Are You Ready?

It's that time of year again! Are you ready for Monday? How about the rest of April? Do you have all your posts scheduled and ready to go?

I do... :)

I hope you'll stop by and take a look. I have a fabulous theme this year, with lots of pictures and interesting bits of useless information. 

Christine's Odyssey

Howdy. I’m glad you’ve stopped in. My name is Christine and although I’m only eleven, I’m what some adults might call precocious. A lot has happened in my life, some of it bad, but like my dad used to say, good things can result from the bad stuff that happens to us.

To help me celebrate overcoming my challenges, a great gang of authors have teamed up and will be giving away copies of their books. Sweet, yes?

For a chance to win a pair of the books listed, you can do anything included on the Rafflecopter (link below) or on Facebook. However, for those who’d like to win a $10.00 Amazon Gift Voucher, hop on over to the Jamaican Kid Lit Blog to enter for that.

Anyway, I tend to talk a lot, so before I get carried away, here’s my story:

Raised in a hotbed of arguments and fights, eleven-year-old Christine Simms is the victim of her mother's cruelty. A domestic dispute ends in tragedy, sending the family into a tailspin.

A shocking discovery sends Christine on a quest to find the stranger who left her behind in Jamaica. Determined to unravel the mystery of her birth, Christine uses every tool at her disposal and treads with courage where no child should.

Thanks so much for dropping in! I hope you win the novels of your choice. I should tell you that you get to choose books based on how the Rafflecopter does the drawing of the winners. So, if your name comes up first, you get to say which pack you want.

Available in ebook format at AmazonUS.


J.L. Campbell is a proud Jamaican, who is always on the hunt for story-making material.

She writes romantic suspense, women's fiction and young adult novels. She is the also the author of Contraband, Dissolution, Distraction, Don't Get Mad...Get Even, Giving up the Dream, Retribution and Hardware (written under the pen name Jayda McTyson). You can find all of her books on AmazonUS.

Visit her on the web at http://www.joylcampbell.com

a Rafflecopter giveaway

It's Not the Quantity...

...it's the quality

Yes, there are plenty of authors who are/were prolific, who have written volumes and left their mark. But what about those who haven't written volumes? My point is, one doesn't necessarily need to write a ton a books. What one needs to do is write what you want because you want to. Even if you have only one book in you, it may well be enough.

So, let's take a look at some authors who wrote only one novel.  I have linked each book back to a Goodreads page.

Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird (Read - has anyone not read it?)


Boris Pasternak: Dr. Zhivago (Not read - Would like to read)













Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights (Read)













Margaret Mitchell: Gone With the Wind (Read)


Ann Swell: Black Beauty (Read)


Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray (Read)


John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces (Not read - Would like to read)

Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar (Read)


Arundhati Roy: The God of Small Things (Not read - Would like to read)













Austin Tappan Wright: Islandia (Read - a BIG favorite and one I reread every ten years or so.)


Isaac Rosenfeld: Passage from Home (Not read -Would like to read)


Randall Jerrell: Pictures from an Institute (Not read - Would like to read - I have read his children's book, The Bat-Poet)


Lionel Trilling: The Middle of the Journey (Not read - Would like to read)


John Okada: No-No Boy (Not read - Would like to read)


Norman Fruchter: Coat Upon a Stick (Not read)


Daniel James (Danny Santiago): Famous All Over Town (Not read - Would like to read)


Walter Miller, Jr.: A Canticle for Leibowitz (Read - fabulous)


And here are a few authors who wrote other novels but are remembered for just one.

Ralph Ellison: The Invisible Man (Read)

J. D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye (Read)

F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby (Read)


Herman Melville: Moby-Dick (Tried to read)


Jack Kerouac: On the Road (Read)


William Golding: Lord of the Flies (Read)


Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre (Read)


Antoine de Saint-Exupery: The Little Prince (Read - of course!)
=

Joseph Heller: Catch-22 (Read)


Kathleen Windsor: Forever Amber (Not read - Would like to read)


Grace Metalious: Payton Place (Not read)


Richard Hooker: M. A. S. H. (Not read)


Ken Kesey: One Flew Over the Cuckcoo's Nest (Read - though some people prefer Sometimes A Great Notion.)



