Top Ten Tuesday: Buzz-words!

 Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week the theme is Buzzwords or Phrases That Make Me Want to Read (or Avoid) a Book (These words or phrases can be in the title, synopsis, marketing materials, reviews, author blurbs, etc. and immediately pique your interest or immediately make you say “NOPE”. Examples include: fae, forbidden romance, morally grey characters, unreliable narrator, found family, magical worlds, love triangle, marriage of convenience, dark academia, stranded, dragons, dual points of view, starting over, etc.)

I am focussing on just one word out of that theme - Buzz!

Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd - I was very late to the party having only read this book around 18 months ago. (my review)

Go Tell the Bees I am Gone by Diana Gabaldon - I still haven't read this book which is the latest in the Outlander series. Maybe I will one day.

The Enlightenment of Bees by Rachel Linden - I have had this book out from the library a couple of times now. Next time I borrow it I really need to make sure that I actually read it!

All the Bees in the Hollow by Lauren Keegan - I have this second book here to read soon, and then I will go back to this one.

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray - I heard Paul Murray speak about this book at Melbourne Writers Festival a couple of years ago.

The Murmur of Bees by Sofia Segovia - I did have this on my shelves for a while. I can't remember if I kept it the last time I did a book purge.

Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang  - Where there's bees there is often honey! I didn't love this book when I read it at the beginning of last year. (my review)

Lion's Honey by David Grosman - I read this a very long time ago now (my review)

Honey: Recipes From a Beekeeper's Kitchen by Amy Newsome - This was a Jamie Oliver Cook Book Club selection a whie ago

The Girl Who Kicked a Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsen - A reminder that no everything that buzzes is a bee!

Six Degrees of Separation: From Ethan Frome to The Red Tent

Welcome to this month's edition of Six Degrees of Separation, which is a monthly meme hosted by Kate from Books Are My Favourite and Best.  The idea is to start with a specific book and make a series of links from one book to the next using whatever link you can find and see where you end up after six links.  I am also linking this post up with The Sunday Salon, hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz. 

The starting point for this month is Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. I really struggled to get started last month. This month I had the opposite problem. I had several ideas of where to start.

 I did think about going using novels with a name for a title as one of my options, but I kept it a bit simpler in the end.

I haven't read Ethan Frome although when I was looking on Goodreads I was surprised to see that it is a very short book, so  maybe I should try reading it. The only book  I have read by Edith Wharton is Age of Innocence, which is a book I read many years ago as part of the Barnes and Noble University.

When I was thinking about Age of Innocence I was thinking of the Gilded Age/era which lead me to thinking about The Gilded Hour by Sara Donati, which coincidentally is also set in New York.

My next choice, City of Dreams by Beverly Swerling is also set in New York, or rather in Nieuw Amsterdam back when the city was under Dutch control.

Taking inspirations from the word dream, my next choice is Dream Angus: The Celtic God of Dreams by  Alexander McCall Smith. This book was part of the Canongate myths series

Also part of the same series is Lion's Honey by David Grossman, which retells the story of Samson from the Old Testament.

My final choice is another Old Testament story, The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. If I had to pick one book as the book that got me over the line from thinking about writing reviews for a blog to actually starting a blog, this is the book.

Next month the starting point is Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. This is an author that I have been meaning to read for the longest time. That might even be my starting point but there's only a couple of thousand books that are on that list so it doesn't really narrow it down.

Lion's Honey by David Grossman

Samson the hero; a brave warrior, leader of men and Nazarite of God? Or a misfit given to whoring and lust, who failed to fulfil his destiny? In Lion's Honey, award-winning writer David Grossman takes on one of the most vivid and controversial characters in the Bible. Revisiting Samson's famous battle with the lion, his many women and his betrayal by them all - including the only one he ever loved - Grossman gives us a provocative new take on the story and its climax, Samson's final act of death, bringing down a temple on himself and 3000 Philistines. In exhilarating and lucid prose, Grossman reveals the journey of a single, lonely, tortured soul who never found a true home in the world, who was uncomfortable in his very body and who, some might say, was the precursor of today's suicide bombers.

I originally added this book to my TBR list because it is part of the Myths series published by Canongate. Other books that I have read from this series are Dream Angus by Alexander McCall Smith (about the Celtic god of dreams and love) and Weight by Jeanette Winterson which is a retelling of the story of Atlas and Hercules. Given that those were both retellings, albeit with a bit of modern day storytelling added in Dream Angus, I was expecting another retelling when I read this book. That is not what I got. If I was to be the person cataloguing this book I am not sure that I would have even called it fiction. The first few pages of the book are the story of Samson, taken directly from the King James Version of the Bible. I guess I was a little surprised to see that, but then again, it isn't terribly long so I though 'okay that's probably as good a place as any to start'. What followed was more of a long essay dissecting the Bible story trying to ascertain motive for some of Samson's actions including but not limited to dissecting his relationship with his parents, why he lived amongst the Philistines, and the women that he was associated with. A couple of examples - Why did he feel the need to use 300 pairs of foxes to burn the Philistines fields and why did he not tell his parents that he had killed a lion with his bare hands, and most importantly, why was it that he told Delilah the secret of his strength. In saying that it was not what I expected, I am not saying that I didn't enjoy it because for the most part I did. It was very interesting to read through the text and then refer to the footnotes at the back which may have been referencing the Torah, or some other studies of Samson done by a variety of scholars over the years. Would I have picked it up if it had not been part of this series - probably not. Do I feel compelled to pick up any other work from this author - not really. It was a quick read, and different from most other things I read. And besides...it was the first completed read in the Once Upon a Time II challenge...so that has to be a good thing! Other Blogger's Thoughts: Rhinoa's Ramblings Things Mean A Lot