.  With Libby, the audiobooks are either streamed through the app or downloaded to the app (mobile or PC) for listening (point being, they can only be played through the app).  My library system still offers both, and I prefer to download them through Overdrive to manually put on my iPod or phone, so I technically am not using Libby, but the point remains the same -- without the library, I couldn't support my audiobook habit!  I listened to 65 last year, with the majority being library loans.

The library has been my friend as long as I can remember.  When I was a young teen, I volunteered during the summer, shelving books.  The librarians gave recommendations to this voracious, precocious reader, so that I was introduced to Agatha Christie ahead of most, developed an early (and lifelong) passion for Regency England through Georgette Heyer, and was encouraged to read classics long before high school.  I owe a lot to Jill and Mary.