BW3: Sunday's Book Babble - Nine Muses Mini Challenge

 

It's book week 3 in our 52 Books quest and the beginning of exploring stories and books influenced by the Nine Muses of Greek mythology, the Goddesses of the arts and sciences, who loved to sing and dance.

I’m currently sipping on multiple books and making some progress in my main A to Z read, The Dragons of Dorcastle by Jack Campbell, in which there are about 100 pages left in the book and they finally mentioned dragons but have yet to see them. 

Slowly rereading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and picking up on details never noticed before.  I had forgotten about the extent Mr. Dursley went to keep Harry from receiving his Hogwarts letter and Hagrid’s anger.  

In When Christ and his Saints Slept, I really dislike Maude’s husband, Geoffrey but she’s feisty enough not to let him run all over her. 

I started listening to Christopher Paolini’s To Sleep in a Sea of Stars and the narrator makes the story come alive and I can’t wait until my buying ban is over to buy the Hard back and read it. 

Nonfiction wise, In Light the Dark, Billy Collins talks about he fell in love with W.B. Yeats poem, the Lake Isle of Innisfree.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

 

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

 

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

 

I wasn’t familiar with Yeats’s poem and love the imagery.  What a great poem.

Collins talks about how there’s always one poem you should memorize that inspires and sooths and, in the process,

“going from deep familiarity to complete mastery – is a challenge and a deep pleasure. In repeating different lines, your reading becomes more focused than it’s ever been before. You become more sensitive to every consonant and vowel.”  

I have yet to find a poem I want to master, but I think I will set a goal of finding that one poem that speaks to me enough to do so.  And as Collins says

“Poetry becomes an oasis or sanctuary from the forces constantly drawing us into social and public life. Poetry exerts a different kind of pull on us.  It’s a pull toward meaning and subjectivity. It’s the sound of lake water lapping by the shore.”

Which is probably why I was blown away while listening to Paolini’s story. There is a poetry about his word choices, the descriptions, although aren’t poetic, are so vivid they draw you out of yourself and into the story. 

 I took the buzzfeed quiz and I am Terpsichore: The Muse of Dance
"When it comes to romance novels, you like them intricate and unexpected. Full of twists and turns as the lovers are blown about by the winds of fate, you look for passion and grace in every line and when the perfect plot twist occurs, you cannot help but gasp aloud."

Ha, right on.  Yes I do love books full of twists and and turns and unanticipated moments.