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Download #FREE @ReadNobels December Wallpaper: Patrick White's Voss


The year is ending and with it now December, it's almost time to wrap up my Read the Nobels annual challenge and my little wallpaper project.

Over the year, my calendar wallpapers were a fun little way to drum up some interest in the Read the Nobels Reading Challenge for 2016. I've featured 12 authors who have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, featured a book cover, and a quote. Check out the full list down below.

How has your Nobel reading been going so far? It is my hope that this challenge has opened up new reading avenues for you!

If you noticed, my posts have not been as frequent but I am becoming my more focused on my reading choices in general. My Nobel reading has been slim but manageable and thoroughly enjoyable. I still have Alice Munro to round me up for the year. I will still continue on the with Read the Nobels (perpetual) Challenge so feel free to join in on the blog!

Looking for co-hosts! I'd like to continue with this annual challenge. I'm curious if anyone out there -- whether you joined this year or not -- to help me out. Sound off in the comments if you're interested in co-hosting or send me an email at readerrabbit22 at gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you!

***
Patrick White (photo from Goodreads)
Now, without further ado, here is December's wallpaper. This month features 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, Australian Patrick White. The Nobel Prize website cites his win thus: "for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature".

On the Read the Nobels blog, six reviews have been posted so far: The Tree of Man, Happy Valley, The Eye of the Storm, Twyborn Affair, Solid Affair, and Voss.

In the award speech, I thought it was especially interesting to read:
Patrick White is a social critic mainly through his depiction of human beings, as befits a true novelist. He is first and foremost a bold psychological explorer, at the same time as he readily refers to ideological views of life or mystical convictions to elicit the support and the uplifting message which they have to offer. (Source)

I think that that is what appealed to me when I picked the quote decided to feature his book Voss*.

Here's a synopsis of Voss*: Set in nineteenth-century Australia, Voss is White's best-known book, a sweeping novel about a secret passion between the explorer Voss and the young orphan Laura. As Voss is tested by hardship, mutiny, and betrayal during his crossing of the brutal Australian desert, Laura awaits his return in Sydney, where she endures their months of separation as if her life were a dream and Voss the only reality. Marrying a sensitive rendering of hidden love with a stark adventure narrative, Voss is a novel of extraordinary power and virtuosity from a twentieth-century master.

You can read more about White and his work here:

Do you like poetry? Have you read any of Neruda's work?

Download the last for year, December's Read the Nobels wallpaper!


Right click image, download, and set as your desktop wallpaper. Voila! #ReadNobels makes an appearance on your computer! (Note: Wallpaper for personal use only.)

 * Affiliate links

Past wallpapers:

Read the Nobels 2016
Yes, there's still time to get one more book in
before the year ends!

Download FREE November @ReadNobels Wallpaper: Pablo Neruda's Love


November ...time to change up our calendar for Read the Nobels.

If this is the first time you're hearing about this, these calendar wallpapers are a fun monthly project I cooked up for myself and is a sneaky way of promoting the Read the Nobels Reading Challenge for 2016. I select an author who has won the Nobel Prize in Literature, a book cover, and a quote.

Two more months to continue reading for this challenge for the year! So, how are you doing with the challenge? I still haven't done much personally with the challenge but with the research comes a much longer and much more informed TBR -- after all I am in this for the long haul as the Read the Nobels Challenge is a perpetual challenge.

This November, I am featuring a poet, one of the few in the Nobel Prize for Literature laureates. The winner for 1971 is Pablo Neruda, a Chilean poet-diplomat-politician. The cover below is from his book Love: Poems from the Film Il Postino.* Not surprisingly, the movie is about Neruda. Have you watched it?

You can read more about Beckett and his work here:

Do you like poetry? Have you read any of Neruda's work?


Download the November Read the Nobels wallpaper!


Right click image, download, and set as your desktop wallpaper. Voila! #ReadNobels makes an appearance on your computer! (Note: Wallpaper for personal use only.)

 * Affiliate links

Past wallpapers:
Get some Nobel Prize winning literature in your reading lists! All it takes is one book for the entire year. Click to join the challenge RIGHT HERE!

Read the Nobels 2016

#FreebieFriday makes a comeback this #fall!


It's been a while since I've done one of these freebie roundups, hasn't it?

With fall in the air, trolling the web becomes more attractive. Ahh, these fall leaves. The photo above by Sergio Rola is free ... like everything else on unsplash.com.

