Trees of Reverie June Read-A-Thon End

June is ending, so that means the ReadaThon is ending too. Sad Face.

I was able to get through quite a few books on this challenge:

1. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
2. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
3. Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor
4. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
5. Divergent by Veronica Roth
6. Raven Stole the Moon by Garth Stein
7. Aimless Love by Billy Collins
8. Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor
9. Brooklyn by Colm Tobin
10. Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor

I also started The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux, She Walks in Beauty by Caroline Kennedy, and listened to a few more chapters of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

By reading these books, I completed quite a few challenges on Trees’ challenge list. I did way better this time than on her last prompt list, so I’m pretty psyched about it.

1. Read a popular or well-known book.
2. Read a book you’ve heard a lot of good things about.
3. Read something recommended to you by a friend.
4. Read a book from your Goodreads to-read shelf.
5. Read a book to go towards a specific reading challenge.
6. Pick out a book from your TBR jar and give it a go.
7. Read a book you’ve been meaning to read.
8. Read a book you’ve been avoiding.
9. Read a book you’ve had lying around unfinished.
10. Read a book by an author you haven’t read before.
11. Finish a book in a series you’ve not yet completed (although I ended up finishing the series by the end of the challenge).
12. Read a Classic.
13. Read a book in the Fantasy genre.
14. Read a book in the Contemporary genre.
15. Read a book from a genre you don’t usually read.
16. Read a book featured in Booktown’s Book Club.
17. Read a poetry book.
18. Read a book written by or focusing on POC #weneeddiversebooks
19. Read a book from thebookishdragon’s Book Lovers List
20. Recommend a book to a friend or a fellow book blogger.
21. Join discussions on the Treesofreverie Read-A-Thom Goodreads Group
22. Share some of your favorite quotes from the books you read
23. Write a book review for one of the books you read.
24. Take pictures of your reading progress.
25. Show off your books by taking more pictures.
26. Start a reading journal (I already had one…so this was a bit of a cheat.)

How did your challenge go?

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WWW Wednesday 6/25/2014

 

What are you currently reading?

Brooklyn by Colm Tobin

Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor

Aimless Love by Billy Collins

 

What did you just finish reading?

Raven Stole the Moon by Garth Stein

Divergent by Veronica Roth

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

 

What do you think you’ll read next?

Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain

She Walks in Beauty by Caroline Kennedy

WWW Wednesday 6/18/2014

 

What are you currently reading?

Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

Aimless Love by Billy Collins

 

What did you just finish reading?

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

 

What do you think you’ll read next?

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Raven Stole the Moon by Garth Stein

Brooklyn by Colm Tobin

 

Reader

Reader

 

Looker, gazer, skimmer, skipper,

thumb-licking page turner, peruser,

you getting your print-fix for the day,

pencil-chewer, note taker, marginalianist

with your checks and X’s

first-timer or revisiter,

browser, speedster, English major,

flight-ready girl, melancholy boy,

invisible companion, thief, blind date, perfect stranger–

that is me rushing to the window,

to see if it’s you passing under the shade trees

with a baby carriage or a dog on a leash,

me picking up the phone

to imagine your unimaginable number,

me standing by a map of the world

wondering where you are–

alone on a bench in a train station

or falling asleep, the book sliding to the floor.

Billy Collins, Aimless Love:  New and Selected Poems

WWW Wednesdays

letyourvoicebenerd just posted a WWW Wednesdays post, and I thought it was neat, so I’m going to play along!

 

What are you currently reading?

Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (I may decide to read all four books in this collection, we’ll see if I do it all at once.)

White Apples and the Taste of Stone by Donald Hall

 

What did you just finish reading?

The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

The Kill Order by James Dashner

Nine Horses by Billy Collins

 

What do you think you’ll read next?

The Eye of the Minds by James Dashner

 

This Little Piggy Went to Market

Pigs are my favorite animals…and I love pork. Ironic, right? Because of both of those reasons, this poem made me laugh pretty hard. In case you haven’t noticed, I really love Billy Collins…

 

This Little Piggy Went to Market

 

is the usual thing to say when you begin

pulling on the toes of a small child,

and I have never had a problem with that.

I could easily picture the piggy with his basket

and his trotters kicking up the dust on an imaginary road.

