I read somewhere that prisoners on death row got a cigarette and a bean-jam bun [Japanese sweets] just before their execution [also, not ideal translation].

#firstlinefridays
@ShyBookOwl

My 2023 #roll100 list.

@PuddleJumper

My latest #bookspin category draw list.

@TheAromaofBooks

A very late #sundayfunday as inspired by @rubyslippersreads

1. Menage Place by Tatum Dixon ( Virgo superego kink/orgyhousecore e-novella) during the late September 2022 hurricane power outage.

2. Dark Winter by John L. Casey (president of The Space and Science Research Facility in Orlando, Florida)

3. Foggy soft rain or 60s weather

@ozma.of.oz

#bookspinbingo board laid out with my TBR (options/themes) game results and my location and miscellaneous prompt jar pulls. #bookspin and #doublespin picks are categories: non-fiction library loan & owned vintage/retro self-help (90s and before). Rolls landed on 3, 13 & 15: Kate Elliott or 500+ pages/philosophy or critical theory/owned romance. #roll100 - Witch's Boy (repeat+CR)/Opal&Nev/Bhagavad Gita or Hindu spiritual text.

@TheAromaofBooks

Who shall deny the excitement of entering a strange city for the first time? Or going ashore in a strange port?
. . .
Evil comes often to a man with money; tyranny comes surely to him without it.

This chapter heading quote reminds of this current read in dark history in this political season.

When I set out to lead humanity along my Golden Path I promised a lesson their bones would remember. I know a profound pattern humans deny with words even while their actions affirm it. They say they seek security and quiet, conditions they call peace. Even as they speak, they create seeds of turmoil and violence.
- Leto II, the God Emperor

#twofortuesday @TheSpineView

1. Music over podcasts (especially walking), but I'm such a chaotic mood listener. I need to zone out while walking, not to have to pay attention + actually hearing things

2. Classical: orchestral, piano and symphony cycles, opera, Celtic music, German pipes, contemporary piano, ambient/instrumental, film soundtracks. I can only listen to audiobooks in the car for local drives around town. 🀷I like the weird stuff.

My little mini-haul (missing Lord of the Flies) from my outing this weekend. Plus my latest library mood. My mom picked up a Garth Stein book, so I found a few at the library. The Shepherd Kings (CR) #lfl haul inspired ancient civilization adventure/mystery picks. And some seasonal-themed classics to try to get to. I don't care if I haven't read the OG Dune: this was fitting for the season. A torn asunder vintage 1958 noir was another #lfl find.

Spitalfields, London:

Since it was only to be a weekend jaunt to Marrakesh, Lily Foster reckoned they could use one suitcase, and a carry-on at that. What did they need to take, really?

#firstlinefridays @ShyBookOwl

Music is life, and like Life, Inextinguishable. ~ Carl Nielsen

#ominousoctober #evil @Eggs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

0 points

Two of the three #roll100 picks, misplacing the other in the meantime.
@PuddleJumper

There is a proverb with reference to the killing of cats, and those who know anything either of high or low government places, will be well aware that a promise may be made without positive words, and that an expectant may be put into the highest state of encouragement, though the great man on whose breath he hangs may have done no more than whisper that '____ is certainly a rising man.'

Thriftbooks YA/children's & 'deal' designation sale haul: YA emotional/drama/grief, Hindi/Desi stories, literary adult, Cuban feminist novel-in-verse & journalist's rural Alabama memoir of childhood, Irish YA.

Stacks containing my #bookspin & #roll100 picks, as well as my own personal TBR game using the #bookspinbingo board.

#bookspin - McCourtney Undertow, Amityville Horror, Dean Koontz Coldfire options for #lfl find I'll donate back; tagged for #lfl find I'm currently reading.

#roll100 - JCO The Accursed, Mark Burnell The Rhythm Section (film adaptation), David Gilbert & Sons

Love the sweet, quirky, childlike, imaginative, rose-colored glasses life, tomboyish protagonist! She's inductive into my hall of fav female characters. This series is early, and thus, different, more cozy, lighter, and more noir-ish, than his more gritty Lincoln Rhyme crime thrillers. Read if you love old Hollywood, childlike perspective of pursuing adventures+ treasure hunts, film/ pop culture/ philosophy references, discussions on being oneself

[The souvenir shop] was just like any place where blue-green water and glimmering asphalt were held apart by hurricane-whipped palms...I didn't believe there was another place like it on this earth. I had not yet seen this dangling participle of a state, this wonderland, and to me this was Florida, a treasure trove of Budweiser beach towels, Styrofoam floats, leaky beach balls, and bottomless bowls of pinkie rings carved from abalone shell.

There, [in Miami] I always felt that, if I ever stopped moving, a civil uprising from a conflict across the sea would just pull me into it, somehow...I don't know; maybe it was just the Cuban coffee...always felt like I was on the edge of something else, something greater and maybe just a bit dangerous, a weird and pleasant unease, if such a thing is possible...Nothing is prettier, at a distance; I've known people that way.

