The Year in Review

Another year has come and gone. Is about to leave.
I read almost 40 books in 2006, and so it turned out to be actually a slow year for me, reading-wise.
Usually I will be reading closer to 50 books, or thereabouts.
As I reflect on the past year’s reading, several books stand out as being exceptionally good. To call them the “best” is inaccurate, I don’t even really like the word at all. But they were exceptionally enjoyable, and well-written. They were, [an equally horrible word] my favorites.
Throughout the past twelve months you have heard me babble on about most of these, so here I will merely list them.

The Bookpuddle© Favorite Reads of 2006.

Fiction:
The Way The Crow Flies– Ann-Marie MacDonald
Life Mask – Emma Donoghue
Seeing – Jose Saramago
My Life As A Fake – Peter Carey
The Book of Revelation – Rupert Thomson




Non-Fiction:
The End of Faith – Sam Harris
Will In The World – Stephen Greenblatt
The Architecture of Happiness – Alain de Botton
The Year of Magical Thinking – Joan Didion
Letter To A Christian Nation – Sam Harris

I am currently reading Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and I am quite sure that it will displace one in the fiction category, but I must wait until I turn the last page to make such an assessment.

Happy reading to you all, in 2007!

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Am I converted?

Well, I hesitate to write of this, because I know that I am going to be razzed by my pseudo-macho-friends as soon as they read of it, but... [OK, here goes...]
LAST NIGHT I WATCHED A MUSICAL!
And that's not all! [...Heaven help me...]
I LIKED IT!
Here's the lowdown, the scenario...
A while ago, my dear dear friend, [a lover of musicals and the entire musical-genre], she sent me the DVD of The Music Man. An early 1960's production, starring Shirley Jones and Robert Preston.
Previously, I had voiced my opinion that I am not a great fan of musicals, in general. I think that this was part of why she sent me The Music Man.
To cure me!
It may have worked, because I really enjoyed the thing.
I had been waiting for the right moment to watch this movie and last night, the moment arrived. I was having a sleepover at my mom's place, here on vacation. It's the first time I had ever been to her new apartment... so we [just her and I] cuddled up [sort of] on the couch and began to watch 151 minutes of singing and dancing.
I was surprised at how much we both enjoyed the thing.
After watching a non-stop assortment of modern movies over the past week, all of which contained enough swearing and violence and mayhem to send my dear old mom into convulsions, it was really refreshing to experience such a well-done, wholesomely good [innocent-like] classic movie.
It is so well choreographed. It is so funny.
And Shirley Jones, [as Marian the Librarian] is a total hottie!

So, all in all, I highly recommend this movie to one and all.
It may cure you of musical-ignorance, as it has done for me!

Here's an extremely brief synopsis of The Music Man:
Confidence man Harold Hill arrives at River City, Iowa, intending to cheat the community with his standard scam of offering to equip and train a boy's marching band. His real intention is to skip town with the money since he has no music skill anyway. Things go awry when he falls for the hottie librarian named Marian Paroo. She becomes savvy to his shenanigans but is impressed with the way is which he inadvertently enriches the town with a love of music.

T.y.L.i.I.

************

The Statement

Please indulge me in my continued praise of the work of novelist Brian Moore.
Today I am thinking of The Statement, originally published in 1996, and subsequently adapted into an award-winning movie starring Michael Caine.

The setting is southern France, 1989.
Pierre Brossard is a man on the run for his life.
For over 40 years he has been in hiding, counting on the complicity of the Catholic Church to perpetuate his anonymity. During WWII, Brossard was a member of the "milice" and as part of his duties at the time he personally shot 14 Jews in a clandestine pogrom and subsequently co-operated in the sending of many Jews from France to extermination camps.
Through his many connections, Brossard managed at one point to obtain an official political pardon for his war-crimes, but now (in 1989) the charge of "crimes against humanity" has been added... with the result that even some of his strongest supporters have turned against him. There is a renewed interest in his case; he's running out of places to hide... and he has more pursuers than ever before.