What always stopped me in my tracks was

the middle toe–this little piggy ate roast beef.

I mean I enjoy a roast beef sandwich

with lettuce and tomato and a dollop of horseradish,

but I cannot see a pig ordering that in a delicatessen.

I am probably being too literal-minded here–

I am even wondering why it’s called “horseradish.”

I should just go along with the beautiful nonsense

of the nursery, float downstream on its waters.

After all, Little Jack Horner speaks to me deeply.

I don’t want to be the one to ruin the children’s party

by asking unnecessary questions about Puss in Boots

or, again, the implications of a pig eating beef.

By the way, I am completely down with going

“Wee wee wee” all the way home,

having done that many times and knowing exactly how it feels.

–Billy Collins, Ballistics:  Poems

(detail)

(detail)

 

It was getting late in the year,

the sky had been low and overcast for days,

and I was drinking tea in a glassy room

with a woman without children,

a gate through which no one had entered the world.

She was turning the pages of a large book

on a coffee table, even though we were drinking tea,

a book of colorful paintings–

a landscape, a portrait, a still life,

a field, a face, a pear and a knife, all turning on the table.

Men had entered the gate, but no boy or girl

had ever come out, I was thinking oddly

as she stopped at a page of clouds

aloft in a pale sky, tinged with red and gold.

This one is my favorite, she said,

even though it was only a detail, a corner

of a larger painting which she had never seen.

Nor did she want to see the countryside below

or the portrayal of some myth

in order for the billowing clouds to seem complete.

This was enough, this fraction of the whole,

just as the leafy scene in the windows was enough

now that the light was growing dim,

as was she enough, perfectly by herself

somewhere in the enormous mural of the world.

–Billy Collins, Ballistics:  Poems

 

Evasive Maneuvers

Evasive Maneuvers

 

I grew up hiding from the other children

I would break off from the pack

on its patrol of the streets every Saturday

and end up alone behind a hedge

or down a dim hallway in a strange basement.

No one ever came looking for me,

which only added to the excitement.

I used to hide from adults, too,

mostly behind my mother’s long coat

or her floral dress depending on the season.

I tried to learn how to walk

between my father’s steps while he walked

like the trick poodle I had seen on television.

And I hid behind books,

usually one of the volumes of the encyclopedia

that was kept behind glass in a bookcase,

the letters of the alphabet in gold.

Before I knew how to read,

I sat in an armchair in the living room

and turned the pages, without a clue

about the worlds that were pressed

between D and F, M and O, W and Z.

Maybe this explains why

I looked out the bedroom window

first thing this morning

at the heavy trees, low gray clouds,

and said the world gastropod out loud,

and having no idea what it meant

went downstairs and looked it up

then hid in the woods from my wife and our dog.

–Billy Collins, Ballistics:  Poems

 

The Chairs That No One Sits In

We’ve had several beautiful days in a row now. Spring has FINALLY sprung in Indiana, after one of the longest winters we’ve had in awhile, so we are all very grateful for the sunshine. My husband and I sat out on the porch and listened to a baseball game last night and it got me thinking about this Billy Collins poem. How many people have chairs just waiting to be used? It’s sad that we so rarely take the time to sit and relax anymore.

 

The Chairs That No One Sits In

 

You see them on porches and on lawns

down by the lakeside,

usually arranged in pairs implying a couple

 

who might sit there and look out

at the water or the big shade trees.

The trouble is you never see anyone

 

sitting in these forlorn chairs

though at one time it must have seemed

a good place to stop and do nothing for a while.

 

Sometimes there is a little table

between the chairs where no one

is resting a glass or placing a book facedown.

 

It may not be any of my business,

but let us suppose one day

that everyone who placed those vacant chairs

 

on a veranda or a dock sat down in them

if only for the sake of remembering

what it was they thought deserved

 

to be viewed from two chairs,

side by side with a table in between.

The clouds are high and massive on that day.

 

The woman looks up from her book.

The man takes a sip of his drink.

Then there is only the sound of their looking,

 

the lapping of lake water, and a call of one bird

then another, cries of joy or warning–

it passes the time to wonder which.
–Billy Collins, Horoscopes for the Dead:  Poems