Book Journey

Morning Meanderings… Banned Aid

Published on September 29, 2015 by Sheila (Book Journey)12 Comments

Good morning! Day 3 of BANNED BOOK WEEK! I sit here this morning drinking tea as I bought this delicious coffee I can not wait to taste from Caribou Coffee and forgot that I had given away my coffee grinder because I never used it and now…

well…

the coffee will have to wait.

I have more great links for you this morning as friends around the bookish world share their thoughts on banned books today. I just love these posts and find them so interesting! I learn something every year! So here are today’s posts:

Erin at Quixotic Magpie writes about one of my favorite and ironic banned books, Fahrenheit 451 (got to love a banned book about book burning!) Brilliant really.

Julie at My Book Retreat is talking about a book I still want to/need to read: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (I am going to look for this one at our library today!)

Sheree at The Electric Reader is chatting about Childhood Favorites of the Banned Variety. Fun post!

*please note if you were scheduled for a post but do not see yours linked here it is because when I looked this morning the post was not up. I will check again later and add you to tomorrows if they pop up. 🙂

AND do not forget to check out the posts from yesterday and Sunday.

A little later today my friend Andrea will have a guest post here about banned books.

I do hope you will check out their posts as someone this week will have a picture within their post and if you find that post (AND comment on the post) and email me (journeythroughbooks@gmail.com) to tell me who’s post you found it on you will go into a special drawing for…

This mug will be shipped directly to one of our commenters on the Banned Book Post you find THIS picture on:

Yesterday I put the Banned Book Window up in the library. I think it turned out fairly well since I just grabbed a bunch of books off my own book shelves and made a few signs about why they were banned. *As a banned book lover I tend to have A LOT of banned books on my shelves.

And now I need to get ready to go back to the library and assist with set up for the sale that starts on Thursday. SO MANY BOOKS. Seriously…. It is a bit crazy how many books we will have at this sale.

Banned Meanderings… Yes. It Is That Time Again

Published on September 28, 2015 by Sheila (Book Journey)13 Comments

Good morning from Minnesota. Day 2 of the Banned Book Week Already. GAH! How time flies… and I finished Gone With The Wind yesterday (more on that BANNED BOOK later).

We have some book lovers that want to share with you their thoughts on banned books. Be sure to check them out as well as yesterdays entries as well. Banned books are near and dear to my heart ad I think if you read the posts you will learn something fascinating about a book that you have quite possibly read. Didn’t know you were a bad banned book reader did you? Well…. you probably are.

Check out Janet at Writer’s Flow with I Read Banned Books And You Can You!

At Chaos Is A Friend Of Mine you can read an excellent review of the banned book Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers. I still need to read that one!

Debbie at The Friday Friends shares a personal banned book encounter and her enjoyment of the book The Changeling. (You also have a chance to win a pair of banned book socks!)

At Kay’s Reading Life you will get a first hand experience of what it is like to work at a Library and handling the Banned Book questions of patrons! She also features some pretty amazing banned books to read.

Melinda at MHDeanCollectibles tells us what the current top 10 banned books are AND there is also a link to a Benned Book Giveaway hop! Seriously? How can you pass that up?

At Sally Whitney shares the right to read and why students should have the right to read The Kite Runner and The Bluest Eye.

Lisa at Lit and Life talks about growing up with banned books.

All excellent posts – I read them myself and love love love the remarkable topics being discussed this year. Spend a little time with your COFFEE CUP and explore these posts. Educate yourself on our right to read.

I do hope you will check out their posts as someone this week will have a picture within their post and if you find that post and email me (journeythroughbooks@gmail.com) to tell me who’s post you found it on you will go into a special drawing for…

This mug will be shipped directly to one of our commenters on the Banned Book Post you find THIS picture on:

So that’s it for this morning. Set up for the Library’s fall book sale starts this morning and I am also setting the library window to banned book week as well. SO….. off I go!

