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Author and Illustrator Blogs
- Sarah N.: The language sounds delightful. I love getting to explore the interesting phrases of the past. That’s...
- Constance: I like the John Stilgoe quote! I took a course with him in college, and it was the kind of lecture that...
- Sally Thomas: We Tennessee natives are good at channeling unlikely voices . . . I can’t decide how scary that...
- Sue: I wish that *I* had a “certain exquisite reticence of the flesh!” Sounds good. Sue
- Jen Lynch: Being both a Lovelace fanatic and a Vassar girl I have read the queer little Queed. It is essentially the...
- Sara: I think I’m going to have to download Queed—after I read Carney (which I never have). When the...
- Melissa Wiley: Yes, it seems it was a quirk of my template. The post was set to be a sticky & I didn’t...
- Lauren: It’s been like that since you wrote that post. Love your blog
Every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious—and childhood even more so. I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.
(Excerpt from
this post about Real Life, quoted here because I don't want anyone to be under the impression that things are always perfect around here! Heaven knows we are anything but. Perfect, frictionless, orderly? Nope. Happy? Most of the time!)
Be like the bird
Who, pausing in flight
On limb too slight,
Feels it give way beneath her,
Yet sings,
Knowing she has wings.
—Victor Hugo
“Exploration,” says John Stilgoe, author of
Outside Lies Magic, “is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun.”
Yes: it is so, so much fun, and that is why I write these posts all chattery with excitement over this or that connection the kids made today. (Or that I made myself!) I know I get carried away, but that’s the point, isn’t it, that way leading on to way has carried me away?
And yet—and yet—I think we are at once ‘carried away’ and made more fully present in the now, more rooted, by these relationships between ideas about things past and future. The joy of connection makes me want to celebrate this moment, this brief encounter with wild-haired child and broad-trunked tree, bus going by, sign on church wall, Scottish warlord creeping over the tower wall and startling the English soldier’s wife who has just put her babe in arms to sleep by crooning that the Black Douglas won’t get him. Child, laughing, shouting “Dinna ye be sae sure aboot that!” across the courtyard outside the library. How can I not celebrate this freedom?
(from a post called
Way Leads on to Way)
Six Things to Include in Your Child's Day:
meaningful work
imaginative play
good books
beauty (art, music, nature)
ideas to ponder and discuss
prayer
Whence It Came
Book rich, but furniture poor? Not a bad trade-off in my opinion!
Posted on March 19th, 2009 at 9:32 amLissa … can’t wait to see that pile dwindle and hear the reviews! I read Austenland on your rec (and really enjoyed it!) … so, I’m waiting with my library on hold to see which you like …
Posted on March 19th, 2009 at 10:05 amDelightful.
I’m a big fan of Josephine Tey. Was that one of Jane’s recommends? I know she’s been doing Agatha Christie lately and it’s a logical jump.
I’ve given up all but spiritually focused reading for Lent, so I’m going away now to avoid temptation. Your blog is dangerous.
Posted on March 19th, 2009 at 10:07 amHey, Mom, what about ‘The Mysterious Benedict Society’? I don’t see that in the pile…
I’m guessing that’s still on my nightstand.
Posted on March 19th, 2009 at 10:28 amOh you’re right! I knew I was missing something. How long can we borrow it for?
Posted on March 19th, 2009 at 10:30 amOoh, Melanie, sorry to be taunting you! You could post a stack of chocolate bars to get even with me.
And yes, the Josephine Tey is a Jane-suggestion. I think she actually encountered it before she discovered Christie–I pulled it off the Ambleside Year 7 reading list. She loved it (this was a year ago, I think) and urged me to read it. I forgot about it until I saw it on an end table yesterday; Jane had returned for a second (or third?) read.
Posted on March 19th, 2009 at 10:33 amOoooo a Double Daring book… I think I know what’s going to be in someone’s Easter basket this year…
Yes, I put books in Easter Baskets. Doesn’t everyone???
Awesome list
Posted on March 19th, 2009 at 11:51 amJust this morning I decided to send back (gasp) half my TBR library books. I had thirty (that’s just the fiction, YA and Adult; I didn’t touch the cookbooks, craft books, homeschooling or zen parenting TBRs), and kept just 10. Actually, I am realizing that those were just the second tier TBRs. The first tier are kept somewhere else and I didn’t touch those either. Hmmm. Maybe I didn’t do as well as I thought I did. Doesn’t matter. I am sure the library will be happy to have those 20 books back sooner than later. I won’t just return them, though. They went onto a To Hold list. I didn’t bother to dig up one of the many such lists I already have. It is so much easier to start a new one. In the back of my mind, though, I know I won’t actually need the list, because so many other TBRs will come into the house to fill my shelves again.
