The Book Stacks

Equals my Booking Through Thursday reading list.

This week’s Booking Through Thursday question…

It’s a holiday weekend here in the U.S., so let’s keep today’s question simple–What are you reading? Anything special? Any particularly juicy summer reading?

It’s funny how things work out because I was meaning to put an updated “What I’m Reading” list up this week and, well, here you go! I love it when things work out like that.

Remember to play the Monday game for your chance to win an Aussie postcard from me.

If you would like to try your hand at reviewing, please feel free to contact me using the contact me button under the site description on the right. I’m more than happy to put up guest reviews. I’m also thinking of a best book review contest, but it’s just an idea floating around in my brain at this point.

Reading:
Savage Survival – Darrell Bain
In Bad Dreams – Horror Anthology – Edited by Mark Deniz and Sharyn Lilley
Xenocide - Orson Scott Card
Don’t You Marry the Mormon Boys – Janet Kay Jensen
Janeology – Karen Harrington

Going to Read:
Supernatural – Graham Hancock
Marwan: The Autobiography of a 9/11 Terrorist – Aram Schefrin
Sabriel – Garth Nix
Neutron Star – Short story collection – Larry Niven
Firebirds – Fantasy/Sci-fi Anthology – Edited by Sharyn November
The Lab – Jack Heath
Remote Control – Jack Heath
The Foreshadowing – Marcus Sedgwick
The Jaguar Legacy – Maureen Fisher
Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hilary Clinton – Kathleen Willey
To Truckee’s Trail – Celia Hayes
The Redemption of Althalus – David and Leigh Eddings
The Serpent Bride – Sara Douglass
Loving the Goddess Within – Nan Hawthorne
Bad Girls Club – Judy Gregerson
Stand – Debbie Williamson
Season of Sacrifice – Tristi Pinkston

Upcoming Reviews:
Crash! – Mayra Calvani
Eon – Greg Bear
Organic for Health – Sandy Powers
Sword Dancer – Jennifer Roberson

So what’s on your list?

Hello and welcome once more to Booking Through Thursday. Once more we have a question about books to think about. The question for last week (due to the site being down)…

Think about your favorite authors, your favorite books . . . what is it about them that makes you love them above all the other authors you’ve read? The stories? The characters? The way they appear to relish the taste of words on the tongue? The way they’re unafraid to show the nitty-gritty of life? How they sweep you off to a new, distant place? What is it about those books and authors that makes them resonate with you in ways that other, perfectly good books and authors do not?

One big thing that gets me on an author’s fan list is the characters and their relationships. Well done characters can have you sympathizing with them or hating them faster than you can blink and you don’t even know it. What they do, say and think are things I want to know and enjoy reading.

A good author also doesn’t let their writing overwhelm the story. The story always takes the main role and the writing just gets you to wherever the story is going. I don’t like it when authors get so caught up in the fact that they are writing that the story becomes secondary.

My favourite authors have a wonderful ability to take me to places that are familiar enough to give me a bit of footing but different enough to make me want to explore all the wonderful spaces the new world holds.

It’s time for Booking Through Thursday!

Have you ever been a member of a book club? How did your group choose (or, if you haven’t been, what do you think is the best way to choose) the next book and who would lead discussion?

Do you feel more or less likely to appreciate books if you are obliged to read them for book groups rather than choosing them of your own free will? Does knowing they are going to be read as part of a group affect the reading experience?

I was a member of a book club in high school, but it didn’t last for long due to lack of interest outside the little group of friends. We chose books by vote, really. We took suggestions and then voted on them. It was all pretty simple. As for who led discussions, it was the teacher who oversaw the club who would start things off, but we were a pretty talkative group of girls anyway, so it was easy.

I don’t think my appreciation for a book is influenced by if I have to read them or choose to read them. It’s the book that counts. In fact, I have ‘had’ to read certain books I wouldn’t have picked up otherwise and completely fallen in love with them.

Knowing that it is group reading influences my reading a bit because I tend to think about the book a bit more than usual. It’s not intimidating or otherwise distracting, though. It goes along the same lines of knowing I’m going to review a book on this site.

