Book Quotes of the Week

"Never judge a book by its movie." J.W. Eagan

"Old or new, the only sign I always try to rid my books of (usually with little success) is the price-sticker that malignant booksellers attach to the backs. These evil white scabs rip off with difficulty, leaving leprous wounds and traces of slime to which adhere the dust and fluff of ages, making me wish for a special gummy hell to which the inventor of these stickers would be condemned." Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night

"When a new book is published, read an old one." Samuel Rogers

"Literacy arouses hopes, not only in society as a whole but also in the individual who is striving for fulfilment, happiness and personal benefit by learning how to read and write. Literacy... means far more than learning how to read and write... The aim is to transmit... knowledge and promote social participation." UNESCO Institute for Education, Hamburg, Germany 

"There are no such things as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written." Oscar Wilde

Find more book quotes here.

Stevenson, Robert Louis "Treasure Island"

Stevenson, Robert Louis "Treasure Island" - 1881/82

I have never read this book before in my life. I haven't even seen one of the many different film adaptations but I was familiar with a lot of the characters, especially Jim Hawkins, Captain Flint and the parrot of the same name, Long John Silver, well, the main ones.

I wouldn't call this a children's book, yes, children can read it, but the story is also interesting for adults, quite some excitement going on, you need to guess what might happen next and won't succeed every time.

If someone had asked me beforehand whether I would like this, I am sure I would not have known. But I really did like it. A lot of drama and action in the story. So, if you don't want too much love in your classics, maybe this is one for you. A true classic.

From the back cover:

"Originally conceived as a story for boys, Stevenson's novel is narrated by the teenage Jim Hawkins, who outwits a gang of murderous pirates led by that unforgettable avatar of immorality, Long John Silver. Admired by Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, and (reluctantly) Henry James, the story has the dreamlike quality of a fairy tale. It has worked its way into the collective imagination of more than five generations of readers, young and old alike, gaining the power of myth.

Although thoroughly British in its setting and characters, Treasure Island, as John Seelye shows, has an American dimension, drawing on the author's experiences living in California, and owes no small debt to Washington Irving's ghost stories and James Fenimore Cooper's tales of adventures. This edition also includes Stevenson's own essay about the composition of Treasure Island, written just before his death."

Top Ten Tuesday ~ Top Ten Bookworm Delights

 

"Top Ten Tuesday" is an original feature/weekly meme created on the blog "The Broke and the Bookish". This feature was created because they are particularly fond of lists at "The Broke and the Bookish". Since I am just as fond of them as they are, I jump at the chance to share my lists with them! Have a look at their page, there are lots of other bloggers who share their lists here. 

April 26: Top Ten Bookworm Delights

What is it that makes me love books so much - other than its contents, of course. Just about anything that has to do with them, from the look to the feel to the smell ... Anyway, here is my list of bookworm delights, not really in order of importance, just in order that they came to me.

1. The book cover, especially if they relate to the story, if they show what it might be about, when it gives you the idea what could happen in the book.

2. A new book. It always smells so nice and flipping through the pages like a deck of cards is one of the nicest things you can do with a new book.

3. Finding a book that I've been looking for for ages in a shop, especially in a used bookstore. Reminds me of treasure hunting.

4. Finding a reader, somewhere, on the train, at the doctor ... who reads a book I have read. Yet another joy of real books vs. ebooks, you can always see the cover and then see what the other before.

5. Reading in a quiet corner on a rainy day with a cup of coffee next to me.

6. Looking at my bookshelves. Saying hello to all the books I ever read as if they were old friends. Stories come back to mind as soon as I see the book. Almost as good as reading them again. Almost.

7. Taking a book anywhere I go. Trips, doctor's appointments, hairdresser, anywhere I might have to wait for a while. I'm never bored.

8. Talking about a book. Be it with a good friend, in a book club or with a total stranger you happen upon

9. Discovering an author new to me who has been writing a lot of books before.

And last but not least:

10. Travelling the world. Even though - due to my illness, I cannot go out much and travel even less, I can "visit" any place I want with my book. Even travel in time.

There are many many more reasons why I love books and many many more things I love about books, this is just a random, quick list of a few of those points.

Filipović, Zlata "Zlata's Diary"

Filipović, Zlata "Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Wartime Sarajevo" (Bosnian: Zlatin dnevnik: otroštvo v obleganem Sarajevu) - 1993

I recently read "Rose of Sarajevo" by Ayşe Kulin and remembered that I always wanted to read this book. My son read it in school and so it was in our house. No chasing after it in a bookshop or waiting until my library found it on an inter library exchange.

This is a wonderful account about a war. The interesting thing is that Zlata started this diary before the war where she is all girly and interested in all the stuff girls of her age are just interested in. so, we can see how her life changes with the war, how all she is interested in now is how to survive and how to find food. A brilliant way of showing the world that war destroys everything and punishes especially those that are innocent, most often women and children. A way of seeing the war through the eyes of a child.

Like Anne Frank in "The Diary of a Young Girl", she gives her diary a name (Mimmy) and like Anne Frank's diary, I think everyone should read this.

