Gold Medal Reading - BTT

It is Thursday again and this week on Booking Through Thursday, there are several questions, split into two parts:

First:

Do you or have you ever read books about the Olympics? About sports in general?
Fictional ones? Or non-fiction? Or both?

And, Second:

Do you consider yourself a sports fan?
Because, of course, if you’re a rabid fan and read about sports constantly, there’s a logic there; if you hate sports and never read anything sports-related, that, too... but you don’t have to love sports to enjoy a good sports story.
(Or a good sports movie, for that matter. Feel free to expand this into a discussion about “Friday Night Lights” or “The Natural” or whatever...)

To answer the first question, it's a big "no" for me. I haven't even tried to read a biography of an athlete. It doesn't interest me, though after watching Michael Phelps perform as well as he has, I think I would be willing to read his biography if I ever saw it and had nothing better to read at the time.

Because, to answer the second question, I am not a huge sports fan. My family is big into football but I just watch when I have no other alternative. I have been watching gymnastics and swimming but that is because I think that gymnasts are amazing with what they can do and swimming because I want to see if Phelps can manage the eight gold goal. Really though, I watch sports about once every two years and that is just to see how many medals the USA can earn. I'm just not a sports person.

I don't even like sports movies. They don't interest me and when my dad watches them, I leave the room, typically to find a book. Especially baseball movies. I can't stand them, though that may have more to do with how many I had to watch in my high school geography class, which was taught by the head baseball coach, than anything else.

What about you? Do you read sports books?

Other Worlds - BTT

So it has been a while, by which I mean about two months, since I last did Booking Through Thursday, but I'm back today and the question is:

Are there any particular worlds in books where you’d like to live?

Or where you certainly would NOT want to live?

What about authors? If you were a character, who would you trust to write your life?

There are several worlds that I have wanted to live in, mostly those from fantasy books. Imagine living in some of those worlds with magic! I have fallen in love with several magical literary worlds over the years.

As for worlds I wouldn't want to live in, I remember one book where there was a lie detector machine that 100% effective that had been created and was used for almost everything including determining whether you were fit to marry the person you wanted or whether the state would allow you to have a child. I think that is my own business and dystopian worlds like this put a shudder down my spine. No, thanks.

As for someone writing my life, I am not sure who I would trust. Seems like a huge leap of faith, to trust someone to set down your life. I would have to personally know the author and since I don't know any established authors, I think I will have to go with my best friend.

Who would you trust?

Manual Labor - BTT

It's time for another Booking Through Thursday and the question this week is:

Writing guides, grammar books, punctuation how-tos . . . do you read them? Not read them? How many writing books, grammar books, dictionaries–if any–do you have in your library?

Let's see... If I haven't thrown it out, I believe I have a small guide from college but that's it. Well, other than a dictionary and thesaurus, also from college. That's if you are only counting books on English. I have several guides, dictionaries, and workbooks on French but that is to help me continue to learn the language and not forget the little that I learned in school.

Mayday! - BTT

Another Thursday and another question from Booking Through Thursday:

Quick! It’s an emergency! You just got an urgent call about a family emergency and had to rush to the airport with barely time to grab your wallet and your passport. But now, you’re stuck at the airport with nothing to read. What do you do??

And, no, you did NOT have time to grab your bookbag, or the book next to your bed. You were . . . grocery shopping when you got the call and have nothing with you but your wallet and your passport (which you fortuitously brought with you in case they asked for ID in the ethnic food aisle). This is hypothetical, remember...

No book? In the waiting area and no book? I usually have as many as I can pack with me so I don't have to worry about finishing one. But in this case, I would probably end up checking the bookstore for anything decent looking or just grab a pencil and a puzzle book.

Of course, I would also be concerned with the fact that I didn't get to pack clothes amd it looks like I'll be shopping even more when I get to my destination...

Springing - BTT

I woke up today and it took me a while to realize that it is Thursday again! Time does fly. And it being Thursday means that it is time for 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?

Honestly, the books don't really change for me based on the season. The only change that comes over me is the location of the reading. There is a river not far from my house and I can take a short bike ride to a nice little pavilion that looks out on to the water. During the spring and summer, that becomes a very common place for me to read. If I don't want to go all the way out to the river, my back porch is great with the garden in the backyard to look upon. It makes me love the spring even more!

