Pipsqueaks! Little Books with a Big Novelty Punch -- BOOK THOUGHTS

BOOK THOUGHTS

Pipsqueaks! Little Books with a Big Novelty Punch

Oh, the pipsqueaks! You know the little books that accumulate in your house? I don’t mean short books, although most are. I mean books that are physically small and often have what I think of as a novelty aspect to them. They are typically illustrated, often compilations, and are quick reads. They usually arrive as gifts or impulse purchases. They are the kind of little books often found at the checkout counter of bookstores.

I think of these little books as pipsqueaks. They hide on my shelves and occasionally squeak at me. They are meant to be read immediately and don't like being left on the shelf like an unread copy of Don Quixote or Moby Dick. In the interest of quieting the squeaking and clearing space on my shelves (admittedly, not much), I’ve gathered a very short stack of these cute little things, with the goal of reading them soon to get them off my shelves and out of my brain.

Would you have impulse purchased any of these?

• With Thanks & Appreciation: Thoughts, Sentiments, Tokens & Traditions of the Past by Pat Ross. Apparently, double-barreled titles are another feature of these books. I see there is a note inside telling me this was a gift from the realtor who helped me buy my first house back in 1989! Good grief! I need to read it or just pass it on.

• Bamboo Farmer Wisdom: 101 Inspirational Thoughts by Greg Bell. Greg is a friend of mine who wrote Water the Bamboo: Unleashing The Potential Of Teams And Individuals, an excellent business leadership/self-help book that I reviewed here. Bamboo Farmer Wisdom is a sort of tag along collection of inspirational aphorisms.

• Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon. This is a perfect example of what I am talking about. I grabbed this one day when I was shopping at Powell's, intending to read it that afternoon. Several years later, it is still on my shelf. Time to remedy that!

• I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats by Francesco Marciuliano. Didn’t every cat owner get this in a Christmas stocking hen it first came out? I think I got three copies!

• Freedom Feminism: Its Surprising History and Why it Matters Today by Christine Hoff Sommers. This is the only substantive book in the stack. I got it from American Enterprise Institute when I joined its Leadership Network and meant to read it right away.

• Bad Dad Jokes: That’s How Eye Roll by Bart King. My friend Jack Ohman illustrated this one, so I got a copy when they launched it.

• Literary Feasts: Inspired Eating from Classic Fiction by Sean Brand. This one is an understandable impulse purchase, since I will buy any books, whatever its size or format, that combines books and food.

• What Shall I Say: A Guide to Letter Writing for Ladies, no author, is a facsimile of an 1898 self-help book. I found it in a Little Free Library and couldn't resist. 

• The St. Trinian’s Story: And the Pick of the Searle Cartoons, compiled by Kaye Webb, illustrated by Robert Searle. Another LFL find. I knew nothing about Searle or St. Trinian's, but google tells me that Ronald Searle was a British artist and satirical cartoon artist. He created the famous, fictional St. Trinian's School as the subject of comic strips, books, and movies. 

• An Englishman’s Commonplace Book by Roger Hudson. It is unfair to lump this gorgeous Slightly Foxed edition with the others. For one thing, it isn't so little. But it is a very short compilation of brief observations, quips, and quotes, so has the high novelty value that makes it a pipsqueak to me.

What pipsqueaks are hiding on your shelves?

Jane Austen's 250th Birthday -- FAVORITE AUTHOR, BOOK LIST

FAVORITE AUTHOR/BOOK LIST

Jane Austen's 250th Birthday

Did someone say bandwagon? Yes, I’ll jump on!

As we’ve all noticed, 2025 is Jane Austen’s 250th birthday. Or, technically, it is the 250th anniversary of her birth, because she isn't celebrating anymore. But we can! Like others, I plan to reread her six major novels in celebration of this milestone. I may get to some of her other works as well.

I’m going to read them in publication order. I’m too Teutonic in my reading habits to do it any other way. There are readalong groups reading by popularity and other criteria, but chronologically is my preference. Because she stopped and started her writing of some of the books, there is uncertainty about the precise order in which she wrote them, particularly the last two. So I'm going with publication order, not the order in which they were necessarily written. 

