Day 2 of #12Days of Christmas book game
On the second day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Two Turtle Doves
Day 2 of the 12 Days of Christmas game and giveaway.
Our task today is to come up with book titles that match the second line of the song The Twelve Days of Christmas. The likelihood you come up with a title including all three words is remote but you may have more luck with either turtles or doves. Remember this can be a cover image or a book title or an author’s name. Here’s my attempt…
Booker Talk Titles for Day 2
I failed miserably with turtles, there being nothing in my TBR or wishlist or brain that I could fit with that theme. I had a bit better luck with doves.
When the Doves Disappeared by Sofi Oksanen. This comes from my TBR and was a book I bought in Cirencester on Dec 26 last year (known in the UK as Boxing Day).We went on a little outing to get away from the claustrophia of two days with the family in a rented house. I didn’t expect to find many places open but what a delight to find a branch of Waterstones – equal to my delight at finding a shoe shop with a lovely pair of boots at a crazy price. I bought When the Doves Disappeared purely because it was on one of the buy one, get one half price offers and it would add another country to my world literature reading list. Almost a year has elapsed and I have picked it up a few times but then found something else that was calling to me more. Maybe I will get to it before it’s first birthday.
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James. This is a 1902 novel that relates the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with a serious disease, and her effect on the people around her. I’ve read a few novels/novellas by Henry James with varying success. Portrait of A Lady I found incredibly slow though I warmed to it on second reading. The Turn of the Screw (click the title to find my review) wasn’t anywhere as sinister as it could have been – – I was more intrigued by the question of whether this story about ghosts was a figment of the governess’ fiction. Washington Square (reviewed here) was far superior to Daisy Miller. Because I”ve had such mixed reactions I’m willing to give him another go so Wings of a Dove is on my wishlist.
Sadly I couldn’t come up with a third title without resorting to Google lists (which would be cheating) so I offer you a third literary connection instead ….
Dove Cottage. This was the small home of the poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy that I visited two years ago. It’s very close to Lake Grasmere in the Lake District of England which inspired so many of Wordsworth’s poems. The cottage is tiny so would have been rather dark and gloomy in winter but it has a lovely tiered garden at the back. Luxury it is not nor romantic in any sense……But they loved it apparently.
Now over to you – here’s How to Play:
Come up with book titles or book images or anything book related (could be the name of a location mentioned in the book or a character) that matches with either ‘turtle’ or ‘dove”. Let’s see how creative you can be. I’m looking ideally for 3 titles/images etc . You can mix and match your nominations just as I did.
Put your titles into the comments field of that day’s post. Don’t just give me the name since you could easily get that from a Google search – tell us something about the book itself. Why did you choose these titles – are they from your TBR or ones you’ve seen mentioned on a blog. Please try not to just use lists from Goodreads etc.
Feel free to blog about this on your own site or via Twitter using the #12days hashtag
The Giveaway
There’s an incentive to play along with this which is a giveaway of a book up to the value of $20 USD from the Book Depository
To participate, your list of books must be in the comments field by 10pm GMT/5pm Eastern Standard Time on Saturday Dec 3.
Day by Day Prompts
Day 1: Partridge in a Pear Tree
Day 2: Turtle Doves
Day 3: French Hens
Day 4: Calling Birds
Day 5: Gold Rings
Day 6: Geese a-Laying
Day 7: Swans a-Swimming
Day 8: Maids a-Milking
Day 9: Ladies Dancing
Day 10: Lords a-Leaping
Day 11: Pipers Piping
Day 12: Drummers Drumming
Rules of the Game
1.Each day a post will go live on booker talk.com matched to the task for that day. All you to do is post a comment with your list of books on the page
2. Each day try to come up with 3 titles. No need to think of 11 books featuring pipers or eight with maids in them. This is meant to be fun not mission impossible…..
3. Participants are encouraged to be creative with the names of titles matching each day. But the books do need to be in existence – no scope here for making up your own titles.
4. The number of contributions per person will be totalled and the one with the highest number will win the prize. So if you post three titles for day 6 and 5 on day 11, that gives a total of 8 points.
5. Contributions should be entered on the page within the time limit stated each day – typically I will give 48 hours between the time I post the day’s challenge and when comments will be closed.