Love art books? Here's 422 free downloadable art books from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (via openculture.com).

Do you like to try natural products? Then try Social Nature. I've already scored some Camino hot chocolate mix.

Are you in NYC and take the subway? You need to check out Subway Reads by Penguin Random House! Find the best reads that will work for the time you're on the subway - 10, 20, 30 minutes. If you've tried it, do tell me how it goes!

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I'm still in love with Creative Market* and I'll keep blabbing about its free weekly goods, perfect for bloggers alike!

If you liked this post, please share! Which is your favourite? Tell me if you end up using any of these great freebies!


* Affiliate link. If you purchase anything through these links, you help out my blog! Thank you :)

Download October @ReadNobels Wallpaper featuring Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot


September's ended - time to change up our calendar for Read the Nobels.

If this is the first time you're hearing about this, these calendar wallpapers are a fun monthly project I cooked up for myself and is a sneaky way of promoting the Read the Nobels Reading Challenge for 2016. I select an author who has won the Nobel Prize in Literature, a book cover, and a quote.

I have been making slow progress with the challenge but it is still very much on my mind. The Read the Nobels blog continues to get a slow but steady stream of reviews and visits. How are you doing with the challenge?

Samuel Beckett
(photo from Wikipedia)
For October, I am featuring 1969 Nobel Prize Laureate Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (In French: En Attendent en Godot). I admit that I know little about this Irish born author who entered the literary world via Paris and wrote in French! Waiting on Godot, a play published in 1952, is subtitled "a tragicomedy on two acts."

If the title seems familiar,  it has been made into a movie (see below) and a play (starring Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart!).

On the Read the Nobels blog, only two of Beckett's works have been reviewed so far, namely Worstward Ho and Endgame. 

You can read more about Beckett and his work here:

Have you read any of Beckett's work?



Download the October Read the Nobels wallpaper!

Right click image, download, and set as your desktop wallpaper. Voila! #ReadNobels makes an appearance on your computer! (Note: Wallpaper for personal use only.)


 * Affiliate links

Past wallpapers:
Get some Nobel Prize winning literature in your reading lists! All it takes is one book for the entire year. Click to join the challenge RIGHT HERE!

Read the Nobels 2016

Download September @ReadNobels Wallpaper featuring Anatole France's Our Children


It's almost September! It's time once again for our new calendar for Read the Nobels.

If this is the first time you're hearing about this, these calendar wallpapers are a fun monthly project I cooked up for myself and is a sneaky way of promoting the Read the Nobels Reading Challenge for 2016. I select an author who has won the Nobel Prize in Literature, a book cover, and a quote.

This month, I am featuring 1921 Nobel Prize Laureate Anatole France. I noticed that on Read the Nobels, there was only one book reviewed. I'm going to keep this simple, let you gawk at the vintage cover, and click on the links below.

You can read some of his work here:
Download this September Read the Nobels wallpaper!


Right click image, download, and set as your desktop wallpaper. Voila! #ReadNobels makes an appearance on your computer! (Note: Wallpaper for personal use only.)

 * Affiliate links

 Have you ever heard of Anatole France?

Past wallpapers:
Get some Nobel Prize winning literature in your reading lists! All it takes is one book for the entire year. Click to join the challenge RIGHT HERE!

Read the Nobels 2016

Download August @ReadNobels Wallpaper featuring Pearl S. Buck's #TheGoodEarth


Happy August! (Apologies this is a little late!) Yes it is time for our new calendar! If this is the first time you're hearing about this, these calendar wallpapers are a fun monthly project I cooked up for myself and is a sneaky way of promoting the Read the Nobels Reading Challenge for 2016. I select an author who has won the Nobel Prize in Literature, a book cover, and a quote.

Download this August Read the Nobels wallpaper!


Right click image, download, and set as your desktop wallpaper. Voila! #ReadNobels makes an appearance on your computer! (Note: Wallpaper for personal use only.)

 * Affiliate links

Author Photo: Carl Van Vechten [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 Have you read any of Buck's work? 

Past wallpapers:
Get some Nobel Prize winning literature in your reading lists! All it takes is one book for the entire year. Click to join the challenge RIGHT HERE!

Read the Nobels 2016

Download July @ReadNobels Wallpaper featuring #ThomasMann's The Magic Mountain


Happy July! Calendar time!

