word of the day :: spurious

spurious:

[spyoor-ee-uhs]

–adjective

1.  not genuine, authentic, or true; not from the claimed, pretended, or proper source; counterfeit.

2. Biology . (of two or more parts, plants, etc.) having asimilar appearance but a different structure.

3. of illegitimate birth; bastard.

Origin:

1590-1600;  < L spurius  bastard, perh. < Etruscan; see -ous.

"Happy is the novelist who manages to preserve an actual love letter that he received when he was young within a work of fiction, embedded in it like a clean bullet in flabby flesh and quite secure there, among spurious lives."

:: Vladimir Nabokov ::

* Definition from www.dictionary.com

from Bertrand

"Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness."

~ Bertrand Russell ~

Happy International Literacy Day!

September 8 is International Literacy Day. If you visit the International Reading Association's web site, you'll see that more than 780 million adults worldwide do not know how to read and write. Two-thirds of that number are women. And somewhere between 94 and 115 million children lack access to education.

I learned to read at a young age, and I had three younger brothers (and sometimes the neighborhood dog) to read myriads of books to. In my family, reading has always been an important and valued pastime. Today, I'm grateful to have been raised and educated in a literate family and country. I just can't imagine life without books and the written word.

In honor of International Literacy Day, here are some of my favorite books throughout childhood, books that made me the reader and writer I am today!

A Bear Called Paddington

 

Stone Soup

The Hungry Thing 

 

The Giving Tree

Are You My Mother?

The Berenstein Bears and Too Much Junk Food

Green Eggs and Ham

 

Amelia Bedelia 

Mr. Popper's Penguins

  

Sarah, Plain and Tall

 

Little House on the Prairie

 

A Little Princess 

The Betsy-Tacey Treasury

Island of the Blue Dolphins

And, more recently....

The Harry Potter series--even though I read them as an adult!

What were some of YOUR favorite books growing up?

word of the day :: smithereens

smithereens:

[smith-uh-reenz]

–plural noun

small pieces; bits: broken into smithereens.

  

Origin:

1820-30;  dial. smithers  (< ?) + Hiberno-E -een  dim. suffix (< Ir-ín )

"With him love of country means blowing it all to smithereens and having it all made over new."

:: Robert Frost ::

* Definition from www.dictionary.com

from E. B.

"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."

~ E. B. White ~