#Bookthreads #booksky 💙📚 #bookstodon Finding Another One of Us - my #bookreview for #MyFriends by #FredrikBackman on my #bookblog now. OMG @AtriaBooks @simonschuster what an amazing book! #2024NewReleaseChallenge #20booksofsummer2025 #BigBookSummer #histficreadingchallenge #FictionFriday
I just remembered #BigBookSummer and decided to finally tackle Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson. I received it as a gift in 2017, and it's been in my to-read stack ever since. A big book is any book with 400 or more pages. The challenge is to read at least one big book each summer. #DaVinci
But think not that this famous town has only harpooneers, cannibals, and bumpkins to show her visitors. Not at all. Still New Bedford is a queer place. Had it not been for us whalemen, that tract of land would this day perhaps have been in as howling condition as the coast of Labrador. As it is, parts of her back country are enough to frighten one, they look so bony. The town itself is perhaps the dearest place to live in, in all New England. It is a land of oil, true enough: but not like Canaan; a land, also, of corn and wine. The streets do not run with milk; nor in the spring-time do they pave them with fresh eggs. Yet, in spite of this, nowhere in all America will you find more patrician-like houses; parks and gardens more opulent, than in New Bedford. Whence came they? how planted upon this once scraggy scoria of a country? Go and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons round yonder lofty mansion, and your question will be answered. Yes; all these brave houses and flowery gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea. Can Herr Alexander perform a feat like that? In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their daughters, and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises a-piece. You must go to New Bedford to see a brilliant wedding; for, they say, they have reservoirs of oil in every house, and every night recklessly burn their lengths in spermaceti candles.
In summer time, the town is sweet to see; full of fine maples-long avenues of green and gold. And in August, high in air, the beautiful and bountiful horse-chestnuts, candelabra-wise, proffer the passer-by their tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms. So omnipotent is art; which in many a district of New Bedford has superinduced bright terraces of flowers upon the barren refuse rocks thrown aside at creation's final day. And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own red roses. But roses only bloom in summer; whereas the fine carnation of their cheeks is perennial as sunlight in the seventh heav-ens. Elsewhere match that bloom of theirs, ye cannot, save in Salem, where they tell me the young girls breathe such musk, their sailor sweethearts smell them miles off shore, as though they were drawing nigh the odorous Moluccas instead of the Puritanic sands.
I'm reading Moby-Dick now (it's #BigBookSummer after all), and — surprise! — the writing is often so delicious I can't stand it.
E.g., below are the last few paragraphs of Chapter 6: The Street, in which Melville describes the wealth of New Bedford accumulated from the whale trade.
What are you reading this summer? #Midyear check in #@thenubianreview #bigbooksummer #booktomovie #mustreads #xmasinjuly #tulsariots
#Midyear Books reading choices! What are you reading for the summer? #nonfiction #historical #bigbooksummer #booktomovie #xmasinjuly😊
The audiobook for James Michener’s “Centennial” is 50 hours long. I’m on the sixth chapter, covering the arrival of the Mennonites. It’s six hours all by itself. #books #JuneOnTheRange #BigBookSummer
My #FridayReads update: I’m 25% of the way through Alan LeMay’s “The Searchers.” I’m also 26% of the way through the audio of James Michener’s “Centennial,” but I think all of “The Searchers” would fit into just this one chapter about the Mennonites. #books #JuneOnTheRange #BigBookSummer
I'm back for another summer of big book reading. maphead.wordpress.com/2025/05/24/b... #BigBookSummer
I had not heard of Big Book Summer, but I’m already planning to read some big books and may as well join the fun. She defines a big book as anything over 400 pages. Stephen King’s “The Stand” and James Michener’s “Centennial” are 1,000+ pages. #books #BigBookSummer
We like big novels and we cannot lie! What contemporary novel should MTC read this summer? Drop your recommendations in the comments, the longer the novel the better. #bigbooksummer
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Savvy Cinderella Story. My #BookReview for “The Girl from the Savoy” by @hazelgaynor.bsky.social on my #bookblog now. This is a #BeatTheBacklist book that also qualifies for #histficreadingchallenge #20booksofsummer24 and #BigBookSummer
