RTW: What Else Can You Do With A Book?
It’s Road Trip Wednesday time again, and this week’s topic selected by the ladies at YA Highway is: What’s your favorite use for a book besides reading it? Each week, someone over at YA Highway posts a question or challenge and invites bloggers to write an article in response and post the link to that article in the comments of the RTW article. We then all visit one another’s blogs to read and comment on their replies. It’s all good community-building fun, so why not join in?
Usually, books spend a lot of time on my bookshelf. Normally, when I purchase a book, it gets logged in my database (yes, I keep a database of all my books–author, title, ISBN, cover blurb, etc.), then joins the line of books to read. If it’s on my TBRASAP pile, it will probably sit on my desk since it will be read soon. Once read, it has a home on one of my bookshelves where it will stay until I need to refer to it, I want to re-read it, or until someone else in the family wants to read it.
The only time in recent memory I recall using books for something other than reading was for Janet Reid’s book title poetry competition last September. Inspired by Tahereh Mafi, she asked her readers to submit pictures of a pile of books whose titles form a poem. She permitted the limited use of other words to help join the titles together, but the majority of the words had to be the book titles. I got an honorable mention for only using two extra words. This was my entry:
In case you can’t quite make out all the titles, the poem reads:
A PASSION FOR TRUTH,
a SECOND GLANCE
UNDER THE DOME,
LIKE MANDARIN
IN SEARCH OF DIGNITY,
THE LAST JUROR
was SURPRISED BY JOY
If you’ve never done this before, you should give it a try–it was fun. 🙂
What do you do with books other than read them? You can reply in my comments, or better still, reply on your own blog and link to it in the YA Highway comments!
Wow, you keep a catalog of all your books?! That’s so organized! That’s a great poem as well… I’m going to have to stack a bunch of random books sometime and see what I come up with.
Yeah, I suppose it does seem a bit organized… it’s probably because I’ve always been fascinated by databases and the idea of being able to search, retrieve, and analyze data. I imagined one day I would have thousands of books, and I could use the database to search for books on specific topics, or by certain authors when there are too many of them for me to remember.
My poem was actually quite short compared to some of the other entries. If you want to read the others, go to Janet’s blog (jetreidliterary.blogspot.com) and find her September 2011 archive. There were a lot of very clever entries, and some of the book stacks were quite large.
Oh how fun! I’ll have to give this a try.
It is fun–and the more books you have, the more creative you can be with your poetry.
That’s wonderful. Now I want to make poems out of all my books.
Thanks, Carrie! You should–and perhaps take a picture and post it on your blog. I’d be interested to see what you come up with. 🙂
That poem concept is really neat. I’m impressed that you log all your books. It’s great to have a record of everything you’ve read, so you don’t have to wrack your brain trying to think of a book you’ve forgotten.
Well, the database is to log every book I own… I *ahem* have a spreadsheet to keep up with all the books I read in the year–when I read them, etc. In my defense, it comes in VERY handy when I have to pick my book of the month! I thought about adding a “Date Last Read” field to the book database–and I still might–but for now that’s the spreadsheet’s job. 🙂
What a great idea! Next time my kids complain that they’re bored, I’m going to send them to the bookshelves to come up with a poem. Love it!
Mmm… you’re right–it would be a fun thing to do with the kids. It might be a bit nightmarish in terms of clean up, but it’s also something teachers and librarians could do with kids to help them get engaged with books and perhaps discover books with intriguing titles. Good thought, Amy!
Cool concept! I´d love to try to make a title out of my books and maybe I can even mix the languages, could be fun! 😀
And I love the fact that you have a database, must come handy!
That would be an impressive poem–using three different languages! Go for it, Elodie–and post a photograph of the results. Maybe offer a prize to anyone in the US that can translate the poem! 😀
Hey Colin thanks for stopping by my blog today! That book title competition sounds really fun!
Hey, Shenell! It was fun, and mine was by no means the most creative entry. Some were amazing. Give it a try sometime–perhaps when you need a creative diversion one evening. 🙂
Wish I’d thought of doing something like this for my experimental writing class in uni. Would have made a fun project!
Sounds like fun in general. I’ll have to remember this project if I ever teach 10 or 11 year olds. It’d be a fun task to do for something like children’s book week.
I was thinking of you and the other teachers that frequent my blog when I replied to Amy’s suggestion above. If you have a healthy school library, this might be a good exercise for the kids.
I love it! I did one of these once, but I couldn’t find all the actual books to take the picture.
Awww… I would like to see what you came up with.
I didn’t think this would be so difficult until I realized:
1. Most of collection’s titles are built out of nouns as opposed to verbs or prepositions.
2. I can only pull from that collection and not just search for a book with a random title like “Found” or “Got.”
The best I got just glancing might be:
Out of the Silent Planet
The Once and Future King,
Catching Fire,
said “Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon?”
The only solution is more reading!
That’s pretty good for a glance around, Alex! Imagine what fun you might have in a public library with all those titles to choose from… 🙂
BTW, I’m reading CATCHING FIRE at the moment. I’m about half-way through, and there’s a big game-changing twist. It’s proving to be a good sequel to THE HUNGER GAMES.
Well now that was pretty clever with the book titles. Also I don’t think it’s strange to have a list of books. I have an alphabetized list of my DVD’s but haven’t gotten started on books yet, maybe one day.
Thanks, Eve! It’s not a bad thing to be organized… really! 🙂