Tag Archives: ” books
Bookbound
Even the most intriguing book can become a dungeon of our own choosing. Comfortable as it is to read the stories of others, we only truly satisfy life by moving out into it and creating our own.
The prompts today are book, intriguing, dungeon and satisfy. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/22/rdp-friday-book/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/22/fowc-with-fandango-intriguing/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/22/your-daily-word-prompt-dungeon-march-22-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/22/satisfy/
Books (For Daily Addictions July 21, 2018 prompt of Obsolete)
Books
The fresh bookstore smell of them,
bending the pages to crack the spine,
notes scribbled in the margins,
underlines,
hearts with initials on the flyleaf,
something to loan or to wrap for a gift,
something propped up on the bathtub edge,
its paper sprinkled with drops-—
pages wrinkled into a Braille memory—
that rainstorm run through,
how he put it in his back pocket.
Poetry touched by fingers.
Single words met by lips.
Words pored over by candlelight or flashlight
in a sleeping bag or in a hut with no electricity.
Books pushed into backpacks
and under table legs for leveling.
Paper that soaked up
the oil from fingers
of the reader
consuming popcorn
or chocolate chip cookies
in lieu of the romance on the pages—
finger food served with brain food.
Passions wrapped in paper and ink—
the allure of a book and the tactile comfort.
The soul of a book you could touch, fold, bend.
Books are the gravestones of trees
but also the journals of our hearts.
Cities of words,
boards and bricks of letters,
insulated by hard covers or the curling skins
of paperbacks.
Something solid to transfer the dreams
of one person to another in a concrete telepathy
of fingers and eyes.
Books are the roads we build between us,
solid and substantial—
their paper the roadbed,
the words the center lines directing us.
What will fill the bookcases of a modern world?
Wikipedia replacing dictionaries,
Google already an invisible bank of Encyclopaedia Britannicas.
What will we use our boards and bricks for,
if not to hold up whole tenements of books?
How will we furnish our walls?
What will boys carry to school for girls?
What will we balance on heads
to practice walking with perfect posture?
What will we throw in the direction of the horrible pun?
Will there be graveyards for books, or cities built of them?
Quaint materials for easy chairs or headboards for beds?
Will we hollow them out for cigar boxes
or grind them up for packing material?
Where do books belong in the era of Kindle and Audible?
These dinosaurs that soon will not produce more eggs.
Perhaps they’ll grow as precious as antiques.
Perhaps the grandchildren of our grandchildren
will ponder how to open them. Will wonder at their quaintness,
collecting them like mustache cups or carnival glass,
wondering about the use of them—as unfathomable as hieroglyphics.
That last book closing its pages—one more obsolete mystery
fueling the curiosity of a bygone era that has vanished
into a wireless universe.
Yes, you are right. These are chairs made out of books.
In response to The Daily Addictions prompt of obsolete Of all the technologies that have gone extinct in your lifetime, which one do you miss the most?
The Daily Addictions prompt is obsolete.
Reading Each Other
Reading Each Other
The book I’ve chosen for the plane ride
sits open on my lap
as the stranger on the plane
opens himself—
his life pulled leaf by leaf from his family tree.
His words come faltering and sputtering at first,
like water from a tap newly opened,
then rush out cool and even,
telling of a life that is a richness
of jobs held, wives loved, children raised.
He is going back to Mexico for the saints day
of the small pueblo where he was born.
The parade. The effigies. The life-sized santos
standing in their boats to tour the lake like kings.
I’ve been to this celebration; and as he speaks,
I sit like an honored guest beside him,
reading my memory as well
“Come,“ he tells me, giving me directions and a date.
I do not tell him I have been to that fiesta years ago.
“Perhaps,” I say, sliding his instructions to his family’s house
to form a bookmark in the book now closed upon my lap,
then go on, listening.
What were we born for
if it was not to read each other?
In the rush from the plane, that old man falls behind
and it is you I see as I come out into the world of Mexico,
leaving the plane ride, immigration and customs
in its place behind the swinging doors.
This flower that you give me is a mystery book.
I read it—stamen, pistil and corolla—
as well as the hand that holds it out to me
and then the warm embrace that you enfold me in.
This is a rewrite of a poem written three or four years ago. The Ragtag prompt for today is embrace. V.J. also invited me to link this with her Weekly Prompt on books.
