Rebecca Reads

I really like the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling. It is an inspiration for all of us to be mature. It’s especially timely for me right now because I’m currently listening to the nonfiction audiobook Emotional Intelligence (by Daniel Goleman). More about that later… Read the rest of this entry »

The August Bookworms Carnival is up at The 3 R’s. This month’s theme is “You Are Never Too Old.”

I submitted my review of The Complete Tales and Poems of Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne.  I love Winnie-the-Pooh, and I look forward to rereading it many times with my son!

I also wrote a post recently about the picture book Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. I love that picture book!

I have also reviewed number of other children’s books and stories, but not all of them are books that I enjoy as an adult. View summaries of all of the children’s books I’ve reviewed on Rebecca Reads in the Child/Young Adult category.

I’m going to New Zealand for nine days! If all goes well, I have a couple of posts scheduled to appear. I probably won’t be visiting your blogs or responding to comments in the next few days. I’ll try to make up for it when I return!

Image in public domain at wikipedia.org

If Guy de Maupassant lived and wrote stories or novels today, his name would appear on The New York Times best-seller lists many weeks out of a year.

As it was, in the late 1800s, his stories were best-sellers from the time the first one, “Boule de Suif,” appeared in a collection with five other previously unknown authors, until he died, mentally ill, at the young age of 42 in 1893.

But don’t let the best-seller title sway you from reading Maupassant. I tend to avoid modern-day best-sellers because, in my mind, they are (stereotypically) not written very well. But that’s not the case with Guy de Maupassant’s stories: he writes incredibly well. Read the rest of this entry »

Making a movie of To Kill a Mockingbird (reviewed here) was like killing a mockingbird: a sin.

In the beginning, I thought “Wow, this is bad; they should do a remake.” By the end, I decided that no remake could capture the beauty of the novel: any film is bound to fail. A picture is not worth a thousand words. Read the rest of this entry »

I was dressing my 10-month-old son on his bedroom floor the other evening when he started reaching up. I saw his fingers brush the edge of the orange cover of Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, which was on the edge of the second-lowest shelf. Once he was fully clothed in pajamas, I sat him up and pulled the book off the shelf.

“In the great green room,” I began, setting him on my knee.

He stopped squirming and clapped his hands together, ready for his story. Read the rest of this entry »

In reading the Poetry Friday website, I came across some significant pointers about honoring copyright on the web.

• Mitali at mitali’s fire escape reviews some basic ways to honor copyright when posting poetry for Poetry Friday.
• She links to a great article called Websites: Five Ways to Stay Out of Trouble.

While I’ve taken care to avoid breaking copyright in terms of text, I hadn’t put much thought to the photos (oops!). All book covers come from my Amazon store, which has proven in court to be acceptable. As for the authors’ photos from weekly geeks the other day, I realize now that those that I got off Google search are breaking copyright, so I’ll take those down. I’ll also keep image copyright in mind as I blog in the future.

The main thing that stood out to me was this: probably, no one is going to come after me if I do post copyrighted photos. However, the more readers I have, the more likely someone will notice. I want more readers, so I won’t tempt fate!

Am I the only one who didn’t even think of this? What are your thoughts about copyright on your personal blog?

I found Poems Every Child Should Know, which was edited by Mary E. Burt and published in 1904, on the Project Gutenberg site. I was looking for poems by Rudyard Kipling, but I decided to look at all of this, as I have a child and want him to know what he “should” know.

I’ve only skimmed it, and I love it so far. I did come across a (more) complete “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” I didn’t know the rest of it. Reading it is different, because it obviously doesn’t follow the familiar song. Read the rest of this entry »

Answers

to Sunday’s post

1. (a) A.A. Milne (b) Simon Winchester (c) Alexander McCall-Smith

2. Guy de Maupassant

3. (a) Amy Tan (b) Terry Tempest Williams (c) Sherman Alexie (d) Robert Hass

4. Robert Hass

6. Winston Churchill

The winner was gag who guessed all correct (!) except Terry Tempest Williams. NIce job! And nice job for the rest of you.

Go visit her Reading Room!

I am not very familiar with the political situation before, during, and after World War II. But after reading the best speeches of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, I am impressed that his powerful, confident speeches were a deciding factor in the perseverance of the United Kingdom through the trying times of World War II. I loved reading his political speeches: though my situation is different, his powerful words buoy me. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not Maupassant’s fault, but I have a grudge against him already: his book stinks.

The librarian had to retrieve it from The Stacks. The first thing I noticed as she returned was its size. At more than 1300 pages, it thudded on the counter. Then, as she swiped my library card and pushed the book toward me, I smelled it. Musky. Old. Like a 1950s house that hasn’t been aired out in decades. Like puke-colored green shag carpet.

The cover itself isn’t too bad: the top two-thirds has the long title and subtitle and editor written in plain print across a faded (and stained) orange background. Bizarre green faces stare at me from the bottom third of the page.

Then I opened it. The text is about 8 point font. A story ends and the next begins on the same page (that bothers me: a story should stand by itself). And each page is as thin as skin. The book is probably 11 inches tall and 5 inches wide, so with 1300+ pages, a heavy cover, and Bible-thin pages, it’s kind of hard to curl up in bed for some comfort reading. Read the rest of this entry »