Moment in the bookshop ~ captured by Kim Jeffrey.
Alan Bishop, John Passfield & John Ballinger


Thank you, Kim

Neecha

Beautiful Neecha brings happiness to folks who don't often get to pet or observe a dog.  She is not new at socializing ~ she is thirteen years old, rolls over, sits up ~ all the time enjoying people.

This little dog brings a smile to folks in Grandview Lodge and Edgewater in Dunnville.  Yesterday she visited The Neat L'l Bookshop.  Come back soon, Neecha.

Testament of Youth/Testament of Friendship/Testament of Experience ~

Vera Brittain was born at Newcastle under Lyme, Staffordshire in December, 1893, the daughter of a wealthy manufacturer.  During World War I she served as a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) nurse, an experience which interrupted her studies at Oxford and which she recounted in her autobiographical Testament of Youth (1933).
Although Vera wrote numerous volumes of poetry and fiction, she is more widely known for two later works:  Testament of Friendship (1940) and Testament of Experience (1957).

Her brother, her fiance and two close friends were killed in the war leading Vera toward becoming a pacifist.  She died in 1970.

Source:  The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, Ian Ousby, 1993.

Today in The Neat L'l Bookshop the topic:  Poetry WWI including Vera Brittain ~ Dr. Alan Bishop.  Everyone welcome.

Photo: Wikipedia



Elizabeth's Seven-Eyed "Grandpa Beaver"



On Childrens' Day ~

"I wanted to draw a dog.  I sat beside Carlow's kennel and stared at him for a long time.  Then I took a charred stick from the grate, split open a large brown-paper sack and drew a dog on the sack.

"My married sister who had taken drawing lessons looked at my dog and said, 'Not bad.'  Father spread the drawing on top of his newspaper, put on his spectacles, looked, and said, 'Um!'  Mother said, 'You are blacked with charred wood, wash!'  The paper sack was found years later among Father's papers.  He had written on it, "By Emily, aged eight."

~GROWING PAINS The Autobiography of Emily Carr,  Clarke Irwin & Company Ltd., 1946.

Season of gifts ~ We have a wonderful afternoon planned for you this Thursday.  Dr. Alan Bishop will be reading.  Third Thursdays are always reserved for an entertaining group of local authors, poets and other fascinating personalities.  They read from their own published work ~ sometimes introduce new work ~ and inevitably drift toward whatever literary subject interests those present.

Poetry of Vera Brittain will be Alan's focus this week; however, he has agreed to bring along one of his own books, Letters From a Generation.
              Thursday, November 21 at 1:00 p.m.

www.freedompress.ca

Thank you Tristan of Freedom Press and Gary McHale for a fun and informative afternoon ~ and for hanging around in the bookshop long after scheduled hours.

Available in The Neat Little Bookshop, VICTORY IN THE NO-GO ZONE.  $19.95, Gary McHale.  Freedom Press Canada Inc., 2013.

Doris Lessing on literary excellence ~

"It is interesting to imagine what our vision of the world would be like had there been no novelists, no storytellers.  Like the dark side of the moon, or the sea floors where fishes still unknown to science live, or reports from unexplored countries where maps said 'Here be monsters'.  Literature makes us all kin, because every tale is a report from people whose differences are only variations on the theme of our humanity.  Without the explorations of writers we would not know them.
"While I read a novel, enjoying all the skills that go with literary excellence - the design, the complexities, the ironies, the insights - I am saying, 'But wait a minute, here's a region of the world (or of society or of psychology) I haven't been in before.'
"If we can say, 'No human behaviour is alien to me', then it is because we know it all from literature."

~ Doris Lessing (Oct. 22, 1919 - Nov. 17, 2012)  English novelist

~ Forward to The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, Ian Ousby, Cambridge University Press, 1993.