Archive | 7/4/2010

Road Trip Game

The Semicolon family is going on a road trip (someone will be left here to guard the henhouse)! We’ll be traveling for the next two weeks, and I may or may not have internet access. Don’t worry: I’ve left you some good stuff to read while I’m gone, just in case.

Anyway, I thought of a game to play with the blog along the way. I’m going to take a lot of my blog business cards and scatter them all along the way. I plan to leave one in every motel, fast food joint, tourist trap, roadside attraction, and gas station from here to, well, almost but not quite to Canada. If you come to visit Semicolon because you found one of my cards, please leave a note in the comments. Tell where you found the card and if you’d like to share, tell us your favorite book.

The rest of you, regulars and googlers, are welcome to leave a comment, too, while I’m gone. Tell us where you’re going on vacation this year. Or tell us where you’d like to go if you could. Are you taking a road trip? Do you enjoy driving? What do you do to entertain yourself and the kids, if you have them, on the road?

And most important of all, what books will you be taking on vacation with you? I already have a bagful packed and ready to go.

Sunday Salon: Books Read in June, 2010

Adult Fiction:
The Laws of Harmony by Judith Hendricks.

Very Good, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse.

So Much For That by Lionel Shriver. Ms. Shriver rants about health care, and tells a pretty good story. Semicolon review here.

Mandala by Pearl S. Buck. Set in India, not China.

Children’s and YA Fiction:
Dolphin Song by Lauren St. John. Semicolon review here.

Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce. Semicolon review here.

The GIrl Who Saw Lions by Berlie Doherty.

Escaping the Tiger by Laura Manivong. Laotian refugees escape to Thailand, then to America. Semicolon review here.

Exposure by Mal Peet. Soccer and celebrity in South America. Semicolon review here.

Claim to Fame by Margaret Peterson Haddix. Would you like to be able to hear anything anyone said about you, anywhere in the world? Semicolon review here.

For the Win by Cory Doctorow. Computer games and organized labor? Semicolon review here.

The Long Way Home by Andrew Klavan. Sequel to The Last Thing I Remember. Semicolon review here.

Countdown by Deborah Wiles. Where were you in 1962? Semicolon review here.

Ice by Sarah Beth Durst.

Princess of Glass by Jessica Day George.

Beautiful by Cindy Martinuson-Coloma. Finalist for the 2010 Christy Award for Young Adult Fiction. Semicolon review here.

Nonfiction:
Get Me Out of Here by Rachel Reiland. Memoir of a woman diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. Too Freudian for me, but it seemed to work for the author.

Disrupting Grace: A Story of Relinquishment and Healing by Kristin RIchburg. Another memoir, this time about a failed adoption. The adoptee in the story seemed, in my amateur judgement, to have a juvenile version of BPD, but in children it’s called “attachment disorder.” Semicolon review here.

Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream by Adam Shepard. Semicolon review here.

The 4th of July

Happy Fourth of July to all who visit Semicolon! My pastor put this video together using Ben Shive’s ballad, 4th of July and some footage of Japanese fireworks:

Consider that wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us; soe that if wee shall deale falsely with our god in this worke wee have undertaken and soe cause him to withdrawe his present help from us, wee shall be made a story and a byword through the world, wee shall open the mouthes of enemies to speake evill of the wayes of god and all professours for Gods sake; wee shall shame the faces of many of gods worthy servants, and cause theire prayers to be turned into Cursses upon us till wee be consumed out of the good land whether wee are going: And to shutt upp this discourse with that exhortacion of Moses that faithfull servant of the Lord in his last farewell to Israell Deut. 30. Beloved there is now sett before us life, and good, deathe and evill in that wee are Commaunded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another to walke in his wayes and to keepe his Commaundements and his Ordinance, and his lawes, and the Articles of our Covenant with him that wee may live and be multiplyed, and that the Lord our God may blesse us in the land whether wee goe to possesse it: But if our heartes shall turne away soe that wee will not obey, but shall be seduced and worshipp other Gods our pleasures, and proffitts, and serve them, it is propounded unto us this day, wee shall surely perishe out of the good Land whether wee passe over this vast Sea to possesse it;

Therefore lett us choose life,

that wee, and our Seede,

may live; by obeyeing his

voyce, and cleaveing to him,

for hee is our life, and

our prosperity. John Winthrop, 1630

May God bless America for as long as He wills her to endure, and may America be a blessing to the world, a shining city on a hill, as the Pilgrims prayed she would be so long ago.