WHAT Banned book are you reading this week?

p.s. I just realized this moment that I forgot to post It’s Monday What Are You Reading last night. My bad. Fell right out of my head. Next week then…..

Morning Meanderings…. Banned Book Week Kick Off!

Published on September 27, 2015 by Sheila (Book Journey)25 Comments

Sunday. COFFEE. The first day of life beginning to simmer again. With today being the first day of Banned Book Week (YAY!) and tomorrow starts the fall book sale set up leading to the book sale later in the week and then a big board meeting a week from Monday and Tuesday a meeting and Thursday of that week the Minnesota Library Association meeting and a day out-of-town….

lets just say things are about to get bookish.

And really – they have. Welcome to Banned Book Week a week I LOVE being a part of and try to read books during that week that have been banned or challenged.

So today I am still listening to…

Not only is this our October classic read for book club… it is also a Banned Book.

The Civil War epic which is often cited as one of the most beloved novels of all time was banned by a California school district for the book’s portrayal of slaves in the antebellum South and for the immoral behavior of its heroine, Scarlett O’Hara.

Just Google “Gone With The Wind Banned” and you will find a plethora of information on potential Gone With The Wind bannings – in book form AND in movie format as well.

But what does it say about us as a nation if we continue to embrace a movie that, in the final analysis, stands for many of the same things as the Confederate flag that flutters so dramatically over the dead and wounded soldiers at the Atlanta train station just before the “GWTW’’ intermission? ~ New York Post June 24th 2015

Yes – Gone With The Wind DOES use many words and references to African Americans that is not correct – not b a long shot. Even I admit to cringing at parts – HOWEVER, while this is by no means acceptable now. It was at the time. AND like it or not… we can not change history.

So… I continue to read/listen to Gone With The Wind and I will watch the movie afterwards to get the fully rounded effect of a bucket list book – AND look forward to our book discussion.

Each year I offer other book reviewers, authors, etc to join me in reading a banned book during Banned Book Week. I love the surprise that people have when they realize a beloved childhood read, or a favorite classic, or even a modern-day YA is on this list. Banning is flatly – censorship. And while I do not choose to read all banned books *cough cough 50 Shades of Gray cough cough* I do not have any right to say that YOU can not read it.

See how that works?

So today – I have a few bloggers joining me to chat up Banned Books. I do hope you will check out their posts as someone this week will have a picture within their post and if you find that post and email me (journeythroughbooks@gmail.com) to tell me who’s post you found it on you will go into a special drawing for…

This mug will be shipped directly to one of our commenters on the Banned Book Post you find THIS picture on:

A second mug will be given away from all the comments on banned book post participants posts this week including mine.

SO enough said…

Here are today’s participants. Stop by. check them out. LEARN about banned books and READ them.

Brooke from Brooke Blogs: The Right To Think For Ourselves and a Giveaway!

(There are a couple more but I do not see their posts up yet so will add them if they put them up) 🙂

A quote from a banned book page on Gone With The Wind:

To the book burners; to those who hide from the truth of history; to those who oppress out of ignorance and fear I can only say this: Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.

Enjoy your Sunday. I am linking this to the Sunday Post as this is what I am up to today. Listening to Gone With The Wind, canning a little bit, and maybe mowing this afternoon. Here is a list to other banned classic reads. I bet you cant read just one.

Morning Meanderings… Can you?

Published on September 26, 2015 by Sheila (Book Journey)20 Comments

I woke up crying this morning. That may be a bit TMI… but I do want to keep it real here and this site is not only my bookish release – it is also my record of what life is now like in this after Justin world.

With that said – the word for the week is CANNING.

With a couple of people offering me up the tomatoes they were not going to use themselves, I have found that the process of canning keeps my mind busy, and while doing so, I am listening to Gone With The Wind for book club – so double duty.

Today I thought I would share with you for Weekend Cooking and Saturday Snapshot, a look into my canning world – and a recipe bonus.