Posted on March 19th, 2009 at 11:55 amI went to our local library and checked out all the Roger MacBride Rose Years books to read. My husband laughs as I inhale book by book trying to get them all done in 2 weeks. I also have a stack of your books lurking in a pile to be read soon.
Posted on March 19th, 2009 at 12:14 pmInkheart! A good tale on a premise many of us voracious readers have considered but not played out quite as far as Funke does. Not precisely my kind of book, but as a read aloud to 11 yo son, fun! We’ve read the sequel, Inkspell, and await for the third in the trilogy to appear at our rural library….
Posted on March 19th, 2009 at 1:02 pmSuper stack, Melissa. I could see a photo meme emerging out of this practice! “What books are in YOUR stack?”
Penny in VT–I put books in Easter baskets, too. : )
~Christina in MA
Posted on March 19th, 2009 at 1:32 pmWhat a beautiful stack. I can only imagine how high mine would be if I gathered them from all around the house. And I see several here I’d like to add.
Penny, I can’t imagine an Easter basket without books in it. I actually just placed an order today for some that will fill our baskets.
Posted on March 19th, 2009 at 1:41 pmOooo, read the Daughter of Time first! I read it as a child and was blown away! The Singing Sands is good too, but not a patch on The Daughter of Time…
The Madaline Le Engle one looks good, I’ve read quite a bit of her fictional ones about a group of kids that have fantastical/scifi adventures, but I don’t know ‘The Love Letters’…
Posted on March 19th, 2009 at 1:43 pmWow, I want the Super Daring book!!! Is it already out?
Posted on March 19th, 2009 at 1:57 pmMy pile is also out of control. I have to read the Zookeepers wife for book club this month. I have less than two weeks so I ‘d better start it!
Posted on March 19th, 2009 at 2:02 pmI loved Daughter of Time and so did my friends. One of favorites of last year. I should pull it out and read it again.
Posted on March 19th, 2009 at 5:03 pmButterfly just read the Inkheart books and loved them.
I very much enjoyed The Love Letters.
Posted on March 19th, 2009 at 6:45 pmMy nightstand looks just the same. My son loved the Inkheart series and he keeps telling me that I have to read The City of Ember. No matter what you do, there will always be a bookstack and I can’t imagine it any other way. Thanks for sharing!
Posted on March 19th, 2009 at 7:22 pmBetty and I usually read together in my room for about 20-30 minutes before bed. She’ll read her book, I read mine. This week she added a new game to this ritual: count the number of books on Mommy’s night table.
As of last night, it was 30.
Obviously, I can truly relate.
Posted on March 20th, 2009 at 5:18 amSO JEALOUS!
Posted on March 20th, 2009 at 8:51 amI have some books coming my way in the indefinite future but right now? I AM OUT. I’m re-reading things I’ve read MANY times before right now. Grim!
Oh so many ideas in one pile!
I’m on quite a L’Engle kick at the moment. Reading the Murry books aloud to the older kidlets, the Austen books to myself and her memoirs when I can. Interesting overlaps between the three.. I have developed both appreciation and critiques.
Posted on March 25th, 2009 at 6:16 pmLissa
I was totally inspired by this post to go to the library and take out a stack of books.
As I leafed through one of the books I borrowed, I realized that I had to recommend it to you:
House Beautiful’s _Decorating with Books_ by Marie Proeller Hueston.
Posted on April 1st, 2009 at 6:54 pmOOOH, Helen! I’ll have to look for that! We really *have* decorated with books. Scott calls our interior decorating style “Early Library.”
Posted on April 1st, 2009 at 7:10 pmTBR Pile Update — Here in the Bonny Glen says:
[...] I haven’t made much of a dent in that stack of books. [...]
Posted on April 1st, 2009 at 7:38 pmTo-Be-Read Piles – Small, Large, and Extra Large! says:
[...] How author, mom, and blogging dynamo Melissa Wiley even has time to put books in piles, let alone read them, is beyond me. But she does… and has even found time to blog about her TBR pile being out of control. [...]
Posted on September 18th, 2009 at 11:36 pm