This poem written over two years ago and edited a bit today seems to fulfill the requirements of today’s prompt word. As I look at those who have already read it, I see only a few familiar faces. (Hi, Marilyn) so I’ll risk running it by again. (The prompt word today was mystery.)
Books
The fresh bookstore smell of them,
bending the pages to crack the spine,
notes scribbled in the margins,
underlines,
hearts with initials on the flyleaf,
something to loan or to wrap for a gift,
something propped up on the bathtub edge,
it’s paper sprinkled with drops–
pages wrinkled into a Braille memory–
that rainstorm run through,
how he put it in his back pocket.
Poetry touched by fingers.
Single words met by lips.
Words pored over by candlelight or flashlight
in a sleeping bag or in a hut with no electricity.
Books pushed into backpacks
and under table legs for leveling.
Paper that soaked up
the oil from fingers
of the reader
consuming popcorn
or chocolate chip cookies
in lieu of the romance on the pages–
finger food served with brain food.
Passions wrapped in paper and ink–
the allure of a book and the tactile comfort.
The soul of a…
View original post 311 more words
Literary Reference
Need to borrow a good book? If so, click on any photo to enlarge all and read titles. Something for everyone.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
For Nancy’s A Photo A Week Challenge. on the topic “Literary Reference.”
Books or Kindle, Eye or Ear?
The prompt word today was controversy. Are Kindle and Audible a blessing or a curse? Will libraries and bookstores become a thing of the past, vanished like scrolls and slates and blackboards? Will technology continue to wed the concrete and the abstract until there is no difference? In looking for one of my photographic images to accompany this prompt, I found this poem written two years ago and decided to reblog myself!
Books
The fresh bookstore smell of them,
bending the pages to crack the spine,
notes scribbled in the margins,
underlines,
hearts with initials on the flyleaf,
something to loan or to wrap for a gift,
something propped up on the bathtub edge,
it’s paper sprinkled with drops–
pages wrinkled into a Braille memory–
that rainstorm run through,
how he put it in his back pocket.
Poetry touched by fingers.
Single words met by lips.
Words pored over by candlelight or flashlight
in a sleeping bag or in a hut with no electricity.
Books pushed into backpacks
and under table legs for leveling.
Paper that soaked up
the oil from fingers
of the reader
consuming popcorn
or chocolate chip cookies
in lieu of the romance on the pages–
finger food served with brain food.
Passions wrapped in paper and ink–
the allure of a book and the tactile comfort.
The soul of a book you could touch, fold, bend.
Books are the gravestones of trees
but also the journals of our hearts.
Cities of words,
boards and bricks of letters,
insulated by hard covers or the curling skins
of paperbacks.
Something solid to transfer the dreams
of one person to another in a concrete telepathy
of fingers and eyes.
Books are the roads we build between us,
solid and substantial–
their paper the roadbed,
the words the center lines directing us.
What will fill the bookcases of a modern world?
Google replacing dictionaries,
Wikipedia already an invisible bank of Encyclopaedia Britannicas.
What will we use our boards and bricks for,
if not to hold up whole tenements of books?
How will we furnish our walls?
What will boys carry to school for girls?
What will we balance on heads
to practice walking with perfect posture?
What will we throw in the direction of the horrible pun?
Will there be graveyards for books, or cities built of them?
Quaint materials for easy chairs or headboards for beds?
Will we hollow them out for cigar boxes
or grind them up for packing material?
Where do books belong in the era of Kindle and Audible?
These dinosaurs that soon will not produce more eggs.
Perhaps they’ll grow as precious as antiques.
Perhaps the grandchildren of our grandchildren
will ponder how to open them. Will wonder at their quaintness,
collecting them like mustache cups or carnival glass,
wondering about the use of them–as unfathomable as hieroglyphics.
That last book closing its pages–one more obsolete mystery
fueling the curiosity of a bygone era that has vanished
into a wireless universe.
Rebuilding Your Life after the Death of a Loved One
Since the WordPress prompt is “Rebuild” and I have written a book with that word in the title, I guess this is an obvious time to link to it here:
Now available on Amazon, in print and Kindle versions and in Bookstores, including Diane Pearl Colecciones, La Bella Vida, Jose Melendrez and Mi Mexico in Ajijic, MX.
Lessons from a Grief Diary: Rebuilding Your Life
after the Death of a Loved One
Judy Dykstra-Brown and Anthony Moriarty, Ph.D.
A widow’s grief diary chronicling the illness and death of her husband as well as the process of her recovery from grief over the next eight years is analyzed in alternating chapters by a psychologist. Includes methods of overcoming grief, suggested further reading and ending notes that summarize main points of the book.