6. You don’t need to play every day in order to be entered for the prize. Some days will be easier than others – and anyway you have all that shopping and packing still to do
7. There is only one prize – available internationally. The Prize winner will be announced on the blog around about the 15th of December.
6. The prize is that you get to choose a book up to the value of $20 USD from the Book Depository that I will arrange to ship to you. This will probably not arrive until next year given the last postage dates for international mail.
Still not reading other people’s ideas…
– Franklin the Turtle Series by Brenda Clark and Paulette Bourgeois
– L’homme à la colombe by Romain Gary (A “colombe” is a dove in French)
– Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. I haven’t read it yet but I want to and I loved his Last Picture Show.
I love the fact you are coming up with choices no-one else has
Thanks, I try to.
Again, someone’s beat me to the turtle in Discworld. That was all I could think of for this one.
I’ve read Dream of the Dove by Nova Scotian author Bruce Graham. Graham fictionalized the story of his (great?)-grandfather who sailed the seas, a Nova Scotian who saw the world at the apex and decline of the age of sail. His ship was The Dove.
In July 2013, I read The Sweet Dove Died by Barabra Pym. It’a about Lenora, a middle-aged woman who befriends well-to-do Humphrey, 60, and his nephew James. Unwilling to admit her aging, she is in love with the 25-year-old nephew while the uncle is enthralled by her.
In Janury 2012, I read Dove Creek by Paula Coomer. I’m not sure of the point or the plot of this novel which centers on a woman who, after her divorce, becomes a public health nurse on reservations in the west. I gave it two stars for the info about the native lifestyle issues on the reservations.
Hmm. I also have the “Two Turtle Doves” memoir on my TBR, and recently read my first Rita Dova poetry collection. But I’ll try to come up with some original answers. So…
1. Alice Hoffman’s The Dovekeepers is meant to be one of her best books, historical fiction set in ancient Israel. I’ve only read one of her books so far, but would like to try others. The cover image has two doves, one on either shoulder of a young woman.
2. & 3. Also on my TBR: The Back of the Turtle by Thomas King (recent Canadian literary fiction) and The Slow Waltz of Turtles by Katherine Pancol (translated from French).
Darn it Lisa, I immediately thought of
– Blanche d’Alpuget’s Turtle Beach too, so if I’m disqualified so be it
– Barbara Kingsolver’s Pigs in heaven, which is the sequel to Bean trees, and features a little Native American girl named Turtle. I loved these two gentle but pointed introductions to Kingsolver’s work.
– Aesop’s The hare and the tortoise! Can I go from turtle to tortoise?
No, you are not disqualified 🙂
Turtle Beach by Australian author Blance D’alpuget
The Plague of Doves by Louise Edrich
The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym.
PS If someone else has already named something I was going to choose (i.e. the Henry James) is that disqualified?
nope, i didnt disqualify people for that reason – it would have made it way too difficult to come up with names
1. Another shout out for ‘Turtle Diary’ by Russell Hoban,
2. ‘The Wings of a Dove’ Henry James.
3. ‘The Time of the Doves’ Merce Rodereda (a book set in Barcelona that still haunts me).
I am going all in for the turtle angle because not only do I love turtles but you took my dove title in your post! 🙂
Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban (it even has turtles on the cover!)
Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss
Small Gods by Terry Pratchett, a Discworld book that has a turtle on the cover and also, Discworld rides on the back of the Great Atuan, a turtle flying through space.
The poetry of Rita Dove! Former US Poet Laureate and currently a professor at the University of Virginia, in my hometown.
This is probably cheating big-time, but for the word “two”, Two Caravans was the US title of Marina Lewycka’s novel Strawberry Fields, about Eastern European immigrants who work on a strawberry farm in Kent.
1. Two Turtle Doves: A Memoir of Making Things. Unbelievable as it may be, my husband was given a copy of this book. It’s not one I’ve had on my TBR but it is a great fit for this day
2. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. I don’t typically like Westerns but I did enjoy this classic
3. The Adventures of Gary and Harry: A Tale of Two Turtles by Lisa Matsumoto. This is another one of my daughter’s books. It’s a cute picture book with a message about marine life.
I am going to go straight for the obvious – At Swim Two Birds, by Flann O’Brien.