If this is the first time you're hearing about this, these calendar wallpapers are a fun monthly project I cooked up for myself and is a sneaky way of promoting the Read the Nobels Reading Challenge for 2016. I select an author who has won the Nobel Prize in Literature, a book cover, and a quote.

About Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann won the Nobel Prize in Literature in1929 "principally for his great novel, Buddenbrooks*, which has won steadily increased recognition as one of the classic works of contemporary literature"(NobelPrize.org).

This prolific German author attracted attention with this win because the Nobel is typically usually awarded for an entire body of work and not just one work. The novel Buddenbrooks,* published in 1901, is a family story inspired by Mann's own background as a north German merchant family.

He is known for his symbolic and ironic fictional works, which have insight into the artistic and intellectual psychology. He drew inspiration from German and Biblical stories, and the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.

I am featuring his book The Magic Mountain*, a coming of age story, because I have had it on my TBR for a while now. It has so many quotable quotes that I feel it has much wisdom to impart. Here's a synopsis which I have no doubt will whet your appetite for more Mann:

In this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Mann uses a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, a community devoted exclusively to sickness, as a microcosm for Europe, which in the years before 1914 was already exhibiting the first symptoms of its own terminal irrationality. The Magic Mountain is a monumental work of erudition and irony, sexual tension and intellectual ferment, a book that pulses with life in the midst of death.

Mann's other notable works include: Death in Venice*, Joseph and His Brothers and Doctor Faustus*.


Have you read any of Mann's work? 


More links about Thomas Mann:

Go ahead and download this month's wallpaper!


Right click image, download, and set as your desktop wallpaper. Voila! #ReadNobels makes an appearance on your computer! (Note: Wallpaper for personal use only.)

 * Affiliate links

Author Photo: Carl Van Vechten [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Past wallpapers:
Get some Nobel Prize winning literature in your reading lists! All it takes is one book for the entire year. Click to join the challenge RIGHT HERE!

Read the Nobels 2016

Download your FREE June @ReadNobels wallpaper with Elfriede Jelinek's The Piano Teacher


Holy smokes, it's almost the middle of 2016! I'm very happy with my discovery for June'sRead the Nobels freebie wallpaper calendar. If it's the first time you're hearing about this, these calendar wallpapers are a fun monthly project I cooked up for myself and is a sneaky way of promoting the Read the Nobels Reading Challenge for 2016. I select an author who has won the Nobel Prize Literature, a book cover, and a quote.

About Elfriede Jelinek

Elfreide Jelinek, 2004
Elfriede Jelinek, from Austria, won the Nobel Prize in Literature 2004 "for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power"(NobelPrize.org).

I was quite drawn in by the fact that Jelinek is polarizing with her work which explores the themes of sexuality, sexual abuse, and powerplay of the sexes. One of her most popular works, Die Klavierspielerin (The Piano Teacher*), the featured book in this month's wallpaper, showcases this quite well. See the synopsis here:

The Piano Teacher* is a searing portrait of a woman bound between a repressive society and her darkest desires. Erika Kohut is a piano teacher at the prestigious and formal Vienna Conservatory, who still lives with her domineering and possessive mother. Her life appears boring, but Erika, a quiet thirty-eight-year-old, secretly visits Turkish peep shows at night and watched sadomasochistic films. Meanwhile, a handsome, self-absorbed, seventeen-year-old student has become enamored with Erika and sets out to seduce her. She resists him at first but then the dark passions roiling under the piano teacher s subdued exterior explode in a release of perversity, violence, and degradation."

The 2001 movie by Austrian director Michael Haneke, The Piano Teacher (movie), was based on Jelinek's book. It won numerous awards in the 2001 Cannes Film Festival including the Grand Prix, best actress and best actor.



I have not read any of Jelinek's work but am sufficiently intrigued based on this one book.

Would you consider reading Elfriede Jelinek?


More links about Elfriede Jelinek:

Go ahead and download this month's wallpaper!



Right click image, download, and set as your desktop wallpaper. Voila! #ReadNobels makes an appearance on your computer! (Note: Wallpaper for personal use only.)

 * Affiliate links

 Author photo: By The original uploader was Ghuengsberg at English Wikipedia (Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.) [CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0), GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

Past wallpapers:


 Get some Nobel Prize winning literature in your reading lists! All it takes is one book for the entire year. Click to join the challenge RIGHT HERE!