Vocabulary - BTT

I missed last week's Booking Through Thursday but now I'm back from studying and can answer this week's question:

I’ve always wondered what other people do when they come across a word/phrase that they’ve never heard before. I mean, do they jot it down on paper so they can look it up later, or do they stop reading to look it up on the dictionary/google it or do they just continue reading and forget about the word?

Typically, I tend to use context clues and just guess the meaning (aka "just continue reading and forget about the word"). It usually works though I do tend to get strange ideas about the exact definition - I found that out in a strong way when I was studying vocabulary for the GRE exam. Then again, there are times when I will jot the word down and later look it up. That tends to be the choice when I am reading a more complex text and I am looking up several words at once.

What do you guys do?

Lit-Ra-Chur - BTT

Is it time for Booking Through Thursday already? Time goes by way to fast. Anyway, here is the question of the week:

When somebody mentions “literature,” what’s the first thing you think of? (Dickens? Tolstoy? Shakespeare?)
Do you read “literature” (however you define it) for pleasure? Or is it something that you read only when you must?

I guess "literature" tends to be synonymous with the classics in my mind. Books that have aged enough to be considered timeless and truly worth reading (whatever that happens to mean.) As for whether I read "literature," that comes with a resounding YES. Some of my favorite books are classics, from Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen to the Sherlock Holmes mysteries by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; from Wuthering Heights to Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo. I have often chosen to read "literature," not because I had to, but because it is enjoyable reading.

Cover-Up - BTT

This week, Booking Through Thursday asks:

While acknowledging that we can’t judge books by their covers, how much does the design of a book affect your reading enjoyment? Hardcover vs. softcover? Trade paperback vs. mass market paperback? Font? Illustrations? Etc.?

To be honest, I think the only design element that typically has an effect on whether I enjoy a book or not would be the font. If I am having trouble reading the text, I get frustrated and am more likely to dislike the book. On the other hand, when the font is used in an original way, like Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper, where each character's narration had a different font, I found this added to my enjoyment of the story itself. Few of my books have illustrations at this point and the cover rarely makes any difference in whether I like the story or not.

That being said, I must admit that while the cover and format may not affect whether I like the story, it often has an effect on whether I pick it up in the first place. If the cover interests me enough, in form or artwork, I am more likely to read the book, even if it is not the sort of book I would usually choose. Does anyone else do this? I know it is dangerously close to "judging a book by its cover," but there it is.

What do you think?

The End - BTT

Booking Through Thursday is here again and so I am going to take a break from my book that I am currently struggling through and answer this weeks question:

You’ve just reached the end of a book . . . what do you do now? Savor and muse over the book? Dive right into the next one? Go take the dog for a walk, the kids to the park, before even thinking about the next book you’re going to read? What?

(Obviously, there can be more than one answer, here–a book with a cliff-hanger is going to engender different reactions than a serene, stand-alone, but you get the idea!)

There are definitely a few answers to that in my own case. There are times, like when I finish a long series or when I have just finished something that really made me think where I will sit back and just really think about what I have read. There are also times when I have stayed up so late reading it that my first act upon finishing the novel is to get some sleep! If I really liked it, I will set it aside to recommend to my best friend.

As for picking up another book, that is usually pretty immediate. I don't usually go without at least one book in progress unless I just finished a book and now have nothing else I want to read at my house. In which case, finishing a book is soon followed by a trip to the library or the bookstore to find new material. No, usually, I have another pile of books on hand that are my "Read Next" books so as soon as I finish one, I can go to the next one. That is why I like to have a good bit of any series on hand because with them, I definitely want to start the next one as soon as I can.

Now that I've answered, I am going to go back to my book but tell me, what do you do?

Playing Editor - BTT

This week's question for Booking Through Thursday is a bit more challenging:

How about a chance to play editor-in-chief? Fill in the blanks:

__________ would have been a much better book if ______________________.

For the most part, I am not sure what I would change in any given book. Many times, even if I don't like the events or plotline in a given story, I can later see why the author chose to arrange things in that fashion. Often times, things make sense in hindsight, so I wouldn't want to change those elements.

On the other hand, there have been times when I don't like the ending to a story. Perhaps I would have changed the endings to a few stories, like a few of those I have read in the last two weeks or so, but that is more of the job of an author, not an editor.

I can't write stories myself so for now, I just have to content myself with enjoying the work of others.

Hero - BTT

Last week, Booking Through Thursday was about our favorite heroine. This week:

You should have seen this one coming... Who is your favorite Male lead character? And why?

