memoir

The Seven-Day Book Challenge

/ saraletourneau / 13 Comments

Recently, a Facebook friend tagged me on the Seven-Day Book Challenge. I finally got around to it a few weeks ago and “double-teamed” it through FB and Instagram. And then I thought, “Why not share it on the blog, too?”

The rules of the Seven-Day Book Challenge are simple: For seven days, you share a photo or image on Facebook of a different favorite book and nominate another friend to carry on the challenge. There’s no set theme to follow, and you don’t need to write a caption or explanation for why you choose each book. You simply share the photo, tag a friend, and reply to any comments. But for this blog post, I think I’ll “break” one of those rules. 😉

Here are the books I chose for the Seven-Day Book Challenge, and why I picked each one.

Continue reading →

Twelve Books in My TBR Pile that I’ve Been Meaning to Read for a While

/ saraletourneau / 23 Comments

How about a fun post today? As much as I’m grateful for writing last week’s tribute to the late Ursula K. Le Guin, I feel the need to do something lighter this week. Oddly enough, I know which topic to choose. Three of my book-blogger friends (Mogsy @ Bibliosanctum, Nandini @ Unputdownable Books, and Zezee @ Zezee With Books) recently posted Top Ten Tuesday posts featuring ten books that have been in their TBR piles for a while. I enjoyed reading their lists so much that I decided to do my own – and go figure, I came up with twelve books instead. 😉

So, in alphabetical order, here are the twelve books that have been waiting longest for me to read them. Let’s start with…

Continue reading →

The Cotopaxi Challenge: Eleven Favorite Adventure Stories (+ Lessons From Each)

/ saraletourneau / 11 Comments
Cotopaxi banner

Original photo courtesy of Tim Kressin and the Wondercamp Team (seen here: http://blog.cotopaxi.com/hornstrandir-iceland/).

You may have heard of Cotopaxi before if you’re a fan of camping and outdoor activities. This backpack and apparel company based in Salt Lake City, Utah creates innovative products that fund health, education, and livelihood initiatives to help alleviate poverty in underdeveloped countries. And for their customers, Cotopaxi hopes to inspire adventure. Take a look at their blog The Llama Chronicles, and you’ll see what I mean. The company shares travelogues, tips on outdoor sports and activities, recipes for campsite meals – even American road-trip routes inspired by adventure novels.

I confess that I’m not an “outdoorsy” person, though I relish walking and spending time outside. But when I recently came across a special blog project by Cotopaxi, I knew I wanted to take part in it. Here was their challenge:

Share in a post on your blog your favorite adventure story, along with what lessons you’ve learned and you continue to carry those lessons with you since.

Now, I thought it wouldn’t be hard to pick an adventure story to write about. But then I reviewed my bookshelf, and realized I’ve read a LOT of adventure stories over the years. (No wonder I’m currently writing one of my own.) This led to me hemming and hawing over the usual novels I talk about here and other choices I love but aren’t highlighted as often… and finally decided, “You know what? I’ll write about ALL of them.” 🙂

Continue reading →

Time to Play TBR Book Tag!

/ saraletourneau / 9 Comments

Since Anya at On Starships And Dragonwings and Molly Mortensen openly tagged readers on their TBR Book Tags, I thought I’d continue the chain! So, I combed through my physical bookshelves, took some photos, and (finally!) finished updating my “To-Read” shelf on Goodreads to include my home collection. Now I’m ready to play!

For anyone who’s not familiar with the acronym, TBR stands for “to be read.” Therefore, a TBR pile or TBR list consists of the books in your personal collection that you haven’t read yet.

Ready to explore my bookshelves and reading wishlists with me? 🙂   Continue reading →

“Spring Cleaning” at the Website

/ saraletourneau

Yes, it’s probably too early to use the term “spring cleaning.” But spring is only a few days away now, and I’m finally carving out time to update the static content on my website. Hooray!

Here’s what I’ve done so far:

  1. Other Projects / “Love, Loss, and Life: The Extraordinary Story of Robertina Cole”: Other Projects now contains a (short) list of my other writing projects besides poetry and journalism. This includes a link to a new page about my memoir project with my great-great-aunt Tina. Here, you can read about how the project came to be, my relationship with Tina, and the lessons from her that I will always cherish.
  2. About Me: About Me has been updated to cover my current projects and add new information about myself.
  3. Contact Me: I made minor changes to the wording on Contact Me.

In the coming weeks, I’m planning to change out the poll question and update the Links page. I’ll let you know via blog post when that happens. In the meantime, let me know what you think of the updates I’ve made so far.

P.S.: Work on the new fantasy novel is coming along. I haven’t reached 6,000 words yet – so it’s not quite time for another Chronicle!