Jun 30, 2012 |
Congratulations to Jessica N. of Arizona!
In response to last week’s post, Mojo Book Review (and a Giveaway!): The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour”, Jessica commented, pinned, and shared her entry on Facebook. All of these earned her three entries in the Giveaway.
Jess, thanks for being a Most Valued Reader at Frankly, My Dear…
I hope you enjoy your book and can’t wait to hear your own review.
For those of you who didn’t win, thanks so much entering and promoting the Giveaway. July starts tomorrow so keep reading! There will be a special giveaway coming up soon (think summer!).
Until then, Happy Reading!
And Frankly, My Dear… that’s all she wrote!
Jun 22, 2012 |
Nutcracker Not Included.
I love Louis L’Amour. If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, this isn’t a surprise. But if you’re new, let me just state the obvious:
I love Louis L’Amour.
I named my newest Nutcracker after him. I collect Nutcrackers, and every holiday season my Mom lets me pick one for my Christmas gift. It’s been a tradition for about ten years now. Last year I couldn’t find any that I really wanted. Then suddenly one day, at the local Kohl’s Department Store and looking for something completely unrelated, I turned around and there he was. Rocking right at me.
There was no question. He was The One. Thankfully, Mom let me have him before Christmas, so I could enjoy his company. As you can see, Little Louis sits high on his ridge, overlooking the beautiful front vista of my little Bedford Manor.
So. Let me state again:
I love Louis L’Amour.
I love his style of writing. The infusion of history, environment, and emotion. His descriptions and dialogue are like no other. Which explains how the man could have written over 100 books in his lifetime and been the first novelist to receive the Congressional Gold Medal.
The Congressional Gold Medal is the highest civilian award in the United States, and is awarded to an individual who performs an outstanding deed or act of service to the security, prosperity, and national interest of the United States.
Although L’Amour died in 1988, his stories and legend live on. Living in the civilized desert of Southern California, I’m struck by its beauty when I read his stories. I find myself lifting my eyes from the pages to look into the distant horizon. Could that be such a location I’ve been reading about? How many Cochise or Navajo or outlaws have walked across my yard, before it was my yard? Did my ancient Joshua Tree provide shelter and fruit for any struggling stranger? What did my area look like before it was a tame town?
I’ve been reading The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour, Volume One: The Frontier Stories. My mom, the avid reader that you’ve read about, picked up the book for herself last summer. When I “glanced” at it on her coffee table, I couldn’t put it down. So she lovingly bought me my own copy. I know: awwww! She’s cool like that, my mom is.
And while I haven’t finished reading; in fact, I put it aside through the winter… well, I just picked it up again and have made it my goal to finish by the end of June. I’m not a speed reader like my mom is, but I do certainly love the activity. Especially when it adds so much to my world.
The Creosote bush I photographed last week means more to me now. Almost every story has an amazing quote in it.
I want you to see more in the world around you. To discover the history of America’s wild west past.
So if you’d like your own copy of The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour, Volume One: The Frontier Stories, here’s how you enter to win a copy.
1. MANDATORY ENTRY: Leave a comment on this post: Who is your favorite author? This entry is mandatory. If you don’t answer this question, all other entries are void. [Canadian entries only: Since I’m opening this giveaway to my Canadian friends as well, if you live in Canada your rules state you must answer a skills test in order to enter. So if you live in Canada and want to enter, you must correctly answer this question in your mandatory comment/entry: If I start the day with five apples and eat two, then later buy nine at the store, and the next day eat three more, how many apples do I have at the end of the second day?]
2. ADDITIONAL ENTRIES: You can earn up to four additional entries (for five entries total) by doing each of the following then leaving a comment here telling me you’ve done so. If you already do any of these things, that counts as an entry only if you post it in the comments. (Additional entries will be verified):
a. Follow me on Facebook and share this giveaway.
b. Follow me on twitter and tweet this giveaway.
c. Follow me on Pinterest and pin this giveaway.
d. Share this giveaway on your own blog and leave the link in the comments below.
