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| Designed for kids,
including several read - alouds, but also fun for grown ups! |
a long series of calm blue summer days."
from The Summer Book
by Tove Jansson (1914 - 2001)
Before reading all of the other books on your challenge list, I recommend starting with this summer story of a small family on a small island in Finland. Every page is filled with images of immersive midsummer light, capturing "the allure of summer itself for these people who spend so much of the year in the dark."
1. by flashlight [or nightlight]
The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
Somehow instead of the "Signed Edition" I ended up with the "Large Print Edition." But that's okay. That nice big font actually comes in handy when reading by nightlight -- a lifesaver when your hotel room is without a reading alcove and your traveling companion falls asleep before you.
So, as it turns out, I have already fulfilled my flashlight requirement by staying up super - late reading the first few chapters of this book by the glow of a tiny nightlight! [I'm all for tweaking the stipulations a little bit if need be!]
p 142: "Do I believe in God? I believe around God. But I can only believe in what I am in -- sunlight and shadow, oxygen and carbon dioxide, solar systems and galaxies." Hey -- that's what I said: The Miracle of Oxygen & The Precession of the Equinoxes!
p 248: "Tradition is a way of being with people, not just the people you're observing the traditions with now, but also all those who've ever observed them."
2. in a funny accent [audio ~ Cornish]
The Birds by Daphne du Maurier
3. a comic book ~ [Click for more]
Tom's Midnight Garden:
A Graphic Adaptation of the Philippa Pearce Classic
4. as a family
Family favorite author Bill Bryson's uber - informative The Body: A Guide for Occupants. We read it sequentially (first Gerry, then me). I think that counts for "as a family." Book after book, year after year, Bryson never fails!
The Body:
p 4 - 6: “That is unquestionably the most astounding thing about us – that we are just a collection of inert components, the same stuff you would find in a pile of dirt. I’ve said it before in another book, but I believe it’s worth repeating: the only thing special about the elements that make you is that they make you. That is the miracle of life. . . . Altogether it takes 7 billion billion billion (that’s 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 7 octillion) atoms to make you. No one can say why those 7 billion billion billion have such an urgent desire to be you. They are mindless particles, after all, without a single thought or notion between them. Yet somehow for the length of your existence, they will build and maintain all the countless systems and structures necessary to keep you humming, to make you you, to give you form and shape and let you enjoy the rare and supremely agreeable condition known as life. . . . But your atoms are just building blocks, and are not themselves alive. Where life begins, precisely is not easy to say. The basic unit of life is a cell -- everyone is agreed on that. The cell is full of busy things --ribosomes and proteins, DNA, RNA, mitochondria and much other cellular arcana, but none of those are themselves alive. The cell itself is just a compartment – a kind of little room: a cell -- to contain them, and of itself is as nonliving as any other room. Yet somehow when all of these things are brought together, you have life. That is the part that eludes science. I kind of hope it always will.”
The Brain:
p 48 - 49: “The great paradox of the brain is that everything you know about the world is provided to you by an organ that has itself never seen that world. The brain exists in silence and darkness, like a dungeoned prisoner. It has no pain receptors, literally no feelings. It has never felt warm sunshine or a soft breeze. To your brain, the world is just a stream of electrical pulses, like taps of Morse code. And out of this bare and neutral information it creates for you—quite literally creates—a vibrant, three-dimensional, sensually engaging universe. Your brain is you. Everything else is just plumbing and scaffolding.”
p 50: " . . . to quote the neuroscientist David Eagleman . . . [there are] as many connections ‘in a single cubic centimetre of brain tissue as there are stars in the Milky Way.’"
For more on these neural connections & pathways,
see my previous post: Twister!
Thus the persistent & perpetual
importance of CONNECTION!
5. about your country
6. under a tree
7. about friendship
8. about space
9. in a blanket fort
10. to a pet
11. a book with a color in the title
12. a book with chapters
13. at breakfast
14. about a city far away
15. a book of poems
The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy
Edited by John Brehm
Days
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.
by Philip Larkin (1922 - 1985)
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
by Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)
16. about your favorite [or other] animal
The Little Gentleman by Philippa Pearce
"Summer Books: The Beach"]
17. a mystery
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers
some background reading & a mini-series
18. a funny book ~ [Click for more]
The entire Strange Planet series by Nathan Pyle!
19. to a sibling:
Take a look at Ellie Reading to Aidan: "Such Goings- On"!
in each line as the summer progresses!
I hope to incorporate into the challenge
a number of books that I have been meaning
to read for months. Now is my chance!
P.S.
I am NOT a fast reader.
P.P.S.
Thanks to my friend
Cathy McKinnis for this delightful idea!
