storytelling

So here we go. I've got two POBs ready to go out to eager readers.
Here's how it will work:

1. I'm announcing the first giveaway right here and now. The winner will get to choose which POB they want.
2. The next giveaway will be for the POB that remains.
3. This first giveaway will be on the forum; the second giveaway will be here on the weblog.

Here's what you've got to do. Go to the forum and answer this question:

If you found yourself inside the novel Fahrenheit 451, and you were one of the people working to preserve the written word, you would have to memorize a novel to save it for posterity. Which novel would you memorize, and why?

In your answer you may pick only ONE book, and your "why" can't be more than 200 words long. Short and to the point will go over better than long and redundant.

Decisions of the judge (me) are final. I'll pick a winner when I've got more than fifty and less than a thousand entries. That is: when the timing seems right to me. So go to it.

I will send the POB to the winner anywhere in the world, but if the winner is outside the continental United States, I will be sending by surface mail.

I'm turning off comments on this post because this is NOT where you answer the question. You answer the question over on the forum. You'll need to register if you haven't already.

Posted by at 5:55 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Yiiiippppppeeeeee! A really good review from Booklist:

Donati, Sara. Queen of Swords. Oct. 2006. 564p. Bantam, $27 (0-533-80149-X).

In the fifth volume of her popular Wilderness series after Fire Along the Sky (2004), Donati sweeps readers into two strong women's personal journeys of rescue and redemption. It is 1814 in the French Antilles, where Scots noblewoman Jennet Scott Huntar is being held captive. But when her future husband, Luke, and his half-sister, Hannah, finally locate and free her, their troubles have just begun. To ensure the safety of her son, born during her imprisonment, Jennet had made a devil's bargain with a dissolute, untrustworthy man. As the trio travels from Pensacola to New Orleans in their attempts to learn the child's whereabouts, Jennet struggles to heal herself and her marriage, while Hannah, half-Mohawk, uses her medical training to help the city's Indian populace and faces deadly illness herself. It's both a smoothly written, engrossing adventure about an early American family and a vivid depiction of the little-explored War of 1812, yet it's more than that. Donati also delves into much deeper realities, such as race and prejudice in one of America's famously multicultural cities, the complex patterns of revenge, the price of loyalty during wartime, and the transformative power of love. Avid historical fiction and romance readers will devour it. —Sarah Johnson

edited to add this link to Sarah Johnson's weblog

Posted by at 2:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

This is what I'm doing on the fifth anniversary of the attacks: I'm refusing to watch anything on television that touches on the subject at all. No news, no talk shows, and absolutely no specials or so-called documentaries.

There are many things I admire about Quakers, but the one I'm borrowing just now has to do with silence and reflection. I prefer to spend some time today considering the families of the victims, how they've survived in spite of merciless media scrutiny and the contempt of people like Anne Coulter.

Here's my question: do we really need to keep revisiting those images? My sense is that none of us who turned on the television that morning and watched things as they happened will ever forget what we saw. Going back to those pictures again and again strikes me as morbid. The worst kind of voyeurism.

Far more important, to me at least:

The way our government is busy overseas creating more generations of desperately poor and angry people. The kind who, driven to the wall we helped build, embrace extremism and violence.

The thousands and thousands of civilians who have died and will continue to die while we are busy imposing democracy on them. In order to save the village, we had to destroy it.

The thousands of young people we have sent to fight; the ones who come back in body bags and coffins. Those are images you don't see, because the government doesn't want you to.

The way this administration has dedicated itself to the steady chipping away of civil liberties.

These things that are happening. Right here. Right now.

Posted by at 9:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (35) | TrackBacks (0)