Wondrous Words Wednesday - from Maya Angelou

Kathy at BermudaOnion's Weblog hosts this meme. It is a place to share words were encountered in our reading or highlight words we love.



Both of my words today are from Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou. 


"I believe that profanity directed at the victim of rape or equally lugubrious declarations of eternal love dribbled into the terrified victim's ear, have less to do with power than with sexual indulgence."


lugubrious - adj

: full of sadness or sorrow : very sad especially in an exaggerated or insincere way



"We must call the ravening act of rape, the bloody, heart-stopping, breath-snatching, bone-crushing act of violence , which it is."

This word had me really searching. I could tell from the sentence, that she meant it to be a strong word to describe the violence of rape. 

raven - verb

ravened, ravening

transitive verb

: to feed greedily
: to prowl for food
: plunder

transitive verb

: to devour greedily
:  despoil

Origin of RAVEN


Middle French- raviner to rush, take by force, from ravinerapine
First Known Use: 1530

As I looked at other definitions for raven, or ravening, I wonder if Ms. Angelou used it in the original sense =  take by force.  
What do you think? This word is very powerful used in this sentence


Today is a gathering of a group of friend I really like. We sew together. We are all quilters and it a great way to spend the day sharing and seeing the projects that are being created. We meet at a Retirement Center, in their assembly room. Then we have lunch with the residents in the dining room. We even get some resident stop in to visit and see what we are doing. I enjoy this group a lot. We call ourselves The Loose Threads!  We are all just a little bit short of a full spool!!  :)

Until next time
Stay Busy and Stay Happy

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday -

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile By The Sea gives us a place to share the first paragraph of the first chapter of a book we are reading or maybe hope to read soon. Come join us.

I.O.U.Sex  Sandra Nachlinger & Sandra Allen

2010

Chapter 1

IOU

March 20, 1965 - A perfect 18th birthday with my perfect boyfriend. He gave me a single pearl on a gold chain. Drove to Kiest Park and   ***  .  I love him so. I'd  do anything for him, except IT, but it's soooo tempting.      (substitute "hearts" for the asterisks, I could not get hearts to print in blogger)

      June flipped the diary face down on the coffee table to mark her place and smiled at her two best friends. She was glad she'd  kept the book. Kiki and Peggy had lived those high school days with her, and they treasured her diary as a priceless record of their teenaged years, just as much as she did. Their friendship warmed her more than the blazing logs in the fireplace  or her glass of wine.
       "Don't stop reading," Kiki begged, gulping the last of her beer. "This is too damn funny."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am enjoying this one. Would you keep reading?  Sandra N. is a fellow blogger and I enjoyed her other book, Bluebonnets for Elly.




Until next time
Stay Busy and Stay Happy

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? Moyes, Kingsolver, Lavene, Edwards, Wiggs

A place to share what you are currently reading and to see what others are reading this week. Check in with Sheila at Book Journey and link up and see what others are reading.

I finally got brave and took this one down off the bookshelf. I bought it for myself for my birthday in 2013, so it has been almost 2 year. Sheila encouraged me to try it!  So far I am loving it. 

Me Before You
by Jojo Moyes (Goodreads Author)

Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.

What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps her sane.

Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he's going to put a stop to that.

What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.

This one is the November selected read of the Goodreads group Love of Reading. I have been wanting to read it for sometime so was glad to do it now. 

from Goodreads:

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.

It was an unusual week in that I also brought 3 new books to my stacks. Two were titles that were passed on to me by friends:

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

The Goodbye Quilt by Susan Wiggs

And the 3rd one was ordered from Amazon when I ordered a couple of other non-bookish things. I have read the other 4 in this series so ,of course, I had to have it.

A Corpse for Yew ( A Peggy Lee Garden Mystery) by Joyce and Jim Lavene 

This one came from a marketplace seller on Amazon and she enclosed a gorgeous bookmark in the book . A really neat surprise.

Thanks, Kim. I love bookmarks!!!!

I found Mailbox Monday again. I had lost track of it and hadn't linked up there is a long time. I will today. 