Moore has written a great meditation on the historical processes and conditions that make war crimes or crimes against humanity so difficult to pursue. Brossard is demonstrative of the expertise with which such "criminals" are able to exploit various forces of compromise, immunity, asylum and refuge.
Many questions are subtly raised by this book. The Church here affords a sort of refuge to the retributive justice that the outside world demands (concerning Brossard's obvious past crimes/sins)... but what of Brossard's inner torment? Even if the Church offers (grants) Divine pardon... does the pardon of man/society necessarily follow? Should it? (I hope not). What do we make of priestly absolution when it proves ineffective as conscience-cleanser? Is this question being answered when, with his final breath, Brossard tries to be penitent and sense God's pardon, and all he is afforded is a final look (in his mind's eye) at the people that he has killed?

It is a story told by a genius writer, Moore didn't even know how to disappoint a reader. The short quick chapters make you quickly forget whatever else you had to do today... you won't stop flipping the pages till your done. He changes the "I" of his narrator constantly, and never loses the reader for a moment. I've read almost all of his many books and consider this among his very best. This is a book that had significant meaning for the author (a sort of purging of his own shame at his father's conservative Catholic belief and initial support of totalitarianism during WWII). Moore commented, concerning The Statement, saying --> "I never thought that novels changed the world. I still don't believe that. But I just thought that this was a story which really should come out."
It should.

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existence: a poem

existence

i would like to watch a stream descend
its babbling course between mountains
before ever a human eye was in a head
and whether you choose the book of
genesis or darwin as your text surely
there was such a time in history for no
doubt the inanimate came first either way.
secondly, to hear the first bird clear its
throat and sing would be nice and whether
you believe in god or not it is just
another way of saying that being around
when existence started happening would
be something i am totally interested in.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2006
**********

agnes in hiding.

Can you find the hidden cat in the above picture?

You know what’s funny?
SHE THINKS YOU CAN’T!
Her name is agnes, that’s right. It must be spelled in lower case, just like e.e. cummings would do it!
She has had enough of the bustle of Christmas and is trying to hide herself amid the foliage and unopened gifts.
You know what?
I can somewhat relate.
In the midst of all the visiting, do you ever just slink away and find a place to be alone for a few moments? I do.
I think I am part cat. My brain is cat, I think!

Happy Boxing Day [whatever that is] to you!

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MERRY CHRISTMAS!

"At Christmas, I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth.
But like of each thing that in season grows."
-- from Love's Labor's Lost –

Merry Christmas!

I have some great Christmas Day news!
I called Claude last night. He is my professional catsitter/caregiver.
Seems that Jack has made a full recovery.

He is back to eating and drinking in his usual voracious way! And the litter box? Well… the litter box is as it should be. In need of constant…. maintenance!
[Poor Jack, suffering the humiliation of my divulging public information about his bowel situation!] Poor kitty. Poor kitty.

On the heels of this good news, I nearly feel off my chair when I opened a certain Christmas card containing a monetary gift which will more than pay for my entire trip to Mexico next month!

Alas, along with the above good news, there lurketh some bad.
I weighed myself.
On a digital scale… the kind that do not lie.
A few days ago, when I arrived here, it read 177.5 pounds.
This morning it said 183.
I wish I was kidding.
And there is a whole turkey [another one] waiting to be eaten, tonight.
There is gravy in my bloodstream!

***********

Silent Night...

Marcellus:
...Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Savior's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is the time.
Horatio:
So I have heard and do in part believe it.
-- Hamlet, I.i. 157 --

Merry Christmas to all!

*********

Idea Novelists.

Just a little update on my holidays…
I AM THOROUGHLY ENJOYING THEM!
Oh, it is just so relaxing to sit around and visit, sip coffee, read a bit, and eat dead animals.
Last night it was a turkey.
Tonight, → turkey carcass soup!
Tomorrow, there will be yet some other animal that was running too slow, fated to end up in our festive holiday cauldron!
I come from a long line of non-vegans!
Carniverous to the core!

I’ve been reading Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.
As I vowed to do, so have I done.
I am reading Rand for the Holidays! As I am only 138 pages in, [of 695] I will hold my comments for later.
For now, I just want to mention something that caught my eye, on the back of my ancient used-paperback novel.
This Signet edition was published in the early 1970’s. [Fountainhead was originally published in 1943].
The back of the book quotes the New York Times as saying, of Rand: “A writer of great power. She has a subtle and ingenious mind and the capacity of writing brilliantly, beautifully, bitterly… This is the only novel of ideas written by an American woman that I can recall.”

