Brad Smith's Latest Novel, Crow's Landing, published by Simon & Schuster, attracted attention today at Flyer's Bakery and Cafe in Dunnville, Ontario.



August, 2012, Scribner, A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

 

Smith's second novel in a new series, is getting good reviews:  "[SMITH'S] BEST CREATION IS CAIN, A RUGGED CHARMER," ~ National Post

Smith's overwhelmingly successful first book in the series, Red Means Run, introduced the main character, Virgil Cane, and was named among the Year's Best Crime Novels by Booklist.

Crow's Landing is Brad Smith's seventh book.

(Author COMING SOON to The Neat Little Bookshop.  Watch for details.)

www.bradsmithbooks.com

 



This Beautiful Meadow ~ Sharon Jackson's

T's all I have to bring to-day,

This, and my heart beside,

This, and my heart, and all the fields,

And all the meadows wide.

Be sure you count, should I forget, ~

Some one the sum could tell, ~

This, and my heart, and all the bees

Which in the clover dwell.

Emily Dickenson, Poems, 1896, Third Series.

Photo: lbwalker w/favourite Emily Dickenson poem.

Late Bulletin !  Appearing tonight, Friday, Aug. 10:

David Wice, singer, guitarist, entertainer at the Cayuga Hotel,* 9:00 p.m.  David ensures that everyone has "a great time."

*Hwy. #3 at Cayuga st. (same intersection as the bookshop.)

 www.davidwice.ca

Update on Bridge-Replacement Project!

Cayuga Bridge Over The Grand

August 14 - 30 Complete freshwater mussel survey/relocation work.

September 2012 START CONSTRUCTION

Ministry of Transportation, Ontario, MTO STATUS UPDATE as posted on the Haldimand County Website, July 16, 2012.


www.haldimandcounty.ca
Search: "Our County/Public Notices/Cayuga Bridge Replacement Project."



Smile for Today ~

"The daily consumption of 40 grams of dark chocolate (chocolate containing 70% cocoa mass) may supply the body with a significant dose of polyphenols, and thus obtain benefits with respect to the prevention of cardiovascular disease and cancer.  The preventive effect will be enhanced if dark chocolate consumption replaces or reduces the amount of the sugary and fat-filled foods consumed."

RICH IN POLYPHENOLS!
Dark chocolate (50 g) 300 mg.
Green tea (125 ml)     250 mg.
Cocoa (2 tsp.)            200 mg.
Red wine (125 ml)      150 mg.
Milk chocolate (50 g)   100 mg.


~ Foods That Fight Cancer ~ Preventing Cancer Through Diet, R. Beliveau, Ph.D., and D. Gingras, Ph.D., McClelland & Stewart, 2006.



Rain in Summer ~

How Beautiful is the rain!

After the dust and heat,

In the broad and fiery street,

In the narrow lane,

How beautiful is the rain!

How it clatters along the roofs,

Like the tramp of hoofs!

How it gushes and struggles out

From the throat of the overflowing spout!

Across the window-pane

It pours and pours;

And swift and wide,

With a muddy tide,

Like a river down the gutter roars

The rain, the welcome rain!

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882) American Poet

(Photo:  files 2011 ~ lbw)

Maeve Binchy ~

May 28, 1940 ~ July 30, 2012

"Writing is a bit like going on a diet:  you should either tell everyone or no one."

"Time doesn't appear from nowhere.  You have to make time, and that means giving up something else.  Regularly.  Like sleep, for example, or drinking, or playing poker, or watching television." 

"I gave up a bit of sleep.  I had a full-time job in London, a lot of commuting, a heavy social life, a fair bit of travel, so it seemed a good idea to get up at five a.m. three times a week.  I hated it.  Of course, I hated it.  Who would like sitting at a dining table half-crazed and trying to type, when the rest of the world was sleeping peacefully. . . "

~ The Maeve Binchy Writer' Club,  Anchor Books, 2010.

Until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1905, Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was the dictionary of preference.  Born in Staffordshire, England, in 1709, Johnson was the son of a bookseller.  Samuel read voraciously in his father's shop.  About dictionaries he said, "Dictionaries are like watches.  The worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true."

In 1747 he issued a prospectus of a Dictionary of the English Language, which was to take him eight years to complete.  His great dictionary appeared in 1755, which "gave rise to a celebrated letter in which Johnson disdained an offer of patronage from Lord Chesterfield.  Johnson was awarded an honorary degree at Oxford, but he had to continue literary hack-work to earn a living."

 A few memorable definitions and quotations from Johnson:

Lexicographer.  A writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.

Network.  Anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.

"Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place."

"I'll come no more behind your scenes, David; for the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities." (Said to theatrical impresario David Garrick.)

"Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures."

~ CHAMBERS Biographical Dictionary, Editor Una McGovern,  Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd.,7th ed., 2002 with contribution from Lawrence Miller who refers to Johnson as, "The Great Bear, the Ursa Major who growls and shambles and towers over the eighteenth-century English literary world."  Thank you, Laurie.