Kick-Butt Characters Giveaway Hop (INT) - From Thenadays

The Kick-Butt Characters Hop is Hosted by Good Choice Reading & I Am A Reader, Not A Writer.

The dates for this hop are March 23rd - 28th.

Up for Grabs

Okay, I know everyone is probably going to be giving away The Hunger Games, so I'm giving your the opportunity to choose either The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley or The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. 

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For the sake of trying something different here at Bibliophila, Please, Thursday is now Thenadays.

Beware the Ides of March!

The Ides of March, as many of you know, is upon us today. According to various unreliable internet sources that I overuse, the Ides is the middle of the month and supposedly when the full moon is supposed to occur. It is the 15th day of March, according to the Roman calendar, and also the day that Julius Caesar was assassinated by his "buddies" at the Senate. It was such a significant event at the time (despite nearly every emperor being murdered by an enemy or heir), that "the Ides of March" became synonymous with the assassination, as it is now. Cicero is quoted as saying "The Ides of March are encouraging", instead of saying it gladdens his heart or gives him hope since their beloved tyrant was murdered. He knew that people would get his drift.

According to Plutarch (a major ancient historian), a seer told Julius Caesar that he would not live past March 15th, and like any good leader, he paid little mind to the person shouting at him on the street. William Shakespeare made that encounter popular in his work Julius Caesar. In case you did not know this, that literary masterpiece is offered for free over at Project Gutenberg. If you've never had the opportunity to read it, this is your chance to get your hands on it for free.

Celebrate the Ides of March & Download Julius Caesar Here!

Oh, and if you have any friends named Brutus, you should probably not hang out at the capital with him today. Just sayin'.

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For the sake of trying something different here at Bibliophila, Please, Thursday is now Thenadays.

Today is Kenneth Grahame's birthday. Many of you may be scratching your heads right now, but he is the author of The Wind in the Willows. Thanks to the Project Gutenberg, many old classics are available for free online. (You should seriously check them out.) In honor of his birthday, I am going to post The Reluctant Dragon from Dream Days for you to enjoy. It was adapted into a feature film by Walt Disney in 1941, and it is also one of my family's favorites.

The Reluctant Dragon 

by Kenneth Grahame

Footprints in the snow have been unfailing provokers of sentiment ever since snow was first a white wonder in this drab-coloured world of ours. In a poetry-book presented to one of us by an aunt, there was a poem by one Wordsworth in which they stood out strongly—with a picture all to themselves, too—but we didn't think very highly either of the poem or the sentiment. Footprints in the sand, now, were quite another matter, and we grasped Crusoe's attitude of mind much more easily than Wordsworth's. Excitement and mystery, curiosity and suspense—these were the only sentiments that tracks, whether in sand or in snow, were able to arouse in us.

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For the sake of trying something different here at Bibliophila, Please, Thursday is now Thenadays.

This has been a completely insane week for me, so this post is going to be a little more lazy than usual. Since my post yesterday was about Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin, I thought I would share the original short story by Edgar Allan Poe with you. (Yes, I am well aware that I linked to it, but who actually clicked on it?) So without further ado:

The Masque of the Red Death

by Edgar Allan Poe

http://www.online-literature.com/poe/36/

The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal -- the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.

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For the sake of trying something different here at Bibliophila, Please, Thursday is now Thenadays.

Title: Ariel

Author: Steven R. Boyett

Publisher: Ace

Release Date: December 1, 1983

At four-thirty one Saturday afternoon the laws of physics as we know them underwent a change. Electronic devices, cars, industries stopped. The lights went out. Any technology more complicated than a lever or pulley simply wouldn't work. A new set of rules took its place—laws that could only be called magic. Ninety-nine percent of humanity has simply vanished. Cities lie abandoned. Supernatural creatures wander the silenced achievements of a halted civilization.


Pete Garey has survived the Change and its ensuing chaos. He wanders the southeastern United States, scavenging, lying low. Learning. One day he makes an unexpected friend: a smartassed unicorn with serious attitude. Pete names her Ariel and teaches her how to talk, how to read, and how to survive in a world in which a unicorn horn has become a highly prized commodity.


When they learn that there is a price quite literally on Ariel's head, the two unlikely companions set out from Atlanta to Manhattan to confront the sorcerer who wants her horn. And so begins a haunting, epic, and surprisingly funny journey through the remnants of a halted civilization in a desolated world. (via Ariel's Website)

This is the first post-apocalyptic book that I can remember reading - back when I didn't even know anything about these so-called "genre" things. All I knew was that it was a book with a unicorn on it, and I was all over it. You guys already know I'm weird, so I'll go ahead and admit that I used to be obsessed with unicorns. I've calmed it down over the years, but I'm still drawn to them. But you're here about the book, right?

Ariel was one of my first ventures outside of the high or epic fantasy genre that wasn't required school reading. I was tricked by the cover, and by the time I read the first two or three chapters, I was irrevocably hooked. It is a beautiful story of a boy and his quasi-horse who has a potty mouth, who are trying to survive in a world that neither of them really understand. Pete grew up in a world with the normal, scientific rules and experienced the horrors of what humanity is capable in disaster. Ariel was a baby when Pete found her not long after the Change - in a world where she was only a myth before.

Ariel is one of my favorite literary characters. She is not some angelic creature who sprinkles love and rainbows across the land. She is obsessed with peppermints to a fault, loves Don Quixote, and is constantly on her toes to keep Pete out of trouble. Oh, she is also extremely jealous and curses like a sailor sometimes. (No strong language, so don't worry.) Ariel is very human, except for the fact that she is a unicorn. And who wants to walk around all wobbly on two legs anyways?