I paused upon reading that last line, and sort of looked at it again.
What exactly is the critic suggesting?
Was it so startling that a → “woman” ← could write “a novel of ideas”?
It seems…. well, not like something that would be an acceptable statement today, for instance.
Is it true that there were not many American women novelists “of ideas”?
It was bothering me so I did some research.
And well, it seems true that it is a bit difficult to find what one might call American women novelists of ideas, from that era. I’m talking about the 1960’s – 1970’s.
I came up with writers like Sylvia Plath, Susan Sontag, Toni Morrison. I’m sure there are many more, but the thing is, it is difficult to find them.
It is amazing how male-dominated the world of literature was, in those decades.
I wonder if this is still the case? I would think that it is NOT!
Most of my favorite contemporary writers are female, and I would say that they are writing great “novels of ideas.”
So I am currently concluding that the blurb on the back of my Fountainhead is quite wonderfully archaic.

But help me out.
Tell me of a few more American [female] novelists of ideas, that would have been writing in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s.

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Put it on your list!

A few days ago I wrote about one of my favorite books by Brian Moore. The Luck of Ginger Coffey.
Today I am thinking of another excellent Moore book.
The Great Victorian Collection.
As is the case with a lot of great books that should still be in publication, this one is now out of print. The only place you will find it is probably in some dusty old used bookstore.
But if you love a great novel, I encourage you to put this one on your Next Time I Am In A Dusty Old Used Bookstore List!

The book is a dream come true…....literally!
Anthony Maloney is assistant professor of history at McGill University. At twenty-nine years old he is already a specialist on everything Victorian. If there's anything to know about the Victorian era, Anthony knows it.
While attending a series of seminars in California, he decides to indulge in a few days of rest and relaxation before heading home to Montreal. One night, alone in his hotel room, Anthony has a profound dream about London England.
He suddenly awakes and when he looks out his window, finds that down below on the huge hotel parking lot, a complete exhibition of Victorian culture has appeared overnight.
He climbs out of the window and wanders among the endless aisles of Victoriana and is soon met by a man asking, "Are you in charge of this?"
Without understanding why... he replies "Yes," and from that moment when Anthony claims ownership of The Great Victorian Collection, he will never be the same.

What follows is a truly realistic treatment of what would happen to someone who found themselves in this truly unrealistic situation.

A bewildered Anthony tries to process the fact that his "dream" brought this spectacle into existence, while everyone from the hotel manager, the law enforcement agencies, the press, television media, and the surrounding community descend upon him for an explanation of how he has done such a thing. 

We're not talking about a few doilies and candle-snuffers here! Hell, no!
There are gigantic working fountains... a locomotive... entire buildings that were not there the night before! Previously unknown collections within the collection... rolltop desks with handwritten letters locked within!

Of course, he does not have an answer. He only knows it's there. Everyone sees it. And he's responsible for it.

This collection consists of vivid replicas of existing Victoriana, and experts are called in to vouch for its authenticity. Most find that the stuff is so "good" that it is indistinguishable from the originals which are still located in their respective museums and locales around the world.
There seems to be no other explanation for how such a monstrous display has appeared here in Carmel-By-The-Sea (overnight, no less) than to conclude that Maloney DID in fact "dream" it into existence.

As such, he becomes a worldwide celebrity. 
Many people believe his story, and many do not. The plot revolves around the way these supporters and detractors affect Maloney's psyche. It appears as though the previously unextraordinary and perfectly normal professor is now on the verge of going completely bonkers. And who can blame him?

The problem becomes the uncertainty that surrounds the perpetuity of the Collection.
What will become of it? Will it slowly fade? Will it disappear overnight, as quickly, and inexplicably as it appeared? Is Maloney responsible (though his continued dreaming) to keep it in existence?
And what should be done with it if it does last forever? Should it become a Disneyland-like tourist attraction?
Maloney finds that if he tries to manipulate the Collection in his waking state, it begins to deteriorate.
And the Collection becomes a nightmare to him. Can he turn over to the world what he has created? He attends to it with a jealous possessiveness, and finds that he cannot let go of it. Psychologically, the Collection imprisons him, creates unendurable insomnia, and other life-threatening perils.

Because of the initial scandal, and subsequent absence from the University, Maloney has long since lost his professorship, only to be offered it once again after he becomes an established celebrity.

Should he return to Montreal and try to re-establish a somewhat normal life... or stay with the Collection?
He is torn. His dream becomes a living nightmare.

