Chatting Books Online Day 95. If you had asked me my favorite book back when I was in college I would have probably answered "The Awakening by Kate Chopin" ( also possible I would have answered A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole or Love in the Ruins by Walker Percy , but I digress).
When I was in college I saw the book through the eyes of a young, single woman and identified with the strength of the main character claiming rights over her life. When I re-read the book in my late 20's early 30's I saw it differently but still admired her strength. When I have read it again years later I was angry with the infidelity in the story, and finally when I read it again in recent years I find a sadness that it ends like it did (won't ruin it and tell you).
Originally written in 1899 and set between Grand Isle and New Orleans this book was considered shocking at publication. This book is many things to many people - and many things to the same person depending on where you are in life when you read it, and isn't that hopefully true of all great literature?
This very short 116 page paperback costs only $4 a copy.
Day 94: 50 Beautuful Deer Resistant Plants
Chatting Books Online Day 94 . Please take note the title of today’s recommended book is “50 Beautiful Deer-Resistant Plants” , NOT “50 Beautiful Deer -PROOF Plants”. This paperback by Ruth Rogers Clausen gives you pictures , growing information , and design tips on the prettiest annuals , perennials, bulbs, and shrubs that deer don’t eat (generally).
Each plant in the book is given a deer-resistance rating between 1 -10 (actually the book does not cover anything less than a 7) . With 1 meaning Bambi finds it delicious and 10 meaning our deer friends generally leave the plant alone completely not even tasting a leaf . (a 7 they might eat the flowers but leave the foliage alone - the beasts !)
Some good choices are things like Daffodils (9-10) , beauty berry (8-10), and most herbs (9-10) but marigolds (which I have always heard were good used to distract deer and rabbit away from your good plants so they would eat that instead) are only a 7-8 so I guess it might actually work ! Though that seems awfully rude to the poor marigold - or kind to the deer depending on how you look at it.
So buy this 224 page paperback by Timber Press from us for $19.95 a copy to learn to make your garden a bit less of an outdoor salad bar for Bambi and her friends .
Day 93: Case of the Missing Poodle
Chatting Books Online Day 93 . I think of today’s recommended book as sort of a New Orleans Nancy Drew type mystery . The Case of The Missing Poodle by Rannah Gray is a children’s book starring twins Adeline and Victoria. The book opens as they see a scared looking little dog with a mean man at a Mardi Gras parade who won’t let them pet the dog . They know a similar dog has gone missing and so they decide to solve the mystery . Along the way they visit lots of popular sites in New Orleans.
I remember one lady in the shop telling me she gave the book to her grand daughter and they read it together and then took a day trip to New Orleans to ride the street car and visit some of the places in the book .
Hardcover 204 pages . Sells for $15.99 a copy .
Day 92 : The Week in Review : June 8-14, 2020
It was another fun-filled week in book the recommending world. This week we took a trip to the Country (not so far from where I sit) with The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Living. We talked about what to call groups of things in A Compendium of Collective Nouns . We learned from one of Louisiana’s greatest writers in “Ernest J. Gaines Conversations”. Then we traveled to distant lands (once in a wolf suit) with “Where the Wild Things Are” and again with “Atlas Obscura” (though even more odd those things are real!) . And finally we visited with long beloved stories in a beautiful edition of “The Essential Grimm’s Fairy Tales”.
Can’t wait to see what next week brings - honestly it is usually as much a surprise to me what I choose each day as I hope it is for you.
Day 91: The Essential Grimm's Fairy Tales
Chatting Books Online Day 91. As many of you know I love a pretty book. I mean it still has to also be a good book , but bonus points are given if the book is also beautiful and even more if it feels nice to hold - and yes, I have been known to encourage people to "pet" a book or two in the shop . That said, today's recommended book checks all the boxes, it is The Essential Grimm's Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm. With more than 59 fairy tales including not only the ones you think of right away like Rapunzel, Hansel and Grethel and Cinderella but also some you will remember hearing once you read them like The Elves (includes the Shoemaker and the Elves and 2 other Elven stories) and the Wedding of Mrs. Fox, but it also includes some you may have never read before like The Fox and the Horse (which I had to read because I love "The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse" by Charlie Mackesy so much and I wondered if they were related - they are not at all similar - but both are beautifully illustrated). And there are so many more, some you will know and many you will not but will now know them going forward.