Jane Austen is a favorite of mine, ever since I first encountered her as an English Lit major in college. I’ve read the six major novels before, most of them two or three times. This time around, I plan to read them with my ears because I haven’t experienced them as audiobooks. 

My set, shown in the picture above, is a Book of the Month Club special edition issued 25 years ago for the anniversary of her 225th birthday. My then sweetheart, soon to be husband, gave it to me for my birthday that year. 

I read Sense and Sensibility in January. I’m happy to be back in Austenland!

Are you reading any Jane Austen books this year? What’s your favorite?

WRITINGS OF JANE AUSTEN

Austen wrote six major novels, another novel that she never submitted for publication, two unfinished novels, a play, poems, letters, prayers, and a large collection of juvenilia published in three volumes. 

Here is the list of Jane Austen's six main novels, in publication order. These are the books I plan to reread this year: 

• Sense and Sensibility (1811)
• Pride and Prejudice (1813)
• Mansfield Park (1814)
• Emma (1816)
• Northanger Abbey (1818, posthumous)
• Persuasion (1818, posthumous)

Austen's other writings, which I may get to someday, but probably not this year, are:

• Lady Susan (the novel she never submitted for publication; published in 1871)
• The Watsons (novel begun in 1803 and abandoned in 1805; fragment published in 1871)
• Sanditon (novel begun in 1817 and left unfinished at her death in July of that year; fragment published in 1925)
• Sir Charles Grandison (a play adapted around 1800 from a novel by Samuel Richardson; published in 1980)
• Plan of a Novel (satire written in 1815; first published in 1926)
• Poems (written 1796–1817; perhaps published at her death in 1817, but I can't pin that down)
• Prayers (written 1796–1817; same as poems)
• Letters (written 1796–1817; same as poems)
• Juvenilia in Three Volumes (written 1787 to 1793, when she was 11 to 17 years old; organized by Austen into three volumes; perhaps first published in 1954, since updated) 

There is a Kindle omnibus edition of that includes Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon, Plan of a Novel, Sir Charles Grandison, and the three volumes of Juvenilia. This is all the minor works except the poems, prayers, and letters. At the time I wrote this post, the Kindle omnibus was $.99. 

 

How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days by Kari Leibowitz -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

How to Winter by Keri Liebowitz, PhD.

Thank you for joining me for Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy, even if you are not reading it right now.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Located more than two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, Tromsø, Norway, is home to an extreme and special winter, when the world often appears blue-tinted, snow cloaks the city in quiet, and the northern lights dance in the sky.

-- from How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days by Kari Leibowitz, PhD. 

A friend of mine gave me this book for Christmas and I want to read it while it is still winter. It is aimed at people who don't like winter, so I am not really the target audience. Maybe if I lived some place where winters are harsh, I'd dislike winter. But here in the Pacific Northwest, winter is pretty mild. We definitely get the dark, shorter days, and the weather is chilly and damp. But we don't usually get snow and it rarely dips below freezing. I enjoy the change of season very much, although I understand that some people don't. 

Still, Leibowitz has interesting ideas for how to deal with the winter blues, so I am enjoying the book. She also makes an effort to explain how her advice and tips can be applied to any depressing situation -- more of a winter of the soul than a season. 

For more on winter in Portland and a list of 18 wintery book, check out my post from earlier this week. 

 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginnings post in the box below. If you share on social media, please use the #bookbeginnings hashtag.

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 is a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings. The idea is to share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your featured book. If you are reading an ebook or audiobook, find your teaser from the 56% mark.

Freda at Freda's Voice started and hosted The Friday 56 for a long, long time. She is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. Please visit Anne's blog and link to your Friday 56 post.

MY FRIDAY 56

-- from How to Winter:

The recommendations in this book are not one-size-fits-all. Rather, they are a smorgasbord of psychological tools and winter strategies that anyone can use, wherever you live, to cultivate more adaptive mindsets and embrace the darkest time of year.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

Do you dread the end of Daylight Saving Time and grouch about the long, chilly season of gray skies and ice? Do you find yourself in a slump every January and February? What if there were a way to rethink this time of year? Psychologist and winter expert Kari Leibowitz’s galvanizing HOW TO WINTER uses mindset science to help readers embrace winter as a season to be enjoyed, not endured—and in turn, learn powerful lessons that can impact our mental wellbeing throughout the year.

