06.17.08 at 3:23 pm by Kara_S
Are you familiar with Bartleby.com? The website tagline is “Great Books Online.”
The complete text, not excerpts, of the books is available with no registration or fee required.
A quick scan of the titles reveals classic writers to more recent writers, such as Agatha Christie and Edith Wharton, to non-fiction and reference titles.
The reference section looks handy for research and writing purposes – encyclopedias, thesaurus, Strunk’s Elements of Style, Civil War History, dictionaries, and more.
06.15.08 at 8:51 pm by Kara_S
This is what has been occupying my time the past few days. Well, this and quite a few other things that go along with moving to a new house!
One thing that I learned about moving is I have a lot of great books that I forgot about. As I was unloading my laundry basket after each trip, I would see a book and think, “Oh! I forgot about this” or “I’ll have to read this again because I don’t remember the story” or “I really want to share this book on my blog.”
The pile above is about 2/3rds of my books, maybe a little less. I managed to empty about 8 shelves and still have a couple of shelves to go, two large stacks (about twice the height of those in the picture), and random books scattered around the house. I honestly think I’ll have to get another set of shelves. Sigh.
The piles are filled
Continue reading A Glimpse at the Book Pile
06.09.08 at 7:19 am by Kara_S
On Saturday we went to an estate auction. I love the treasures at estate auctions!!!
Around here there’s a lot of glassware – mainly Fenton and carnival glass. There’s also a lot of farm equipment at most auctions we attend too.
At another estate auction about a month ago, we got great stone bird bath and a book of Shakespeare prints from 1906.
For months we’ve been wanting a dog house but really didn’t want to pay the outrageous prices – $60+. A few weeks ago we saw one on sale for $40 and failed to buy it at the time. We also talked about building one too. At Saturday’s auction, we bought one for $8! Yep, a whopping eight dollars. We got a few other things too, but the dog house was definitely the best deal for us!
06.08.08 at 10:51 am by Kara_S
Christianbook.com Home has a really nifty chart posted on its website. If you have a favorite author, you can look up the author on a chart and find other authors that are similar (genre and writing style). See the author chart.
I checked some of my favorite authors and a few recommendations puzzled me. For example, I love books by Dee Henderson and one of the recommended authors is Jamie Langston Turner. Over the years I’ve tried reading Turner’s books, but her books just don’t sit well with me. I usually manage to read a few pages and am not drawn into the story at all. For me, that’s a reason to put the book down. I try to skip ahead (bad no-no, I know!) and the storyline still doesn’t catch me. Usually I return the books to the library without reading them. On the other hand, Henderson’s books are books I can’t put down
Continue reading If You Like an Author…
06.05.08 at 3:38 pm by Kara_S
If you’ve ever been off the interstate (the good road) in West Virginia, you’ll notice that we have two things – lots of creeks and lots of country roads (with potholes). And most of the country roads follow next to the creek beds. Presumably the roads are the old horse trails, and in a mountainous area, the easiest, flattest area is next to the river.
I’ve lived here for almost four years now, and every year we get rain that sends the creeks out of their banks. An average rain can wreak havoc in some people’s lives especially if they live near a low water crossing. For you non-West Virginians, a low water crossing is a cement bridge across a creek and under normal circumstances it will be above water.
Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, we didn’t have average rain. We had torrential rain that came down by the buckets. Then the sun would almost come
Continue reading Living in the Land of Creeks
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