24-Hour Readathon: Opening Survey

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?

I am reading from Delhi, India

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?

Mary Oliver's poetry books...

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

Rice munchies and tea...

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!

I am a school teacher. I teach English to Class 12. That is, 17-18 year old girls.

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?

I have been participating in the readathon for a long time now. So it is going to be pretty much same as others

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros to share the first paragraph sometimes two, of a book that she’s reading or planning to read soon.

Why I Wake Up Early
by Mary Oliver

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety–

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light–
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

Top Ten Things That Will Make Us Instantly NOT Want To Read A Book

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.

I read much of everything but I can't stand books related to the following:


1. Self Help

2. Fantasy

3. Super males/Super Girls

4. Werewolves

5. Chick Lit

6. Alpha Males

7. Serial Killers

8. Women Abuse

9. Animal Abuse

10. Child Abuse

The Friday 56/Book Beginnings on Fridays

Welcome to Week 320!|

Rules:
*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader
(If you have to improvise, that's ok.)
 *Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it)
*Post it.
*Add your (url) post below in Linky. Add the post url, not your blog url. 
*It's that simple.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Wren From Carolina by Mary Oliver (Why I Wake Early)

Just now the wren from Carolina buzzed
through the neighbor's hedge
a line of grace notes I couldn't even write down
much less sing.

Now he lifts his chestnut colored throat

and delivers such a cantering praise -
for what?
For the early morning, the taste of the spider,

for his small cup of life
that he drinks from every day, knowing it will refill.
All things are inventions of holiness.
Some more rascally than others.

I'm on that list too,
though I don't know exactly where.
But every morning, there's my own cup of gladness,
and there's that wren in the hedge, above me, with his

blazing song.
~~~~~~~~



Why I Wake Early
by Mary Oliver

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety–

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light–
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

.

Booking Through Thursday

What have you been reading lately?

I have been reading Romances lately. Nothing much to write about. I read the romances and forget the stories, if we call them that, promptly and then go to the next. Sometimes one just needs mindless stuff, and this is one of those times!

Poetic Book Tours: Among The Lost by Seth Steinzor

Among The Lost by Seth Steinzor 

Back Cover:

Among the Lost, set in the modern American rust belt, is a meditation drawn from Dante’s Purgatorio. To Dante, Purgatory was the mountain where souls not damned went after death to cleanse themselves of sin in preparation for entering Paradise. What, Steinzor asks, are we preparing ourselves for, having lost the fear of hell and the hope of heaven, in the course of our daily urban existence? And whatever that is, how do we go about preparing for it?

My Review:

Hindu Religion is about attaining Nirvana, where the cycle of rebirth is broken. One strives to attain that highest status where ones soul merges with that of God. The soul stuck in mid way is in fact, how we are. We do not even realize it and that is what is terrifying. When we follow the right path then Nirvana is not as difficult as it seems.

I won't say that this book of poetry was a revelation for me. I liked the narration. The way he describes the mundane everyday life and is very near to the cycle of birth and death, being in a hospital. I always found that it is only place which levels us. We are forced to contemplate our own mortality. It is how we deal with it, is the question as well as the answer.

Lost love need not be saddening. It gives us the confidence and capability to love. However, we are lost in the maze of life and think, why me, why me....

I found the poems rhapsodic, melodious and very touching. The beauty of words cannot but touch the soul, that very soul, which wants to attain the highest state.