Hello and happy Thursday all!

I have probably mentioned this before, but I love Thursdays. One reason is because I get to answer the Booking Through Thursday question.

Here is the question for this week:

What is reading, anyway? Novels, comics, graphic novels, manga, e-books, audiobooks — which of these is reading these days? Are they all reading? Only some of them? What are your personal qualifications for something to be “reading” — why? If something isn’t reading, why not? Does it matter? Does it impact your desire to sample a source if you find out a premise you liked the sound of is in a format you don’t consider to be reading? Share your personal definition of reading, and how you came to have that stance.

(Two weeks late for Reading is Fundamental week, but, well…)

I’m probably rather boring when it comes to answering these questions. In my opinion, as long as it has words, it’s reading. I can read a novel, read my to-do list, read the list of ingredients and read a road sign. (Not all at the same time, mind you.) It’s all reading.

I prefer to think of things in terms of good reading, light reading, heavy reading, quick reading… A light and quick read is something I get through fast and doesn’t make me think too much. A heavy read can be short or long, but either way it makes me really think about things.

What do you think?

Remember to leave a comment with the link to your answer both her and on the BTT site.

Once again I have decided to take a break from Thursday Thirteens to participate in Booking Through Thursday. After a particularly stressful week (thank goodness Friday is coming), I’d rather answer some questions than think of a thirteen list.

I think you can all understand, right? Right. That’s what I thought. So please let me know if you are also participating in Booking Through Thursday by leaving your links in the comments section of this post.

On to the question!

Books and films both tell stories, but what we want from a book can be different from what we want from a movie. Is this true for you? If so, what’s the difference between a book and a movie?

The bottom line for me with either a book or a movie is I want to be swept away. I want the medium to use all the weapons in its arsenal to take me to a different place.

The difference between a book and a movie is the way they do this.

A movie can give you the sights, sounds, colours, and characters right there up on the screen. While you might think this would make it easier, that’s not always the case. Because it’s all presented to me right away, the story needs to be strong enough to engage me or I’m not going to pay attention.

Books have a few more ways to engage me, either with some description or other imagination-inspiring devices. I become engaged simply through the act of imagining how it all looks and what’s happening.

This can’t save a poor story, of course, but it is a less complicated way to make me pay attention.

Following up last week’s question about reading writing/grammar guides, this week, we’re expanding the question….

Anything at all?

If I don’t know how something works, I definitely read the manual. Only then, though. If I buy something new, I don’t go straight for the manual. The manual only comes in when I need a little help an guidance. But I figure it’s the fastest way to get something done/working, so why not use it?

I don’t by a lot of how-to or self help guides, though I do own a few. I guess the same sort of philosophy comes into play again – I don’t get it unless I need it. I’m not afraid to admit when I don’t know something.

I also thing quick guides, idiot’s guide, and complete idiot’s guide type books can be fun if you’re introducing yourself to a subject you’re not familiar with but interested in. I have a few ebooks that I got because of that. Things like massage, building a website, etc.

It’s like taking a 101 class without spending so much money! (And only one book to buy.)

Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments at the Booking Through Thursday site—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!

Courtesy of Booking Through Thursday

This prompt is courtesy of Booking Through Thursday.

Do your reading habits change in the Spring? Do you read gardening books? Even if you don’t have a garden? More light fiction than during the Winter? Less? Travel books? Light paperbacks you can stick in a knapsack?

Or do you pretty much read the same kinds of things in the Spring as you do the rest of the year?

When I first read this question, my immediate response was no, I don’t change my reading habits in spring. Who has seasonal reading habits? However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I actually do.

When spring comes around, I do start reading ‘lighter’ material like women’s fiction (not that all women’s fiction is ‘lighter reading’ – it just tends to be), shorter books in general (under or around two hundred pages), and books that are easy to put down and pick up again later. That sounds bad, but in the spring, I like my books to travel with me. Big novels with hard covers don’t exactly make easy travel material.

