Marvelous Monday is here! The concept is simple and stress-free. I’m inviting my tea party friends – readers and friends – to post good things in their life on Mondays. Grab a macaroon and a cup of tea and join us. Or a cupcake. Whatever suits your fancy. Let’s dish about positive things! This post contains affiliate banner links. If you click a link and make a purchase, Poe in Wonderland will earn a small commission for the referral at no cost to you. All opinions are my own and I only recommend products and services I think will add value to my readers. Read more about affiliates and disclaimers here. Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash One book that I’m really enjoying is 101 Thinks You Didn’t Know About Jane Austen. I know quite a bit about one of my favorite authors, but this book delves into deep detail about all aspects of…
Alice in Wonderland is an enduring tale that began as an oral story on July 4, 1862, and was written and delivered by hand to the original Alice – Alice Liddell – on Christmas in 1864. The real-life story of the book is from a summer’s day where Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) rowed his neighbors the 3 Liddell sisters across a lake with a friend. Alice implored him to entertain them, and so he did with what would become a most famous story. Carroll wrote the tale down and illustrated it as a gift to Alice when she was 12 (possibly 11). The Victorians were fascinated by childlike innocence and you couldn’t find such a nonsensical book without a child. For me, it is one of the earliest memories I have of a favorite book. My mother read it to me. I own a 1976 copy she read from…
Join our email and newsletter list today and receive a free printable bookmark. We change them out monthly, and they feature an image and a literary quote. If you love bookmarks and literature, one of these may be up your alley or in your wheelhouse! Join today at the link on our page or here. This is a sample. You will receive the full bookmark upon signup. And, as always, we wish you happy reading! This post contains affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, Poe in Wonderland will earn a small commission for the referral at no cost to you You might enjoy our post Jane Austen FAQS and A Quote from Mansfield Park and Fanny Price . Start A Blogging Business 5 Day Crash Course with this link. Credit to: It’s a Lovely Life.com
Book obsessions are moods we fall into all the time. When you’re looking for your next book, it’s fun to hunt it down. We LOVE shopping in stores but also reading the book newsletters we receive. Bookshop.org supports a collection of independent book stores, and it’s fun to read their recommendations. In fact, we happen to find our next reads on their lists a lot of the time. We’d encourage you to check out their site while we link to 4 books to check out below. One just came out in February 2021 and the other 3 are from 2020 and 2019. Different genres with different moods. Biographical and Historical The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation By Anna Malaika TubbsPublished February 2021 Description Much has been written about Berdis Baldwin’s son James, about Alberta King’s son Martin…
Imagine walking in an alleyway in Shanghai where people are passing, windows are full of residents going about everyday chores, and shops are busy when you hear a “Miaow”. You can’t locate its source anywhere until you finally look upwards to see a cat perched atop a fruit shop. Marcel Heijnen, a Dutch photographer, experienced this very thing last fall and took the stealthy kitty’s photo. It’s now included in his latest book Spot the Shop Cat that came out this month. Along with Australian illustrator Stephen Case, the duo tells the tale of Spot, a cartoon cat who lives in a dried goods shop. Hong Kong-based Australian illustrator Stephen Case (left) and Dutch photographer Marcel Heijnen show off their new book Spot the Shop Cat in Tsing Yi, Hong Kong. Photo: Winson Wong Meet Spot, the cartoon cat who leaps from page to page as he recounts daily life…
Jane Austen is one of my favorite authors, in fact, this blog could easily have been called Austen & Poe in Wonderland. It was a bit wordy and I wanted to focus more on an eclectic blend of topics. I know quite a bit about her life, and I’ve read a majority of her 6 novels (haven’t gotten around to Northanger Abbey). However, I freely admit I don’t know everything. Jane Austen was certainly unique in her time period and remains so today. I picked up 30-Day Journey with Jane Austen today. I bought it months ago but hadn’t read it. Well, I only made it through the introduction and day one of the book before I decided I HAD to share excerpts from it with you. If you enjoy history, hopefully, you’ll like these Austen facts. This post contains affiliate links. If you click a link and make a…
This post may contain affiliate links and we may earn compensation when you click on the links at no additional cost to you. Where do you find your latest books these days? I’ve been discovering and ordering ones that cross my Instagram feed from book reviewers. I enjoy their breakdowns and honest opinions of what’s on their To Be Read (TBR) lists. It’s been my main source since the continuing state of the world has drastically cut down on my trips to bookstores. I dart into Barnes and Noble and used stores if not crowded. In and out. I decided I’d Google top books of 2020 to see what’s new. After scrolling through title lists, I’ve picked 5 out to tell you about today from some key categories. The source I used was FiveBooks.com which is a site where experts and authors make recommendations on what they consider the top…
Happy 168th Birthday to Alice Liddell – the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland! Interesting that the story’s image of Alice is a matter of dispute. Obviously, it is not the illustration of the original Alice. Carroll sent a photograph of another child friend, Mary Hilton Badcock to the book’s illustrator, but whether or not the artist actually used it is cloudy. A letter Carroll wrote suggests the illustrator did not. Either way Alice Liddell had a life of adventure and helped to establish stories we know and love. You can read more about her life here and the illustration of the story in this article. Alice Liddell (right) with her sisters circa 1859, photographed by Lewis Carroll Liddell aged 7, photographed by Lewis Carroll in 1860
The Japanese word describes piling up books to save for later … even if you’ll never actually read them. “Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity.” – A. Edward Newton, author, publisher, and collector of 10,000 books. Are you one of us? A master of tsundoku? Mine takes the shape of the aspirational stack by my bedside table – because I am going to read every night before bed, of course, and upon waking on the weekends. Hahaha. My tsundoku also takes shape in cookbooks … even though I rarely cook from recipes. And I think I most fervently practice tsundoku when I buy three or four novels to pile in my suitcase for a five-day vacation. Sometimes not even one sees its spine…
Simon Watson, a young librarian, lives alone in a house that is slowly crumbling toward the Long Island Sound. His parents are long dead. His mother, a circus mermaid who made her living by holding her breath, drowned in the very water his house overlooks. His younger sister, Enola, ran off six years ago and now reads tarot cards for a traveling carnival. One June day, an old book arrives on Simon’s doorstep, sent by an antiquarian bookseller who purchased it on speculation. Fragile and water damaged, the book is a log from the owner of a traveling carnival in the 1700s, who reports strange and magical things, including the drowning death of a circus mermaid. Since then, generations of “mermaids” in Simon’s family have drowned–always on July 24, which is only weeks away. As his friend Alice looks on with alarm, Simon becomes increasingly worried about his sister. Could…