Great books for the library at my castle in the clouds

1. All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten ~ by Robert Fulghum, 1986, nonfiction, 196 pages
2. The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image ~ by Leonard Shlain, 1998, language and culture, 464 pages
3. The Art of Racing in the Rain ~ by Garth Stein, 2008, fiction, 321 pages
4. The Color Purple ~ by Alice Walker, 1982, epistolary fiction, 300 pages
5. The Dance of the Dissident Daughter ~ by Sue Monk Kidd, 1992, nonfiction, 304 pages
6. Go Out in Joy! ~ by Nina Herrmann Donnelley, 1990, nonfiction, 221 pages
7. Jonathan Livingston Seagull ~ by Richard Bach, photos by Russell Munson, 1970, fiction, 127 pages
8. Little Women ~ by Louisa May Alcott, 1868 and 1869 (in two volumes), fiction, 759 pages
9. The Metamorphosis ~ by Franz Kafka, 1915, novella, 63 pages
10. My Name is Asher Lev ~ by Chaim Potok, 1972, fiction, 369 pages
11. My Sister's Keeper ~ by Jodi Picoult, 2004, fiction, 448 pages
12. Time and Again ~ by Jack Finney, 1970, fiction, 507 pages

Beginning ~ with a strange transformation

Metamorphosis ~ by Franz Kafka, 1915, novella, 63 pages, 10/10

Beginning:  One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.  He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly dome and divided by arches into stiff sections.

One of Kafka's best-known works, Metamorphosis tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect.  The German title literally means "monstrous vermin."  He struggles to adjust to this new condition.  In popular culture and adaptations of the novella, the insect is commonly depicted as a cockroach.  At 63 pages, it is the longest of the stories Kafka considered complete and published during his lifetime.  The text was first published in 1915 in the journal Die weißen Blätter, with the first edition in book form appearing that December.

I've read this short book at least once and decided to download it for my Kindle.  It's short, so it didn't take long to re-read.  It definitely will go into the library that I am assembling for my castle in the clouds!

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays.

Armchair traveling

My castle in the clouds has a living room, and my living room has an armchair.  What does one do while sitting in a chair?  Well, I don't know about you, but I often travel in books!  Novels take me places, and sometimes those places are far, far away.

In 2009, I opened a book in my own library, but I don't remember where it took me, because I can't see the title in that old photo.  But I do remember going to a tea party with Alice in Wonderland.  I've been all over the world — north, east, south, and west.  For example, I've been to Mitford.

Have you read any of the books about Mitford?  It's a fictional place in North Carolina.  This series by Jan Karon is set in the very small imaginary town she called Mitford and centers around Father Timothy Kavanagh.

For  the next few days, I'll continue showing you around my castle in the clouds as I explore the various rooms.  It is such a wonderful imaginary place!

Someone's in the kitchen

I wrote about food yesterday, so today my Wednesday Words will be puns about stocking up on food for the kitchen of my castle in the clouds:

• She's the apple of his eye.
• Gouda luck getting that job you want.
• Lettuce romaine happy.
• This food is berry delicious.
• Donut worry; be happy.
• These grape foods are making me hungry!
• Actually, I'm souper hungry right now.

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P.S.  I've had another SCAMMER try to scam me.  This one is Indonesian.  How do I know?  Because he/she left this line in what they sent back to me when I said in effect, "Not interested":

Pada tanggal Sen, 21 Agu 2023 pukul 11.00 < my name > menulis:

I don't click on links in email sent by strangers, but this fool forgot to change that into English, and Google tells me it's Indonesian.

Food for thought

In my castle in the clouds, my "food" will be words.  Lettuce begin, and that's my first grocery shopping item.  Hmm, what else?  Do you carrot all for celery?

Oops!  That's three things on this TWOsday.  Hmm, but only two photos.  Okay, let's call it PUNday and TWOsday.

Wandering through my castle in the clouds

As I've read yesterday's book about a blueprint, I've been roaming the rooms of my very own castle in the clouds.  If course, I'll have a library in it, overflowing with books.  I'll also have a workroom, by which I mean a desk overflowing with papers.  You are asking, "Why?"  Because I'm a writer, a wordsmith whose "works" are composed of words.  My tools are pen and paper, or maybe laptop and printer is more accurate.  (Or laptop and blog.)  It will NOT have a landline phone as on this desk like mine that I found online.

Just imagine!

A Blueprint for Your Castle in the Clouds: Make the Inside of Your Head Your Favorite Place to Be ~ by Barbara Sophia Tammes, 2012, inspiration, 160 pages

Come build your castle in the clouds — a spacious and light-filled palace within you where big insights and inspirations are given room to stretch and play.  You  will design mental "rooms" to house your most important self-observations, your dreams, your fears, your fantasies.  To figure out what's going right in your life and what's not.  What will make your life manageable and your dreams feasible.  To envision and begin to move toward your very best life.  You'll build ...

• a Mental Spa for cleansing intrusive, bothersome thoughts.
• a Head Office, where you are in charge.
• a Suite for Shame that includes one side for your real self and the other for your ideal self.
• a Little Chapel for your soul, with a tiny door to keep out your bloated ego.
• a Hall of Tears, where you are allowed to cry as much as you want.
• a Library, where you will discover all the wisdom you hold within your mind and your body.
• a Kitchen to help you digest new information and things that have been said to you.
• and a Mental Spa and a Playroom and more than a dozen other rooms that will become your inner sanctuary.

A Wedding in December ~ by Anita Shreve, 2005, fiction (Massachusetts), 337 pages

At an inn in the Berkshire Mountains, seven former schoolmates gather to celebrate a wedding — a reunion that becomes the occasion of astonishing revelations as the friends collectively recall a long-ago night that indelibly marked each of their lives.  This book probes the mysteries of the human heart and the endless allure of paths not taken.

This quote from page 33 continues this blog post's theme of imagination:

"History, Agnes always told her students on the first day of school, was not a matter of dates and battles, but rather one of stories.  She would tell them stories, she announced, and they would listen.  But as Agnes put her pen and notebook away, she wondered this:  Is imagination dependent upon experience, or is experience influenced by the imagination?"

Deb Nance at Readerbuzz

hosts The Sunday Salon.