Category Archives: The Reading Life

My poor, overcrowded bookshelves

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Time for a survey of the state of my bookshelves. The results ain’t pretty.

Here’s a typical set of shelves in my house:

Is it getting a bit crowded in here?

 

Notice, if you will, the double-stacking, the books crammed in at the top, the lack of any discernible rhyme or reason for book placement. I tend to shelve books these days by feel. Look, there’s still an inch of space — let’s see if this skinny one will make it!

My frustrated inner librarian shudders with dismay. How about organizing by genre? By author, maybe? Or by color scheme? Nope, it’s all about fit. Stuff ’em in there, and if they don’t fall out onto the floor, we’re done.

I suppose these books should feel fortunate that they actually have a shelf to call home. Here’s where some other books live in my house:

This pile has accumulated another 10 books or so since the picture was taken.

 

This poor stack is homeless. These are the various books that I continue to amass without having a place to put them. All the stuff that I consider my “next-in-line” books — although many of them have been “next-in-line” for months. So there they sit on top of a dresser, in a pile that grows and grows…

 

 

 

 

Spoils of war

See these bags of books? These are my lucky finds from last year’s public library sale. Quick aside: Awesome event! Twice a year, the friends of the public library organize a HUGE used book sale (500,000 items for sale, or so they say). Everything is $5 or less (paperbacks typically $1 or $2), and all proceeds benefit the public libraries.

Typically, I score big at these events. The bags in this picture hold about 60 or so “new” used books that I found at the sale last fall… still sitting in the paper bags they came home in. I want them, I love them, I intend to read them, DON’T EVEN THINK OF GIVING THEM AWAY!!! But my shelves are full to bursting and I have no place to put another book, much less three bags full.

So what’s a poor, overcrowded booklover like me to do?

A ray of hope has arrived! All is not lost! Due to various people coming and going in my house, lots of changes and reorganizing, suddenly, this beautiful thing appeared:

Miracle of miracles!

An empty wall!

Of course, much debate ensued. My husband sees a guest room perhaps, or maybe even a room to rent. My son envisions a game room, with electronics and Legos everywhere.

Me? It’s obvious, isn’t it? IT’S MY READING ROOM!

I don’t know if I’ll succeed in claiming the whole room, but that wall is mine. I’m picturing wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Oh, the fun I’ll have! I can see it now, organizing my various and sundry tomes by whatever method catches my fancy.

It’s time to be bold, stake my claim. Tape measure in hand, I’ll map out what’s mine. No one can stop me!

I feel a trip to Ikea beckoning in the not-too-distant future. My epic quest begins!

I’ll be back to let you know if I slay the dragon.

 

Series mania! Or, the five stages of reading a series.

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I’ve realized that my obsessive reading habits can occasionally be problematic, enough so that I think a little acknowledgement of my own personal five stages of series reading is in order.

Quick example: Last spring, eagerly anticipating HBO’s debut of the first season of “Game of Thrones”, I decided to read A Game of Thrones (I love how the “A” is what distinguishes the book from the TV show) ahead of time to see what all the fuss was about. I raced my way through it (on a family vacation, accompanied by loud complaints from my son that I was reading when I should be in the pool or playing air hockey), and fell deeply in love with the world of Westeros. I then made the calm and measured decision to wait until after the season finale on HBO to read the next book in the series, so as to appreciate the TV drama without spoilers for the future. Fair enough… but my resolution didn’t last. When loading up my Kindle for a two-week trip in early June, it seemed that A Clash of Kings would make perfect travel reading, and off I went — quite determined that I’d stop after that one. After all, George R. R. Martin hadn’t even finished the series yet, and from what I’d heard, it would be years before the seventh volume would see the light of day. No problem. Except… I’d bought books 3 and 4 at a used book sale a few weeks earlier, and when I came back from my trip, there they were on my shelf, mocking me, calling my name, daring me to crack their covers. I knew I was a goner. Sure, I had a good rationalization for breaking my resolve: Book 5, A Dance With Dragons, was due out in July, and wouldn’t it make sense to read the other books, be ready for the new one, and then stop? Needless to say, my book gobbling immediately encompassed A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and A Dance With Dragons. After which, I came up for air, looked around, and thought — now what? Now I just have to wait, along with legions of GRRM fans, for however many years it takes until a new book is released. Meanwhile, that’s thousands of pages of his novels read over the space of about a month and a half, while ignoring everything else on my shelves.

Not that I didn’t enjoy it. But my experiences with A Song of Ice and Fire do illustrate my worst tendencies when it comes to my reading habits.

Time and time again, I innocently read the first one or two volumes in a series, thinking I’ll take breaks in between, read other stuff, make the series last. Inevitably, though, once I get into it, it’s full speed ahead, no turning back, no distractions, until I get through to the very last page of the very last installment, at which point I am absolutely bereft.

I’ve analyzed my series mania thusly:

Stage 1 – Denial: I can start this series and stop after one book. I don’t have to keep reading it. I’m in control.

Stage 2 – Bargaining: Okay, the first book ended with a cliffhanger, so I’ll read just one more, I swear, and then I’ll stop.