I inherited a lot of tomatoes.

And more than what is pictures as I went back to this one ladies house two times with 4 totes and filled them all each time. So I have been making salsa (red and green), spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, sliced green tomatoes for friend green tomatoes, stewed tomatoes, basil tomato sauce… and enough cucumbers to make 12 jars of pickles.

One of my favorite recipes is the one for salsa. I LOVE salsa. I love to make it fresh but I have discovered a salsa recipe that Al and I both devour with satisfaction. And that is what I will share with you today:

You will need:

14 cups of cored and peeled and then chopped up tomatoes

5 cups of dices onion

5 cups of diced green pepper

1/4 cup of fresh diced jalapeno peppers

5 Tablespoons of cumin (I use the hotter one I find in our local grocery)

1/4 cup of Cilantro

1/4 cup of sugar

3 Tablespoons salt

fresh ground pepper to taste

1 cup cider vinegar

1/2 cup lemon juice

Still all of this together and simmer in a large pot around 20 minutes. Process into hot sanitized pint jars with a 1 teaspoon of lemon juice in the bottom of each jar. Seal and place in a large boiling hot water canner for 15 minutes. Be sure that all lids seal before storing (I leave them on my counter for a day to check them.) Delicious with chips or over chicken. Also makes a lovely gift.

Today… I continue. I have tomatoes ready to make another batch of the basil tomato sauce, and apples ready to start apple butter. Later today I am going to try my had at home made siracha which involved my peppers witting in a vinegar bath overnight. We will see….

On another note, Banned Book Week starts tomorrow… CRAZY how fast that came up. For those of you signed up to participate I will send out an email today, for the rest of you – its not to late to sign and be sure to participate too as there will be giveaways and a lot of fun!

Be sure to check out Weekend Cooking and Saturday Snapshot for other things cooking and happening around the world.

Morning Meanderings… Storms, Canning, and Miss Scarlett

Published on September 23, 2015September 23, 2015 by Sheila (Book Journey)11 Comments

I am amazed how I can fill up my time.. so much that days go by and I realize I have not posted a thing. So determined I am to keep my mind busy that I plan to post, and then before I know it, it is 5 pm and I need to plan dinner. There is good and bad in this… the good is I am busy for sure. The bad is I know I fear a time when I am not.

For busy now – canning has preoccupied my time. I have been busy processing tomatoes and enjoying it. Yesterday I canned spaghetti sauce, salsa, pizza sauce, and 7 jars of pickles.

Today I plan to do the same.

It is a stormy day outside – the good old thunder and lots of rain type. It cramps my style a bit as I like to use my deck for the cutting of the tomatoes, but I can make do. I am listening to Gone With The Wind now, having to set the book aside as I have no time to read, so have switched to audio and find I am really enjoying it as well as accomplishing my book club read while canning at the same time.

So… a quick update on my relationship with Scarlett, and Tara, and well.. the clan.

Currently, I have made my way into part 3. Scarlett is still fretting around in her “Scarlett Scarlett Scarlett” attitude… ooh, a more self centered woman I do not think I have met.

I am finding however, in all the petty worrying about the lack of pretty clothes, judging all other women as homely or unkempt, her (still) attempts at winning Ashley’s heart and her belief that any man that pays her a lick of attention *cough cough Rhett cough* must surely want her passionately for marriage. AND for that, I give Rhett credit for laughing in her face every time she inquires about it. Oh Scarlett… still trying to add notches to her marriage proposal list while she complains about the down side of war (stinky wounded, needy people, having to work in the hospital, and a child that she admits she often forgets she has). I have to give author Margaret Mitchell credit… I am finding Gone With The Wind to be brilliantly witty and a take on the war that I have never heard before and admittedly…

enjoying it.

Tonight I have a city Library Board Meeting and prior to that I will change the window at the library to Banned Book Week, because yes, Banned Book Week is almost here! If you have not already, please check out my Annual Banned Book Week Meme – it is fun, there are giveaways, and I am thoroughly looking forward to it. Join in!