There is so much more to the plot than I'm saying here in this review because I don't want to ruin anything for readers. There is the usual Moore romantic dalliance thrown in, and it's wonderful stuff.
The beauty of the book is the way Moore makes such an unrealistic situation seem like the most normal thing that could have happened. The way that Maloney and those around him react to the Collection seems very natural, very believable.
And all in all, the book reminds me why Moore is definitely one of my favorite writers of all time. This one is a real page-turner from start to finish.


Hope you are all winding down from your work routines, and planning some good rest and relaxation with friends and family over the holiday season.
May not a one of you find yourself stranded at the Denver airport!
Tonight, I am going to eat a turkey.
-- Cip

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Splash du Jour: Thursday

Well, it is holiday time! I am on my way, literally out the door in minutes, for the airport.
Leaving Jack in the [hopefully worthy] care of the catsitter.
He seemed to be doing a bit better today. We are still not out of the woods yet, but he seems a bit better. Thank you for all of your warm feline-wishes!

Can any of you recall what happened to me LAST YEAR when I was leaving for Christmas? That was just scary. Downright scary!

I may not be around much [on Bookpuddle] because I am not sure of my computer access out on the prairies, so let me take this chance to wish you all a happy holiday season!

Have a great Thursday!

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Just as the water of the streams we see is small in amount compared to that which flows underground, so the idealism which becomes visible is small in amount compared with what men and women bear locked in their hearts, unreleased or scarcely released. To unbind what is bound, to bring the underground waters to the surface: mankind is waiting and longing for such as can do that.
-- Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) –

Have a great Wednesday!
*********

Twice Daily

Thank you for your concern about Jack.
Some have written to me [email], and some [below] have commented on today’s Splash!
Jack says, "Meow!"
I spent the entire morning with Jack at the vet’s. Let’s just say…. it was a lucrative venture. → For the pet hospital!
But, having said that, if what Dr. Ellison prescribed for Jack works out, it is worth it all.
Truth is, I am at my wit’s end. I mean, what is the next step?
Televangelists?
Some guy on a phone-in line, with his hand on the screen, as Jack extends his paw toward the TV? “I see you Jack! Oh, yes! I see that paw! Just believe! Just belieeeeeeeve! [and send money!]”
I missed a full day of work today, over cat issues. See, I am scheduled on a flight out of Dodge, like…. tomorrow night, basically. Time is of the essence.
Today, I was almost going to cancel my entire Christmas holidays. I was in the waiting room, literally pacing [I’m not kidding!]
Then the doctor came out, and told me that the news is not as bad as it could be. Jack does not have “crystals” [as of yet] but he does have a bladder infection, and with the proper treatment, he will most likely make a good recovery. Treatment consists of a tablet of Clamavox, twice daily, for 14 days.
And some Phenoxybenzamine [...ahhh! Memories of high school!]…. also twice daily. Along with the dope, I had to buy a bag of the most expensive cat food that has ever been sold on the face of the earth.
I’m thinking of cooking some of it up for myself.
Or putting it in a big bowl and not telling guests.
"Wow, Cip! Awesome party snacks!"

My professional catsitter is now going to be making way more money from me, than was originally planned.
The "once every two days" dramatically changed today, to TWICE DAILY!
I am going to be bankrupt!

[All donations welcome! There, that's my own televangelist bit!]

Aside from this news about Jack, I am reading The Fountainhead, and loving it, thus far.
Thank you for your thoughts, toward a fully recovered Jack!

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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don't buy love for nothing. Like all pure creatures, cats are practical.
-- William S. Burroughs –


My poor cat Jack, [shown] is not well.
It is tearing me apart.

All the same, I wish you all a great Tuesday!

Splash du Jour: Monday

He had grown up in a country run by politicians who sent the pilots to man the bombers to kill the babies to make the world safer for children to grow up in.
-- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven, 1971 –

Have a great Monday!