It ought to have been comical, but it seemed all the more sinister and graphically real without the benefit of perspective. With the figures ludicrously out of proportion, big heads like grinning toffee apples on black sticks, it resembled some crude medieval engraving.

Sympathetic, endearing, informative, observant, intense, fever dream. The journey of processing grief and acceptance of one's own body in dissociating and experimenting with kink and BDSM culture. Recommended for readings in perspective. Come to learn and grow, open your mind and heart toward differences in experiences and method. Put your compassion and empathy hats on. One to own and come back to for the lessons and insight. Refreshingly honest.

#firstlinefridays @ShyBookOwl

An article in the Liberty Leader, dated January 8, 1931, announced, in the breathless style of the times, 'Local Tycoon Does in Penniless Despair, Foley House to Be Pawned at Auction.'

#firstlinefridays @ShyBookOwl

Well, nothing exciting here from the books I've started this past week (4). Oh well.

"When I'm finished working, I don't waste any time. [I put my djellaba back on, smooth out its creases, and I wait. For the guy to zip up his fly, smoke a cigarette, and leave, so I can go back to my spot and harpoon another guy.]"

#wondrouswednesday @Eggs

1. Last added to TBR: library book I saw today, Luke Rosiak's book on the current state of public education (as spurned on to read about by a public radio interview/segment), Race to the Bottom (2022, HarperCollins)
2. Fave in Aug.: Need more time.
3. Fav locales: Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto range Japan, China, Curaçao, historical/ancient Greece, Charleston SC, Maryland, Susquehanna River, Arizona.

A neat and fun, adventurous, quaint combination of vintage science fiction and fantasy. It reminded me of Lord of the Rings, Earthsea, with elements of Star Trek themes (though probably written before it) like research of less advanced societies and planets, and policy similar to Starfleet's Prime Directive noninterference. Best of both worlds/genres. So we get some discussion of ethics and what to do or how to consider once broken. Conceptual.

Though characterization was shallow, I like the way most of the characters were made. The three women were the best of the bunch. The casino owner seemed sort of like a Trump character. The dynamics between Teddy Fay and two of the women were good and set up for future partnerships, I hope. I thought the side story with the Chinese daughter giving testimony should've been expanded. Quality pick w/ Macau. The denouement was too quick/lackluster.

@egg #artfulaugust #floralcover

Not sure if you can see, but there's a floral pattern on the Jane Healy book.

A joke is a way of dominating a language. You must have timing and fluidity, like a fine musician...This is what happens when you move to a foreign place: either you recoil into yourself, becoming a quiet, tense listener, or you make a show of your errors, flaunting them for all to see. Both are attempts to make people comfortable with your otherness. Forgettable, or entertaining.

Sit beside me now, at the riverbank
hear my voice, loud and strong.
Wade into these sweet waters with me,
let me open your heart with a song.

Now we're both pulled under, friend,
singing the same refrain:
Dive back, again, to the lace you once loved
and you'll find it's never the same.
. . .
Now, I wish for the early, chaotic part of my life to return to me, even with its cruelty, its sacrifice, its missteps, its misdeeds. My misdeeds.

#two4tuesdays @TheSpineView
1. Philosophy or miscellaneous non-fiction? Even for fiction, what I go for is probably too vague to fit one genre.
I'd probably be driven insane like The Joker if I had this restriction. I constantly crave and live off of novelty and variety.
2. Most of the books I pick up and read are half-started and unfinished. No other way to be.

#weekendreading @Andrew65

Appreciation for this late-19th-century academic atmosphere/setting following the Harvard Poets of Lowell, Longfellow, and Holmes, Sr. Reminds of the literary references and quoting in the letters between Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg I'd briefly dabbled in. Now I just need some evening rains for it, instead of lingering but unyielding clouds!

@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks #thealphabetgame #letterL

To raise a martini glass to the 60th for the James Bond film franchise, I nominate the adaptation, Licence to Kill to the game. I hope to get to it soon.

Attempting to create and start my own monthly TBR game, combining features from multiple ones from here, bookstagram, YouTube. 30 spaces, 3 TBR jars to roll in picking from, 5 rolls for picks to start off with. Location acquired prompt jar, genre prompt jar, miscellaneous prompt jar; considering adding a specific titles I've purchased prompt jar and a library loans titles prompt jar, too. See how it goes for me, if it helps me choose and focus.

@Eggs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks
My #artfulaugust #boats features:

Literary essays, "Adrift in Sunlight Night"
A 1973 publication in translation about two rival billionaire global shipping magnates.

My updated #alphabetgame #letterd !
@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks
Tagged by @PageShifter

Which ones should I get to next?

