The Blogger Chronicles at mirabile dictu

Kat, at "mirabile dictu", is running a series, The Blogger Chronicles, that features interviews with book bloggers (including me!), novelists, and critics.

I first followed Kat and her excursions into reading and blogging about books (and occasionally other subjects as well) on her blog "Frisbee: A Book Journal" which she had for six years. Then, in December 2012, she moved to her new site mirabiledictu.org. 

Mirabile dictu, by the way, translates as wonderful to relate.

Kat makes me laugh. She tears around her Mid-West neighborhood on her bicycle, dreams in Latin, and fights the urge to spend too much time in the kitchen. All with a book in hand and with high spirits.  

Check out The Blogger Chronicles here.

Theodore Roosevelt and Speed Reading

Bookplate used by Theodore Roosevelt

for his personal library

"My library has been the greatest possible pleasure to me, [Theodore Roosevelt] wrote to his parents during his freshman year [at Harvard], "as whenever I have any spare time I can immediately take up a book." 
             ---from The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin

It is said that Mr. Roosevelt read a book a day...before breakfast! In the evenings, when things in the White House (where he lived from 1901 to 1909) were quiet, he read another book or two plus magazines and newspapers. 

Speed reading, anyone?

I once took a class in speed reading. It ruined me. It made reading too much like work, gave me a headache, and I had absolutely zero comprehension of what I had read. I soon went back to my normal pace. I am the type of reader who Reads Every Word. It is my one weakness (as Candleford's Postmistress Dorcas Lane would say).

As much as I like the idea of gobbling up books, I find that forcing my eyes to tear across lines of text takes away all the enjoyment of reading for me. 

In 2009, the blog "The Art of Manliness" (which has some great information that is not only for men) had a post on Mr. Roosevelt's reading habits and some tips on increasing one's reading speed. You can read the entry, slowly or quickly, here: Speed Reading.

What about you, dear reader. Have you tried speed reading? Did you have any success? Do you consider yourself a slow reader or a fast reader?  Have you ever calculated the number of words you read per minute? Does your reading speed matter to you? 

Comments, anyone?

Crashed by Timothy Hallinan

My first book finished in 2014 is a mystery by a new-to-me author, Timothy Hallinan. Crashed introduces professional burglar Junior Bender who has been in the business for two decades without ever getting caught. Until now. 

His latest heist, stealing a Paul Klee painting (while holding off four vicious-crazy Rottweilers), is captured on security film. This leads not to jail but to being blackmailed into helping the head of an organized crime family. Trey Annunziato wants to produce an adult film trilogy that will make her enough money to get her out of the business of crime once and for all. Production on the film is being sabotaged and it is up to Bender to find out who is messing with the schedule. If he doesn't, those Rottweillers are going to have a Bender Dinner. Complicating matters, the film's star is to be one Thistle Downing, beloved former child television star and now a down and out junkie, who has a habit of disappearing.  

I know this sounds bleak, but it's not. Mr. Hallinan has fun poking fun at just about every profession  in the Hollywood film industry, Los Angeles traffic, the above mentioned Rottweillers, coked-up art collectors, crooked cops, the tabloid press, and stage mothers.

Junior Bender may be a crook but he also knows how to do the right thing. I found him to be witty and charming. And, of course, he is very resourceful and fixes everything in the end. 

Mr. Hallinan has two other series. One features Simeon Grist an English professor turned private eye which bears looking into. The other stars Poke Rafferty who lives in Bangkok. There are also two more Junior Bender books to add to my list, Little Elvises and The Fame Thief. 

It is always best to start a new year with a laugh or two and Junior Bender provides plenty of them.

A Gift from The Professor

My neighbor The Professor dropped in the other evening. He had a book he wanted to give me and which I was delighted to accept.

Levels of Life by Julian Barnes is a non-fiction offering from the Man Booker Prize-winning author. It is a small book, only 125 pages, and is divided into three sections: "The Sin of Height" about the daring balloonists of the 1800s; "On the Level" about a balloonist's love affair with Sarah Bernhardt; and "The Loss of Depth" about his grief upon the death of his wife, Pat Kavanagh, in 2008. In each section, Mr. Barnes reflects on putting together "two things that have not been put together before." 

I am always happy to receive a recommendation from The Professor. We have lovely conversations in which he quotes lines from his favorite books. (He has many.)

The Grouchy Grammarian by Thomas Parrish

I was rearranging books this morning (which means I was trying to cram the strays onto shelves and between bookends on tabletops) when I came across a copy of the only book I bought at the first Kentucky Book Fair I attended in 2002.

The book is The Grouchy Grammarian written by Thomas Parrish. It is subtitled A How-Not-To Guide to the 47 Most Common Mistakes in English Made by Journalists, Broadcasters, and Others Who Should Know Better.

