How to use this Page

50 Book Pledge | Book #40: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

One of my favourite poems by Shel Silverstein is “Invitation.” Take a look:

If you are a dreamer, come in.
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer . . .
If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fire,
For we have some flax golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!

Like Silverstein, Summer has an invitation all its own: To read our fantastical tales in the great outdoors. Take a page out of the Nature Conservancy of Canada‘s book and Take Time for Nature. And, why not? You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Add a Comment

The Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern
Adult/YA Crossover

From the moment I began to listen to this story on audio until I finished, I couldn't classify it. A trip to Target - serious source searching - didn't help. The book was in the bestseller category with the other adult books, but toward the bottom where some YA and middle grade were. When I finally upped  my game and checked out the classification on Amazon, it's adult.

Yet, this is a book for all ages. I've encouraged my nine year old to read it because it's such a dreamlike adventure. Two magicians battle it out for their lives in a night circus that magically appears and disappears from location to location across the world.

This is the first circus I liked. I'm not crazy about clowns, or the whole circus venue in books or movies. There are exceptions, of course, Water for Elephants being one. It was more along the lines of gritty realism circus. This is dream circus without the scary factor that often seems to accompany that venue. The characters are gorgeously rich. The setting is magical. The plot is lusciously entwined.

The story is not told chronologically, which made the audio aspect to my "read" difficult. It will likely make the story difficult for a middle grade audience as well. What's more, I wasn't sure it was a necessary aspect to the story. It indicates the longevity of the challenge early on, but complicates the story's unfolding unnecessarily. The author could have revealed the backstory of the magician who had won a similar challenge earlier and thus introduced the complexity and longevity of the magical challenge in that way without complicating storytelling. However, these temporal fluctuations were not so off-putting that they derailed the circus story, just complicated it. Maybe that was the point. It's a complex plot.

Nonetheless, if you're searching about for a cozy, by the fire, dreamlike read, search no further. The Night Circus is just the winter ticket!

For more exciting reads, click over to Barrie Summy's site!

Add a Comment

Algonquin Books has launched the ‘Ask an Editor’ video series on their blog. Executive editor Chuck Adams stars in the video embedded above and answers the question: “How did you acquire Water for Elephants?”

Marketing director Michael Taeckens explained how it will work: “For this series, readers who have any questions about the publishing process can submit them on our blog or on our Facebook or Twitter accounts. Every two weeks a different Algonquin editor will select and answer one of the questions submitted.”

The next Algonquin Books Club will feature a conversation between Gruen and The Help author Kathryn Stockett on April 26th. Those interested can check out the website for a reader’s guide, essays by Gruen, and her recipe for oyster brie soup.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Add a Comment

Algonquin Books has launched the ‘Ask an Editor’ video series on their blog. Executive editor Chuck Adams stars in the video embedded above and answers the question: “How did you acquire Water for Elephants?”

Marketing director Michael Taeckens explained how it will work: “For this series, readers who have any questions about the publishing process can submit them on our blog or on our Facebook or Twitter accounts. Every two weeks a different Algonquin editor will select and answer one of the questions submitted.”

The next Algonquin Books Club will feature a conversation between Gruen and The Help author Kathryn Stockett on April 26th. Those interested can check out the website for a reader’s guide, essays by Gruen, and her recipe for oyster brie soup.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Add a Comment

I read the Robert Pattinson profile in Vanity Fair.  I take note:  Of the prison that is fame.  Of the insecurity of the artistically ambitious.  Of the predicament of a nearly 25-year-old actor who has been engulfed by the Twilight surge and wants, more than anything, to know who he is and what he is actually made of. 

I decide that what I love most is RPlatz's restless quest for knowledge—reading, they say, some 20 books during the filming of Water for Elephants, none of those books, from what I can tell, easy:  Eat the Rich, Money, the Keith Richards autobiography, a book of David Foster Wallace essays.  To not be able to walk a street, sit at a bar, or relax behind a curtain without the accompanying throng of fans (even if, in his case, they most unilaterally love him)—that sounds like hell to me.  To escape inside a book or 20—he's no dummy, that RPlatz.

Display Comments Add a Comment

Last week Amazon exclusively released a long Water for Elephants film trailer. We’ve embedded the trailer above.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Amazon has only aired full-length trailers for one other movie: The Dark Knight. The film will hit theaters on April 22nd.