Kenneth Graham: The Wind in the Willows (Read - Wish I had my original copy...)


Michael Ende: The Neverending Story (Read - Absolutely MUCH better than the movie!)


Peter S. Beagle: The Last Unicorn (Read - a favorite)


Kurk Wagner: The Book of the Dun Cow (Read - Excellent!)


A. Merritt: The Moon Pool (Not read - Would like to read)


Bram Stoker: Dracula (Not read)


Mordecai Roshwald: Level 7 (Read)



Richard Adams: Watership Down (Read)


James Barrie: Peter Pan (Read - of course!)


Mary Shelly: Frankenstein (Read)


Miguel Cervantes: Don Quixote (Read)


John Knowles: A Separate Peace (Read)


Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (Read)


How many of these books have your read? Which of these haven't you read but would like to? 

Spring is Here and An Award!

For those of you in the far north with snow still on the ground, I bring you tiding of great joy. Spring is headed your way. Despite the horrific drought we're in (its going into the FOURTH year) trees are starting to bud and bloom and the mockingbird is singing his song.

Redbud trees

A close-up of the Redbud.

I don't think any two mockingbirds sing the same song as they imitate the sounds they hear in their area. The northern birds sound quite different from the ones we have here in Texas. And the ones here differ from place to place. This guy sounds the closest to what we hear in our yard. I have seen them on the very tops of trees like this and sometimes, as if in complete joy, they leap up into the air and flutter back down to their perch. I have heard and watched a papa teach his boy how to sing. "Repeat after me, son." "Repeat after me, son." What a delight.


It's been a LONG time since I've gotten an award. Thank you  Barbara at March House Books in the UK, for passing it on. I'm not nearly so stylish as the illustration. She looks a little like Aubrey Hepburn. I mostly wear jeans with a loose top, and my dog is one hundred pounds of love and adoration, who takes up the whole couch when she stretches out on it. She's not a little fur ball on the end of a dainty leash.

That said, this award comes with no rules! I don't even have to pass it on, which, in the lives of all you busy bloggers I know you appreciate.  But here's to all of you who are each stylish in your own right. Just take it if you want it. (Alex, I'm not sure if this badge will work for you :) But if you want it, it's yours too!) 

May we all look so svelte and well put together when we go strolling down the avenue.

And for the melancholy, those feeling a bit blue around the heart, a lovely spring song to express your mood.

Top Ten Movie Countdown Blogfest!

I know I'm not the only one participating in this blogfest from Alex Cavanaugh. It's just so much darn fun! 

I think the movies are supposed to be in some kind of order, like Dave Letterman's Top Ten List. But I am unable to do that. So, here, in no particular order are my top ten favorite movies. At least, these are the ones that came to me right off the bat.

Brother Sun, Sister Moon: The cinematography for this movie on the early life of St. Francis, is stunning and the music by Donovan, beautiful.

To Kill A Mockingbird: Nothing to be said here. But did you know Boo Radley was played by Robert Duvall?

The Princess Bride: It's the best!

Lawrence of Arabia: I so fell in love with Peter O'Toole, and after seeing it I was inspired to try to read THE SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM, by T. E. Lawrence. I didn't finish it. After all I was only like 13 or so when I first saw the movie.

Raising Arizona: Laugh out loud funny. Probably one of Nicolas Cage's best movies. And Holly Hunter is fantastic.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Does that count as one?): When I first read the books I knew a day would come when a movie would be made. I kind of dreaded it because I had such clear pictures in my mind of what the characters and places looked like. I was blown away at how closely my mental images matched with the film maker's. Or maybe it's because Tolkien was clear in his story telling.

The Shawshank Redemption: Love this movie!

Babe: There's nothing like "rooting" for the underdog, err, underpig.

Dances With Wolves: So beautiful, so tragic. 

George Harrison: Living in the Material World - Sigh... my favorite. Wonderfully done, incredibly moving.