Thank you to Swagata Mukherjee from Kolkata, India who nominated me to take part in the 3 day Quote challenge.
Swagata is a PhD student in Physics who loves to travel and is passionate about photography.
Here’s a link to her blog: https://physicsswagata.wordpress.com/2015/08/07/3-day-quote-challenge-day-33/
I’ve been a bit slow in taking up this particular challenge what with one thing and another. I do hope to finish the challenge on Saturday but if I’m a day or two late I’m sure you’ll forgive me.
Thereafter I’m taking a bit of a blogging break, partly for a holiday, and also to help my mum out (she’s in hospital at the moment undergoing an operation.) So I’ll be donning my Florence Nightingale gloves and doing my daughterly best. I’ve just heard that she’s out of the operating theatre, so my anxiety levels are now back on an even keel. Goodness I’ve been stressed today, my leg was shaking earlier on in the day when I was driving. Somehow this is a million times more stressful than when I went in myself for an operation, that was nothing compared to this, this is my mum, so it’s not surprising that I’ve been worried. I tell you it’s been a strange day, I could write a massive blog post about it but I might be better to save that for later………..
The 3 Day Quote Challenge has been a great diversion for me as I needed something to take my mind off my mum’s operation.
I’m going to kick start this challenge by celebrating books, where would we be without them? Yes they work wonders, especially on stressful days.
This quote from Jeannette Winterson says it so succinctly, books are a home, a warm inviting home, a special place that only you the reader can imagine. Each reader has their own individual experience when they open up a book, and that is what makes books so brilliant and magical.
“Books, for me, are a home. Books don’t make a home – they are one, in the sense that just as you do with a door, you open a book, and you go inside. Inside there is a different kind of time and space. there is warmth there too – a hearth. I sit down with a book and I am warm.”
Jeannette Winterson.
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Courtesy of Goodreads:
Jeanette Winterson’s bold and revelatory novels have earned her widespread acclaim, establishing her as a major figure in world literature. She has written some of the most admired books of the past few decades, including her internationally best-selling first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, the story of a young girl adopted by Pentecostal parents that is now often required reading in contemporary fiction classes.
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a memoir about a life’s work to find happiness. It’s a book full of stories: about a girl locked out of her home, sitting on the doorstep all night; about a religious zealot disguised as a mother who has two sets of false teeth and a revolver in the dresser, waiting for Armageddon; about growing up in a north England industrial town now changed beyond recognition; about the universe as a cosmic dustbin. It is the story of how a painful past, which Winterson thought she had written over and repainted, rose to haunt her later in life, sending her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her biological mother. It’s also a book about other people’s literature, one that shows how fiction and poetry can form a string of guiding lights, a life raft that supports us when we are sinking.
Witty, acute, fierce, and celebratory, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a tough-minded search for belonging–for love, identity, home, and a mother.
It sounds good doesn’t it? Haven’t read this yet…..
Oops forgot to add the rules, hastily adding this in now!
Rules for Three-Day Quote Challenge
- Thank the blogger, who nominated you.
- Publish 3 quotes on 3 consecutive days in your blog. It can be your own, or from a book, movie or from anyone who inspires you.
- Nominate 3 more bloggers to carry on this endeavour.
I’ve decided to nominate some bloggers from #BlogBattle Rachael Ritchey’s Weekly writing battle.
My nominations:
https://darrenscanlon.wordpress.com/
https://phoenixgrey85.wordpress.com/
Feel free to take part in the challenge or not the choice is yours.
Thanks for stopping by today, do leave a comment.
I’d love to hear your opinion on Jeannette Winterson’s quote. Oh and if you’ve read the memoir do say, I’d love to hear your thoughts….
Marje @ Kyrosmagica xx
I feel for you. It is much more stressful to be the one worrying and looking after. Take care. xx
Thanks, yes that is so true. xx
I love this quote! I feel like that too. How many times as I kid did I wrap myself up into the life of the kids I read about… too many to count. I would reread the same books many times. It felt like home to me. Lovely! <3
Thanks Colleen. 🙂
Nice quote.
Thanks Svegliati. 🙂
The quote describes for me the escape from the outside which can so often feel like a home (when the definition is that which is comforting place). We all need to escape from time to time, a respite, a time to replenish, to find support. I haven’t read the memories, but I have many of early works. and they describe a world from which one might want to escape. But I think she means in her quote, even if the book’s world may be a less than pleasant place, it is at least not here, this world, for that moment.
Yes that’s a viable interpretation, the world conjured by books is not always a pleasant place but that doesn’t mean that we don’t want to experience all that the printed word has to offer. All sorts of emotions and settings can be encompassed in a book. We read to discover all we can of this world that we live in and at times we escape from the world through reading. Thanks so much for your comment, appreciate you sharing your opinion, its good to air these thoughts.
Lovely quote!
Thank you. 🙂