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.

Day 1 of the 12 Days of Christmas game and giveaway.

Our task today is to come up with book titles that match the first line of the song The Twelve Days of Christmas.

On the First day of Christmas my true love sent to me
a Partridge in a Pear Tree.

Booker Talk Titles for Day 1

I bombed out on partridge and pears – nothing in my TBR or wishlist that fitted that bill so I had to go on the theme of trees…..

The Tree of Life by Maryse Conde. This was a novel I read earlier in the year as part of Women In Translation Month. I’d never read anything by an author from Guadeloupe. Sadly this wasn’t a great novel though I can see that it had important themes about race and ambition. Here’s my review.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith: I’ve seen this mentioned so many times and recommended highly. I’ve added it to my wishlist. Not quite a classic it’s still immensely popular. Published in 1943 it tells the story of a second generation Irish-American girl and her family who live in Brooklyn. It comprises five books which each focus on a different time period in the family’s history. Just hope its not as sentimental as Little Women, another American classic I just finished reading.

Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy: This was the first of Thomas Hardy’s ‘Wessex’ novels. I read it a few decades ago when I had a spate of reading Hardy. It wasn’t one of my favourite Hardy novels – I much preferred the harder edge of Tess of the d’Urbervilles or The Return of the Native to this amiable portrait of life in a provincial town. I can’t have thought that badly of it though because i still have that edition of the book in my shelves. Could be time to give it another go.

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 ‘partridge’ or ‘pear tree’. Lets see how creative you can be. I’m looking ideally for 3 titles/images etc ..You can mix and match your nominations to give 2 instances of partridge and 1 of pear tree if you want

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 Friday 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.