Booking Through Thursday: Current

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On Thursday, September 23rd, Booking through Thursday asked:

What are you reading right now? What made you choose it? Are you enjoying it? Would you recommend it? (And, by all means, discuss everything, if you’re reading more than one thing!)

I have a stack of books I have to review that is growing exponentially this week, but I’m reading three of them at once. I’m almost done with When Life Throws You Lemons, Make Cranberry Juice, by Shari Bookstaff, midway through The Wedding Gift, by Kathleen McKenna (I’m really enjoying it, but I’m savoring it because I love the tone she uses.), and I’m about three chapters into Key Lime Pie, by Josi Kilpack (and with a title like that it should have come with an actual key lime pie.)

I have more to review after that, but once I get a break, I’m planning to rediscover Dick Francis, because even though his mysteries involve violence, I’m in the mood for slightly befuddled Englishmen who smell of leather and horse tack and drink tea and stout between races, and fumble their love affairs, and, oh yes, solve crime. I tend to read a lot more mysteries in autumn. It might be the weather, or it might just be that’s what’s available.

And speaking of mysteries, I have Sara Paretsky’s latest V.I. Warshawski novel on the Kindle, and I’m trying hard to resist the urge to start THAT because I have to, Have To, HAVE TO, finish the review stack, first.

Booking Through Thursday: Day and Night

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On Thursday, September 16th, Booking through Thursday asked:

“I couldn’t sleep a wink, so I just read and read, day and night … it was there I began to divide books into day books and night books,” she went on. “Really, there are books meant for daytime reading and books that can be read only at night.” — Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, p. 103.

Do you divide your books into day and night reads? How do you decide?

For me, any spare moment is a good time to read, so no, I don’t divide my books into daytime vs. nighttime reading, but I do tend to have some titles I’m willing to travel with, and some I don’t.

Maybe it’s my version of my grandmother’s admonishment to always wear clean underwear, in case you’re ever in an accident, but there are some books I won’t read outside the safe confines of my house, and other’s I’ll proudly carry with me. For example, Harry Potter books generally stay home, and not only because they’re bulky, as do the occasional Silhouette romance novel I’ll admit to reading, but novels like Sarah’s Key, a recent favorite, I’ll carry with me everywhere.

Now that I’m a proud Kindle owner, carrying books is easier, because I have just one thin piece of technology to port around, although I have to wonder if the people who write car insurance quotes are keeping up with our addiction to such techy toys when they generate pricing. I know that some police forces, the one in Cincinnati, OH, are leaving security warnings on cars around town, reminding people to take their computers, cell phones, eBook readers and GPS devices with them (or at least hide them in the trunk), when they leave home, but it’s got to be a nightmare when break-ins do occur and there are those gadgets to catalog.

Speaking of books on the road – and car insurance nightmares – my stepfather was prone to visiting library discard sales and taking home pretty much anything he deemed interesting. At some point my mother issued an edict – he wasn’t allowed to take anything else home – so he kept stashing books in the trunk of his car, to the point where the weight of them made the car sluggish and non-responsive – an accident waiting to happen. Of course, this would be the car that was stolen by a couple of kids who just wanted to take a joy ride…it was eventually found with a jammed ignition and a note from the kids, “This car sucks.”

Insurance paid for all the repairs.
The books were still in the trunk.

Booking Through Thursday: First Time

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On Thursday, August 5th, Booking through Thursday asked:

What is the first book you remember reading? What about the first that made you really love reading?

As usual I’m a day late in answering the BTT prompt. Ah, well, I don’t do it to share my link, I do it because I like the questions. In this respect, internet memes are sort of like patio furniture – nice to have there waiting when you need it, but not something you can’t function without.

Books, on the other hand, are essential to life – or at least, they are to my life.

I don’t remember learning to read. I don’t remember struggling with words. I’m not even entirely certain what my very first book was. I’m not sure if it’s the first book I ever read, but certainly one of the earliest books in my memory is A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. Some of the poems are silly, some are still wonderful but all are indelibly engraved on my heart, if not entirely in my memory.

I remember reciting some of those poems with my grandmother, “I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, and what can be the use of him is more than I can see…” She always smelled of summer: roses and violets and Oil of Olay, and her voice never devolved into baby talk, but she did accent words from time to time.

The book that really made me love the written word though, is more difficult to identify. Was it A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, or should the honors go to Judith Viorst’s Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day? What about Little Women, which was the book that ended my nightly reading hour with my mother, in favor of reading to myself?