From the back cover:

"In a voice both innocent and wise, touchingly reminiscent of Anne Frank's, Zlata Filipovic's diary has awoken the conscience of the world. Now thirteen years old, Zlata began her diary just before her eleventh birthday, when there was peace in Sarajevo and her life was that of a bright, intelligent, carefree young girl. Her early entries describe her friends, her new skis, her family, her grades at school, her interest in joining the Madonna Fan Club. And then, on television, she sees the bombs falling on Dubrovnik. Though repelled by the sight, Zlata cannot conceive of the same thing happening in Sarajevo. When it does, the whole tone of her diary changes. Early on, she starts an entry to 'Dear Mimmy' (named after her dead goldfish): 'SLAUGHTERHOUSE! MASSACRE! HORROR! CRIMES! BLOOD! SCREAMS! DESPAIR!' We see the world of a child increasingly circumscribed by the violence outside. Zlata is confined to her family's apartment, spending the nights, as the shells rain down mercilessly, in a neighbor's cellar. And the danger outside steadily invades her life. No more school. Living without water and electricity. Food in short supply. The onslaught destroys the pieces she loves, kills or injures her friends, visibly ages her parents. In one entry Zlata cries out, 'War has nothing to do with humanity. War is something inhuman.' In another, she thinks about killing herself. Yet, with indomitable courage and a clarity of mind well beyond her years, Zlata preserves what she can of her former existence, continuing to study piano, to find books to read, to celebrate special occasions - recording it all in the pages of this extraordinary diary."

Book Quotes of the Week

"You learn to write by reading, and my experiences and tastes as a reader are pretty wide." Justin Cronin

"Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance." Will Durant

"Some people will lie, cheat, steal and back-stab to get ahead... and to think, all they have to do is READ." Fortune

"The love of books is a love which requires neither justification, apology, nor defense." J.A. Langford

"A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint.... What I began by reading, I must finish by acting." Henry David Thoreau

Find more book quotes here.

Hooks, Bell "All About Love: New Visions"

Hooks, Bell "All About Love: New Visions" - 1999

I read this because it was suggested in the Goodreads group created by Emma Watson "Our Shared Shelf".

I thought this might be a good and interesting non-fiction book but found that it sounded more like those self-help ones that promise that everything will be fine as long as you love yourself and love the world and all such stuff. Yeah, I'm not really a yoga-meditation kind of person and I don't believe that you can change everything in the world once you start looking at it different. How will we get rid of terrorists? Love yourself? How will we prevent World War III? Love yourself? You see the drift and you see the problem I have with that sort of stuff. I have lived in a very hateful environment for a long long time and I cannot change people's minds, I have to live with it. It doesn't make it better if people start telling me that I just have to change my mind and everything will be find. Would they have told that to a Jew who was carted off to a concentration camp? And how many of them would have believed them?

All in all, I think this book is more depressive than uplifting. One of the books where I wish I could speed-read and just get through a hundred pages in a minute, that sort of thing.  I will stop now because otherwise I will just be rambling on like the author did.

From the back cover: "A visionary and accessible book, bell hooks's All About Love offers radical new ways to think about love. Here, hooks, one of our most acute social critics, takes the themes that put her on the map - the relationship between love and sexuality, and the interconnectedness between the public and the private - and challenges the prevailing notion that romantic love is more important than all other bonds.
All About Love is a blueprint for finding myriad types of love, which hold the redemptive power to change our minds and lives. In thirteen concise chapters, hooks explains how our everyday notions of what it means to give and receive love often fail us, and how these ideals are established in early childhood. But challenging us to think of love as an action, not a feeling, hooks offers a rethinking  of self-love (without narcissism) that will bring peace and compassion to our personal and professional lives.
Imaginative and original, hooks shows how love heals the wounds we bear as individuals and as a nation. All About Love, written in vivid, provocative, and sensual language, is as much about culture as it is about intimacy. In exploring the ties between love and loss, hooks takes us on a journey that is sacred and transcendent. Her destination: our own hearts and communities."

Top Ten Tuesday ~ Ten Books That Will Make You Laugh (or at least chuckle)

"Top Ten Tuesday" is an original feature/weekly meme created on the blog "The Broke and the Bookish". This feature was created because they are particularly fond of lists at "The Broke and the Bookish". Since I am just as fond of them as they are, I jump at the chance to share my lists with them! Have a look at their page, there are lots of other bloggers who share their lists here. 

April 19: Ten Books That Will Make You Laugh (or at least chuckle)

Bryson, Bill - Any book he ever wrote
Busch, Wilhelm "Max and Moritz" (Max und Moritz) - 1865
Dahl, Roald "The Best of Roald Dahl" - 1978
Dickens, Charles "The Pickwick Papers" - 1836
Ephron, Nora "I Feel Bad About My Neck And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman" - 2006
Ionesco, Eugène ""Rhinoceros" (Rhinocéros) - 1957
Kerkeling, Hape "I'm off then: Losing and Finding Myself on the Camino de Santiago" (Ich bin dann mal weg. Meine Reise auf dem Jakobsweg) - 2006
Kishon, Ephraim - anything
McCarthy, Pete "McCarthy’s Bar" - 2002
Rosendorfer, Herbert "Letters Back to Ancient China" (Briefe in die chinesische Vergangenheit) - 1983
Tanpınar, Ahmet Hamdi "The Time Regulation Institute" (Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü) - 1961

I have tried to add a few that were not English in the original to widen the choice. There are funny books written everywhere in the world.

 
If you are looking for more funny books, please, check out my label: Humour