The Nobel Prize for Literature is awarded to Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.
Newbery Medal for children’s literature goes to Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars.
Children’s/YA Published in 1971:
The Shrinking of Treehorn by Florence Parry Heide. Reviewed by Nicola at Back to Books.
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien. Winner of the Newbery Medal in 1972.
The Lorax by Dr. Seuss.
I’ve been interested for a while in reading books about Africa. If you look at the top of this page you will see a link to my pages of Books about Africa, sorted by region and then by country. So I decided to get organized in 2012 and sponsor a challenge for myself and anyone else who wants to join in.
I (we) will be concentrating on Northern Africa this year. It’s a good place to start because I think we could all afford to know a little more about this part of the world from which so much of our heritage comes and in which so much has been happening lately. In my template, there are eleven countries in Northern Africa: Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Sudan, Tunisia, and Western Sahara. (South Sudan is a brand-new country in this region, and of course books set in South Sudan count, too.) The challenge is to read eleven books either set in this region or written by authors from this region in 2012. I hope to read read at least one adult book and one children’s book from each country. The children’s books may be more difficult to find.
You are welcome to try any one of the following challenges—or make up your own.
1. North Africa Tour: Read at least one book from each of the eleven countries in Northern Africa. Since the challenge runs for eleven months, this challenge would entail reading one book per month.
2. African Country Concentration: Read five books set in one of the countries of Northern Africa or five books by authors from one of the countries of Northern Africa. Example: Read five books by Egyptian authors.
3. Children’s Challenge: Read five to eleven children’s books set in Northern Africa. Adults are welcome to do this challenge either with a child or not.
The Northern Africa Challenge begins on January 1, 2012 and ends on December 1, 2012. If you choose to read eleven books for this challenge, that will be one book per month. You can still join. If you would like to join me in this challenge in 2012, please leave a comment. I will keep a list of challenge participants in the sidebar, and I will link to your reviews, if you write them and send me links, on my Africa pages. (If you already have book reviews on your blog related to Northern Africa, those books don’t count for the challenge. However, if you send me the links at sherryDOTearlyAtgmailDOTcom, I will add your reviews to my Northern Africa page.)
Have you read any books in February set in North Africa or written by North African authors? Have you reviewed those books on your blog? If so, please leave a link here so that we can share our journeys through the countries of northern Africa.
On July 4, 1970 Casey Kasem hosted “American Top 40” on radio for the first time. I cannot tell a lie; in high school I spent every Sunday afternoon listening to Casey Kasem count down the top 40 songs on Billboard’s Hot 100 Singles chart each week.
The first #1 song on American Top 40’s inaugural 1970 broadcast was “Mama Told Me Not to Come” by Three Dog Night.
January 4, 1972. The first scientific hand-held calculator (HP-35) is introduced.
January 30, 1972. 10,000 demonstrators defy a British government ban on public assemblies and march through the streets of Derry in Northern Ireland, protesting against the policy of internment without trial of suspected IRA terrorists by the British authorities. British troops confront the rock-throwing protestors, and the British use rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons, then real bullets to break up the crowd. 13 men and youths are killed and 17 wounded.
February 21, 1972. President Nixon of the United States goes to China to meet with Chairman Mao Zedong and Prime Minister Zhou Enlai. Nixon urges CHina to join the United States in a “long march together” to achieve world peace.
April 10, 1972. The U.S. and the Soviet Union join some 70 nations in signing the Biological Weapons Convention, an agreement to ban biological warfare.
May, 1972. In Burundi a genocidal attack against the Hutu begins; more than 500,000 Hutus die.
August 12, 1972. The last American ground troops leave South Vietnam, trusting the South Vietnamese themselves to continue the fight against the communist North. The North Vietnamese army, however, is steadily advancing toward Saigon in the south in spite of the bombing of supply routes by American B-52 bombers.
September 5, 1972. At the Sumer Olympics in Munich, Germany, members of the Israeli Olympic team are taken hostage and eventually killed by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September.
October, 1972. The United States and the USSR sign a strategic arms limitation treaty (SALT) to reduce the number of atomic missiles in both countries.
November 29, 1972. Atari kicks off the first generation of video games with the release of their arcade version of Pong, the first game to achieve commercial success.
December 30, 1972. President Richard M. Nixon orders a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam as the North Vietnamese show a renewed interest in peace negotiations.
Archie comics had been around for years, since 1941, but in 1969 The Archies, a Saturday morning cartoon band that actually consisted of a group of studio musicians managed by Don Kirshner, has their one and only #1 hit song. The Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar” was the 1969 number-one single of the year in the U.S., UK, and South Africa.
January 2, 1971. The United States bans radio and television ads for cigarettes. Here’s a montage of cigarette ads from the 1960’s:
January 15, 1971. The Aswan High Dam officially opens in Egypt.
February 13, 1971. Backed by American air and artillery support, South Vietnamese troops invade Laos in order to root out Vietcong fighters who have fled across the border.
February 20, 1971. Idi Amin, former boxing champion and army leader, declares himself president of Uganda. He bans all political activities and elections for the next five years.
April 17, 1971. Libya, Syria and Egypt sign an agreement to form a confederation.
April 21, 1971. Nineteen-year-old Jena-Claude “Baby-Doc” Duvalier succeeds his father “Papa Doc” as president of Haiti.
July, 1971. The first combined heart and lung transplant is performed in a South African hospital.
August, 1971. Internment without trial is introduced in Northern Ireland. Over 300 republicans are arrested secretly in pre-dawn raids. Some loyalists are later arrested. British troops begin clearing operations in Belfast following the worst rioting in years.
October 27, 1971. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is renamed Zaire. General Mobutu becomes Mobutu Sésé Seko and forced all his citizens to adopt African names and many cities were also renamed.
December 16, 1971. Pakistan surrenders to India after a two-week war. East Pakistan becomes the independent nation of Bangladesh.
January 15, 1970. After a 32-month fight for independence from Nigeria, Biafran forces surrender to the Nigerian government.
April 17, 1970. Apollo 13, crippled by an explosion in its service module early in its flight, returns to the earth safely, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. The three astronauts on board are safe and in good health.
April 29, 1970. The U.S. invades Cambodia to hunt out the Viet Cong; widespread, large antiwar protests occur in the U.S.
September 1, 1970. An assassination attempt against King Hussein of Jordan precipitates the Black September crisis, war between Palestinian guerillas and Jordanian troops.
September 27, 1970. King Hussein of Jordan and Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yassir Arafat sign a peace agreement to end the war between Jordanian troops and Palestinian guerrillas.
October, 1970. Anwar Sadat becomes president of Egypt after the death of Gamel Abdel Nasser. Sadat is expected to take a more moderate attitude toward Israel and the U.S.
October 9, 1970. The Khmer Republic is officially proclaimed in Cambodia. The Khmer Republic is a right-wing pro-United States military-led government headed by General Lon Nol and Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak that took power in the March 18, 1970 coup against Prince Norodom Sihanouk, then the country’s head of state.
October 22-24, 1970. Chilean army commander René Schneider is shot in Santiago; the government declares a state of emergency. Schneider dies October 25th. On October 24, Salvador Allende is elected President of Chile.
November 13, 1970. Hafez al-Assad comes to power in Syria, following a military coup within the Ba’ath party. Assad will rule Syria for the next thirty years until his death in June, 2000.
November 13, 1970. 500,000 people are feared dead after a tidal wave hits East Pakistan (Bangladesh).
“Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you’ll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding.†~Stephen King
Welcome to the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon. Here’s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can link to your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.
Then on Friday night/Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.
After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.
Powered by… Mister Linky’s Magical Widgets.
February 4, 1969. In Cairo, Yasser Arafat is elected Palestine Liberation Organization leader at the Palestinian National Congress.
March 7, 1969. 70 year old Golda Meir, head of the Israeli Labor Party, becomes Israel’s new prime minister.
April 4, 1969. In Houston, Dr. Denton Cooley implants the first temporary artificial heart in a man, Hanskell Karp, who lives for 65 hours.
April 9, 1969. The supersonic airliner Concorde 002 takes to the air in the UK for a maiden flight of 21 minutes.
July 21, 1969. Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to walk on the moon.
August 15, 1969. The British government sends troops into Derry, Northern Ireland to restore the peace between groups of Protestant and Catholic street fighters in the war-torn city. Troops will also be sent to Belfast to break up fighting there.
August 15-17, 1969. The world’s biggest rock festival is held at Woodstock in upstate New York. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, The Who, and Santana are a few of he many performers at the festival.
September, 1969. North Vietnamese president Ho Chi Minh dies as the war in Vietnam continues.
September, 1969. In Libya, a group of army officers, led by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, seize powere while King Idris of Libya is out of the country. Gaddafi will rule Libya until his death in 2011.
September 28, 1969. The Social Democrats and the Free Democrats receive a majority of votes in the German parliamentary elections, and decide to form a common government. Willy Brandt becomes chancellor, the first Social Democrat to be elected in 39 years.
October, 1969. Civil war rages in Nigeria as the rebel republic of Biafra fights for independence from Nigerian rule. 300,000 civilian refugees in Biafra are facing starvation as the Nigerian government has stopped Red Cross flights carrying relief aid. Nigeria says that the Biafran rebels are using the flights to get arms as well as food.
“Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.”~Marianne Moore
Of course, I am reminded of Anne of Green Gables whenever I read or hear mention of this poem.
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro’ the field the road runs by
To many-tower’d Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Thro’ the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.
By the margin, willow-veil’d
Slide the heavy barges trail’d
By slow horses; and unhail’d
The shallop flitteth silken-sail’d
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?
Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to tower’d Camelot:
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers “‘Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott”.
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the ‘curse’ may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
And moving thro’ a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot:
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village-churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls,
Pass onward from Shalott.
Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,
Or long-hair’d page in crimson clad,
Goes by to tower’d Camelot;
And sometimes thro’ the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror’s magic sights,
For often thro’ the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights,
And music, went to Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed;
“I am half-sick of shadows,” said
The Lady of Shalott.