I come from a family of voracious readers. Sometimes we exchange books, or book recommendations; sometimes our tastes diverge, but no matter what, most of us, given a quiet hour and a mug of tea or coffee, can be found reading.

A Child's Garden of Verses

Booking Through Thursday: Beach Buddies

It’s still Wednesday, which means I can still answer last week’s BTT prompt before they post this week’s!

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On Thursday, July 29h, Booking through Thursday asked:

Which fictional character (or group of characters) would you like to spend a day at the beach with? Why would he/she/they make good beach buddies?

Despite the fact that just being her friend is likely to make one’s homeowners insurance rates skyrocket, I’d love to hang at the beach with Clare Cosi from Cleo Coyle’s Coffeehouse Mysteries. Clare is roughly my age, though as a parent she skews older, shares my obsession with coffee and gourmet cooking, and isn’t above falling for the guy who isn’t the entire world’s idea of sex on a stick.

For that matter, if her ghostly friend Jack came along for the ride, I wouldn’t mind a day at the beach with Coyle’s other heroine (written other a different name, of course) Penny, from the Haunted Bookshop series.

As to more general fiction….any of Jennifer Wiener’s lead characters would be a blast to hang out with (though I haven’t read her most recent yet – it’s coming up next on my stack), and I fantasize about having the YaYas as a bunch of affectionate aunties.

I’m sure if I were writing this at a brighter time of day, I’d have radically different answers, however.

Or maybe not.

Booking Through Thursday: Discussion

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On Thursday, July 8th, Booking through Thursday asked:

Do you have friends and family to share books with? Discuss them with? Does it matter to you?

When I was little, my mother and I had an unofficial race to see who be the first to read each month’s issue of Ms. Magazine. I usually won, simply because I got home to check the mail before she got home from work, and I usually got in trouble for taking her magazine without permission. By the time I left for college, however, we’d learned to share our books, and to this day, I’ll read things she recommends and vice versa. In fact, most of what she reads lately comes from the boxes I send to her every few weeks – her magazines, and my paperbacks (once they’ve been read).

While my mother and I can talk about anything from the latest pronexin reviews to my novel ideas and her newest purse design, we rarely discuss the books we read, though a recent exception was Melissa Gilbert’s memoir, which we both liked because in it Gilbert comes across as a real person, with real flaws.

But I have other friends with whom I can discuss literature. For example, my good friend Deb, shares my love of Charlaine Harris, so we share Sookie Stackhouse and Aurora Teagarden novels, as well as other books, and often talk about them.

What I have never done, however, is join a book club, not because I wouldn’t love more people to discuss books with, but because I read so quickly, that I can’t imagine finishing a book, and then having to wait days or weeks to talk about it.

Booking Through Thursday: Now or Then

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On Thursday, June 17th, Booking through Thursday asked:

Do you prefer reading current books? Or older ones? Or outright old ones? (As in, yes, there’s a difference between a book from 10 years ago and, say, Charles Dickens or Plato.)

I read a bit of everything, and go through cycles where I only want period pieces, only want contemporary novels, only want classic literature, etc.

I grew up reading the classics, in more ways than one. My grandfather’s eclectic collection of books, some in the shelves behind his recliner, and others on the shelves above the bed in the room where I slept most summers (the end room, with the psychedelic flower wallpaper) included two thick red hardcovers that either never had dust jackets, or for which the dust jackets had long since been replaced. I don’t remember the actual titles of those books, but I know at least one of them was published by the folks at the Readers’ Digest. They were both collections of fairy tales – and I don’t mean the Disney fare we’re accustomed to today. These stories included “Snow White,” but they also had “Snow White and Rose Red,” and stories about little goose girls, and a girl who had her hands hanging over her shoulder. Gruesome stuff. I don’t know what happened to those books, but really wish I had taken them when I had the chance.

From those, I moved on to real classics – I remember reading Jane Eyre during a violent summer storm, between bites of cold, creamy, coffee ice cream, while my grandparents watched the news. I read a lot of Alcott and Twain, Melville, Hawthorne, and Cervantes when I was young…but I had no problem switching between, say, Tom Sawyer and Harriet the Spy.

Today, my tastes remain just as diverse. Last summer, I started re-reading Jane Austen’s work, because I’d never really appreciated it before, but this summer I’m reading contemporary novels about people summering in (on?) Nantucket.

I don’t have a preference for any particular era, as long as the characters are well drawn, the story compelling, and my mind free enough from distraction to enjoy whatever I’m reading.

