ExclusiveCelebrate Book Lovers Day with classic literature about summer

Welcome to Epoch Insights with Tiffany. My name is Tiffany Brannon. Did you know that August 9th is National Book Lovers Day? I didn't know that until I was reading the latest issue of the Epoch Times, and in the Life and Tradition section, there's an article called A Day Just for Book Lovers. This article describes how no one knows when or how this holiday was started. I did some additional research online to see if I could disprove this, but it's true, there is no information out there on just when people began dedicating a day to those who love reading and who love books. National Book Lovers Day isn't the only day in the calendar dedicated to books, there also is Children's Reading Day and just National Reading Day. This short article is very charming because it talks about just how great it is to be a book lover and how it's a pleasure that many of us have lost. Somewhere along the way, maybe young people with their school assignments of doing book reports will realize that they really love reading novels. That was the case with me. I was given some of the best classic literature in my junior high school and high school and even before that in my curriculum. Many times I not only read the book, but discovered an author I really liked. Maybe discovered a series that I wanted to read more of it, or in my literature book there would be excerpts of long poems or chapters from whole books, condensed versions of short stories, and I realized that's a story I'd love to finish, so I sought them out and enjoyed reading them myself in my spare time. The delight of a book is that it brings you to an entirely different place. It's the most escapist pleasure there is. It's something that's very personal because when you read a book, you read the author's description of a character or a setting, but you have to picture it. How you picture a person, a place, or thing based on a description will be very different than from how your friend pictures it or even how the author pictures it. On the same page in the Epoch Times, there's an article called Seasonal Delights, Summer in Literature, and it's talking about some poems and stories that are especially poignant for this time of year, this summer. It starts with talking about perhaps the most famous is William Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, which begins, Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer's lease hath all too short a date. It also describes another poem, one by Emily Bronte, which is Moonlight, Summer Moonlight, and this describes a beautiful summer night. The warm, calm, peaceful atmosphere. Mark Twain paint a very vivid picture of the beauty of the Old South in his work. Although it was merely the backdrop to the adventures of the characters, he did spare some words to depict the scenery which he loved as a boy. John Muir's My First Summer in the Sierra. His description is really beautiful of real nature that he saw, rather than fiction. He's humbled by the beauty of the Yosemite Dome and all the nature around him. Finally, it mentions L.M. Montgomery's Anne's House of Dreams. Now this is the same Anne, Anne Shirley, which you may know from Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery's most famous novel, which she wrote in 1908. This Canadian author was describing the beautiful Prince Edward Island where she lived, and where she set her heroine's first adventures. Speaking of works which I read in school which inspired me to read more, Anne of Green Gables was the first of eight books in a series about Anne Shirley, starting when she's an 11-year-old orphan just coming to live with a kindly pair of unmarried siblings who meant to adopt a boy, but are sent a girl by mistake. They end up loving her and raising her. Anne of Green Gables is one of the most popular and widely read novels ever written. However, it wasn't the only work about this popular character, Anne Shirley, which L.M. Montgomery ever wrote. It was only the first in what would eventually be 11 works which Montgomery wrote about this character. The whole Anne series includes eight novels and three other collected works of story. The extra works are Chronicles of Avonlea, Further Chronicles of Avonlea, and Quotes from the Blythes. However, of the eight novels, she only wrote six in chronological order. These were Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, Anne's House of Dreams, Rainbow Valley, and Rhea of Ingleside. She wrote these between 1908 and 1921. The original Anne of Green Gables takes place in the late Victorian era. In 1923, 25, and 27, she wrote one book in each of these years about a She was first introduced in the novel from 1923, Emily of New Moon. I've read these three books as well, and they have a distinct beauty to them. They really are charming, and I would recommend them to anyone who likes the Anne of Green Gables series or even just the first book. Maybe a little less strong-minded than Anne, she's even more of a dreamer, and it focuses a lot on her writing as well. She has some interesting romantic adventures as well, and the first book especially focuses on Emily and a group of three friends, two boys and another girl. After writing these three books, Ella Montgomery went back to the Anne of Green Gables series and wrote two additional novels to fill in times in Anne's life that she hadn't really covered. These were the fourth and sixth books in the series chronologically, according to the timeline of Anne's life. They were Anne of Windy Poplars, which is about her time when she's studying at a girls' school, and she stays at a beautiful house called Windy Poplars, and Anne of Ingleside, which is the name that she and her husband give to their home. So that's more about her days as a young wife, then leading to Rainbow Valley, which is about her children, and Ria of Ingleside, which is about her eldest daughter. It's been years since I've read any of these books, but just thinking about them, it's like I can see the pictures in my mind. I can visualize these scenes like they're places where I actually went, just from imagining it in my mind's eye. And I remember how much fun it was to grab another one of the books in my little eight-book collection and dive in to see what was the latest adventure which Anne would be having, especially for girls, because they're about these two lovely young heroines who follow their dreams and they enjoy being writers, which I like because I've always wanted to be a writer too, and how to remain true to themselves and have a sense of integrity and strong moral values, as well as following their dreams. I also love the way that Montgomery would weave in these side characters who, although they may only appear in one book, maybe even half of one book, were very alive and real, and I'm sure she based many of them on people she knew or scenarios which she observed in real life. I think it's great that there's a day specifically for book lovers. It's great for authors as well, because where would writers be if there weren't people to enjoy and love their musings and their dreams and beautiful ideas? This article about Book Lovers Day concludes with some ideas for how to celebrate. It suggests throwing a party, because it's going to be on a Friday this year, so you can kick off the weekend with a festivity of books. Maybe have a backyard barbecue or some kind of a dinner party with drinks and hors d'oeuvres and share books. You could have a book-oriented event like having some games of literary charades, or you could maybe have trivia, or have a book white elephant where each person brings a book wrapped up in tissue paper and you exchange them. There are all sorts of fun things you could do at a book party, or just go to your local library or bookstore like the author describes he's going to do on that day. Maybe share a book with a friend or someone else who might love it. And you can always opt to finish up National Book Lovers Day simply by silencing the phone, tucking in on that sofa, and putting a book inside yourself. That's a reference to a beautiful poem which the author quoted earlier in the work. It's by Julia Donaldson, and it's a children's poem called I think it's a good way to conclude discovery and exploration of celebrating books. Thank you for spending this time with me. I hope this encourages you to maybe pick up a book you've been wanting to read that's been on your shelf for years and dive into it, or perhaps revisit an old classic that you've loved and want to read again. If you enjoyed this video, I hope you'll like it. Maybe leave a comment and tell us what your favorite books are, and subscribe to the channel, as well as share this video with your friends to encourage them to celebrate National Book Lovers Day.