Coffee, and Coffey

I am just sitting here [at home] on a lazy Sunday afternoon, sipping my coffee, and thinking of Coffey. Leafing through my old old copy of the book.
The Luck of Ginger Coffey. A novel by Brian Moore.
It is one of my all-time favorite Moore novels. I’ve written of this man’s work on Bookpuddle, a few times before. [Like here and here.] He is superb. Even though so many of his books have become movies [most recently, The Statement, starring Michael Caine], Moore [1921-1999] is not nearly as well-known as he deserves to be. I think this is the case with so many great authors.
Yet I can pretty much assure you, when you discover Moore, you unearth treasure.
In the meantime, let me take a few moments to tell you WAY too much about Ginger Coffey…

The story explores one man's heroic attempt to shift position in the world. Ginger Coffey leaves the unpromising economic situation in Dublin to pursue his idea of the Great Canadian Dream. With wife and daughter in tow, he arrives in Montreal in the dead of winter with $15.03 to his name. He has been waiting a long time for this golden opportunity. It soon becomes apparent however, that Canada was not as eagerly waiting for him!
He manages to land a job at The Tribune, but rather than his desired position as journalist, he wallows among the other galley slaves as a lowly proofreader. They collectively suffer under an exploitative and humiliating boss, MacGregor. Because of his radical Irish optimism, Coffey is blind to the emptiness of the editor's promise to promote him to journalist "one day soon". Before that mysterious day which never seems to arrive, Coffey is further forced to augment his meager wages by accepting a job as a diaper delivery man for a company called TINY-ONES© .
Is this the Utopia that he crossed an ocean for? Utopia-shmopia!
But while his Great Canadian Dream is shattering he hears some trans-Atlantic gossip that suggests the situation back in Ireland is even worse! So his choice of Montreal is now an irrevocable one, if for no other reason than it at least affords him some anonymity until he hits the big time. But even this anonymity is brutalized one day when he encounters an old Dublin girlfriend while he is in the full garb of his TINY-ONES© uniform. This is only one of a series of humiliations that Coffey experiences, not the least of which is the fact that his marriage is threatened, and he fears that his wife Vera is involved with an associate of his. His fears are correct... her involvement with the successful journalist Gerry Grosvenor amounts to a sort of clandestine infidelity, but unknown to Ginger, it has not been adulterous. At any rate, soon they are poised for a divorce. But the coup de grace in Ginger's bad luck comes one cold winter night as he stumbles out of a bar after drinking far too much of a mixture of wine and Coca-Cola. While waiting for the bus, he feels the need to unburden his bladder somewhat, and (thinking that he was up against an unoccupied office building) relieves himself in the doorway of one of the biggest hotels in the city! He is arrested for indecent exposure and has his (hilarious) day in court. In this case, the luck of the Irish turns out to be a six-month suspended sentence.
It looks like things could get no worse. Coffey returns home to gather up his things and leave his family. But amazingly, his final courtroom incident has led to some genuine "luck" in the life of Ginger Coffey. A great final chapter shows us the joy that comes from true forgiveness and reconciliation. Ginger Coffey must resign himself to the fact that some very simple things in life (the renewed love of his wife, the steadfast love of his daughter) are like the consolation prizes in his uphill run through life. In the end he celebrates the retention of roughly no more than what he arrived with in Canada... his original $15.03. But, along with that fortune, he now has a new understanding of what makes life important.

This was Moore's first novel with a Canadian setting, published in 1960 after the Irish-born author himself had spent twelve years living in Canada. He was personally familiar with what it is like to be an immigrant emerging from Montreal's Dorchester Street bus terminal into the same sort of frozen slush, snow and gloom that Ginger Coffey experienced. And Moore's interest in this novel seems to be an investigation into the ways in which public myths (the Great Canadian Dream) reflect and encourage private fantasies (I'm going to get rich when I get there). Coffey's conclusion was that "life was the victory... going on was the victory." That the true challenge and test in life resides in the private domain, in intimate relationships. It is for this reason that the central drama of the story, which is intertwined with Ginger's search for wealth and public recognition in the New World, is the collapse of his marriage to Vera. Moore deals with these serious themes in a novel that is very light to read and even "comic" at most points. Ginger Coffey is an unforgettable character... the quintessential well-intentioned optimist/dreamer.

You can buy your own cup o’ Coffey right here.
Brief Brian Moore bio.

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Splash du Jour: Friday

America’s one of the finest countries anyone ever stole.
-- Bobcat Goldthwait –

Have a great Friday!

Severe Serendipity!

Well, tonight’s blog is not only LATE, as in, it is already night and I should be sleeping with Jack [who is a cat, by the way!]… but also, tonight’s blog has absolutely nothing to do with books, or things bookish.
I am drying my freshly washed laundry right now.
Bed linen!