This one is really hard to say. I guess I have never really thought about my favorite guy in books. I guess I was always pretty fascinated with Edmond Dantes, from The Count of Monte Cristo, and his multiple transformations. Even though most of the novel is spent in his seeking revenge, he still has humanity within his character and wakes up to the world around him at the end.

I also liked Sherlock Holmes. He wasn't much on the interpersonal skills sometimes and there was the opium addiction but he was smarter than anything and I always admired that. He caught the bad guy and figured things out. Good job, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, even if you did try to kill Holmes.

Heroine - BTT

Another week has past (they always seem to fly by) and Booking Through Thursday has a new question:

Who is your favorite female lead character? And why? (And yes, of course, you can name more than one . . . I always have trouble narrowing down these things to one name, why should I force you to?)

At the risk of being trite and picking the same one millions of others would choose, the first heroine to come to mind is Elizabeth Bennet. Here is a girl with a family that is nothing like her, but she has a strength about her and she is witty. Even in the world she lives in, she still needs to respect the man she marries, which makes her different from many women who would just marry to secure herself a position for later in life. And if none of that works for you, she is just fun - her sense of humor and the way she was written are all amazing.

Of course, there are one or two others. Jaenelle from the Black Jewels Trilogy was great. Here is a little girl with more power than anyone in the history of her people and she collects the most amazing friends from around the world, always remaining sweet and humble. A sense of humor is also found here - in fact, it seems that is an essential part of a good heroine, in my experience.

If a girl is smart, witty, and capable of carrying herself through the plot with dignity, chances are I will like her. I know there have been other female characters that I loved but there two seem to stand out, Elizabeth because she is from one of my favorite books written by one of my favorite authors and Jaenelle because she is from my favorite series. Then again, it may be that these are my favorite books because these characters are there. Either way, I suppose that (sort of) answers as to who my Reader's Oscar for Best Female in a Leading Role would go to... or at least who I would have to decide between.

Format - BTT

Another Thursday and another question from Booking Through Thursday! This week it's:

All other things (like price and storage space) being equal, given a choice in a perfect world, would you rather have paperbacks in your library? Or hardcovers? And why?

Some of the most adorable books in my library are these small, hardcover books, with a red cover and gold-edged pages, that I bought from Barnes and Noble a while back. They even have thin, red ribbon to use as a book-marker! One of my favorite things about them is that they are small enough to fit into nearly any of my purses, so I can carry any of them around with me; a great classic novel that I can take anywhere without having to lug some big, thick tome around with me - Wonderful!

While my library is, at present, almost completely composed of paperbacks, I think I would prefer hardcovers, if all other factors (read "price") were equal. At the present, hardback books cost too much more for me to buy them, but they are more attractive sitting on your shelf. They also have the advantage of not falling apart as easily. There are a few books in my collection that have been read so many times that I fear it will fall into a couple pieces. I also don't feel so bad about cracking the spine of a hardcover... I always feel just a bit guilty for opening a paperback and putting a bend in the spine of the book (I can't dog-ear pages either... it's something about "damaging" the book - I just can't manage it without a bit of guilt).

After the Honeymoon - BTT

So I recently found something called Booking Through Thursday and decided to try it out and throw my own answer in there. The question for this week is:

Have you ever fallen out of love with a favorite author? Was the last book you read by the author so bad, you broke up with them and haven’t read their work since? Could they ever lure you back?

I don't think I could say that I feel out of love with an author but I did fall in love with a series. For a while, I was reading a lot of Piers Anthony's work. His Incarnations of Immortality series, along with the Mode and Geodyssey series were fascinating and I enjoyed reading them. In fact, I still would read those books, and am looking forward to reading the most recent installment of the mode series. Around the time I was reading all these other books, someone recommended the Xanth series to me. The first three books (which I later found out have been written with an adult audience in mind) were fine. Anthony had created a great world for his characters and the result was good storytelling with a few puns on the side. As the series progressed, Anthony had found out that young adults and children had been reading the Xanth series so he changed the direction of the books to suit that audience better. In doing so, he packed the books so full of puns that I was unable to appreciate the plot that may have been buried underneath everything else. Everything was a pun and the later books got so "punny," I simply couldn't bear to finish the book, much less pick up another.

As I said, I still like the other books that Anthony has produced but I completely fell out of love with this particular series. Some of my friends continued to read the series and they still (as far as I know) enjoy the books, but I don't think I would ever want to read another of that particular series.