I met Mr. Parrish at the Book Fair and he kindly inscribed my copy of his book. He is an author and editor and lives in Berea, Kentucky. 

The Grouchy Grammarian is Mr. Parrish's fictional friend who, depressed over the grammatical blunders and missteps he encounters daily in the media, encourages the examination of examples of such errors and voila! we have a book.

There are chapter headings such as: There - the Introducer; May and Might - Did They or Didn't They?; Floaters and Danglers; Whiches, Who's and Thats; Pairs - Some Trickier Than Others; and Between vs. Among.

And, it contains a extensive bibliography and helpful index.

I have dipped into and dawdled among this book's 172 pages over the years, but I think the time has come to sit down and read it straight through. A mini-grammar refresher. 

This is just the sort of book I enjoy reading. Not for everyone's taste, but I am the person who rereads Strunk and White's Elements of Style every year, so of course this book appeals to me. 

From the book jacket:
"No one is safe from the Grammarian's vigilant monitoring of the English language. From the New York Times to the New Yorker to network sports broadcasters, the Grammarian records various gaffes, careless errors, and basic grammatical mistakes made by those who should know better."

The moral of the tale: Sometimes we can learn from our own mistakes and sometimes we can learn from the mistakes of others. 

Four for 'Fourteen

Woman reading on top of ladder

c. 1920

copyright: Bettmann/CORBIS

Yesterday's post was all about First Lines of the Past - blog posts from 2013. Today features First Lines of the Future - the opening sentence of the four books I am determined to read in 2014:

Roosevelt Is Coming Home, Hurrah! Exultant headlines in mid-June 1910 trumpeted the daily progress of the Kaiserin, the luxury liner returning the former president, Theodore Roosevelt, to American shores after his year's safari in Africa.
---The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism (2013) by Doris Kearns Goodwin (750 pages)


He was tall, about fifty, with darkly handsome, almost sinister features; a neatly trimmed mustache, hair turning silver at the temples, and eyes so black they were like the tinted windows of a limousine--he could see out, but you couldn't see in.
---Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1994) by John Berendt (388 pages)


In the spring of 1841, when John Tyler was President, a Kentucky farmer named Solomon Young, and his red-haired wife, Harriet Louisa Young, packed their belongings and with two small children started for the Far West.
---Truman (1992) by David McCullough (992 pages)


On a warm spring evening just before Easter 1927, people who lived in tall buildings in New York were given pause when the wooden scaffolding around the tower of the brand new Sherry-Netherton Apartment Hotel caught fire and it became evident that the city's firemen lacked any means to get water to such a height.
---One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson (456 pages)

All intriguing beginnings, I think. Do any of them pique your curiosity? 

A Year in First Lines

As this is the first day of the new year, I thought I would follow a suggestion by Simon at Stuck in a Book (who is following a suggestion by Melwyck at The Indextrious Reader) and copy the first line of each month's blog post (with link) in 2013.

Here goes:

January: I have already pulled off my shelves three books that I bought in 2012 and that I have been saving to read this year. 

February: Here is what author Jean Hersey has to say about February in her book The Shape of the Year (1967). 

March: March is restless and wild and windswept.

April: For most Major League baseball teams, today is opening day. 

May: Happy May Day! Did you ever circle 'round the May Pole when you were a kid?

June: There is an urgency in April and May in both man and Nature, an urgency that quiets during June. 

July: Here's the thing: I grew up watching television shows such as Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and Have Gun...Will Travel. 

August: I took two years of French in high school and then quickly forgot the headache of deciphering the feminine and masculine nouns, the use of pronouns - je, tu, il, elle, on, and the days of the week - lundi, mardi, mercredi...

September: I have added two destinations to my travel itinerary - armchair travel that is - for this long weekend.

October: Here is a link to some helpful suggestions - from a librarian no less - at Design Sponge on how to style your bookshelves. 

November: It's funny how similar themes seem to arise from books that one is reading. 

December: My at-home, no-writing retreat went something like this:


In review, I know that these lines don't touch on the posts on vintage dictionaries, the Letter a Day Month in February, my four-day retreat from writing and technology, the Kentucky Book Fair, The Grand Southern Literary Tour of 2013, author events at the library and other venues, used book sales and bookstores, my research and paper on the female Victorian archaeologists, attendance at The Jane Austen Festival, my 500 Posts Giveaway, and book lists from the past.

It also doesn't tell me - and this is a good thing - how many books I bought this past year. I would estimate at least fifty but that is low-balling it. I will have to go on a book-buying diet this year to give me a chance to read the stockpile that I have acquired. (Oh, yeah...we'll see how long that lasts!)

Happy New Year to all of you. Thank you so much for visiting and commenting here at Belle, Book, and Candle.