Remember a few days ago when I mentioned my friend, the one who sent me the signed Alice Munro book, unaware that the signature was authentic, [which has since been proved authentic by a team of researchers?] Remember that?
Remember how I said that she is “forever doing these sort of serendipitous things?”
Well, it happened again, the serendipity!

See, I have to do my laundry at the pay machines, downstairs.
And so, I had done a load of bed linen.
Well, I went down to the laundry room with some change in my pocket. Each dryer load costs $1.75. I had $3.25 in my pocket. [This is going to take a bit of math here folks!]
OK, so I place my $1.75 in the slots. A one-dollar piece, what us Canadians call a “loonie” [because it has a “loon” on it] and three quarters. Throw the sheets and pillowcases in. Fabric softener sheets. Slam the door.
Punch the plunger with the money in it.
KERPLUNK!
Money goes into the netherworld! The same planet that eats your socks, I guess!

No action! The thing is deader than six wigs!
I say, “Hey, hey HEY!”
The guy yonder, who is putting his load of clothes in a washer says, “No! It ate your money?”
“Yes,” I say, loud enough that Jack probably turned his head, 14 floors up! “And I don’t have enough to try another machine! I DON’T HAVE ENOUGH CHANGE! I’m a quarter short!”
The guy gives me one of those looks that says, “Damn, I’d help you out but I don’t have any extra change either!”
I was mad!
“Arrrrgggghhh!”
How am I supposed to sleep tonight on soggy damn…..!!??

AHA!
Like a flash of lightning, a vision of the top of my fridge passed through my noggin!
Quarters! American ones, though!
But quarters, nonetheless!
Once, a long time ago now, and I mean like YEARS ago, my serendipitous friend sent me a series of American quarters, special editions, that had famous scenes from different U.S. states on them. Like, for instance, the Delaware one had Paul Revere [or maybe it’s Rip Van Winkle, or even Hoss Cartwright, I’m still not sure] riding a horse and stuff.

I took the elevator up to my place and ran to the fridge!
YES!
They are still there! After all this time.
I grabbed one of them. It had a sort of….. fuzz on it. I scraped this stuff off while I descended in the elevator, praying all the while, “Lord, please bless this Yankee quarter. I really need it to have a good sleep tonight. And you KNOW how badly I need a good sleep…. so please, dear God, if you help this fuzzy foreign quarter to fit in the tray real nice, if you just miraculously Canadianize it tonight, I promise that I will become a missionary to…..” [by now I am placing the thing alongside the other two, and PUSHING the tray forward]….. BINGO!
The coins fall…… the light goes on…… I’m in business…… just as I say….
"HAWAII."

Yes…. missionary to Hawaii… Waikiki!
Missionary to the Macadamians!
I hear they are NUTS!
And I hear that there are way too many heathens there…….!

Thank you my serendipitous friend.
You unintentionally, inadvertently, silently, touch my world, yet again!

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Splash du Jour: Thursday

"Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies."
-- Voltaire on his deathbed when asked by a priest if he renounced Satan –
← Here he is, looking very Michael Bolton-ish.

Have a great Thursday!

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Are there books in this world?
Can I see them? Touch them?
Read them?
I shall never be, for one minute, bored!
-- Cipriano –

Have a great Wednesday!

Bookopoly

I want this game!
Bookopoly.
And I don’t even LIKE games.
Seriously, I don’t. Board games and me, they are not a great mix. Scrabble is an exception. But other than Scrabble, board games for me are more like BORED games!
But look at this new game I have discovered.
[And by the way, I discovered it while discovering a great blogsite. → Stephanie’s, The Written Word.

Here is a brief description of what goes on, in Bookopoly:
Roll the dice and advance to Read. Collect Bookstores and trade them in for Libraries. Who knows! You may soon be elected President of the Book Club or you may be tossed out of the game for three turns and sent to WATCH TV!

I wanna play I wanna play I wanna play!
But I have a dilemna.
NO ONE TO PLAY WITH!

I feel inspired.
I would like to INVENT a board game, called Bookpuddle©.

Roll the dice and advance to Splashland. Collect book "puddles" and trade them in for book "oceans". Who knows! You may soon be elected Cap’n Readsalot of The Big Puddle or you may be slowly drowned by the Puddle Master in three inches of water, or made to walk the plank for writing in the margins!

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