Look What I Won! (Forgotten Bookmarks!)

It's easy to feel unlucky in the art of winning prizes and awards.  Those pesky odds.  When I left a comment to enter one of Forgotten Bookmarks' giveaways, I held little hope of actually winning.  I don't enter there often, but I couldn't resist trying when he offered an old etiquette book.

After entering the contest I promptly fell into a fever-induced state of forgetfulness about the whole thing, making me completely miss out on the whole state of anticipation.  Imagine my shock then, when - still in a feverish frame of mind - I tried to comprehend the email I received telling me I'd won the book!

Manners, Culture & Dress is packed with wonderfully helpful tidbits, from directions for removing freckles to Trifling With a Man's Feelings.  Imagine a time when peer pressure was so intense that there were scores of books offering guidance and assistance...oh wait, that applies to the current day also, doesn't it?  Somehow, the social anxiety of a bygone era seems so much simpler and quaint.

Anyhow, thanks to Michael at Forgotten Bookmarks for the lovely book - such a treat!

A Cover Art Tour: Classics Club Spin List Selection

The spin has been spun and #14 has won!  In my list, that means I am reading F.Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned by April 1st.  First published in 1922, this is a story of the elite in the Jazz Age, and is supposedly a largely autobiographical look at marriage.

I had been pretty neutral at the thought of reading this book, but then I happened to have received a beautiful new copy in the mail last week...so now of course I'm excited!  There has been quite a wonderful assortment of covers for this book, though, so a Cover Art Tour is in order.  I've chosen the ones I like best; I hope you enjoy! (images via GoodReads)

The Beautiful:

  

And Damned:

  

The Others:

     

My Collection:

I actually came across these whilst browsing Houzz, working on my
home design, and decided these were a Must Have.

My Bookish Christmas Trees

Up until it was time to decorate for Christmas, very few of my books had made it into the house after having moved at the beginning of October.  Decorating needs changed all that.  Here are some ways that my books are keeping me company this Christmas:

If you have any paperbacks (or magazines) lying around that you've been thinking of donating, it's easy to turn it into a Christmas tree instead.  This particular one is super easy—no cutting, no gluing...only simple paper-airplane type folds and a lot of spine-breaking/bending.  Fold each individual page, starting with the top corner...bring it down to align with the inside of the spine, crease, and repeat.  Then fold the bottom flap up to align with the lower edge of the page, making the bottom flat.

My 12-year old helped me make this tree.  She had a wonderful time stacking books by height, and needed to make sure that the cover of her favorite book was peeking out (A Monster Calls, bright blue cover near the bottom.)

We hosted a large party this last weekend with the theme of White.  Never before had I realized how little white I own...I surround myself with a lot of earth tones and some bright pops of green and orange for the most part, so trying to make my house seem white was a challenge.  It spurred the idea of turning my books backwards so the pages were showing.  Although it's terribly trying to not be able to see which books are on my shelves, it's a nice effect.  I couldn't leave them all that way though—books with green spines allowed me to make another bookish tree whose presence eludes most visitors.  That, somehow, makes it all the better.  It's like my little secret.  Except that now I've proclaimed it to the world.  But still.

This is actually the first year that I've incorporated any book trees into my Christmas, but it has been such a warm, wonderful addition that I think I must do it every year now.  There are so many more great ideas out there, it would be a pity not to enjoy them all!

How Lovely are Thy Covers?

I missed last week's Hop, being out and about all weekend.  This weekend I should actually have time to visit other blogs and find out if you all judge books by their covers or not.

I would love to be able to puff out my chest a bit and declare that I would never in a million years judge a book by its cover.  Haven't we been instructed from childhood to never do such a thing?  But I can not.  I have a continual struggle in this area...I know I'm not supposed to, but I end up doing it before I even realize it has been done.  It's like waking up in the morning and realizing you forgot to take your make-up off the night before.  Oops. (did I just admit to that?)  Some covers just don't compare to others, and as the outside of a book is your first encounter with what lies inside, I can't help but tie them together.

Counting Calories

Summer Book Buying Ban...pffft.  My Summer Slimdown seems to be lightening my bookshelf about as much it's lightening my hair (which is to say, of course, that it isn't.)  Between book clubs and review copies, I'm nearly done in.  I counted 12 new books that came into my house in the last month!  And me thinking I'm slimming down...

Two PaperbackSwap books came my way: Song of the Lark by Willa Cather (I read this on my Kindle and needed a real copy) and The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton.  At least one of them I've already read, so that's not exactly making my shelf heavier.

I have two book clubs, and they each meet every four weeks or so, but for some reason I bought four book club books in the last month.  I guess July I was procrastinating and August I was on the ball.  For my Monday Night book club, I didn't read (because I was out of town, missed the meeting, and loaned the book to someone else) Interred With Their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carrell.  I need to read The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff before the end of the month.  For my Thursday Night book club (which may start to meet on Monday nights...this might get confusing) I just finished reading The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama (my review here) and am excited to read Little Bee by Chris Cleave next.

More review books than usual came to me in the last month as well.  I received Anne Bradstreet by D.B. Kellogg from BookSneeze, Where's My Stuff by Samantha Moss and Crap from Zest Books (my review of Crap) and Masquerade by Nancy Moser from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers (I must learn to be more judicious in my Early Reviewer requests...I had no idea I'd requested this one.)

Finally, I hid two of my own choices in the mix.  My excuse is that I needed to place my order with Amazon immediately from my phone, and they were already in my cart...deleting them or moving them to my wishlist seemed like too much work at that point.  First is I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (impulse buy based off of a review on The Blue Bookcase).  I finished this today, and plan on blowing through the other: Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George (Junior Fiction) tonight.  I was waffling on buying this one, but after remembering how much I enjoyed her Dragon Slippers series, I decided to go for it.


So there it is:  12 new books in the last month or so.  I was wondering why my shelf didn't seem any lighter.