Day 22 — conundrums + more conundrums

The idea for this one has been nagging at me for several days & many of the pairs popped (or rather worked their way) into my head as I drove home from work into the setting sun. The Poetic Factoid today is actually many Factoids in one — & picks up where the first poem leaves off (there was so much I couldn’t fit in to the top poem; hence part ii).

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the great moral conundrum of our time

Life gives us choices. Constantly.

From little easy ones like:  boxers or briefs.
Vampires or werewolves. Dogs or cats.
Chips with vinegar or sauce. Autumn or spring.
Reddit or Twitter, iPhone or Android.
Toilet paper over or under. Moon or sun.
Glass half full or half empty. Running marathon
or sitting on the sofa sensibly with a book.

To big hard ones like:  pineapple on pizza
Be rich or be in love. Be talented or popular
(obviously not everyone can be both like me).
Live by the ocean or in the mountains.
Cold pizza for breakfast or hot crumpets 
for dinner. Window or aisle. Sweet or savoury.
Fiction or non-fiction. Venice or Reykjavík.

& here’s where we arrive at the prime conundrum:
Rereading old favourites or trying out new books.

If you’re looking for some wise words of wisdom from me here to guide 
your way forwards, sorry to disappoint — I’ve yet to solve this myself.

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Day 22 Factoid — reading choices

Part ii: more reader-specific conundrums

Buying more books or reading the ones you have.
(Warning: this is a strawman option 
hence why it is first on the list)
Comfy at home or in a cozy cafe.
Morning or evening; day or night.
In bed or on couch. Silence or with music.
One book at a time or many books at once.
Indoors or outdoors. Hardcover or paperback.
Audio or physical. Sci-fi or fantasy. 
Or crime or romance or historical or thriller.
Or history or memoir or nature writing.
Series or standalones. Classics or new releases.

Tea or coffee or hot chocolate while reading
Or Sauv Blanc or whiskey or GnT or even water.

Day 2 – rereading + most read

Quite probably a topic I shall return to again & again …

five repeat offenders: re-reading

It is far, far better to read one book six times, at intervals, than to read six several books.
— D.H. Lawrence, Apocalypse

going back into the depths of time
Blyton survives despite mild dating dilemmas 
her Five will always be Famous

Anne of All the Different Idyllic 
19th Century Canadian Places*
glorious masterpieces all

for twenty years Tolkien was Christmas
holidays to me with repeated rereads
giving as much delight as presents under the tree

gosh, it’s getting hard down this end of the list
why did I set myself only 5 when 8 or a dozen 
would’ve enabled far more faves 

there’s newcomers like The Princess Bride
quirky Thursday Next, & Pullman’s Dark Materials
but I guess I must really mention oft-reread big guns

Austen outshines the Brontes; & Shakespeare, Dickens; 
earthy Lawrence over elegant F. Scott, & the Greek 
playwrights are repeatedly visited but all here are intimates

we are today overwhelmed with such quantities of books
but these are valuable as jewels, or a lovely picture, 
into which I can look deeper & deeper 

— & yet still have a profound experience every time

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Factoid 2 – best selling books

best sellers

several sites agree
on the three best-selling 
books in the world

the Holy Bible
the Harry Potter series 
Quotations from Chairman Mao

one i’ve read a couple of times
one at least seven
& one never

as Meatloaf semisang
two outta three ain’t bad

*yes I know they were written in the 20th century
but the first ones were set at the end of the 19th which sounds better so,
poetic license

Day 01 – firsts: reading + writing

April. Again. Therefore Na/GloPoWriMo 2025. It felt like it arrived with a rush. Today has been a week packed into a day already. But I’m looking forward to this year because … 

As in previous years I’m adopting a themes-based approach to Na/GloPoWriMo. And this year it’s something I should, by all rights, love doing since I’ve picked a theme I love, well, doing. My task is to write a reading or book-inspired poem every day. Happy is the man who makes his vocation his vacation & all that. Well, there we go. I’ve already written over a dozen reading/book inspired poems at intermittent stages in my life. So let’s make it official & see if we can get a chapbook out of it.

So the grist for this year’s mill will include: books, book memories, stories about books, lists of books, face books, book is revist often & some I’ve ben too scared too), fave reading quotes & fave book quotes (yes I keep a file of such things), book facts & reading stats, book covers, libraries, lending books, dream house plans which is basically any house with enough rooms to use 40 of them as libraries, book collecting, shopping for books, buying books, quirky topics I collect books on, disputes with parents on the number I books I own, and so on.

As previously II, since the project I have in mind may depend on the poems not being made public prior to their appearance I won’t necessarily be posting the entirety of each poem on my blog, but sometimes a [hopefully] tantalising snippet (many journals/comps/etc refuse to accept poems even if they’ve only been on personal Facebook pages or blogs with minimal subscribers). 

As a wonderful compensation for skimpy serious verse, I’ll be repeating my daily Poetic Factoid poem assignment from previous years — which if I’m honest — can produce better poems than the main event. Hahaha!

Day 1 – reading: act I

first memory reading 
hand written words 
on pieces of paper 
kept in toy box 
at grandparents’ house
sitting beneath 
dining room table 
under which 
we’d eat Christmas 
dinners for decades 
shuffling words 
into simple sentences 

— both acts forever imbued 
with everlasting magic 

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Factoid 1 – first known author

not Gilgamesh again

google tricked me today 
by answering who wrote the first book
not with the anticipated response  
the unknown author of Gilgamesh
but Enheduanna 
                             — a Mesopotamian 
high priestess of the moon (of course she is)
her name means “Ornament of Heaven”
author of 42 temple hymns, the myth
of Inanna & Ebih & 2 hymns to the love goddess
all composed three centuries prior to the Epic
& her name is known 
                                    — despite the anonymity 
of her contemporary poets’ works 
all of which pleases me greatly 
(aside from being forgotten today)
but nothing more than when 
                                                 — at the end of one hymn
she bitches about how difficult the creative process is

yep, writer’s block was a thing even back then