book·ish : Literary Great Britain

I'm no good with geography, but as a wanderlust and a book nerd, I find this literary map of Great Britain positively delightful.

book·ish/ˈbo͝okiSH/Adjective

1. (of a person or way of life) Devoted to reading and studying rather than worldly interests.

2. (of language or writing) Literary in style or allusion.

3. (of art and all manner of lovely things) devoted to the written word as a form of art and as a way of seeing the world.

4. (of SheWritesandRights.blogspot.com) anything of the aforementioned characteristics as they are found on the interwebs and reposted by Bethany, because bookish and writerly things always give reason for amusement.*

*All items posted in the book·ish section are found by myself and posted of my own accord unless otherwise stated. If you would like to be a sponsor or host a giveaway, please contact me at shewritesandrights[at]gmail[dot]com.


Follow me and my bookish board on Pinterest! 

Guest Post | Pen to Paper.

Today's guest post is brought to you by Helena of byebyebitters.wordpress.com. An avid reader, snarky writer and devoted note taker, she has a few things to say about putting pen to paper.

Pen to Paper

Recently, the powers that be at my workplace offered to provide each of us with another axillary monitor - bringing the desktop total to three. I said no. As this response was not in keeping with the majority of my coworkers, I’ve had to frequently explain my refusal. My reasoning? The proffered monitor would take up space currently devoted to my Bic pen and legal-size notepad. This space is sacred, mandatory.

I’m a pen-to-paper girl.

Throughout the workday I jot notes to myself, make lists, and scribble bits of information onto the pad of paper that is always by my side. Without this notebook - and this space to take notes - I would be lost.

I’ve always been an avid note-taker. I have a well-worn callous on my right ring finger where the pen rests as I whip across the page. I filled notebooks with schoolwork and journals with teenage angst. I have a basket of stationery and have long been an active pen-pal with anyone willing to receive my letters.

Handwriting was initially a struggle. I held my pen “improperly” and struggled to form cursive letters with the flow and ease of the other students. Mrs. Harrington, my third grade teacher, would hang examples of proper penmanship on the bulletin board for everyone to admire. I longed to have my own work featured, but continued to fall short.

Formal cursive was later abandoned for my own special longhand hybrid. By the time I entered high school, my script had become a point of personal pride. I experimented with letter-formation: dotting my i’s with bubbles and curving the tails of my y’s elaborately. I copied my mother’s capital H’s and my friend’s lowercase e’s until I developed my own, wide font. My notes were now as neat as they were complete. The employment of several different ink and highlighter colors to further accent my notebooks would come later.

For me, there are certain situation that require pen-to-paper to be properly processed. I learn by writing things down. My brain makes connections as ink spreads my new knowledge along the college-ruled lines. I wonder how I would have done had I started at University any later than I had - in a time when laptops would become ubiquitous and spiral-bound notebooks scarce. Would typed notes have the same resonance? Follow the same well-worn kinesthetic channels to my long-term memory? Be as easily recalled? My learning style requires something more tactile than tapping on a keyboard.
With school and most of my frantic, avid note-taking now behind me, I still reach to a pen to document ideas. I storyboard, I doodle, I make maps. I circle, I highlight, I pin to bulletin boards. While, invariably and understandably, these ideas are typed before they are shared with others, they begin life on a humble piece of paper.

~

Helena Butters lives in Chicago with her fiancé and two cats. She blogs about life, love, and the pursuit of better body image at Bye Bye Bitters. You can catch more of her wit and snark on Twitter at @HelenaMarie.


See a few of my favorite posts from Helena here, here and here.

On Remembering in the Twenty-First Century.

As I turned to washed my hands in the third floor bathroom of my 1920's Georgian mansion-turned-office building, I saw the most beautiful shadow I've ever noticed. Maybe an odd place to contemplate beauty and life, but nonetheless, I was fascinated as I watched the evening sun play with the leaves and the arch of the window. 

I had the sudden, second-nature instinct to video it or snap a photo, to find a way to keep it forever. The quick darting movement of the branches and the light as they swung back and forth against each other reminded me of those moving photos people keep making now, those series of two or three photos that make it look like a stop-action illustration.

In an instant, I saw it: the reaction to a reaction to a reaction. Art that imitates life that imitates art that imitates life.

Sometimes I love technology and everything that we can do with it to capture the world we live in. Without photos, some memories, both the important and the mundane, would be lost forever. Without video, we might forget things like what a loved one's voice sounds like, or the way your grandmother's dining room looked with everyone gathered around it as you blew out your candles out on your third birthday. Those moments would die with us. They would flicker and disappear like a beautiful but rather nondescript early September day.

As a writer I'm repeatedly struck with the urge to write things down, to transcribe every moment, every thought, every conversation. I don't want to lose it, this moment that feels so pivotal and poignant. I'm afraid that I'll forget, and that all these things that seem so necessary will slip through my fingers and that I will reach the end, not knowing who I am or how I got here.

But if I have to record it for it to last, was it ever that important?

And what will happen to our perception of lives lived? 

I fear that if I'm only blogging and tweeting and photographing and documenting the happy things, the funny things, that I'll look back on life with a false sense of reality, believing that things were less painful than they really were. Or that I will be wracked with an unidentifiable emptiness and disconnect to periods of my life that were filled with hardship, because only half of it is visible.

In our flurry to document and text and tweet and Facebook and Instagram it all, maybe instead of creating a new facet of permanence to our lives, we are instead losing our ability to remember and forget naturally, to live independent of the collective conscious, to appreciate a fleeting moment for the bittersweet thing that it is.

I took the photo anyway.

book·ish: Book Challenge.

I found Beth's blog, She Thinks Too Much, over at 101 Books the other day. Both of these blogs are thoroughly bookish, which I love, of course. Beth has been doing a book challenge on her blog in the last month, answering questions about the books she's read. Such an interesting challenge for those of us who are addicted to the written word.

Source: ilovereadingandwriting.tumblr.com via Bethany on Pinterest

So give me a title for one of the following in our own mini book challenge:

1. A book you wish you could live in.
    [My answer: Harry Potter! I want to live at Hogwarts.]

2. A book you're most embarrassed to say you like.
    [My answer: Twilight, the first book in the series. Everything after that, and the movies, and the general hysteria surrounding the series freak me out, though. I'm at least happy to say that I took the time to read them before judging them.]

3. A book whose main character is most like you.
    [My answer: Gemma Doyle, A Great and Terrible Beauty, by Libba Bray. Haven't read it? It's one of my favorites.] 

4. A book whose main character you want to marry.
    [My answer: Henry DeTamble, The Time Traveler's Wife. I don't care if he disappears on me, he's my kind of guy.]

5. A book that you can quote or recite.
    [My answer: The Time Traveler's Wife. What can I say? I read that book every fall and never tire of it.]

Or answer them all! Either way it's fascinating to see the unique perspective and taste of every reader.
And if I haven't read them, I'll add your answers to my to-read list!

~

book·ish/ˈbo͝okiSH/Adjective

1. (of a person or way of life) Devoted to reading and studying rather than worldly interests.

2. (of language or writing) Literary in style or allusion.

3. (of art and all manner of lovely things) devoted to the written word as a form of art and as a way of seeing the world.

4. (of SheWritesandRights.blogspot.com) anything of the aforementioned characteristics as they are found on the interwebs and reposted by Bethany, because bookish and writerly things always give reason for amusement.

Poem: The Master Speed

There are some poems I read that provoke strong imagery. The lines and their imagery come to me like a recurring dream whenever I am caught in a situation that reminds me of it. A year ago, Matt and I had just celebrated our first anniversary and were finally settled into our new apartment. It felt like things were finally beginning to go right for us with steady jobs, a place of our own, a routine.

But other things were also becoming apparent: that my mother was entering a new phase of struggling with cancer harder than she had yet experienced, that some of our friends and loved ones were not experiencing the came contentedness and peace in their families, marriages, jobs and homes, that the economy was still not on the upswing. Just when we felt settled and ready for anything, we sensed a current sweeping us away from that steady place. In the midst of that, I read this poem. The words and the imagery were an encouragement to me, an anchor that reminded me of the sacred commitment of marriage and friendship, the power of love to create peace and determination like nothing else can.

The Master Speed 
Robert Frost

No speed of wind or water rushing by
But you have speed far greater. You can climb
Back up a stream of radiance to the sky,
And back through history up the stream of time.
And you were given this swiftness, not for haste
Nor chiefly that you may go where you will,
But in the rush of everything to waste,
That you may have the power of standing still-
Off any still or moving thing you say.
Two such as you with such a master speed
Cannot be parted nor be swept away
From one another once you are agreed
That life is only life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar.


Do you have a poem, song, book, etc, that does this for you? 


[Image here.]