Read the Nobels 2016

#FreebieFriday round-up of mouth puckering #bookish yumminess!


Just staring at these lemons (limes?) makes my mouth pucker in anticipation of lemon ice cream. Photo by Hoach Le Dinh on unsplash.com, which, you guessed it, offers FREE photos!

Did you know there is a free music archive?

Free everything and anything for your blog at Starsunflower Studio Blog.

And a few more freebies that made me smile, and hopefully you too!






Fruit Smoothie Wall Papers at The Wonder Forest


I'm mentioning Creative Market* yet again! If you don't already know about this weekly bunch of freebies, please go grab this week's Free Goods!

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If you liked this post, please share! Which is your favourite? Tell me if you end up using any of these great freebies!


* Affiliate link. If you purchase anything through these links, you help out my blog! Thank you :)

Download your May #ReadNobels wallpaper. It's Yasunari Kawabata!


It's May ... and time to freshen up your desktops with this month's Read the Nobels freebie calendar! These calendar wallpapers are a fun monthly project I cooked up for myself and is a sneaky way of promoting the Read the Nobels Reading Challenge for 2016. I select an author who has won the Nobel Prize Literature, a book cover, and a quote.


About Yasunari Kawabata

Yasunari Kawabata (born 14 June, 1899; died 16 April,
1972), pictured in a 1938 photograph, at his home
in Kamakura. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Yasunari Kawabata is the first Japanese to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968 "for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind."

Here are some facts that struck me as I was reading his biography on NobelPrize.org:
  • A graduate of the Tokyo Imperial University, he was one of the founders of Bungei Jidai, a publication of a new movement in modern Japanese literature. 
  • Debut work? A well-known short story in Japan entitled Izu Dancer (1927). 
  • His novel Snow Country* (1937), a tale of  a love affair between a Tokyo dilettante and a provincial geisha, secured his position as one of the leading authors in Japan. 
  • Other notable works include Thousand Cranes* and The Sound of the Mountain* (1949), The Lake* (1955), The Sleeping Beauty (1960) and The Old Capital* (1962).


More links about Yasunari Kawabata:

Go ahead and download!

Right click image, download, and set as your desktop wallpaper. Voila! #ReadNobels makes an appearance on your computer! (Note: Wallpaper for personal use only.)

 * Affiliate links

Past wallpapers:
 

Get some Nobel Prize winning literature in your reading lists! All it takes is one book for the entire year. Click to join the challenge RIGHT HERE!

#FreebieFriday with a huge round-up of freebie printables and more!


I guess it's Spring ... finally! :) Here's my third bunch of freebies. This is a round-up post of some of my favourite freebies already featured on my blog. From wallpaper, bookmarks, crochet patterns, bookplates, there's something in here that I hope you love!

Creative Market*

I'm mentioning Creative Market* again, but if you don't already know about this weekly bunch of freebies, please go grab this week's Free Goods!

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If you liked this post, please share! Which of these are you going to click? Tell me if you end up using any of these fabulous free resources!


* Affiliate link. If you purchase anything through these links, you help out my blog! Thank you :)

Download April's #ReadNobels wallpaper with the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature!


Uh, where did March go?

Well, you know what that means ,.. time for this month's Read the Nobels freebie calendar! These calendar wallpapers are a fun monthly project I cooked up for myself and is a sneaky way of promoting the Read the Nobels Reading Challenge for 2016. Every month, I select an author who has won the Nobel Prize Literature, a book cover, and a quote.

Past wallpapers:


About Selma Lagerlöf

Photo from nobelprize.org
This is the first time I have encountered Selma Lagerlöf. She is the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1909. According to nobelprize.org, the prize was awarded to her "in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings."

Lagerlöf is from Sweden and is well-known for her stories about peasant life. Her children's book The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, featured in this month's wallpaper, highlights the geography, folklore, and the natural beauty of Swedish countryside through the adventures of a mischievous 14-year-old -- magically shrunk -- on the back of a goose!

Curious about the story? I found The Wonderful Adventures of Nils online on the University of Pennsylvania's online library HERE, with lovely illustrations included.

Go ahead and download!

Right click image, download, and set as your desktop wallpaper. Voila! #ReadNobels makes an appearance on your computer!

