Sunday Salon ~ library loot and some good stuff

Library Loot

Will's Words: How William Shakespeare Changed the Way You Talk ~ by Jane Sutcliffe, illustrated by John Shelley, 2016, picture book, 40 pages

When Jane Sutcliffe set out to write a book about William Shakespeare and the Globe Theatre, in her own words, she ran into a problem:  Will's words kept popping up all over the place!  What's an author to do?  Shakespeare is, after all, responsible for such familiar phrases as "what's done is done" and "too much of a good thing."  He even helped turn "household words" into household words.  But, Jane embraced her dilemma and wrote about Shakespeare, his plays, and his famous phrases with glee.  After all, what better words are there to use to write about the greatest writer in the English language than his very own?  As readers will discover, "the long and the short of it" is this:  Shakespeare changed the English language forever.  And now he is the only author with his own Dewey decimal number, 822.33.

Catch You Later, Traitor ~ by Avi, 2015, juvenile historical fiction (New York), 304 pages

Twelve-year-old Pete Collison is a regular kid who loves baseball, detective stories, and radio crime dramas.  When an FBI agent accuses his father of being a Communist, Pete finds himself caught in a real-life mystery.  The rumors have reached school and turned Pete's class against him.  To discover the truth, Pete digs into his father's past, but the more he finds out, the more complicated the story becomes.  Are there really Commies in Pete's family?

In a pickle

Today is National Pickle Day, and some people think it's a big dill.  (Yeah, you knew I'd get a pun in here, right?)

Yesterday was World Kindness Day, and the Action for Happiness folks sent out (via the free app I have) a message saying that "It's cool to be kind."  I think every day should be a day to be kind to the people around us.

Trivia

Did you ever play with a slinky?  I discovered yesterday that it was developed in a military research lab.  Yeah, I know you just love that little bit of trivia I found while wasting time online:  "In 1943, a young naval mechanical engineer by the name of Richard James was working on designing a system of springs that could support and stabilize sensitive instruments aboard naval ships in rough seas. During the course of his research, James accidentally knocked a coiled spring off of a shelf in his lab at the William Cramp & Sons shipyards in Philadelphia.  The spring went tumbling, landed on a pile of books, flipped over itself, and then proceeded to 'walk' itself down the books, flop onto a table, onto the floor, and then coil itself back up into a neat stack."  Click here to read more about it.

Good Thing #1

All the numbers looked good at my doctor's appointment.

Good Thing #2

Fun toys like Slinkies and Rubik's Cubes.

Good Thing #3

A warm apartment now that the weather is getting colder.

Bloggers gather in the Sunday Salon — at separate computers in different

time zones — to share what we have been doing during the week.

Other Sunday Salon musings are linked at the bottom of Deb's Readerbuzz post.