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

Published on September 20, 2015 by Sheila (Book Journey)25 Comments

This meme is used to share what we read this past week and what our plans are for the upcoming week. It’s a great way to see what others are reading and add to your own To Be Read list. You never know where that next great read may come from!

It has been a pretty full week with my “need to can” mode going on. Not a lot of time for reading barbecue I am usually on the move, mostly audio happening here. Here is what I posted this past week:

Lock In by John Scalzi

Dirty Chick by Antonia Murphy

Departure by A G Riddle

This week will be a lot more canning so more audio for me! I am planning on listening to:

America’s First Families are unknowable in many ways. No one has insight into their true character like the people who serve their meals and make their beds every day. Full of stories and details by turns dramatic, humorous, and heartwarming, The Residence reveals daily life in the White House as it is really lived through the voices of the maids, butlers, cooks, florists, doormen, engineers, and others who tend to the needs of the President and First Family.

These dedicated professionals maintain the six-floor mansion’s 132 rooms, 35 bathrooms, 28 fireplaces, three elevators, and eight staircases, and prepare everything from hors d’oeuvres for intimate gatherings to meals served at elaborate state dinners. Over the course of the day, they gather in the lower level’s basement kitchen to share stories, trade secrets, forge lifelong friendships, and sometimes even fall in love.

Combining incredible first-person anecdotes from extensive interviews with scores of White House staff members—many speaking for the first time—with archival research, Kate Andersen Brower tells their story. She reveals the intimacy between the First Family and the people who serve them, as well as tension that has shaken the staff over the decades. From the housekeeper and engineer who fell in love while serving President Reagan to Jackie Kennedy’s private moment of grief with a beloved staffer after her husband’s assassination to the tumultuous days surrounding President Nixon’s resignation and President Clinton’s impeachment battle, The Residence is full of surprising and moving details that illuminate day-to-day life at the White House.

and other than that… pretty much Gone With The Wind for book club.

What are you reading this week? What did you read last week? I look forward to seeing what are the books everyone is talking about. Add your Its Monday What Are You Reading here where it says click here:

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Morning Meanderings… Canning FRENZY

Published on September 20, 2015 by Sheila (Book Journey)15 Comments

Sunday.

God bless friends and family that is for sure. This past week I was connected to a woman who lives a few miles from me who was done with the tomatoes in her garden and word came back to me that whatever was left was free for the taking. I hustled out the door with two large totes and a couple of boxes and let me just say…

it was not enough.

On my “SAVE THE TOMATOES” mission I loaded up with not only red tomatoes, but also green. Not sure what I could do with the green but always being a person who will figure it out later…. I grabbed a bunch of those too.

Ummmm…. yeah.

So basically, other than the recent trip to Wisconsin for the Mud Run I participate in every year (pics to come), I have been canning. Last night my first ever spaghetti sauce, and then this morning – 7 quarts of green tomatoes for fried green tomatoes.

book journey — Last nights spaghetti sauce

We are going to a friends house this afternoon for the football game and ribs. A quiet gathering of about 6 of us which will be nice. Then tonight I plan to go for another batch of spaghetti sauce. Keep on keeping on. I love the feel of being productive and the details of caning keeps my mind nice and busy.

Books that came in this week…

Both books look wonderful.

I am connecting this post to The Caffeinated Book Reviewer for her weekly Sunday Post.

Lock In by John Scalzi

Published on September 19, 2015September 17, 2015 by Sheila (Book Journey)10 Comments

In the future, a virus blankets the earth. For some, the symptoms are flu-like and than they get better… for others… the virus causes what becomes known as “lock-in. victims are fully alert and aware of their surroundings but unable to move or voice a response.