Here’s the fine print:
MOJO BOOK REVIEW & GIVEAWAY RULES FOR The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour, Volume One: The Frontier Stories:
1. This giveaway is solely through Molly Jo and the blog Frankly, My Dear…. There are no corporate sponsors and is in no way endorsed by any other person, business or entity.
2. Only legal citizens of the United States and Canada aged 18 years and older are eligible to win.
3. This giveaway begins at 5:30 a.m. PST on Friday, June 22, 2012 and ends at 11:59 p.m. PST on Friday, June 29, 2012.
4. Winner will be selected from all eligible comments on Saturday, June 30, 2012 through Random.org.
5. One prize consisting of a new edition of The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour, Volume One: The Frontier Stories will be given. No substitutions or transfers allowed.
6. Molly Jo and Frankly, My Dear… are not responsible for any damages that may occur during shipping.
7. You may comment as much as you like, but any comment/commenter that does not meet the requirements will be disqualified from this Giveaway.
8. By leaving your comment on this post, you agree to be bound by the rules of this giveaway in their entirety.
So there you are. Have fun, and good luck!
And Frankly, My Dear… that’s all she wrote!
Jun 21, 2012
I’ve been having fun with Photobucket lately. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s a great free online photo editing site.
You can upload your photos and change them completely. You can reverse images, colors, tones, hues, add borders and texts… in short, have fun!
The two I’ve been working on started as these originals:
and ended up with these great quote-photos I love!
The first quote is my favorite, from Louis L’Amour:
The second is something I posted on my personal facebook wall that was well received, so as a reminder to myself I made it into this photo. I took this photo at the Mission Inn in Riverside, CA over a year ago. It was early morning, the sun was just beginning to show its light, and I’ll never forget the quiet beauty of that moment.
In the near future, I hope to have many more creative expressions. How do you express yourself? Leave a comment or even link up your posts on this week’s “What’s the Word?” Wednesday Blog Hop. Oh, yeah. That’s the very first photo editing I did.
Pretty cool, huh?
And Frankly, My Dear… that’s all she wrote!
Dec 28, 2011
Yesterday, I posted My New Reading List for 2012. To make sure I keep up with my List, I already started “The Magician’s Nephew” by C.S. Lewis. By the time you read this post, I should have finished that book and moved on to “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe”. I’m highly excited. I love writings that are so well done, you forget to breathe while writing. That’s how I aspire to write.
I know my List is not nearly exhaustive, but of all the books I have at my house, those are the ones I want to read. Of all the books I have…
So you know where this is going. This post’s title and that one half-sentence say all you need to know. This post is a list of books I will someday have in my Library.
Louis L’Amour. Any and all. Except for the one short story collection I already have and treasure. The one that inspires me again and again to keep writing. He is so magical, so descriptive with his words. He is someone I would have loved to have met. 89 novels, 2 nonfiction works and 14 short-story collections. 105 books! Now there’s a writer!
The Oz series. Recently I watched “The Origins of Oz” on the Smithsonian Channel. All I can say is, “WOW.” I’ve always loved The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and can’t ever remember not having a copy (or two!) on my bookshelves. But after watching this show and realizing what I’ve missed, I’m more interested than ever in reading all the books, not just the first. Yes, indeed. All 16.
Charles Dickens. I humbly admit I had never read A Christmas Carol until this year. December 21st, as a matter of fact. And I read it all in one day. It was stunning, and much better than any movie portrayed. Now I’m anxious to read all his works. In addition to 27 novels and novellas, his was also the author of many shorter stories and essays.
My teen daughter tells me I still need to read her Twilight and Harry Potter series of books. She also received the Hunger Games trilogy for Christmas. There’s 13 right there.
Claudia has reminded me that Ray Bradbury is always a good read. He wrote a plethora of short stories and novellas that would be hard to put down. I’ve tried googling his bibliography but can’t come up with a number because all articles point out that most of his creative writings were either magazine articles and/or adapted for stage and screen, like Something Wicked This Way Comes, which I wrote about in my post, Why I Don’t Go To Carnivals in October. As best as I can figure, there’s a good 20 books at least.
