#12Days of Christmas book game: day 5
On the fifth day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Five Gold Rings
Day 5 of the 12 Days of Christmas game and giveaway.
A bit later than planned today sorry but at last we get a respite from the birds. Only a temporary one unfortunately because tomorrow we are back with them so lets enjoy the break when we can. Today we need to find book titles, cover images, author names etc that match the fifth line of the song The Twelve Days of Christmas. So we need book titles or author names or cover images reflecting the idea of gold, rings or five. Should be easy??
Booker Talk Titles for Day
This was rather easy today…..
Goldfinger by Ian Fleming: this wasn’t too hard to think of because I was sorting out some boxes last week and found my husband’s collection of Fleming’s James Bond series that he has kept since about the 1970s. It’s seventh novel in the series and was published in 1959. Goldfinger. I admit to never having read anything by Fleming nor have I seen the recent film versions.
Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell. I do remember enjoying this autobiographical story of how Maxwell, a naturalist, brought an otter back from his travels in Iraq and raised it at his home in Scotland. Eventually it was discovered to be a previously unknown sub species – subsequently named in honour of Maxwell.
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 gold rings 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 Tuesday Dec 6.
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.
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
Gold by Dan Rhodes
Ringworld by Larry NIven
Wow – I managed this one just with books I’ve read in the last five years! I sense the next few days will be harder though.
Three books, all set in California!
– The Golden Bridge by Vikram Seth. Set in San Francisco Absolutely marvellous
– Sutter’s Gold by Blaise Cendrars. About the Gold Rush
– The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain. Incredible crime fiction
The golden Bowl by Henry James
The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi (do i get extra credit for this one?)
Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins
1. The Rings of Saturn, by W.G. Sebald – on my TBR, if it’s as good as Austerlitz it’ll be a real treat.
2. Ring by Koji Suzuki – some Japanese horror.
3. Five go to Smuggler’s Top by Enid Blyton – if I had a pound for every time I’ve had to read this and the other 20 famous five books, it still wouldn’t be enough to compensate the torture! 🙂
Now you have me curious – are you a teacher and is that why you had to read Enid Blyton? I thought she had been discredited in the education system
A Ring of Endless Light, by Madeleine L’Engle – A lovely coming-of-age story about Vicky Austin and her family, as she struggles to understand the death of her grandfather, falls in love with a local grad student, and becomes involved in a project on dolphin/human communication. L’Engle is such a gorgeous, empathetic writer. The title comes from a poem by Metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan.
Wrong kind of ring, but The Postman Always Rings Twice? Never read it, but it is supposedly one of the great thrillers.
All of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books, for obvious reasons!
William GOLDing and Oliver GOLDsmith also spring to mind, as well as Francis Spufford’s Golden Hill, but Rebecca already mentioned that!
Ok, here goes, I’ll follow Sue’s all-Australian choices with …
The Golden Age by Joan London, which is a surprisingly nostalgic look at the 1950s through the prism of a polio hospital that actually had that name in real life.
The Golden Dice by Elisabeth Storrs is #2 in a historical trilogy about a Roman woman traded off as an Etruscan bride (before the Romans trounced the Etruscans, that is) and a non-fiction memoir of life in Australia’s famous mining town, Broken Hill: it’s called Silver Lies Golden Truths and it’s by Christine Ellis.
Hmmm, not fair, once again you’ve picked the best ones e.g. Lord of the rings and Ring of bright water. I’ll have to dig deeper. Let’s see. I think I’ll have to focus the GOLD theme:
Sonya Hartnett’s The golden boys is a rather dark novel about a father who “likes” young boys.
Irma Gold’s Two steps forward is a great collection of short stories.
Elizabeth Harrower’s In certain circles because, after all, rings are circles aren’t they – and I always love to mention Elizabeth Harrower,
1. “Irish Gold” by Andrew Greeley is one of my favorite Nuula and Dermot mystery/romance stories.
2. “Gold” by Chris Cleve tells about two women who compete with each other in life as well as in the Olympics.
3. In Edith Nesbit’s classic children’s story “The Enchanted Castle” the magic ring plays an important role, first making the wearer invisible, later granting wishes, sometimes making life difficult.
The Golden Mean by Nick Bentock, the last of the ‘Griffin and Sabine’ trilogy of illustrated novels. The story is told in strangely beautiful postcards and richly decorated letters that must actually be removed from their envelopes to read.
These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder. It’s the eighth in the ‘Little House on the Prairie’ series, but the first that I ever read – and it cemented these books as life-long favourites in my heart.
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain. My reading notes from 2009 say in part: 1934 classic about a ‘moral drifter’ . . . very steamy, ‘banned in Boston’ for a reason.
This one was surprisingly difficult!
1. On the TBR: Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories by Joan Silber — a linked short story collection from 2005.
2. Night Ringing by Laura Davies Foley, a poetry collection I reviewed earlier in the year. The title refers to middle-of-the-night phone calls, almost always to deliver bad news.
3. Golden Hill by Francis Spufford is one of the best novels I’ve read this year, brilliant historical fiction set in 1740s New York.