#12Days of Christmas book game: day 6
On the sixth day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Six Geese a-Laying
Day 6 of the 12 Days of Christmas game and giveaway.
First of all an apology for not getting this out yesterday – I was feeling very poorly yesterday and spent most of the day asleep.
The respite from birds is over since today we are back with them. Today we need to find book titles, cover images, author names etc that match the sixth line of the song The Twelve Days of Christmas. So we need book titles or author names or cover images reflecting the idea of gees and laying of eggs. Hm not that easy.
Booker Talk Titles for Day
The Golden Goose: this is a fairy tale published in a collection by the Brothers Grimm in 1884 (the authorship is unknown). I chose this for two reasons.firstly, the course on children literature I’m doing has a module on fairy tales – its astonishing how so many versions of them exist and many of them rather dark. Second reason – its this year’s panto in The Archers, one of my favourite radio programmes.
The Ugly Duckling: continuing on the fairy tale path. This one was first published in 1844 by Hans Christian Andersen first. Apparently he admitted on many occasions that the tale mirrored his own life.
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 geese, goslings or laying eggs. Let’s see how creative you can be. I’m looking ideally for 3 titles/images etc . You can mix and match your nominations.
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 Thursday Dec 8.
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.
I’m struggling on the goose front but “laying” offers up:
Play it as it Lays by Joan Didion
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Both great books. But there I think I’m out.
1) The Wonderful Adventures of Nils by Selma Lagerlöf. Lots of geese involved here, even if they’re not in the title.
2) Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion. Excellent.
3) Les Contes de ma mère l’Oye (une oie is a goose in French)
Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes
Tolkein’s Lays of Beleriand
and for the holidays: Santa’s Wild Goose Chase: the Adventures of Willy and Nilly
Paul Gallico’s The snow goose (a blast from my youthful past)
Mori Ogai’s The wild goose (what Lisa said!)
And, off the planet completely, Carrie Tiffany’s Everyman’s rules for scientific living, which features a world famous chicken-sexer and we all know that if you want poultry (chicken, ducks, geese!) which lays you need to know the sex.
That list choice is definitely not one I would have thought of…..is there really such a job as a chicken sexier?
Oh yes, I believe there is (but I haven’t googled it!)
A Man Lay Dead was my introduction to Ngaio Marsh in May 2013. It featured a folk production of a play in which a man was killed in front of the audience.
I read the fourth in the Benni Harper series Goose in the Pond in July 2003. All of this series’ titles are names of quilt patterns. I’ve since gone back and read the first in the series Fool’s Puzzle.
And I haven’t read but couldn’t resist adding to my TBR this month #10 in the Meg Lanslow series, of which I’ve read a couple: Six Geese A-Slaying.
P.S. I saw our local high-school’s production of Goose Girl in November 2013.
The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale is a YA fantasy-ish novel that retells the fairy tale. It’s down-to-earth and doesn’t shy away from the pretty horrible bits of the story, including the part where the girl’s horse is decapitated and his head “speaks” to her every day from its position on the city walls…
As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner? Includes the representatively baffling line “My mother is a fish” – shame she isn’t a goose.
And… I am going to go with The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham. It is sort of a fictionalisation of Paul Gaugin’s career and therefore slightly irritating (the protagonist abandons his wife and children to go paint nubile native beauties in Tahiti, which we’re obviously meant to see as FINE and ACCEPTABLE because he’s a GENIUS so what can you do).
Whats the link between the Moon and Sixpence and geese/laying – I think I’m missing something here…..
Six, innit
my brain is clearly not working!!
No worries! I wasn’t very clear about that one…
First off, I hope you’re feeling better BookerT – it’s all these birds, they’re bound to make anyone ill!
1. Wild Geese, by Daniel Carney
2. The Snow Geese by William Fiennes, and…
3. The Laying on of Hands, a collection of stories by Alan Bennett. I do love Alan Bennett, so it was nice to be able to include him.
I don’t know that book by Bennett – strange because I thought we had all of his books here since my husband and I are also fans. Have you read his memoirs?
Yes, on and off. I hate the thought that I’d finish them and none left to read so I dip in and out for short stints to eek them out! 🙂
The Wild Goose, by Mori Ogai: this is a new translation by Australian Meredith McKinney and published in an exquisite edition by Finlay Lloyd. One of my rare ventures into JLit.
Ten White Geese (called The Detour in the review on my blog) by Gerbrand Bakker and I’m claiming this one because it’s also translated by an Aussie, David Colmer.
And totally off piste: Historic Heston by Heston Blumenthal, an amazing ‘recipe’ book showcasing recipes that Heston dreamed up for his posh restaurant mission to rescue Britain’s melancholy reputation for awful food by exploring its grand old traditions using chef’s recipe books of the past. It is full of superb photography by Romas Foord, still lifes of Heston’s creations and their ingredients, and you guessed it, one of the still lifes is called Eggs in Verjuice.
Blumenthal is one of the most inventive of cooks in the UK though sometimes he approaches cooking rather more scientifically than most people can manage in their homes. I watched a demo of him doing three-times cooked chips – blimey it was complicated involving thermometers galore.
If you have a look at my review you can see my adventures in making his Taffety Tart…there’s a slide show that proves I really did do it, but (a-hem) it doesn’t look quite the same as his… https://anzlitlovers.com/2014/09/28/historic-heston-by-heston-blumenthal/
1. Ten White Geese by Gerbrand Bakker. I’ve read two novels by Bakker and have this one on the shelf to read. In the UK it’s called “The Detour,” but still has geese on the cover.
2. The Snow Geese by William Fiennes is a nature/travel book my husband enjoyed very much. It’s been on the shelf for ages but I haven’t picked it up yet.
3. I have a couple other “goose” titles on the TBR, but I’ll branch out a bit and say The Most Perfect Thing: Inside (and Outside) a Bird’s Egg by Tim Birkhead, a book I mean to get out from the library over Christmas.