Clothbound over paper from The Knickerbocker Classics collection 359 pages with an elastic band . $16.99 a copy. .
Day 90 : Atlas Obscura
Chatting Books Online Day 90. Today's recommended book is one that I hope can go a long way to satisfy our curiosity and wanderlust until such time as we can freely travel and explore the world in person once again. Today's book Is Atlas Obscura . It is a different kind of travel book , one that finds unusual places and events to visit throughout the world, and as the back inside flap says : "Every page gets to the very core of why humans want to travel in the first place: to be delighted and disoriented, uprooted from the familiar and amazed by the new".
Some of the things I have found interesting as I flip the pages (and it's one of those books that you can leave on the coffee table and read a page or two here and there) are The Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo , Italy where they have 8000 corpses actually displayed in their mummified state (and yes there are some pictures). And did you know that there is a Baby Jumping contest in Spain? I kid you not, grown men dress themselves as devils, get blindfolded and then leap across babies laid on the ground ! And how about this one, there is a spot in St. Pancras church yard in London where there is the most interesting arrangement of tombstones scalloped around the base of a tree, and it was actually done by novelist Thomas Hardy (Tess of the d'Urbervilles etc) while he was an architecture student and was working at the churchyard. The world really is a Bizarre and Wonderfilled place !
I even learned a bit about places and events closer to home . They tell about the Angola Prison Rodeo right here in St Francisville , and the book also tells about a chapel in the center of St Roch Cemetery in New Orleans filled with prosthetic limbs and other medical stuff with a floor covered in coins that was built by a priest in 1867 in thanks for sparing all in his parish from the yellow fever epidemic that killed 40,000 in New Orleans. Now the reason I find this so interesting is not only that it is also dealing with the aftermath of a pandemic but also that my grandparents are buried there in St. Roch and my brothers played little league and football on the St Roch playground teams when we were children and unil reading this I had never heard these stories or seen this chapel.
Wonders never cease to amaze me !
This 472 page hardcover book sells for $37.50 a copy.
Day 89 : Ernest J. Gaines Conversations
Chatting Books Online Day 89. Today’s recommended book is Ernest J. Gaines: Conversations .
The literary world lost a giant at the end of 2019 when this award winning writer from Louisiana passed away. You may have been lucky enough to hear Ernest Gaines speak on one of his visits to The Writers and Readers Symposium and if you were you were certainly moved by his words and inspired by his writing . But wether you had the privilege of attending one of his talks or not you can now read a collection of 15 transcribed interviews ranging from 1994 to 2017. He talks candidly about a variety of topics. With so many different interviewers contributing to this book they covered a wide range of questions so you will learn about his upbringing , his influences , and of course his books and characters along with touching on so much more . As I read these interviews it has inspired me to add a re-read of many of Mr. Gaines’ books to my TBR (To Be Read) list.
Paperback , 218 pages , $25 a copy .
Day 88 : Where the Wild Things Are
Chatting Books Online Day 88. Today's recommended book: Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, is a multiple award winning picture book originally published in 1963.
Who knew that wearing a wolf suit and causing mischief could lead to a trip through weeks and a year to the land where the wild things live, a wild rumpus, being crowned a king, realizing what is really important, then travelling back through weeks and a year by boat , back to your bedroom and into the loving arms of your family and a still warm dinner? Well that is exactly what happens in this delightfully illustrated book.
Hardcover storybook, 48 pages. $ 18.95 a copy (until the ones I have are sold out at which time I see the publisher has raised the price to $19.95 on newly ordered copies).