 Cover image The Wonderful Adventures of Nils published 1906/07 and English 1913. By Selma Lagerlöf, art by Mary Hamilton Frye - http://www.archive.org/details/wonderfuladventu0018582 [Public domain], via Wikipedia

 (Note: Wallpaper for personal use only.)

 * Affiliate links

Get some Nobel Prize winning literature in your reading lists! All it takes is one book for the entire year.

Click to join the challenge RIGHT HERE!

#BookmarkMonday (238): Colouring bookmarks from @BookDepository!

Hit by the adult colouring craze (or frankly sick of it?) Well, the Book Depository* has me all excited for my next purchase with these free coloring bookmarks they're stuffing in their books!

There's a #BDColouring hashtag on twitter just started so people can share their coloured in bookmarks. Find out more about them here* ...

What do you think? Aye or nay?

 *Affiliate link

Guiltless Reading

#BookmarkMonday is a weekly meme that started in 2009. Link up your bookmark below! Don't forget to share your love for bookmarks, whether yours or you dream about making them yours:
  • Post about it on your blog/twitter/pinterest and link up below. 
  • Or share your pic with the #BookmarkMonday hashtag on Twitter so I can go check it out! 
  • If you'd like to post on the #BookmarkMonday Pinterest Board, shoot me an email at readerrabbit22 at gmail.com and I'll add you as a contributor.

Link Up HERE!

The power of three four for #FreebieFriday!


Feeling Spring ... we're almost there!

This is my second bunch of freebie finds. Let me know if you find anything that you'd like mentioned here. I love to share the freebie love around!

SumoMe

Touts itself as "Tools to grow your website traffic," it offers tons of free tools for all websites (self-hosted, Blogger, Wordpress, etc). I'm a little (ok a LOT) in love with this - and I've abandoned many other apps - because it offers so much and integrated into one interface for free with the option to upgrade if desired or needed. You'll see that little blue square with the crown on it on the righthand side of my blog. It offers everything from integration of social media for image sharing (click on an image and you get to choose to share through Pinterest, Twitter, or Facebook), heat maps (know where your visitors are clicking), a subscribe pop-up (that's the List Builder), a Smart Bar (I abandoned Hello Bar because this provides more flexibility), a Highlighter (highlight text and you can tweet it). Oh man, I could go on and on. I haven't yet explored everything but I'm totally sold. Go try SumoMe out for yourself!



Maira Gall's Aurora Template for Blogger 

I adore my template which I bought from Maira Gall*. It's clean, non-fussy, it's for Blogger (yes it is, can you even tell?), it got responsive design (and so looks great on mobile) and so easy to customize. If you're not quite ready to commit to buying, why not try out her freebie called Aurora?


POWr.io 

You'll feel like a kid in a candy store! This is a collection of tons, TONS (I mean, LOOK!) of plug-ins. I'm still playing around with these and figuring out what I can use but really, look at the selection - anything from galleries to e-commerce. There are free versions of all them, but of course if you want more functionality, then you pay up some. Go play on POWr.io!


Creative Market*

BONUS: I already mentioned Creative Market* two weeks ago, but if you don't already know about this weekly bunch of freebies, please go grab this week's Free Goods!

photo 728x90-_0001_graphic-resources.jpg


If you liked this post, please share! Which of these are you going to click? Tell me if you end up using any of these fabulous free resources!


* Affiliate link. If you purchase anything through these links, you help out my blog! Thank you :)

Download @ReadNobels wallpaper for March. Get some Rudyard Kipling in your life!



It's almost March!

These monthly calendar wallpapers are a fun monthly project I cooked up for myself and a rather sneaky way of promoting the Read the Nobels Reading Challenge for 2016. Every month, I select an author who has won the Nobel Prize Literature, a book cover, and a quote.

Past wallpapers:

You probably know Rudyard Kipling for his children's books. He was the Nobel Prize Laureate in 1907. For March, our wallpaper features the beautiful cover of the original edition of The Jungle Book* which is based on illustrations by his father, John Lockwood Kipling. You can read more about this childhood favourite here.

Go ahead and download!


Right click image, download, and set as your desktop wallpaper. Voila! #ReadNobels makes an appearance on your computer!

 Cover image  Illustrated by John Lockwood Kipling (Low-resolution scanned image) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 (Note: Wallpaper for personal use only.)
* Affiliate links

Get some Nobel Prize winning literature in your reading lists! All it takes is one book for the entire year.

Click to join the challenge RIGHT HERE!

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