Looking for quiet gifts

It’s been over five weeks since my last bookconscious post. In that time, I only finished reading four books, although I’ve got three others started and have dipped into several volumes of poetry. Two of the books I’m currently reading are all about grounding oneself in the quiet within an ordinary day.  I can’t seem [...]

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My gone away world: the annual not-back-to-school post

August was a tough month in the bookconscious household. We went through vicarious ups and downs with the Teenager as he traveled alone to Europe and back (although a German customs agent didn’t think he was old enough to return home alone, but that’s another story), turned 16, went through public high school soccer tryouts, [...]

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Fiction and food, the familiar and the faraway

I read a variety of books this month,  but I noticed as I looked over the list that many of them, fiction and nonfiction alike, featured food prominently. Location mattered, too, as I gravitated towards books set near and far, from Seattle to New England, from New York to Paris, to the mountains of Bhutan. [...]

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Powerful personalities, poems, and promises

It’s rainy and cool here in New Hampshire as I start this post, perfect weather for getting into pajamas after supper and curling up with a good book. I have somewhere to be, however. It’s a place I’ve mentioned several times on bookconscious: Gibson’s Bookstore. Tonight will be different: I’m the new events coordinator for [...]

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April in paradise, part III: book buying heaven

My family knows I have a sixth sense that spots used book stores and sniffs out library sales. My inner reading deals beacon honed in on a brief notice about the Five Colleges Book Sale in The Concord Monitor’s “Livewell” insert several weeks ago. The sale, which has run since 1961 and raises money for [...]

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April in paradise, part II: Dogs’ Night Out and Writers’ Day

After the reading at Gibson’s, I was primed for another evening of extraordinary poetry, an event I mentioned in last month’s bookconscious post — Dog’s Night Out. Mike Pride, the retired Concord Monitor editor and a poetry lover, organized this event and wrote about the three poets who graced the stage: Philip Schultz, Wesley McNair, [...]

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April in paradise

Maybe when you picture paradise, it’s someplace warm enough to sustain palm trees, or to support a brisk business in cocktail umbrellas.  I picture barely leafed out trees, mud studded with boot prints, boulders baring their lichen patched shoulders to the sun after months of snow cover.  In New Hampshire, April may or may not [...]

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Reading fast? I’m too hungry.

In February 2008, I began tracking my reading at Goodreads. As of today, I’ve added 106 books to my lists there. Four of those are on my “currently reading” shelf. I’ve read 102 books in the past 13 months, which may explain why I am often sleep deprived.
Goodreads is a social networking site for readers. [...]

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Endurance and inspiration

January always gets me thinking about new beginnings.  This year is even more conducive to forward thinking: as Will I Am sings far more eloquently than I can say, “It’s a New Day,” and President Obama reminded American in his inaugural address that in hard times, we can “pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and [...]

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Searches for meaning, theories of everything

Two of us here at the bookconscious household were NaNoWriMo winners this year — which means we wrote a novel each in November. As I noted last month, it’s absolutely nuts of me to try and write 50,000 words in November, especially 50,000 words that should make sense in some kind of compelling way. My [...]

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