Wintery Books -- BOOK THOUGHTS

 BOOK THOUGHTS

Wintery Books

Snow is coming!

It is supposed to snow here in Portland this week, although I've been fooled already this winter. If it does snow, it will be a big deal for us. As cold, wet, and gray as Portland winters are, we can go whole seasons without a snowflake. When we do get snow, three to four inches can shut down the city. Yes, much of the shutdown is because we aren’t equipped to deal with it. But I grew up in the Midwest and the snow we get here is not like Midwest snow. 

Here, the snow usually comes when it has been raining and then the temperature drops. So first the wet streets freeze, then we get an inch or so of snow on top of that ice. That's bad enough. But then it thaws just enough to make the snow wet before it freezes again. That's when we get the ice/snow/ice sandwich. It's incredibly slippery and this is a hilly city. Forget winter tires or four wheel drive. It's just ice and it’s treacherous. 

Personally, I love a good snow day (or even a snow week). I have no place to go and no kids to entertain, so as long as the pantry is stocked (and the liquor cabinet), I’m happy to curl up with a good book and wait for everything to melt.

The forecast will most likely change and we will get more rain, not snow. But just in case, I made a stack of wintery books. See any here you’d read while the snow’s coming down?

• The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare

• Ice Palace by Edna Ferber

• The Winter of our Discontent by John Steinbeck

• The Case of the Abominable Snowman by Nicholas Blake

• There Came Both Mist and Snow by Michael Innes

• Blood Upon the Snow by Hilda Lawrence

• Chilled to the Bone by Quentin Bates

• Cold Storage, Alaska by John Straley

• If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Colvino

• In Cold Domain by Anne Fine

• The Ice Saints by Frank Tuohy

• Snow Angels by James Thompson

• Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie

• Arctic Chill by Arnaldur Indriðason

• A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore

• Frozen Tracks by Åke Edwardson

• Wintersmoon by Hugh Walpole

• The Cold Millions by Jess Walter

Just seeing these gathered together make be want to put on a wooly sweater, curl up in front of the fireplace with a warm beverage, and get to reading!

What winter mix of books can you find on your shelves?

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Thank you for joining me for Book Beginnings on Fridays. Please share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week. You can also share from a book that caught your fancy, even if you are not reading it right now.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

-- from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. This is one of the most famous opening lines of any book. I am so glad to finally experience it for myself, in context. 

Anna Karenina is one of those classics I have wanted to read forever, yet it languished on my TBR shelf. I finally read War and Peace a couple of years ago as a chapter-a-day slow read. I don't do well with the slow read idea. I'm more of a bolter. I don't like to eke out a book. So no slow read of Anna Karenina for me. I'm reading it straight through. It is one of my TBR 25 in '25 books and on my Classics Club II list. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginnings post in the box below. If you share on social media, please use the #bookbeginnings hashtag.

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THE FRIDAY 56

The Friday 56 is a natural tie-in with Book Beginnings. The idea is to share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of your featured book. If you are reading an ebook or audiobook, find your teaser from the 56% mark.

Freda at Freda's Voice started and hosted The Friday 56 for a long, long time. She is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. Please visit Anne's blog and link to your Friday 56 post.

MY FRIDAY 56

-- from Anna Karenina:

Immediately after dinner Kitty came in. She knew Anna Arkadyevna, but only very slightly, and she came now to her sister’s with some trepidation, at the prospect of meeting this fashionable Petersburg lady, whom everyone spoke so highly of.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

At its simplest, Anna Karenina is a love story. It is a portrait of a beautiful and intelligent woman whose passionate love for a handsome officer sweeps aside all other ties - to her marriage and to the network of relationships and moral values that bind the society around her. The love affair of Anna and Vronsky is played out alongside the developing romance of Kitty and Levin, and in the character of Levin, closely based on Tolstoy himself, the search for happiness takes on a deeper philosophical significance.

One of the greatest novels ever written, Anna Karenina combines penetrating psychological insight with an encyclopedic depiction of Russian life in the 1870s. The novel takes us from high society St Petersburg to the threshing fields on Levin's estate, with unforgettable scenes at a Moscow ballroom, the skating rink, a race course, a railway station. It creates an intricate labyrinth of connections that is profoundly satisfying, and deeply moving.