25 years later, the results of this virus is now called ‘Haden’s Syndrome.’ Newly appointed FBI agent Chris Shane is assigned to a case that appears to be a Haden related murder. The suspect is an “integrator” – someone who can let the locked in borrow their bodies for a time. If the Integrator was carrying a Haden, then naming the suspect for the murder becomes that much more complicated.

As Chris and his partner Van start to dig into the crime, what they find is bigger than they had imagined.

Recently I posted about a book I reviewed that I was hoping a bit more dystopian than it was and a little less sci fi than it was…. and now, with Lock In, I found what I was looking for. Lock In gave me the dystopian I was craving and while this synopsis was a bit out of my league… it was the narration by Wil Wheaton sold me on giving it a try in audio format. Wil Wheaton is one of the few narrators I have actually tracked by what they narrated because they are so incredible at it. Nicely played John Scalzi.

Lock In was brilliant. While it took me a while to fully picture what was happening, once I got it, it was a fun listen. With John Scalzi’s quick wit writing and Wil Wheaton’s perfect execution of the narration – readers are in for a pretty sweet ride. Treat yourself to this one in audio.

I see author John Scalzi has used Wil in other audio as well which I will be checking out soon.

Audible Audio Edition
Listening Length: 10 hours
Program Type: Audiobook
Version: Unabridged
Publisher: Audible Studios
Audible.com Release Date: August 26, 2014

Dirty Chick: Adventures Of An Unlikely Farmer by Antonia Murphy

Published on September 18, 2015September 17, 2015 by Sheila (Book Journey)9 Comments

Antonia Murphy was born in San Fransisco and never really pictures herself as the farm girl type. Later in life she settles with her husband in New Zealand after her son was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition and they felt a slower more laid back style of life might be just the ticket.

The decision to start a farm was probably not as slow and laid back as they had anticipated, but it sure makes for some fun writing.

Obviously, the title captured my attention. While I have had this book on the shelf for the better part of a year, it was the audio version I fit into my schedule and found it quite entertaining and distracting while mowing my lawn. Much of what happens in dirty chicks is fairly funny. Imagine starting out with animals you know little about but you soon learn….. (I swear, I will never look at a duck the same way again.)

There is much to like about this book, and for me – I also found some things I personally didn’t like. As this is a memoir and I often hesitate to review some memoirs due to the impossibility of separating the book from the writer, I will refrain from giving my opinion here on what I did not like. After all – it is just my personal opinion.

I am glad I had a chance to experience this book. Antonia does narrate this book herself which I always find impressive and she did a good job of narrating. If you are ever thinking ooh starting a farm could be a lot of fun,” you may want to test this book out first.

Audible Audio Edition
Listening Length: 7 hours and 20 minutes
Program Type: Audiobook
Version: Unabridged
Publisher: Audible Studios
Audible.com Release Date: January 22, 2015

Departure by A.G. Riddle

Published on September 17, 2015September 17, 2015 by Sheila (Book Journey)3 Comments

On a flight to London, passengers Harper Lane, Nick Stone, Sabrina Schröder, Yul Tan, and Grayson Shaw, have no idea that their lives are about to change forever… but change they do.

When the plane loses power and crashes into a remote area in the English country side, the surviving passengers have to come up with a plan for survival. Yet it is Nick Stone a venture capitalist, along with Sabrina (genetic researcher, Yul Tan (computer scientist), Grayson (son of a billionaire), and Harper (writer), who start to see that perhaps this crash was not an accident at all…

And what is at stake is bigger than all of the world.

I went into this read looking for a dystopian style of read. It has been a long time since I have read a good dystopian and this one sounded like it could be just the ticket.

The Departure was not exactly what I had hoped for, but it was interesting… more sci-fi than dystopian. I listened tot his on audio and narrators Nicola Barber and Scott Aiello are both new to me but really did an excellent job. It was actually Nicola Barber’s sample listen on Audible that sold me on this one.

While I didn’t love this one, I did like it. I am not the biggest sci fi fan and feel that someone more into that genre would find this worth a read or a listen.