Synopsis
When Judy let her husband Bob persuade her to buy a house in Mexico, little did she know that five months later, she would be moving into that house alone. Her diary takes us along through their initial adventures in Mexico, their return to California to sell off the contents of their home, her nursing Bob through his final illness and death and her move to Mexico. For eight years, she chronicles the triple challenge of dealing with the loss of her husband, learning to adjust to the culture of a foreign country where she knew no one and finding ways to find the positive in the most negative situations. Making use of his extensive research in the field of grief as well as experience gained through years of counseling others going through the grief process, Tony’s insightful comments on Judy’s thoughts and actions will serve as a guide for any reader suffering from the death of a family member or other loved one.
Readers’ Reviews and Comments
Having the courage to speak with unembellished honesty, Judy Dykstra-Brown begins by describing the move she and her husband Bob are planning to make to a more relaxed life in Mexico. As the van is being packed and plans finalized, Judy learns her husband is dying. In beautiful prose and poetry, she chronicles her grueling role of caretaker to Bob, their last days together and the death and rituals that follow. Knowing she will be leaving behind all of her support systems, Judy relocates to Mexico alone, sharing her intensely personal journey of grief, growth and finally the excitement of moving towards a different and full life. Uniquely, Anthony Moriarty follows each chapter with a psychological and/or mystical interpretation of the behaviors that accompany Bob’s processes of dying and Judy’s struggles with the loss of her husband. This is a must read for anyone who has experienced loss.—Romaine Presnell, Clinical Social Worker, mental health therapist at John Hopkins and in private practice, Supervisor of Counseling Services as Associated Catholic Charities and group facilitator for The Wellness Community, providing free services for cancer patients and their families.
This book combines the personal account of a woman whose husband has unexpectedly become ill and died with the commentary of an experienced clinical psychologist. The story is compelling, the theme universal, and the dual viewpoints of the authors give us unique and valuable insight into the experience of loss, grief and life beyond.—Amelia Stevens, M.D., Psychiatrist
After suddenly losing my partner of 8 years, the combination of emotions that battered me day-to-day left me lost with no idea of how to find my way back to a relatively normal life. I ordered and read a number of the best-selling books on the subject of grief, but felt none of them applied to me until I discovered this brave and startling book. The combination of Judy’s honest personal journey and Tony’s objective observations make this a very important book with which I was able to easily identify. Had I read it earlier, I seriously think my journey would have been shorter and less debilitating.—Linda Richards, Artist
With the hundreds of books available to help people navigate their way through the grief process, it is a rare find to discover one that approaches it from a whole new perspective. Lessons from a Grief Diary presents material from what I call Wise Mind, with an alternating blend of raw emotional disclosure combined with intellectual analysis and commentary. We get to travel along with Judy as she copes with the unexpected illness and untimely death of her husband and goes on to build a whole new kind of life on her own. Through her ‘real-time’ journal, she reveals nuances ofthoughts and emotions that are rarely spoken aloud. Tony’s intermingled commentary adds a perceptive depth of understanding, providing the reader valuable balance and insights into this complicated evolving process we call grief. Anyone seeking to better understand and explore their own experience of grief will find this book to be an optimistic and eminently relatable companion on their journey.—Joy Birnbach Dunstan, MA, Licensed Professional Counselor
Once I started reading this book, I could not put it down. I loved the way Judy dealt with the death of her husband as well as the way in which she expressed her feelings. So many things she did and felt were the same as my feelings and actions when I lost my husband. Her sense of humor, her sadness, her guts to push on will make you feel like you are her best friend. Getting Tony’s perspective also gives another window into Judy’s heart. If you have lost someone close to you, everything she says will make sense. If you have not yet lost someone close to you, it will prepare you for when it happens.—Audrey Zikmund, Widow for Two Years
Bereavement is a solitary, uphill climb. I watched my mother make the journey and to my child’s eyes, it took forever. Lessons from a Grief Diary is a candid account of the grieving process. It’s as if author Judy Dykstra-Brown is leading the bereaved individual into Dr. Tony Moriarty’s office where the three explore this complex emotional transitional state. I recommend this book to those who have suffered a loss, their families and friends, and to any of the professionals they turn to for help. Reading this book would have helped my mother and me.—Harriet Hart, Social Worker and Past Director of Rehabilitation, Manitoba Paraplegic Association
This book is a great trail guide for exploring the pathway through grief. We get to move between the powerful, surprising ways grief grabs us and the insights and understandings that give us something to hold on to as we pick our way through the boulders.—Georgia King, County Mental Health Counselor