At the proposed rate of one book every two days, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to read all these books in one year, even if I had them in my Library. But it gives me something to look forward to for 2013. I guess I better get reading …
And Frankly, My Dear… that’s all she wrote!
Dec 27, 2011
I come from a long line of readers and writers. I know, I know: big shocker, there.
So it’s also not a shocker that I was gifted three wonderful books for Christmas.
In my family, books are more than paper and binding. Books are entire worlds. Explanations to this one, doors to others. They hold the past, present and future; they hold wishes and dreams and everything real and imagined. Where some people say a picture is worth a thousand words, I’d rather have the words thankyouverymuch. Books are manna in my family.
The first book is my Pastor’s “Route 66 Journal”. One of our main roads out here is the old Route 66. There are 66 books in the Bible. My Pastor’s great at making connections like that, things people will remember. In 2012, Pastor Tom is going to lead us to read the entire Bible from cover to cover. He designed a very simple reading plan to do so, and the journal has a daily entry with simple parts for each daily reading: 1. What does it say? 2. What does it mean? 3. How does it apply? I figure if I want God to continue to bless me and my family the least I can do is give Him half an hour of each day to read and write just for Him. I’m excited about what we’ll learn and how it will change my life. I fully expect it to. Maybe not dramatically; maybe not overnight. But I do expect a good change, and that excites me.
The second book I received is Stephen J. Cannell’s “Vigilante”. It’s the last in his Shane Scully series, finished shortly before he died. If you’ve been around me or my blog, you’ll know that I’m a huge fan of SJC. In 2007 I sent him an email and over the course of three-plus years he became a great mentor and encouraged me to keep writing. I finally had the chance to meet him in person six months before he passed. When he died, I thought it was a joke. I kept waiting for someone to say his Facebook page had been hacked or something. But then the news sites reported it. And later that day came the email. I have the first six books in the Shane Scully series, and now I have the last. I’ll quickly collect the three I’m missing, and those ten books are on my reading list for 2012.
But the best book of all, the one I never expected, the one that I am almost afraid of opening for fear of creasing the pages or smudging the cover… a hardcover collection of the Chronicles of Narnia. It’s beautiful. It’s inspirational. It’s magical. The spare room in my house is called the Narnia Room. It’s designed around a painting of a path into a forest. The walls are painted Mountain Sage Green. I have a brown park bench inside, a fake tree, and flowers, and just walking into the room evokes the magic of stepping through the Wardrobe. The book will have a special, prominent, secure place in the room. At the top of the bookshelf. There’s seven more books for the reading list.
I also need to finish my Louis L’Amour. I want to read “Little Women”, the “Left Behind” series. I only have the first 12 of these, as the last four were added after the series was supposedly finished. So I’m only planning to read the first 12 (at least for now). At some point I’ll get the remaining four and read those as well.
I have Anne Rice’s Songs of the Seraphim series, two books so far. I picked them up when I stayed at the Mission Inn in Riverside last spring. She wrote the books while staying there, and it figures greatly into the plot.
I’m also very intent on reading my Sherlock Holmes collection (the complete collection in two volumes). My favorite Uncle sent me the collection nearly 18 years ago. He was also a writer, and had the most amazing handwriting. I still love reading the letters he sent me before he died. When I was not quite two years old, he wrote a book for our families, a Christmas story that we read every year. So when in passing I mentioned to him that I wanted to read all the Sherlock Holmes stories, four weeks later I was stunned to receive a package containing just that. He was a most amazing man, friend, Uncle and supporter. Reading Sherlock Holmes seems like such a small way to keep him around. I miss our weekly donut dates and only hope he’s looking down with pride at my writing.
That’s 36 books. Now, if I read as fast as my mom does, I’d have them done by the end of February. Unfortunately, I don’t read that fast. So I’m giving myself the entire year. That’s three books a month. And if I add any more to my shelves (which I’m fairly certain I will)… well, for me, that’s a whole lotta reading. But as my Mom keeps reminding me, to be a good writer, I also need to be a good reader.
I think I’ll get a headstart and pick up a book tonight.
Now I just need to figure out where to begin…
