Win a SONY Reader. It’s as easy as sharing your emotions.
Therese Walsh on Nov 16 2009 | Filed under: Contest
Digital Influence Group contacted me recently on behalf of SONY. Would I be interested in giving away a SONY Reader Pocket Edition™ valued at $199.99 on Writer Unboxed? If I agreed, I would also receive a reader, as compensation for our participation. Win-win!
The reason for the promo is to introduce SONY’s Words Move Me website to a larger readership. The site’s goal, according to SONY is “to celebrate the words that move us and to share our reading experiences with others.” Visit the Words Move Me site and you’ll have the opportunity to create an account, then insert moments or memories you have about books that touched you. What emotions did they evoke?
Digital Influence Group asked me to participate, so I registered at Words Move Me, then considered which books have touched me and why. I chose five to share–some tried-and-true, some new–and mentioned a range of emotions, which you can see for yourself here.
So how can YOU win a SONY Reader? No purchase necessary to enter or win. Odds of winning are not increased by a purchase. Instead, you just have to share with us here in comments three literary memories and how they made you feel. Be sure you mention books’ titles and authors. One winner will be chosen from all valid comments left between now and Friday, November 20th, and will be announced next Monday.
Once you’ve submitted your comments, why not check out the Words Move Me website for yourself? Read through others’ comments or add your own. The site really is a great way to share literary experiences with others who love to read. And SONY didn’t even ask me to say that.
Good luck, everyone!
Kathleen Bolton
Therese Walsh
Porter Anderson
Dan Blank
Carleen Brice
Sarah Callender
Lisa Cron
Keith Cronin
Bill Ferris
Dave King
Robin LaFevers
Donald Maass
Sophie Masson
Jael McHenry
Jan O'Hara
Debbie Ohi
Barbara O'Neal
Ray Rhamey
Chuck Sambuchino
John Vorhaus
Julianna Baggott
Brunonia Barry
Sharon Bially
Anna Elliott
Anne Greenwood Brown
Tracy Hahn-Burkett
Suzannah Windsor Freeman
Kristan Hoffman
Jeanne Kisacky
Juliet Marillier
Julia Munroe Martin
Annie Neugebauer
Crystal Patriarche
Erika Robuck
M.J. Rose
Allison Winn Scotch
Lydia Sharp
Elisabeth Weed
Heather Webb
Denise Falvo
Therese Walsh
Vaughn Roycroft
Kim Downes Bullock
Valerie P. Chandler
Heather Reid
Jan O'Hara
Liz Michalski
Kathleen Bolton
Jessica Brockmole
Erika Liodice
Donald Maass
Victoria Mixon
Therese Walsh
Suzanne Anderson
Keetha DePriest
Dee DeTarsio 
Amy Sue Nathan
Colleen Turner
Bernadette Phipps-Lincke on 
First, ” A Wrinkle In Time” by Madeleine L’Engle. All of the characters in this exciting and imaginative story spoke to me, but none more so than Charles Wallace. He remains my all-time favorite literary character. L’Engle presented a character that was extraordinary even though everyone else perceived him as less than normal. He was the literary equivalent of Clark Kent to me.
Second, “A Prayer For Owen Meany” by John Irving. This was the book that had everything. It had substance, meaning, drama, suspense, wonderfully complicated characters, and it made me LAUGH OUT LOUD.
Third, “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison. I didn’t read this classic until I was an adult, but it is the book that defined for me what the the best stories are — stories that resonate with everyone regardless of race, religion, age or sex.
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What an intriguing assignment! After giving it some thought, my top three selections surprised me.
I am a homeschooling mother of three young children and I look the part: I drive a minivan, I cook everything from scratch, I have long hair and I wear a long denim skirt. We spend our days exploring nature, and playing phonics games. I like peace and I hate war. So imagine my surprise when I realized that the three literary works which have had the greatest impact on me are all war-related!
On The Beach is a fictitious work by Nevil Shute that chronicles the story of the last few people remaining on earth after a nuclear holocaust. Shute does a delightful job intertwining the stories of several people so that I felt like I knew and could be friends which each one of the characters. His descriptions are vivid and gave me the illusion that I was there in the book, experiencing what his characters were experiencing. The characters all live in Australia. They know that everyone else in the world is dead and the nuclear fallout that will kill them all is heading their way. At one point a military ship’s captain sails to America to inspect what remains there. I felt so depressed as he describes walking through one small town and seeing no one left alive. He looks in houses and sees that people crawled into bed and waited there to die. At one point he turns off a Barber’s neon sign which was left on. America is empty and there is no need for the sign to stay on. This only foreshadows what happens to Australia by the end of the novel. When the nuclear fallout finally reaches Australia it makes people so ill that they either die from radiation or they kill themselves. The ship’s captain drowns himself with the ship. I cried as his beloved watches from the shore and swallows deathly pills as she watches his ship sink. The worst scene for me in the book – both when I read it as a teenager and now as a mother – was reading about a family with a 10 month old baby. The mother and baby are particularly ill from radiation and, not wanting to watch them die and have to live another few days without them, the father helps the mother prepare to die (change her night gown and climb into bed), brings the baby to her and all three swallow the pills together that will end their lives. By the time this happens, I absolutely wanted to throw up. The worst of it is, that throughout the book Shute makes it clear that this is not a natural disaster. This is something that people did to each other, themselves and innocent bystanders through their hatred for each other.
Rilla of Ingleside is Lucy Maud Montgomery’s final book in the endearing Anne of Green Gables series, but this book is much darker than any of the others. Published in 1921, this is the story of Rilla – Anne’s teenage daughter – during the years of World War One. Incidentally, I heard in a university course that this is the only fictitious book by a Canadian woman to address the issue of the role of Canadian women who remained on the homefront during the war. With the war being so fresh in her own mind when she wrote this book, Montgomery does an incredible job of portraying the torture that mothers, wives and sisters went through not knowing what their loved ones were doing overseas. When Anne’s middle son dies, I was as horrified as if he had been my own neighbor. (After all, I’d followed his childhood through the previous books in the series.) When the youngest son enlists in the army shortly after his brother’s death, I felt as frightened as his mother and sisters that he would be killed in action. As a reader I felt as helpless to prevent him from enlisting as the Canadian women must have felt when they watched their loved ones follow their sense of duty and enlist. Anne’s oldest son goes missing in action and and I suffered as anxious as the parents as the chapters go by with no word from him. And when he finally comes home I was so happy and relieved that I had tears streaming down my cheeks.
Once Upon A Town by Bob Greene is another story chronicling the response of women on the homefront to war. This is the phenomenal true story of the women who lived in and near North Platte, Nebraska. Coincidentally, I drove through North Platte and even spent the night there a few weeks before coming across this book. It is an uninspiring town in the middle of the prairie. You can drive for hours in any direction without seeing anything phenomenal. Apparently, what is extraordinary in that area of the country is the people! This was one of the most enjoyable, encouraging books I have ever read! The North Platte townsfolk heard a rumor that on the first Christmas after Pearl Harbor the soldiers from their town (coincidentally) would be coming through North Platte on the troop train. The townsfolk excitedly hurry to prepare Christmas gifts for their loved ones and take them to the station to await the troop train and get a glimpse of their husbands, brothers, fathers, for the ten minutes the troop trains will be able to stop in North Platte. I couldn’t help but share their shock and disappointment when it is the Kansas boys… strangers… who get off the train! Then, the most amazing thing happens. The townsfolk begin giving their gifts, which had been so lovingly prepared for their own relatives, to these boys. The town reasons that these boys are soldiers far from home and need the encouragement as badly as their own boys would have needed it. And thus, the North Platte Canteen is born. From then on through the continuation of the war, every soldier on every troop train is met with kindness, gifts and homemade food that the townsfolk sacrifice from their own daily rations. Greene interviews several of the people who worked at the canteen and several soldiers who passed through the canteen on their way to war and were forever touched by the greeting they received there. I could not help but feel warmed throughout this book and convinced that no matter how bad things in the world seem to be, there will always be people somewhere to show kindness, grace, and love.
Thank you for hosting this contest. Just like we are told never to judge a book by its cover, I am reminded that we should never judge a person by what he or she appears to be. That person may be a young girl who has not come of age yet, (such as in Rilla of Ingleside), average people in an uninteresting little Nebraskan town, or just an ordinary mom… even when that person happens to be myself!
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Three literary memories? Just three? But there are so many! All right, narrowing it down…
1) R.A. Nelson’s Teach Me – Nelson captured how it feels to have your heart broken for the first time so perfectly. Reading it, I felt like I was in high school again, with all the drama, angst, self-discovery… (though I must say, I was never as sophisticated as any of the characters in the book when I was their age.)
2) Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice – Lizzy is probably my all-time favourite heroine. I felt like I’d found someone I would want to be friends with in real life, someone who was so real she could jump off the page. I loved Darcy, I hated Darcy, I loved Darcy… it is still my all-time favourite romance.
3) Gregory Maguire’s Wicked – I sobbed at the ending. The book made me remember why it’s important not to judge others and that everyone has their own story. Plus, most of the time, it was a lot of fun.
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It’s great of Sony to do this. Picking out only 3 books, near impossible.
1. To Kill a Mockingbird — I read it in 8th grade, an assigned book. I fell so in love with the words and the characters that I was hugely disappointed in the movie when the teacher showed it in class. It took years for me to see the brilliance of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch.
2. The Little Engine That Could — This was a book I read endlessly as a child. The message is pure and simple and it’s a motto that continues to come to mind with every goal I set for myself.
3. The In Death series by JD Robb (Nora Roberts) — Although I love all of Nora Robert’s books, it was Eve Dallas that I’ve connected most to. I’ve never read a character who is a survivor of horrendous abuse written so perfectly and realistically.
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Thanks for all entries! The contest is now closed. I’ll announce the winner on Monday.
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[...] to SONY for the terrific giveaway, and thanks to all who commented in the SONY Reader contest, sharing memorable literary moments. Be sure to check out SONY’s Words Move Me site, too, [...]
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