Reading Lessons from a Grief Diary is the surest way to go from grief to joy.—Gloria Palazzo, Writer, Artist and Widow
“The reading of this book took me to a place where no other book has ever taken me and gave me a new appreciation of lakeside as a magical healing place. Thank you for that. It’s a big revelation for me—and a big step in accepting this place that I have always before thought of as just a place I was passing through. I actually read it in two nights—pretty fast for me. It was a privilege to experience this book.”––Candace Spence, Lake Chapala Resident
Bios
After earning her Masters in Creative Writing and Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wyoming, Judy Dykstra-Brown taught English and writing for ten years in Australia, Ethiopia and Wyoming before moving to California to study film production and to work for a television production company. She studied writing at UCLA and in the Jack Grapes workshop, where she met her husband Bob, a poet and sculptor. After marrying, they moved to Northern California and exhibited their individual and collaborative work at galleries and art and crafts shows nationwide for thirteen years. She was curator of the Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center for three and a half years. After Bob’s death in 2001, she moved to Mexico, where she has continued to publish her work in English language print and online magazines, to read and speak for various lecture series and performance groups and to exhibit her retablos and mixed media sculptures at local galleries. This is her third book.
Tony Moriarty holds a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has been a Licensed Clinical Psychologist since 1978, working both in private practice and community mental health, where his clinical specialties include grief management. As a police psychologist, he was involved in the post-incident counseling of officers whose use of force in the line of duty had resulted in a death or serious injury. He recently retired as the Principal of Homewood-Flossmoor High School in Flossmoor, Illinois, where he developed a number of programs involving non-punitive methods of managing student behavior as well as two high school police resource officer programs. He has published more than thirty articles in the professional literature and is the author of three books prior to this one.
30 thoughts on “Books for Adults”
Since I have written a book entitled Lessons from a Grief Diary: Rebuilding Your Life after the Death of A Loved One, I guess this is an obvious place to establish a link to it.
So Many Books
So Many Books
I don’t “do” lunch, I don’t do sport.
They’re things to which I don’t resort.
For time just seems to be the stuff
of which I never have enough.
As I grow older, and years grow tight,
I find that I would rather write.
So, much as I might like to look
at a favorite once-read book––
Jane Austen or a Bronte sister––
time after time, I must resist her.
So many books are being written
that when the reading bug has bitten
and I find the time to view one,
inevitably, I choose a new one
The Prompt: Second Time Around–Tell us about a book you can read again and again without getting bored — what is it that speaks to you?https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/second-time-around/
Generational Drift
My mother and Scamp in an uncharacteristic upright position. Note reading material to their right.
Generational Drift
My mother would have been the first one to say that she was lazy. To be fair, this wasn’t true. I had seen her iron 32 white blouses at a sitting—her at our large mangle, running the fronts and the back of the garments, then the sleeves and collars through the large rollers, my sisters or I then taking our turns ironing the details near the seams and around the buttons. We had a regular assembly (or wrinkle de-assembly) line going every Saturday morning.
She cooked every meal and kept the house reasonably clean. But on weekends, she was the commander and we were the workers. One vacuumed while the others dusted. We were the window cleaners and the front walk sweepers, the table setters and dish washers when school or social activities allowed.
But there were times when a good book consumed each of our interests to a degree that weekend chores were lost in a blur of fantasy–each of us in thrall to a different book–my sisters in their rooms or on beach towels spread out in the sun of the back yard, me on on my back on the porch roof just outside my older sister’s bedroom window, and my mom flat on her back on the living room sofa.
Or sometimes it was the same book–taking turns reading 9-year-old Daisy Ashford’s memoir “The Young Visiter” [sic] as the rest of us howled–holding sore stomachs, tears running down cheeks. At times like this, a week’s clutter might sit untouched on surfaces, that morning’s dishes still in the sink, last night’s shoes still lying like rubble in front of the t.v. or half obscured beneath piano bench or assorted chairs around the room.
In short, housework, although generally done weekly, never got in the way of activities or a good book. We were a family of readers, and generally this reading was done on our backs. My mother’s spot was always the living room couch–some family pet (a tiny rabbit or raccoon, kitten, or the family terrier, Scamp) spread out between her side and the divan, my dad in “his” comfy rocking chair, feet up on the foot stool. I loved my bed or the floor or in the summer, outside under a tree. My older sisters’ bedrooms were sacrosanct. A closed door meant privacy. No one entered uninvited.