Spring is, after all, the time when I want to get out and about after spending my time primarily indoors tucked up in the warmth with my big, in depth novels. That is, until I realize once again that I am introverted and start reading in the house more often again. Hehe.

That’s not to say, however, that I won’t read big fat novels or murder mysteries in the spring. I just usually have a transition period of reading the light, easily transported novel.

How about you? What are your seasonal reading habits?

Hello, everyone. In case some of you are unfamiliar what I do on these discussion pieces, I went back to the beginning of Booking Through Thursday and am using those prompts. I’m hoping it will spark discussion here on site as well as attention for BTT for those who don’t know about it.

On to the questions!

Some people are like my uncle, and they read four or five books a week, every week. Some are like my father, and read four or five books in a year.

1. How many books do you read in a week? Month? Year?
2. What’s the best book or series of books you’ve read so far this year?
3. What’s the worst book you read this year? Did you finish it?

I’ve known a lot of people who go through books like nobody’s business. They read as much as often as possible.

Personally, I can be like that too, but it depends if I have an active writing work in progress going. I’m not keen on reading much when I’m working on a novel. You don’t want to subconsciously (or consciously, in some cases) ‘borrow’ things from the book you’re reading.

As far as the best book or series of books I’ve read so far this year… Well, seeing as it’s the beginning of the year, I’m going to read back and say Ender’s Game. I couldn’t read for a few days after reading that book because I had to sit and think about it and what it meant to me.

The worst book I read was Turtle Feet, Surfer’s Beat. Like I said in the review, she has a great cause so the book shouldn’t book you off supporting her. I just plain didn’t like the book.

I did finish it, though. I’m one of those people who doesn’t like not finishing a book. I’ve read some really bad ones in my time, but I always finish.

Questions found here.

I found this meme at Tiny Treasury. Though it’ll be embarrassing to put it up, I will anyway so you can all kick my bum to read some more classics. (Keep in mind, though, that I didn’t exactly have a normal childhood. So there.)

Bold those you’ve read.
Italicize books you have started but couldn’t finish.
Add an asterisk* to those you have read more than once.
Underline those on your To Be Read list.

(They should include an option for “…if you have seen the movie”.)

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights*
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: A Novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Anyone who has looked through my entire list is now challenged to put the list up on their blog.

It seems that I’ve been running across the Thursday Thirteen meme everywhere lately. When I encountered it over on JM’s Write Anyway a couple of weeks in a row, I finally gave in. I’ve decided to try it out this week with a list of thirteen classic books that I have read. I’m curious to see if we have any books in common. You already know about some of the books I haven’t read, so here is a list of ones that I have.

Classics I Have Known, or How to Redeem Myself For Last Week’s List:

1. The Odyssey by Homer (Read it to annoy my teacher. Loved it.)
2. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott (Read it in 7th grade. Loved it)
3. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (Had to read this for High School English. Hated it.)
4. The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson (Read it in 7th grade. Loved it.)
5. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (Had to write a poem about it for English. It was okay.)
6. The Purgatorio by Dante (I was originally a Medieval Studies Major. Liked it.)
7. Paradise Lost by John Milton (Still think it should have been called “Paradise Misplaced.” Not too bad.)
8. The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare (Saw the play and liked it so much that I went home and read it. Loved it.)
9. L’étranger by Albert Camus (I’ve never read this in English. It was okay.)
10. Candide by Voltaire (Yes, I was a French Major. Interesting.)
11. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse (Read it in High School. Found it intriguing.)
12. The Epic of Gilgamesh by someone in Mesopotamia (I wish that the Pre-Assyrian version still existed. Liked it.)
13. Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare (Acted in the play, so there is a special place for it in my heart.)

Thursday Thirteen, The Odyssey, Homer, Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, The Black Arrow, Robert Louis Stevenson, Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte, The Purgatorio, Dante, Paradise Lost, John Milton, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, William Shakespeare, L’étranger, Albert Camus, Candide, Voltaire, Siddhartha, Herman Hesse, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Mesopotamia, Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare