Enjoy. If you read a bit of political commentary into the segue midway through, I won't mind.

The wood is all flicker and murmur and illusion. Its silence is a pointillist conspiracy of a million tiny noises--rustles, flurries, nameless truncated shrieks; its emptiness teems with secret life, scurrying just beyond the corner of your eye. Careful: bees zip in and out of cracks in the leaning oak; stop to turn any stone and strange larvae will wriggle irritably, while an earnest thread of ants twines up your ankle. In the ruined tower, someone's abandoned stronghold, nettles thick as your wrist seize between the stones, and at dawn rabbits bring their kittens out from the foundations to play on ancient graves.

--Tana French, In the Woods

Oops, I've already deviated from my RIP Challenge list. Typical.

An FYI

It is now possible to get a Kindle for $259--$100 off the regular price--by signing up for an
Amazon.com Rewards Visa card before Sept. 8.

You particularly want an Amazon.com Rewards Visa card if you have a college student in your family--you receive double rewards points for school payments. That's on top of triple rewards points for books or other items purchased through Amazon.

Ah, the challenge of it all

I know I overcommitted to reading challenges this year and that's cramped my Read at Whim! mantra to a certain extent, but there's no way I would let Carl's third R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril Challenge pass me by. I'll try for Peril the First, reading four books from the pool of potentialities below:

Elizabeth Gaskell's Gothic Tales (on the Kindle)

Walter de la Mare's The Return (on the Kindle)

Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca

Kate Atkinson's When Will There Be Good News?

Richard Hughes' In Hazard

Carlo Emilio Gadda's That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana

Ann Radcliffe's The Italian




Neither can I resist Kristi's What an Animal! challenge, which started July 1 and runs through June 30 next year.

The rules are simple:

1. Read at least 6 books that have any of these requirements:
a. an animal in the title of the book
b. an animal on the cover of the book
c. an animal that plays a major role in the book
d. a main character that is or turns into an animal (define that however you'd like ;>)).

The best part? I'd read three books that will count for this challenge before I even learned about it (and I'm not counting the mule books):

Richard Hughes' A High Wind in Jamaica. Tabby the cat!

Gerard Donovan's Julius Winsome. Hobbes the dog! (plus cover)

Charlotte Bacon's Split Estate. Horses, horses, horses! (plus cover)

I'm sure I'll read three more that qualify before next summer without an effort on my part, so no reading pool here, just a reliance on serendipity.

If you need me, I'll be at Shatley Springs, listening to bluegrass and eating country-style.

Want to feel appreciated?

Details here

Libraries

Inspired by Booksplease

Whether you usually read off of your own book pile or from the library shelves NOW, chances are you started off with trips to the library. (There’s no way my parents could otherwise have kept up with my book habit when I was 10.) So … What is your earliest memory of a library? Who took you? Do you have you any funny/odd memories of the library?

My earliest memory of a library is that of checking out a hardcover copy of Clare Turlay Newberry's Marshmallow (the big white rabbit) while I was still preschool age. The library in my town was then located in the basement/back side of a Main Street building--just one big room if my memory is correct. It would later move into the old post office, which has several rooms, none of which had concrete walls like the basement library. My mother always took me to the library. She never got anything for herself and preferred dropping me off once I got a little older.

I have no doubt that I was in my elementary school library on a daily basis. The teachers would send my best friend and I there whenever we asked or whenever we finished our work because we could not be trusted to remain quiet and nondisruptive unless we were well-supplied in books. In third grade we were the class librarians--C. stamped due dates and I put the cards in order.

Booking Through Thursday