Booking Through Thursday: Signature

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On Thursday, June 10th, Booking through Thursday asked:

Do signed copies excite you? Tempt you? Delight you? Or does it not matter to you?

While there are a few authors of whom I am truly a fan, and not just a mere reader, I’m not the type to wait in line all night, so I can appear before them with bad breath and dark circles under my eyes, in order to get one of a limited number of signed copies.

However, while I don’t generally collect autographs, I will, if presented with the opportunity, opt for a signed copy of a book whenever possible. I don’t own a lot of signed copies, though my collection is growing lately. My copy of Robert Englund’s memoir is signed (and has a doodle), as does my copy of Michael Perry’s latest, Coop, but some of my favorite books, by some of my favorite authors (my entire Laurie R. King collection, for example) are not signed and it doesn’t mean I love them any less. (The lack of a Laurie R. King signature is somewhat mitigated by the signed photo of Jeremy Brett that I’ve had since I was thirteen or fourteen. Fans of a certain fictional detective will understand why. )

One of my favorite signed copies is the galley I have of Cleo Coyle’s coffeehouse mystery from last year – I love her work, and her recipes, and I enjoyed getting to read that before it was released.

In truth, I’d rather have the book than the signature on it.

Booking through Thursday: Long and Short of It

Yet again, I am dreadfully late at responding to BTT.

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On Thursday, May 27th, Booking through Thursday asked:

Which do you prefer? Short stories? Or full-length novels?

In my world, having nothing to read is just as bad as not taking vitamins. I need to have a book or two near the tub, the toilet, and the bed, as well as various other places in the house, so asking me to choose between novels and short stories is difficult. If it’s well written, I like it.

After further thought, however, I decided that while I like short stories in small doses, I much prefer novels, because they give me the time to really submerge myself in a story, and breathe in a completely different world for a while. Short stories entertain me, but they never really give me the satisfaction I need.

Booking Through Thursday: Bedside

I never answered last week’s Booking Through Thursday, so am doing so now, to get it in under the wire:

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On Thursday, May 27th, Booking through Thursday asked:

What books do you have next to your bed right now? How about other places in the house? What are you reading?

My book collection is rather eclectic. I have books that I’ve had since childhood, books that I kept that still have notices reminding me when I could sell textbooks back to the bookstore for cash, and books that I bought and never read.

My to-be-read pile lives in a combination of piles on my nightstand and books still in Barnes and Noble bags, waiting for me. I am embarrassed to admit that I bought a second copy of Three Cups of Tea a few weeks ago, forgetting that I already had a copy in my TBR queue.

Tonight, sparked by this question, I went through the stacks, and listed, in no particular order the books that I have yet to read. Or the bulk of them, anyway. There are others, because sometimes something appeals to me in the moment and then by the time I get to it my mood has changed. It’s not a problem though, because eventually everything does get read.

But anyway, the list:

  • Barefoot, by Elin Hilderbrand – IN PROGRESS
  • Girl in Hyacinth Blue, by Susan Vreeland
  • Ground Up, by Michael Idov
  • The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen, by Syrie James
  • Acedia & Me, by Kathleen Norris
  • Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin
  • Touchstone, by Laurie R. King
  • Muse and Reverie, by Charles de Lint
  • Changes, by Jim Butcher
  • Hope in a Jar, by Beth Harbison
  • Lunch in Paris, by Elizabeth Bard
  • The Last Song, by Nicholas Sparks
  • The House on Oyster Creek, by Heidi Jon Schmidt
  • The Blue Bistro, by Elin Hilderbrand

So, what’s on YOUR list?

Booking Through Thursday: Influences

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On Thursday, May 13th, Booking through Thursday asked:

Are your book choices influenced by friends and family? Do their recommendations carry weight for you? Or do you choose your books solely by what you want to read?

While I’d like to think I make all my own decisions, the reality is that everything I use, from anti wrinkle cream to books to hair styling products is at least partly influenced by my friends – we talk about it all, you know?

True confession: I’m nearly 40 and my mother still has the power to destroy me if she doesn’t like my hair, clothes, or home decor.

Books however, are the area where I’m least influenced. Partly this is because I tend to read very quickly, when I’m in a reading mood, and partly it’s because I usually know what I want, but sometimes, my friend Deb will get a book to review, and hand it off to me when she’s done, and I’ll often do the same. I tend to hand off more books than I receive, but that, again, is because I read quickly.

And because I’m an addict, and I like to BUY my books, because the ones from the library smell like old people, and not the kind of old people I want my books to smell like.

Sorry for the rambling answer.

But there you have it.