HOW FASCINATING?

This blog is one of 100 blogs nominated for the Most Fascinating Blog of 2012 Award! It was this posting about P L Travers and Mary Poppins that won me the nomination from a pool of over 2,300 submissions!


And now you, gentle reader, can now take part in voting it the MFB of 2012!

You can do this by clicking on the logo in the side-bar on the right, or by following this link that will take you to a page headed 2012 Fascination Awards – Librarian Blogs, then scroll down the link to the voting ballot

All blogs listed on the ballot are randomized every time the poll is accessed to ensure the fairness and integrity of the results.

You'll find my blog listed as http://briansibley-exlibris.blogspot.com/

All votes are 100% anonymous and secure through the use of a 128 bit SSL connection.

But spit-spot! Voting ends on March 6 at 11:59 P.M (EST)

A VALENTINE VERSARY

A
VALENTINE
Greeting
from one of my all-time favourite versifiers,

Mr OGDEN NASH

To My Valentine

More than a catbird hates a cat,
Or a criminal hates a clue,
Or the Axis hates the United States,
That's how much I love you.

I love you more than a duck can swim,
And more than a grapefruit squirts,
I love you more than a gin rummy is a bore,
And more than a toothache hurts.

As a shipwrecked sailor hates the sea,
Or a juggler hates a shove,
As a hostess detests unexpected guests,
That's how much you I love.

I love you more than a wasp can sting,
And more than the subway jerks,
I love you as much as a beggar needs a crutch,
And more than a hangnail irks.

I swear to you by the stars above,
And below, if such there be,
As the High Court loathes perjurious oathes,
That's how you're loved by me.

Image: Autograph and self-portrait by Ogden Nash

WHAT THE *******?

HAPPY 200th BIRTHDAY
to
CHARLES DICKENS
(7 February 1812–9 June 1870)

"He is a wonderfully accomplished man — most extraordinarily accomplished — reads — hem — reads every novel that comes out; I mean every novel that — hem — that has any fashion in it, of course. The fact is, that he did find so much in the books he read, applicable to his own misfortunes, and did find himself in every respect so much like the heroes — because of course he is conscious of his own superiority, as we all are, and very naturally — that he took to scorning everything, and became a genius."

- Miss Knag speaking of her brother, Mr. Mortimer Knag,
a stationer and keeper of a small circulating library, in
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1838-9)

Caricature of Charles Dickens by Court Jones.

"WHAT DAY OF THE MONTH IS IT?"

"The twenty-seventh!"

Which means – if my watch isn't two days wrong – that today must be the 180th birthday of...

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
aka
LEWIS CARROLL

The Wordle below was created with the text of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 7: 'A Mad Tea-Party'...

Caricature of Lewis Carroll by David Levine

JRRT @ 120

Today is

the 120th Birthday of
J R R Tolkien

"If more of us valued food and cheer and song
above hoarded gold,
it would be a merrier world."

And my personal thanks to the Professor for the opportunities I have had to work with his great stories, which, as a result, have made my world a great deal merrier!

Image: David Levine

NEW YEAR BOOKINGS

A few bookish quotes by bookish men and women to start the New Year...

Books are humanity in print.

~ Barbara W Tuchman

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.

~ Franz Kafka

Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.

~ William Hazlitt

When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than was there before.

~ Clifton Fadiman

The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.

~ Oscar Wilde

A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.

~ Charles Lamb, Last Essays of Elia, 1833

Lord! when you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.

~ Christopher Morley

No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

May you have a year of
Good Books!

Image: 'The Librarian' by Guiseppe Archimboldo (1527-1593)

HAPPY, HAPPY, CHRISTMAS!

"Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!"

- Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers (1836)