World Book Day, March 1, 2007

World Book Day

It's World Book Day, for the UK anyway, and Spread the Word wants to know which ten books you can't live without. Just ten. It was very hard for me to choose just ten books I could not live without, so I went with the ten books I have read the most, rather than the constantly changing "favorite book" enigma-list.

And, I am adding an additional spin, an idea I got while reading FoxyJ's blog. She was meme tagged, and in her blog, she posted the rules of the meme.

* Find the nearest book to you.
* Name the book and author.
* Turn to page 123.
* Go to the fifth sentence on the page.
* Copy out the next 3 sentences and post to your blog.
* Tag someone else.

I think that this could be an interesting exercise for World Book Day, so here are my ten books that I think that I couldn't live without, with random sentences from page 123, just so you can get a feel for the book.

Persuasion: Jane Austin

"The Crofts must be in Bath! A circumstance to interest her. They were people whom her heart turned to very naturally."

The Blue Castle: L.M. Montgomery

"Six reputable citizens of Deerwood bore Cecilia Gay to her grave in decorous Deerwood cemetery. Among them was Uncle Wellington. The Stirlings all came to the funeral, men and women."

Trixie Belden: The Mystery Off Glen Road, Julie Campbell

"She was sure the dogs had done it. And if they ever even tried to do such a terrible thing again, she knew that the verdict would be a death sentence! Trixie's father came out of the terrace in answer to her call and deftly caught the bundle of papers she tossed to him."

Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre

"'I cannot commission you to fetch help,' he said; 'but you may help me a little yourself, if you will be so kind.' 'Yes, sir.' 'You have not an umbrella that I can use as a stick?'"

The Haunting of Hill House: Shirley Jackson

"'Tell me,' Luke said politely to Theodora, 'since you are a princess, tell me about the political situation in your country.' 'Very unsettled,' Theodora said. 'I ran away because my father, who is of course the king, insists that I marry Black Michael, who is a pretender to the throne.'"

Freak the Mighty: Rodman Philbrick

"All the old pipes and wires are hanging down, and everywhere underfoot is broken glass the color of smoke. 'I used to wonder exactly what Hell looked like,' he says. 'Now I know.'"

The Love Poems of John Donne: John Donne

"Here let me war; in these arms let me lie;
Here let me parley, batter, bleed, and die.
Thine arms imprison me, and mine arms thee,
Thy heard thy ransom is, take mine for me.
Other men war that they their rest may gain;
But we will rest that we may fight again."

Just So Stories: Rudyard Kipling

"Draw it separate. Draw his tail. If he's standing on his head, the tail will come first."

The Chicago Manual of Style: University of Chicago Press

"Unwanted marks can be whited out at the same time. Reproduction proofs produced by photocomposition may be corrected by changing the computer file and printing out another repro page. This procedure, however, is usually reserved for more extensive changes; to save time and perhaps money, minor corrections should probably be made by the cut-and-paste method."

The Portable Dorothy Parker: Dorothy Parker

"He'll rot in hell, before I'll call him up. You don't have to give me strength, God; I have it myself. If he wanted me, he could get me."

Hmmm. Not as interesting as I thought it might be... none of my favorite lines came up. Oh, well! I am not sure what that all says about my reading tastes, but we can still have a happy World Book Day!

Dictionary Day, October 16th

Dictionary Day

So, you don't know what to do on Dictionary Day? According to this press release:

"people everywhere will be
putting decorations on their dictionary trees, hiding dictionaries for
dictionary hunts, proudly flying their dictionary flags, and going
door-to-door reading dictionary entries aloud for candy." (Gather 'Round the Lexicon - Sunday is Dictionary Day! PR Newswire)

If you didn't prepare for Dictionary Day by decorating your dictionary tree, preparing a dictionary hunt or flying dictionary flags, don't worry, just dust off your favorite board game, Balderdash (okay, it's my favorite board game) grab a few friends, and play a few rounds.

If you don't have Balderdash, that's okay, before there was Balderdash, there was the parlor game called "Dictionary" (check out the rules here). All you need is a fairly large dictionary, (the brainier your crowd, the better to have a BIG dictionary), a few pencils, and some paper without any distinguishing charactistics, and good group of friends with creative thinking caps.

If you don't have a big enough dictionary to produce words that will fool the smartest in your group, or you have friends in your group that just don't approve of lying even if it is just for a game, you can play this other Dictionary Game, which is more of a practice in creative writing.

Or if you have a lot if dictionarys in your house, you can have dictionary races.

And you thought Dictionary Day would be boring...

International Literacy Day, September 8th

International Literacy Day

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) annual supports an International Literacy Day. This year's theme for International Literacy Day is: Literacy Sustains Development. According to UNESCO statistics there are 781 million illiterate adults in the world who cannot read. That may seem like an impossible statistic, that there is very little that we can do to help, but there are so many ways that anyone can help.

Many libraries have adult literacy programs where you can volunteer to be a tutor, and often it requires just a small amount of time each week. The Provo City library sponsors a program called Project Read, which is an excellent program. (And sometimes you can find cool writing tips on their website.) Or, you can simply support reading activities, like those posted here.

The next thing to celebrate, after International Literacy Day of course, is Roald Dahl Day. I do have to be honest and say that Dahl is not my favorite author (I just am really, really creeped out by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and that has tainted everything but Matilda for me.) but I can support any day that celebrates an author.

After Dahl Day, we have Tolkien Week (September 16th-23rd), and the week after that is the American Library Association's Banned Book Week (September 23rd-30th).

See, we all have lots of opportunities to support literacy this month, so let's just do it!