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People look left and right, but they rarely look up!

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David McCullough books are awesome. The Wright Brothers were awesome. McCullough's book "The Wright Brothers" is awesome. It's interesting to see the many different titles, subtitles, and cover schemes considered for this book. In the end, they went with the more subdued version in the lower right. Amazing stuff. You might even say it is awesome.

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LOD. Calos Salazar in Portugal cannot be stopped! The whole room is booktown central WITH....awesome lighting. Every home in America should have a dedicated library room. "All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do." —Leo Tolstoy, 9 September 1828—20 November 1910. "Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly." —Ibid. "People make mistakes in life through believing too much, but they have a damned dull time if they believe too little." —James Hilton, English author, 9 September 1900—20 December 1954. "A good book isn’t written. It’s rewritten." —Phyllis A. Whitney, mystery writer, 9 September 1903—8 February 2008. "You must want to enough. Enough to take all the rejections, enough to pay the price of disappointment and discouragement while you are learning. Like any other artist you must learn your craft—then you can add all the genius you like." —Ibid. "For any artistic person who creates imaginary people, the art is like inhabiting the life and mind of a seven-year-old child with imaginary friends and imaginary events and imaginary grace and imaginary tragedy." —Bob Shacochis, born 9 September 1951. “You’re a coward and a liar and a—" —Bart Sibrel, who lured astronaut Buzz Aldrin to a location on the false pretense of him doing an interview for a children's show, and then energetically denied the moon landing, interrupted when 72 year old Aldrin punched him, 9 September 2002. Listen to good music. Read great books. Keep your eyes on the sparrow.

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LOD. This is a home library in Croatia. I'll withhold the owner's name, because I suspect the outrage is about to fly. The only explanation of which up I can think is that the owner is trying to make the pattern of the book spines match the pattern of the floor boards. What do you think of this home library?

"Everything is change; and you cannot step twice into the same river." —Mary Renault, English-born South African writer, 4 September 1905—13 December 1983.

"I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger of life that gnaws in us all, to keep alive in our hearts a sense of the inexpressibly human." —Richard Wright, 4 September 1908—28 November 1960.

"Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books…" —Ibid.

"Words are like spices. Too many is worse than too few." —Joan Aiken, English writer, 4 September 1924—4 January 2004.

"A children’s book is not something that can be dashed off to order – children have huge needs…which reading will help to fill. A good children’s writer may be particularly well equipped to do this…as a kind of lunatic or poet…they are the sensitive points in a civilisation." —Ibid.

"All great characters, great icons, in literature are a bit of a riddle, and that’s the reason we go back to them over and over." —David Lagercrantz, Swedish journalist, born 4 September 1962.

Listen to good music. Read great books. Keep your eyes on the sparrow.

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Where did your reading rank in 2023? Assuming the rate holds for 2024, how are you reading this year?

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LOD. Julia Wilson in Australia proves a home library doesn't have to be enormous to be wonderful. What a swell place to read.

"The flag of the United States be thirteen alternate stripes red and white [and] the Union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.” —American Continental Congress, determining the American flag, first taken into battle 3 September 1777, and which, in it's original configuration with a circle of 13 stars is today branded a hate symbol by the Dominion.

"Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow." —Lawrence Clark Powell, librarian and writer, 3 September 1906—14 March 2001.

"I can speak of my own criterion for judging whether or not a book is good or bad. I ask of it a single question, From how deep and true an impulse did it spring? Was it written merely to shock? Only to make money? Or was it written to create something more perfect and more lasting than the life experience from which it came?" —Ibid.

"No university in the world has ever risen to greatness without a correspondingly great library." —Ibid.

"So now we’re being governed by a whole lot of people who are either weak and foolish, or cynical liars. Or a little of each." —Alison Lurie, Pulitzer winning author, 3 September 1926—3 December 2020.

"Truly successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking." —Malcolm Gladwell, born 3 September 1963.

"Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good." —Ibid.

"Moments are history. If you have enough of them, they become a story." —Adriana Trigiani, born 3 September 1969.

"The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind." —Kiran Desai, Indian author, born 3 September 1971.

"One man caught on a barbed wire fence One man he resist One man washed up on an empty beach One man betrayed with a kiss In the name of love What more in the name of love?" —U2, from "Pride (In the Name of Love) first released as a single, 3 September 1984.

Listen to good music. Read great books. Keep your eyes on the sparrow.

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Brave men saved the world from German National Socialism. It is our duty to make sure history never forgets The Greatest Generation.

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It's been a long climb to get to this point, but my new middle grade novel HUNTER'S CHOICE will be published March 2, 2021. It's a fun outdoor sporting life adventure novel.

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I’m on a mission to read a biography of every American president in order of presidential service.  Four biographies a year.  GRANT was fantastic.  I learned so much.  A great man.

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My thirteenth book of 2020. This book terrified me when I first read it. I was on a weekend pass from the Army in Texas, where I'd been training with my unit to go to Afghanistan. And this book is all about the futility of an occupying army's effort to subdue a people. THE MOON IS DOWN (1942) is clever war propaganda meant to motivate people in countries occupied by Nazis. While I don't identify with Nazis, as I read the book, I did identify with an army of occupation. I was pleased to learn later that our mission in Afghanistan was liberation and reconstruction, not occupation and exploitation. While the soliders in this book are looked upon by the people with hatred and suspicion, we got along well with the Afghans, working with them to improve their lives and fight the Taliban we all hated. On election day in Farah, Afghanistan an line of Afghan voters down the block waved and shouted "Thank you! Thank you!" Such a scene was impossible in this book, or in the events that inspired it. A fantastic book!

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LOD. It's a Reedyfact™ that people have been waiting up all night to finally get a glimpse of the inside of Atlantis Books on Santorini Island off Greece. Well, wait no more, my friends! Behold the wonder of books.

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Atlantis Books on Santorini Island off Greece down the stairs approaching the entrance to the store. A little bookstore foreplay for you.

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Adults say that the problems high school kids face are no big deal, or that they’re just a phase. But those adults only say that because they’ve already made it. They have already worked through their issues, one way or another. You haven’t yet. Your problems are real, and you don’t know how it will all work out.

If You’re Reading This by Trent Reedy (via thezookeeperisveryfondofrum)

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Thank you so much.  This was, by far, the most difficult to write of all my books.  The timeline was tricky.  I couldn’t seem to get the beginning right.  Or the pacing.  Or the tension.  The main character.  His friends.  And because the book is closely inspired by my time in the war in Afghanistan, I had some emotional challenges as well.  This book required 9 major reimagining overhauls.  I wanted to give up on it so much.  Thank you for reading it.  Your kind words mean a lot.

Started and finished If You’re Reading This today. I read it in 3 hours so I’d say it was a good read.

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Don’t let your fear of failing prevent you from doing good things.

Trent Reedy, If You’re Reading This (via dreamsofafirefly)

You have no idea how much I feared failing as I struggled to write IF YOU’RE READING THIS.  If I had not already spent the advance money, I would have given up and handed the money and the contract back to my publisher.