I am not going to spoil anything for you, but I do my infamous Ugly Cry every time I read this book. Every. Time. Without fail. Oh, it's bad. But the book is so, so good.

Steven R. Boyett released Elegy Beach, a sequel to Ariel that only took twenty-five years to come out. I bought it immediately, but I have not read it yet. I do not know if Ariel is in it or not, and to be honest, that's why I read the original book. Pete is fantastic, but he's no unicorn.

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For the sake of trying something different here at Bibliophila, Please, Thursday* now Thenadays.

The Lorax by Dr. Seuss

I know it may look like I am targeting children's books, but I swear it is not intentionally. The fact of the matter is - some of my favorite reads from "thenadays" are the beautifully written, imaginative works aimed at the wee people.

When I was a junior in high school, one of our books for required reading was The Lorax. Since I began reading at such a young age and mostly skipped over picture books entirely, I had never heard of it. (Do not worry, I knew about Green Eggs and Ham and The Cat in the Hat.) I figured that it would be something along the lines of The Seven Lady Godivas, which was my favorite picture book as a child. (Rest assured, if you have not read The Lorax - it is not.)

The teacher, Mr. P., was a very smart man and knew that we would probably not read it on our own. (I would have, but all copies were checked out from the library, so do not get all judgy about me. Sheesh.) When he pulled out the book in class, everyone was surprised. Me, because I figured that it must be some sort of adult book and everyone else because that man was about to read a children's picture book to a room full of teenagers. However, when he opened the gateway into the World of Seuss, we were transported to the land of the Bar-ba-Loots, Swomee Swans, Humming Fish, and Truffala trees. Mr. P. guided us through the Once-ler's destruction of this beautiful landscape, against the advice of the activist Lorax.

I will admit that I did not understand in the beginning why The Lorax was relevant to a high school classroom. However, I soon realized that the young people in the room (myself included) would be the ones making the decisions regarding the world in which we all live at some point in the future. Mr. P. used the book as a tool to show us that what we did had a direct impact on the world around us. I should also note that he never went on a soap box about big oil or the evils of industrialization or any of that. It was just a book about consequences and redemption (through hard work), and when it comes to that, sometimes teenagers need pictures.

Fast forward (not too far!) to today. It is one of my favorite books to read to my daughter. She is not old enough to give a hoot either way about the message in the story, but she loves the rhyme scheme. And we both love the pictures.

*I really did have this planned out for Thursday, but work got crazy. So here you go - "Thenadays" on Friday.

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The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

Yes, I am well-aware that you folks are sick unto death about hearing about this book. I've been talking about it a lot lately. I'm telling you guys, it is one of the most magical books ever written. I'm currently reading it to my daughter (as if I would let you forget that one, too) for the first time. Bug has never cared about the movie, so she is a complete blank slate when it comes to the book. She does not have Disney's images implanted in her brain. This is all completely new to her, and she is captivated by the Pevensie children - Lucy especially.

There is no way for me to truly describe to you how wonderful it is for me to chaperone Bug's trip through the wardrobe to you. It is almost as if I am discovering the magic of Narnia myself, all over again.Watching her face as the plot unfurls is better than any gift Father Christmas could have pulled out of his bag for me. My child, who never lets me tell stories "from my mouth" (what she calls it), is obsessed with a book that has only very few pictures. It is thrilling.

I promise that I will be leaving Narnia before too much longer, as we have almost finished the book. (I lost most of my voice last week, so we are behind schedule.) Last night, Jadis did her sacrifice to the Old Magic on the Stone Table. Hopefully, by the end of the week*, I will have a daughter who is excited about exploring the magical world of classic children's literature on her own.

Okay, maybe not next week. I'm just ready for her to learn how to read!

Thursday is Now "Thenadays"

For the sake of trying something different here at Bibliophila, Please, I am turning Thursday into Thenadays.

     Thenadays - Adv. At that time; then; in those days; -- correlative to nowadays.

Each Thursday, I am going to feature a book from the past that I have read or want to read if that sneaky villain Time ever allows it. Today, I am going with an old favorite that is celebrating its 50th birthday this year.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

It was a dark and stormy night; Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and her mother had come down to the kitchen for a midnight snack when they were upset by the arrival of a most disturbing stranger.

"Wild nights are my glory," the unearthly stranger told them. "I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course. Let me be on my way. Speaking of way, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract".

This is one of those books that I can truly say had a very huge influence on my life. I cannot remember being interested in anything remotely scientific or based in the Real World, but Mrs. L'Engle inspired me to look outside my comfort zone. I did not just love the Time Quartet, but I learned to love other books by giving them a chance.

Meg Murry is a teenage girl who doesn't quite fit in with her schoolmates, her community, or even her own family. As her brother Charles Wallace puts it, she's not one thing or another. In addition to finding herself, she is faced with challenge of finding her missing father with her four year old brother and sports star Calvin O'Keefe. While it is a coming of age novel, it is also a great example of The Hero's Journey. Meg has to travel across the universe on a quest, battle an epic villain, and learn from her travels.

With all of that said, the best thing about the book is the characters. Every time I read or think about the book, I always wish that I had Charles Wallace as a little brother, a Calvin O'Keefe to long after, and three science-maven godmothers to lead me in the right direction, but let me follow my own path.

I'm always disappointed to hear that this book is no longer required reading, but my daughter will be required to read it because it's a beautiful story about love that transcends genre, religion, and science.


What is one of your favorite books from "thenadays"?

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