@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks
#thealphabetgame #letterd
Not yet read and not fiction. Don't Unplug by Chris Fancy

I often require the stimulation dabbling in miscellaneous subjects & nonfiction. Maybe I could make this my follow-up after I finish the journey of a career journalist into the realm of working in start-up tech during the second boom, a definite learning experience, Disrupted by Lyons (also a 'd').

Let's tag @paperwitchs @puzzledbooks

First graphic novel read in a while. It's neat that the author also provided her own illustrations (or maybe it started the other way around), which was definitely one of the highlights. The artwork was immersive and simple, like news comics, Curious George, Matilda; but I liked it included word bubbles. Second and fourth stories were the best, though all were atmospheric, experiential, the collection's strength. Brothers Grimm + Japanese horror

I dreamt I woke up on a boat
A rocking boat
A quiet boat
On a smooth black sea we float
Away, away
away
I dreamt a Captain dressed in grey
I dreamt I wore a long white coat
I dreamt a stone caught in my throat
I dreamt I choked
and choked
and choked
I dreamt my legs were long and pale
made of smoke
I choked and choked
And when I woke I wrote and wrote
as though it might all float away.

And she was awoken by a soft song: I married my love in the springtime,
But by the summer he'd locked me away.
He'd murdered me dead by the autumn,
& by winter I was naught but decay.
It's cold where I am and so lonely,
but in loneliness I will remain,
Unloved, unavenged, & forgotten,
until I am whole once again.

August #roll100
22-100-17
Kelly Barnhill - The Witch's Boy (middle-grade fantasy)
David Gilbert - & Sons (literary/domestic drama)
Laurie Devine - Saudi (historical fiction fantasy romance adventure drama, 1984)

I think I got these all from the same resale charity shoppe! The middle-grade and Saudi will be the priorities, but I likely won't be able to get through the latter.

@PuddleJumper

How about that? Finished another book which triggered me early on, causing a long hiatus in reading it. Themes of delusion and paranoia, abuse of situations and relationships (emotional), spiraling---Kafkaesque and Hitchcockian in tension. It did have odd Singin' in the Rain contrasts in characterization. This genre probably stresses me out so I don't think I could adequately judge its character properly, or recs. Prob the type in genre for me.

They say that freedom is a constant struggle.
They say that freedom is a constant struggle.
They say that freedom is a constant struggle.
O Lord, we've struggled so long.
We must be free, we must be free.
. . .
They say freedom is a constant dying/we've died so long we must be free.
. . .
We've struggled so long/we've cried so long/we've sorrowed so long/we've mourned so long/we must be free, we must be free.
- 20th century Freedom Movement

He sat a long time, listening, looking up at the carved face which seemed to be true flesh, both pallid and flushed, crowned with agony, listening, yet silently speaking in sonorous accents like the sound of remembered thunder...He himself listened, catching his breath sharply at intervals, nodding, turning his face eagerly, nodding, clasping his hands vehemently together. Listening.

@Eggs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks #julyjam listening day

It rose, seemingly endlessly, and came to rest across Voldemort's shoulders: it's neck the thickness of a man's thigh; it's eyes, with their vertical slots for pupils, unblinking. Voldemort stroked the creature absently with long thin fingers...

#julyjam snake day
@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks @Eggs

Way to be, first reading of author via novella of the character's retirement and a recent brief return to an old signature character. The dialogue/banter was almost like a play; most of the slim book consisted of it. There was some gumshoe private investigator stuff, with a shift in narration tone. Learning about the equivalent of AA for 'working women' and some of the dialogue, observations were the best parts. Still too masculine, outdated tone.

But this is all speculation, mediation, nay, emasculation...I find in you a kindred absorption with identity, dramatic meaning, classic unity, and immortality: you pace a stage, yet sit in the boxes and watch. You seek identity in the midst of indistinguishable chaos, in sprawling nameless reality. Like myself, you deserve the Adlerian verdict...He who seeks all knowledge, and then all life and all power...He is egocentric. How paltry is the def.

#thoughtfulthursday @MoonWitch94

1. Organizational method: genre, theme, subject, provenance/source, rotating TBR/currently reading piles/stacks, Litsy/Instagram prep, reading/stack challenges

2. Across 4 houses, piles and in bags/boxes in vehicle, in out-of-state storage, in stacks on the floor

3. Prefer used + mass market paperback, but there's a lot of hardcover nonfiction. Physical is what I read. Free e-book, heavily reduced Kindle sits

[T]he fact paralyses the intention, gives it something like a malaise producing immobility: in order to make it innocent, it freezes it. This is because myth is speech stolen and restored. Only, speech which is restored is no longer quite that which was stolen: when it was brought back, it was not put exactly in its place. It is this brief act of larceny, this.moment taken for surreptitious faking, which gives mystical speech a benumbed look.

In a single day, how many non-signifying fields do we cross? Very few, sometimes none. Here I am, before the sea; it is true that it bears no message. But the beach, what material for semiology! Flags, slogans, signals, sign-boards, clothes, suntan even, which are so many messages to me.