Sara Gruen wrote Flying Changes and Water for Elephants as National Novel Writing Month projects. Here’s an excerpt from an inspirational letter she wrote to NaNoWriMo writers: “I can do this. WE can do this. However far behind you are, take comfort in knowing that there is somebody else out there in the same boat, and look for that next fun scene. And then the next. And if that doesn’t work, set someone on fire. In your book, of course. See you in the winner’s circle.” (via Shelf Awareness)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Add a Comment

Good Morning:

I had every good intention of taking a leisurely hour or so this morning to blog about Christmas. Thus far, I've managed to pull myself out of bed, drive to the store for tissues and orange juice and drive back home. That's right, tissues and orange juice. My entire family, all five of us, have a nasty cold. Thank goodness it isn't the flu, but still.... My nose is dripping and my eyes are as juicy as a peach on a summer day!!

I managed to finish a 5" x 7" collage before this cold hit hard and I've listed it in My Etsy Shop.

THE WAIT



********************************************

Alrighty, short and sweet this entry will be. I think I'm destined for a cup of tea and a stint on the couch. I may even try to read a little, if my juicy eyes will allow. I'm finishing up the third "Odd Thomas" book and getting ready to start anew with the Harry Potter series. Or...I may start on "Alice's Adventures In Wonderland". I just finished "Water For Elephants", which was an excellent read. Right up my alley.

Well, I'm off to La La Land. I'll be back around soon.

Kim
Garden Painter Art

Add a Comment

You may think it is a bit ironic that I would pick an excerpt from Epidemiologic Principles and Food Safety the week after we announced that Locavore is the “word of the year” but I composed this post long before locavore mania began. Nevertheless, it does seem appropriate to question what the effects of technology have been on food safety. Tamar Lasky’s compilation of leaders in the fields of public heath and safety provides a unique look into a problem we often ignore, until we can’t. The book describes the various ways epidemiologic principles are applied to meet the challenges of maintaining a safe food supply and addresses both the prevention and control of foodborne illness. Below is the book’s forward by Allen J. Wilcox.

Food is much more than personal fuel—food creates community. We welcome friends and family into our homes with a meal. We celebrate important occasions with feasts. We carry food to those in mourning. We receive food as daily comfort. We don’t think of food as a risk.

But there is risk. (more…)

Share This

Add a Comment

Today, a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. "Who?" you ask. Why, one of the most popular poets of the late 19th and early 20th century. Most of you are familiar with some of her lines, for she wrote a poem called "Solitude", which begins as follows: "Laugh and the world laughs with you;/ weep and you weep alone." Wilcox earned a comfortable living in her time from her poems, but has slipped into near obscurity because her poems were more popular than literary. She wrote using more traditional forms than many of the other major poets of her time, and yet, given her prolific production and commercial success, she has sometimes been called a "bad major poet" rather than a minor poet. After her husband's death, Wilcox turned to mysticism, and was one of the founders of the American Rosicrucian movement (which I do not pretend to understand, but it appears not to be a religion (per se), but to be a mystical approach to mysticism; so mystical that my headlights can't quite get through the fog to sort out what it is, actually). But I digress.

Having stumbled upon Ella Wheeler Wilcox, I must say that I like some of what I've read. The poem I've selected is particularly appropriate today, which is (depending on where you live) the day after Midsummer, or two days before Midsummer for those who still go by the fixed date of June 24th according to the Julian calendar.

Midsummer
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

After the May time, and after the June time,
Rare with blossoms and perfumes sweet,
Cometh the round world's royal noon time,
The red midsummer of blazing heat.
When the sun, like an eye that never closes,
Bends on the earth its fervid gaze,
And the winds are still, and the crimson roses
Droop and wither and die in its rays.

Unto my heart has come that season,
O my lady, my worshipped one,
When over the stars of Pride and Reason
Sails Love's cloudless, noonday sun.
Like a great red ball in my bosom burning
With fires that nothing can quench or tame.
It glows till my heart itself seems turning
Into a liquid lake of flame.

The hopes half shy, and the sighs all tender,
The dreams and fears of an earlier day,
Under the noontide's royal splendour,
Droop like roses and wither away.
From the hills of doubt no winds are blowing,
From the isle of pain no breeze is sent.
Only the sun in a white heat glowing
Over an ocean of great content.

Sink, O my soul, in this golden glory,
Die, O my heart, in thy rapture-swoon,
For the Autumn must come with its mournful story,
And Love's midsummer will fade too soon.

Today's Poetry Friday roundup is at A Wrung Sponge.

Display Comments Add a Comment