This was in an age before computers, cellphones, or other texting methods. The one telephone in our house was on the kitchen wall or counter. It was a party line in more ways than one. Not only were our conversations held within earshot of the entire family, but also could be “overheard” at will by the two neighborhood families who shared our party line. Today’s technological wheel had not yet been invented. With no TV possible until I was 11, I spent a youth devoted to two things: my immediate surroundings and the people or book readily within sight. If company was called for, it walked or drove to you or you drove or walked to it. The rest of life was family, homework, housework, play or books, and my mother, luckily, considered the play and books to be equal in importance to housework.
“I’m basically lazy,” she always said, but I must repeat again that this was not true. Our house usually assumed a state of more or less perfection at least once a week. It is unclear the degree to which this was motivated by my oldest sister, who was an excellent commander. “Mom, we’ll do the dishes. Patti, you wash and Judy you wipe,” she would instruct, while she herself disappeared into her room for an after dinner nap.
I do remember a certain Saturday when each of us lay on her back or sat sprawled in a different chair reading when a knock sounded at the front door. Impossible! No one in our small town ever dropped by uninvited. Even sorties to or from my best friend’s house just two houses away from me were always preceded by a phone call. We remained silent, but the insistent knocking continued. I peeked out at the front door through the living room drapes and the eyes of two girls and an older woman all shifted in unison towards the drapes. Caught!
Each of us grabbed a different pile of garments, books, shoes or ice cream dishes from a living room surface and stashed them in a closet, drawer or cupboard as my mother answered the front door to a woman and her two daughters from a neighboring little town, just 7 miles away. They had dropped by because they were building a new house and had been told by my dad that they should stop by to see our house, which had been built a year before by a builder they were considering.
My sisters and I stayed a room ahead as my mother s-l-o-w-l-y showed them the house. I cleared dirty dishes from the last meal into the stove as my sister hastily made beds and tossed dirty clothes into closets, sliding them closed to obscure reality as the visitors probably wondered what all the banging closets and drawers were about.
This was not the norm. All of Saturday morning was traditionally spent cleaning floors, dusting my mother’s salt and pepper collection, neatly piling stacks of comic books on the living room library shelves, washing windows, straightening kitchen shelves. We were not slovenly, but neither was my mother a cleaning Nazi. Life and literature often intervened.
Now, more than fifty years later, my mother has been gone for 14 years. One sister has been lost to Alzheimer’s, the other is the perfect house keeper my mother never was. But every morning, I lie in bed writing this blog until it is finished. My favorite location for reading is still flat on my back, and I do not need to compete with my mother for my favorite reading spot on the living room sofa. Sometimes Morrie, my smallest dog, spreads out beside me, and I can’t help but think of my mother–feeling as though I’ve taken her spot–stepped into the role set for me by the preceding generation.
Yes, the day’s dishes lie stacked in the kitchen sink. There are books piled on the dining room table from Oscar’s last English lesson. Papers are piled on the desk next to my computer, a pair of shoes under each of several pieces of furniture. Bags of beads and Xmas presents purchased during my trip to Guad a few days ago are still on the counter, ready to be whisked off to cupboards or the art studio below.
But my book is a good one and Yolanda will be here tomorrow, bright and early, looking for tasks to justify her three-times-a-week salary. With no kids of my own to boss around or delegate bossing authority to, and salaries cheap by comparison here in Mexico, I have hired myself a daughter/housekeeper/ironing companion. Sometimes we stand in the kitchen and talk, letting the dust remain undisturbed on surfaces for ten minutes to a half hour more, or go down to the garden to decide where to move the anthurium plant, to just admire a bloom I’ve noticed the day before or an orchid recently bloomed that she has noticed in the tree I rarely glance up at.
Every generation cannot help but be influenced by the last, and in spite of many differences, I am still my mother’s daughter. It is in my genes to place some priorities above housework, firmly believing that this is good for my soul as well as the souls of those around me.
My mother and Scamp in a more characteristic pose, resting up from reading.
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “I’ve Become My Parents.” Do you ever find yourself doing something your parents used to do when you were a kid?
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Judy King
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Audrey Zikmund
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We can’t get Kindle here, but a regular book in your hand is very nice
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