In response to Thomas’s request for pictures of pets reading Brookner…
Ritchey and Hops are mesmerized
…and also in honor of International Anita Brookner Day, one month away today! Get ready, y’all!
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I won something! First of all, I would like to thank Alexis over at Bunny Ears & Bat Wings for this honor. No, YOU’RE sweet, Alexis!
This award comes with a few light-duty instructions for its recipients:
I had twenty-something hamsters when I was a kid.
I played soccer starting at age 5 or so, through college.
I’ve always wanted to travel to Greece.
I used to work as a bicycle messenger.
I would love to go back to school and study and learn… forever.
Even though I’m mostly a mountain biker these days, the clean, sharp lines of a track bike are still my favorite aesthetic. Not a hipster fixie, mind you, but a classic track-racing bike.
Husband and I spent last Thanksgiving in Belgium just because our favorite band was playing in the same small town as my favorite beer bar. (Or this one could just read: I’m a lucky woman!)
Now, I know some people are too busy to deal with these awards. If one of my favorite blogs falls into this category (and I’m sure some do), please just take the compliment and move on! I’m not trying to chain-letter you, but I do want to recognize the blogs I am most impressed by. Please check these folks out…
Stuck In A Book
Book Journey
My Porch
TERRIBLEMINDS
books i done read
cakes, tea and dreams
The Feminist Texican [Reads]
useless beauty
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Theme Thursday is hosted by Reading between Pages. My job is to find and post a quotation from my current read, to express each Thursday’s theme. Today, our theme is numbers, and my snippet comes from page 10 of the book I started today, called Clara and Mr. Tiffany, by Susan Vreeland. So far, this is a lovely read…
Now I told Mary to number the individual sections, left to right.
“If a body can count that high,” she said.
“This one only has several hundred pieces because they’re large, but some windows have thousands of smaller ones. When she’s finished, Cornelia, you will cut up the first copy into its sections using these special scissors with three blades.”
Lots of numbers, yes? This book is the fictionalized story of Clara Driscoll, the woman behind much of the artistry of Tiffany’s famed lamps and other glass confections.
And here’s a bonus from pages 33-34:
“…more than that,” Mr. Nash said. “We can now control clarity, color, and surface to create nuances in an infinite variety of glass. We’re approaching five thousand types now.”
“That’s staggering,” I said, knowing I had to keep all of them in my mind when I placed my glass orders for each window and mosaic that my department would create.
The story is told in the voice of Clara herself, in case you were wondering.
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Not my blogoversary, silly! That’s still a ways away. But today, May 7, is *my* birthday, and tomorrow, May 8, is the Husband’s! Together we are 70 years old this weekend. (Whew.)
Today I hope for a beautiful bike ride before the Texas Beer Festival with my parents. Tomorrow I hope for a beautiful bike ride before lunch with an old friend. And I hope for some pleasant reading time, too (although I don’t know where that fits in, actually.) So I invite you to raise a glass, ride a bike, and/or read a book with me! Here’s to another fabulous year.
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Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages for hosting this meme. To participate: Share the first line (or two) of the book you are currently reading on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you’re reading. Then, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence. You might also consider stopping by the original post.
I am listening to this one in the car on audio. (You will note, if you’ve been following, that I am listening to more and more audio. More on that later, but suffice it to say the format is more or less working for me.) I love my Lee Child… Here’s your book beginning:
The sun was only half as hot as he had known sun to be, but it was hot enough to keep him confused and dizzy. He was very weak. He had not eaten for seventy-two hours, or taken water for forty-eight.
I have faith, Reacher! Especially as there’s so much more yet to come. 🙂
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Just a quick note to say that three years ago today, the Man became the Husband, and I am so very thrilled with my good luck. Thanks for three beautiful years – here’s to many, many more.
I love you Husband.
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Today I just want to pass along two items from today’s Shelf Awareness newsletter. The first is about Houston, and the second is about the bike business! (You can read all of today’s issue, and more, at the Shelf Awareness website).
In the latest segment of its Houston by the Book series, the Houston Press profiled Brazos Bookstore and Jane Moser, who “manages the day-to-day operations, scheduling appearances, and–most importantly–buying the books. While she admits that it indeed is no picnic, it’s a job that clearly brings her a good bit of joy.”
In 2006, when previous owner Karl Kilian was ready to step aside, Moser, who had been a children’s bookstore owner, was one of 25 Houstonians who “came together and formed an LLC and bought the store. I was one of the people who worked on the deal to get it together…. I had been a customer of this store for years, and knew the owners. So when it came up that they were trying to put a deal together, none of the people who bought it wanted to run it. They just wanted to save it.”
Moser added, “Everybody loves the idea of a strong, independent bookstore in town. People like the idea, but now we’re in a changing age, and people are going to have to support the sale of physical books as well, or we’re going to lose these opportunities for meeting the authors, etc. That serendipitous experience of walking in a bookstore and seeing a book you didn’t know you needed, or meeting an author you didn’t know about before, or seeing another book by an author, or seeing a cover that just grabs you–those are things that just aren’t yet possible online.”
Christopher J. Zane will be the opening plenary speaker at the American Booksellers Association’s Day of Education at BookExpo America on Monday, May 23, Bookselling This Week wrote. Zane is a 29-year veteran of the retail bicycle industry who bought his first bike shop at age 16 and has built Zane’s Cycles into one of the largest retail bicycle stores in the nation. “His unique approach to marketing includes strategies that stress continual learning, the lifetime value of a customer, guerrilla marketing, and cost-controlled customer service,” BTW reported.
As the morning plenary speaker, Zane will share insights on the lifetime value of one customer to a store’s bottom line, and discuss unique approaches to customer relationship marketing, understanding the psychology of today’s customer, and acquiring the tools to build lifetime relationships in the B2C and B2B markets.
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Briefly, because I couldn’t resist….
This site offers a daily prompt for those bloggers who want to blog every day unfailingly but may lack for topics. I could not let today’s prompt pass me by as the answer is so obvious!
What non-exercise activity do you wish would keep you fit?
Duh! READING! So many hours spent on my back on the couch with a little dog on my belly… ah how flat that belly would be…
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Much nicer all full-up, aren’t they? This is my TBR bookshelf now. 🙂 (notice how I left room for joiners!)
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