Time to add to your newly-released nonfiction TBR with this week's theme surrounding women's empowerment, featuring woman authors telling impressive stories!
Tag: home
Spruce Up Your Home With These Bookish Ideas
We're all sick of our home decor after months of quarantine. Here are bookish cheap/DIY methods to reinvent your home's look.
J.K. Rowling Secretly Buys Childhood Home That Started It All
Long before the world-renowned author became a staple for bookshelves everywhere, she was growing up in the magical church cottage that inspired it all.
Located in the quaint village of Tutshill, Gloucestershire, the home is anything but lacking in serene views and mystical quirks, including an under-stairs cupboard that may sound familiar to fans of the series, and a bedroom wall with a scribbled marking “Joanne Rowling slept here circa 1982”. Rowling reportedly spent the formative years of her life, age nine to eighteen, there with her family and later purchased it back again under her married name.
image via fandom
The low-key transaction reportedly cost Rowling a whopping $505,000 in 2011 and has only come to light now due to renovations finally being approved on the historically listed building. Though it is unclear what exactly she plans to do with the 170-year-old home, some locals contemplate whether it may become a vacation home for families in need. Uh, hello, I’m in need!
featured image via Wikipedia
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5 Poems About The Comforts of Home
In this difficult time, many of us have been urged to stay at home. This can be difficult for many, as this is not only a change in routine, but it is also a change to how we once interacted with the world around us. That isn’t easy. Regardless of if you are an introvert or an extrovert, a sudden change in routine is jarring.
When I find myself struggling with what is going on around me, I have a tendency to turn towards the stories and poems that I feel are comforting. While I can’t say that everyone does the same, or that my way even works, this is my way of processing the difficult emotions that I come up against.
So, with that in mind, here are five poems about the comforts of home.
1. “home” by Edgar Albert Guest
image via wikimedia commons
It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’ make it home,
A heap o’ sun an’ shadder, an’ ye sometimes have t’ roam
Afore ye really ’preciate the things ye lef’ behind,
An’ hunger fer ’em somehow, with ’em allus on yer mind.
It don’t make any differunce how rich ye get t’ be,
How much yer chairs an’ tables cost, how great yer luxury;
It ain’t home t’ ye, though it be the palace of a king,
Until somehow yer soul is sort o’ wrapped round everything. (read more)
2. “A home” by sarah c. woolsey
image via stocksy united
What is a home? A guarded space,
Wherein a few, unfairly blest,
Shall sit together, face to face,
And bask and purr and be at rest?
Where cushioned walls rise up between
Its inmates and the common air,
The common pain, and pad and screen
From blows of fate or winds of care?
Where Art may blossom strong and free,
And Pleasure furl her silken wing,
And every laden moment be
A precious and peculiar thing? (read more)
3. “in praise of my bed” by meredith holmes
image via videohive
At last I can be with you!
The grinding hours
since I left your side!
The labor of being fully human,
working my opposable thumb,
talking, and walking upright. (read more)
4. “dog in bed” by joyce sidman
image via dogtime
Nose tucked under tail,
you are a warm, furred planet
centered in my bed.
All night I orbit, tangle-limbed,
in the slim space
allotted to me.
If I accidentally
bump you from sleep,
you shift, groan,
drape your chin on my hip. (read more)
5. “From a rooftop” by timothy steele
image via smartcity press
At dawn, down in the streets, from pavement grills,
Steam rises like the spent breath of the night.
At open windows, curtains stir on sills;
There’s caging drawn across a market’s face;
An empty crane, at its construction site,
Suspends a cable into chasmed space.
The roof shows other rooftops, their plateaus
Marked with antennas from which lines are tied
And strung with water beads or hung with clothes.
And here and there a pigeon comes to peck
At opaque puddles, its stiff walk supplied
By herky-jerky motions of its neck. (read more)
Featured image via Apartment Therapy
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Watch ‘New Girl’ Star Zooey Deschanel and Jonathan Scott Read a Kid’s Book!
Zooey Deschanel and Property Brothers star Jonathan Silver Scott recently did a live reading of him and his brother’s children’s book, “Builder Brothers: Big Plans,” on Facebook! Before they did the reading, they joked, “We have big plans to read “Big Plans,” ’cause we were so busy, we had to clear our schedules.” Deschanel remarked that she is busy since she’s been home taking care of her kids.
image via amazon
The couple spent the video going back and forth between pages, doing their own impressions of the characters and then showing the page they just read for any children in the audience. They seemingly get into the book itself, with some side comments for the adults. At one point they both read a line together with a lot of energy. Though they do fib some lines at times, it doesn’t detract from the story-telling too much. It was very enjoyable to watch.
At the end of the book, Scott shows a plan for building a birdhouse, holding up the image for any viewers who want to take a screenshot. Deschanel then started a discussion about the book, asking how the builders knew the holes for the door and windows wouldn’t be too small. Scott quips back with a self-critical joke that he and his brother aren’t the smartest tools in the shed, or the sharpest avocados in the basket. Deschanel corrects him: “Or the sharpest knife in the drawer,” before they say goodbye.
image via eric mccandless on house beautiful
Zooey and Jonathan are also sharing what they’re doing while trying to maintain social distancing and stay at home. On March 27, Jonathan posted on Instagram, “Don’t let our smiles fool you, we both play to win! How are you spending your time as we all stay #hometogether? @zooeydeschanel and I have been playing games, making music, and of course doing puzzles.,” along with some photos.
Everyone that is at home is doing all sorts of things while we try to maintain social distancing. It seems that Zooey and Jonathan are keeping themselves busy! If you’d like to watch their Facebook video on the book reading, you can go to their post here.
featured image via e! news
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