Brigham Young and Infamous Legacies in General

Brigham Young
(image from biography.com)

Well, I’ll probably be banned from ever entering Utah for this, but here goes.

I just read The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff. It tells the somewhat parallel stories of two nineteenth wives: Ann Eliza Webb, wife of Brigham Young, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints’  second leader in the 1870s,

1978: A Rockin’ Year to be Seventeen

Image from http://www.fanpop.com

Evolution of X just had a post about her memories of 1978. She invited readers to do the same.

So, let’s see. Not in chronological order:

Raft Books: My Excuse For Browsing

I’m not big on collections. I used to be. I had all sorts of collections. If I saw something I liked, I would start a collection. Until I felt that I was surrounding myself with things just for the sake of surrounding myself with things, and I got rid of most of them.

Martin Chuzzlewit in the U-nited States

(Image: charlesdickenspage.com}

Since I’ve been blogging about Victor Hugo’s stories, let me jump over to England and Charles Dickens.

This winter break I had the bad luck to get the flu. For days I could barely get out of bed. But every cloud has a silver lining, and this cloud’s lining was that I got to read Martin Chuzzlewit in a few days.

Writing Prompt 1984: Paquette and the Nazis

(Image from Oo.Cities.org)

Writing prompt 1984 asks about being locked in a room with my greatest fear. I suppose that having nightmares is a pretty good metaphor for being locked in a room with my fears.

When B was about six months old, we were staying with my in-laws for what was supposed to be a week to ten days, because the front windows in our house were being replaced. It ended up taking more than two months. But don’t get me started on construction work in South Texas . . .

FIve of the Hardest Things I’ve Ever Done

A much younger R

Well, let’s see.

Literally one of the hardest things was the first time I dived off a diving board. This was in a swimming pool in Switzerland. I was twelve, and on vacation with my then best friend Dees. We went to that pool several times, and she dove in like a pro. Toward the end I finally took what was meant to be the plunge. But it was a belly flop instead. Although the term belly flop doesn’t really cover it. A flop sounds soft. This was not soft. In fact, I can still remember just how hard it was, slapping flat onto that water. Very hard indeed.

Nine First Lines And a Paragraph

One of my blogging friends–Fork in My Eye, go visit her–wrote a post about first lines of her favorite books and invited others to do the same. So here’s mine. My favorite books in English, that is.  Some of them. And literature. I’ll do another list with books from other languages, and also one from popular fiction. I’m not going to tell you which books the lines–and one paragraph, you’ll see why–are from. Some are obvious because a name gives it away. Let me know which ones you recognize. No looking them up, though. That would be cheating.

My Relationship With Dictionaries

The Daily Post today is about dictionaries. It concludes with the question what dictionaries are to me and if I have any favorites.

Well, it wasn’t love at first sight, I can tell you that. In fact, I avoided dictionaries as a youngster–too much hassle. I preferred the DIY method: inference through context.

As a student in library school I learned extensively about all imaginable dictionaries, but it was one of the most boring classes. Probably because the teacher had the stage presence of a bibliography of bibliographies. Dictionaries were a necessity, a useful tool, but I still wasn’t turned on.

Book Spine Poetry 2… and 3

I did say of the previous book spine poem that it was the first installment, during this national poetry month. But as some of you may have noticed, I have a hard time following up on stuff. (I wasn’t always like that; I blame it on menopause.)  Book spine poetry also turns out to be harder than I thought.

NaPoMo

It’s National Poetry Month! I’m no good at poetry, but via The Daily Post I came across this really cool idea for making book spine poetry here. So that got me going. Here is my highly existential first installment.