Until next time

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Saturday Snapshot 11/1/14

Hosted by Melinda at West Metro Mommy Reads, Saturday Snapshot is a place to share a favorite photo or more. There are a few rules, so check them out at Melinda's blog and the grab the button and play along. 

My favorite Cowardly Lion. Our middle great grandson who now lives in our town. The other two are in Arizona. He wasn't very fond of the hooded costume. 

The sky is a brilliant pink this morning as I sit and post this. And we are counting down to Christmas. 55 days and I have barely given it a thought. 

Until next time,

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Yellow Crocus - a story worth telling

This is my 14th entry to the 2014 Ebook Reading Challenge. Hosted by Sarah at  Workaday Reads.

Yellow Crocus by Laila Ibrahim
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've given 5 stars to a lot of books lately. Maybe I should be more selective, but they are all really good.

The first paragraph drew me in. I already felt bad for Mattie. How could the plantation owner expect her to just leave her own baby, to be the wet nurse to their new daughter? How could the Missus not want to hold and nurse her own child?

Elizabeth attaches quickly  to her nurse, preferring Mattie to her own mother. Mattie keeps an eye on her own son by watching out the window of the nursery. Luckily, because the quarters are close, when Lisbeth is finally old enough to be without Mattie for a few hours, Mattie is allowed to visit Samuel, and keep a relationship with him as he grows.

As Mattie transitions into becoming Lisbeth's maid, Lisbeth changes. As she grows into a young woman and then becomes betrothed, she ponders the way of her life. A disturbing event makes her really consider her future and she makes a courageous decision.

I really enjoyed the storytelling in this book. I hope Laila  Ibrahim writes again.


View all my reviews


Until next time
Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Wondrous Words Wednesday 10/29/14

Every Wednesday, Kathy at Bermudaonion's Weblog host this wonderful meme to showcase words we encounter in our reading. Join us and tell us about words you discovered.



from Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls

"His handwriting was elegant, if a little spidery, and his sentences were long and extravagant, filled with words like "mendacious" and "abscond".


Mendacious : adjective

: not honest : likely to tell lies
: based on lies

The sentence in which mendacious was used gave me no clue as to its meaning. I knew abscond but needed to look up mendacious.


"Cowboys who could ride anything, caught them and ran them on fear, spurring and quirting them too hard, taking pride in staying on no matter how desperately they bucked and fishtailed.

quirt : transitive verb

:to strike or drive with a quirt

        quirt: noun  - a riding whip with a short handle and a rawhide leash.

I thought I knew that the word whipping could be substituted here, but the word was unfamiliar to me.


from beth's book-nook blog. 10/25/14 - her Saturday Snapshot post. She is involved in a local theatrical production

"Wish me break a leg as this is our final weekend (and we are being adjudicated)."

adjudicated:  transitive verb

: to settle judicially

     intransitive verb

: to act as judge

I should have been able to discern the meaning because it sounds like "judicial". But I looked it up to confirm. 

Have you come across any word you did not know or were unsure of?  

Until next time, 

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

A Happy Read: The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap by Wendy Welch

I am linking this review to the Nonfiction Reading Challenge hosted by The Introverted Reader.


The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap: A Memoir of Friendship, Community, and the Uncommon Pleasure of a Good Book by Wendy Welch
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As of this date, Goodreads says this edition has 500 pages. It does not, only 391. That being said I read this book in a fairly short time. I really became engaged to the character of this story, mainly Wendy, Jack and the cats, Beulah and Val-Kyttie.

Wendy Welch and her husband, Scottish-born Jack Beck, leave the Snake Pit of her current job to find a quiet, more relaxed life. Their search leads them to a struggling Virginia coal-mining town and a wonderful "old" house that seems perfect. They soon find that they are ill prepared for the logistics of their endeavor , but with grace and good old-fashioned chutzpah they soldier on.

As they struggle to build inventory, they find friends and a few foes that help them in their journey. Wendy Welch tells their story with humor, candor and love. This book makes me want to continue to support my local businesses and wish for a used bookstore, like Tales of the Lonesome Pine, in my hometown.


View all my reviews


Until next time,
Stay Busy and Stay Happy