Stage 3 – Anger: Stop looking at me funny because all I can talk about is this book series! I do too have a life! Don’t criticize me!

Stage 4 – Depression: There are thousands of books waiting to be read, and I’m stuck here reading this enormous series. There’s nothing I can do about it. Life will be meaningless unless I finish.

Stage 5 – Acceptance: Big sigh. This is when I finally face facts, and admit to myself, in my heart of hearts, that nothing else will satisfy me, that I am, in fact, enjoying the series immensely, and that reading through to the end is a choice, not something I’ve been forced to do. I accept it!

Now let me keep reading.

 

 

 

 

Confessions of a book snob

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I admit it. I am a certifiable book snob. Really, I can be a judgy little thing, especially when it comes to other people’s taste in books.

Not that I expect everyone to sit around reading serious works at all times. My life does not revolve around Shakespeare, Melville, and Dickens (although sometimes I think it should).

I’m the type who wants to know what everyone else is reading. I’ve had great airport conversations with strangers, sparked by the books in our hands (e.g., “Wow, you’re reading Lamb? I love Christopher Moore!”).

But I must ‘fess up and say straight out that I tend to turn up my nose when I see people reading those certain bestsellers that “everyone” loves — and I simply despise — such as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo or The Da Vinci Code. As a booklover friend of mine and I smugly agreed, when people rave about those books, those books are probably the only books they’ve read in the past year or so.

I admit to feeling just a wee bit of condescension toward friends after our first visit to their home, when I saw that the majority of books on their bookshelves were written by John Grisham, Nicholas Sparks, and Clive Cussler.

On the flip side, when I first visited someone I knew mainly as a professional connection and saw the wall-to-wall bookshelves in her family room, filled with everything from Harry Potter to Neil Gaiman to Mary Roach, I knew we’d manage to hit it off.

So does that make me a snob? Probably. I know, in this age of non-stop technological distractions, that I should applaud people for reading at all, even if it is mass market drivel.

I think my main problem is that I tend to reach out to people and try to find common ground with them over the subject of reading. I love meeting people with unusual book tastes, so long as they’re readers. When we click over a book, I know we’ll manage to find something to talk about. But when all they can find to read is Grisham and the like, I just have nothing to say.

So, I’ll keep plugging away, making it my own personal mission, in my miniscule sphere of influence, to tell people about the great books I’ve read. Maybe we’ll connect, maybe the other person will think whatever I’m reading is absolute dreck. But maybe, just maybe, one or both of us will come away from the encounter with a new title or author to explore, and that can only be a good thing.

Just don’t tell me to give Stieg Larsson another try. I don’t think our friendship can take it.

This may get a bit graphic

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I was shocked – SHOCKED, I tell you – to discover that I’ve read 25 graphic novels thus far in 2012.

This astonishing turn of events was driven home to me the other day during family reading time, a new tradition recently instituted in my house solely for the purpose of getting my 9-year-old to read. Whether this will actually be successful remains to be seen. However, I digress. During family reading time, the kiddo and I plop ourselves on the couch with our books for a mandatory half hour or so of side-by-side independent reading. On this particular occasion, my college grad daughter joined us. As we all settled in – daughter with A Storm of Swords, kiddo with Henry Huggins – my son looked over at me, started laughing hysterically, and said, “Mom’s reading a comic book!”

My initial reaction was denial – “What? Me? No way… I’m a serious reader!” But when I stopped to think about it, I realized that I should start holding my head up a bit higher when I tell people about the amazing books that I’m reading. Yes, I read graphic novels. And yes, graphic novels can be great literature too!

I don’t remember being much of a comic book fan as a kid, although I do recall reading the Archie comics (I always wanted to be Betty, and thought Reggie was a big jerk), maybe a bit of Richie Rich here or there. No superheroes at all, I’m quite sure. Even for the comics I remember reading, I have no idea where they came from or how they ended up in my hands. I certainly never bought any myself.

Flash forward to my adult years. I read a few of the more “literary” graphic novels (Maus by Art Spiegelman and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi are two that come to mind), but it wouldn’t have occurred to me to explore any further.

I suppose I can point the finger in two different directions, if I want to “blame” anyone for my newfound interest in graphic novels.

First, there’s Joss Whedon. After falling in love with Joss’s Firefly/Serenity ‘verse, I gobbled up everything I could find that was related, including a Serenity graphic novel entitled Those Left Behind. Once I got hooked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (thanks to massive DVD-watching marathons), I started reading all of the related Buffy titles, such as Tales of the Slayers, Tales of the Vampires, and Fray. When it was announced that Joss would be creating an official season 8 of Buffy in comic book format, my fate was sealed. There was no way that I could not read season 8, and for some reason, reading season 8 has really opened the floodgates for me in terms of my openness toward reading graphic novels.

Second, when my kiddo started 4th grade last year and was forced to do more independent reading, I was concerned when the book he started with was a graphic novel. His teacher set me straight, and told me that it was more important at this stage to let my son read something he enjoyed, rather than what I thought would be good for him. (Thank you, Mr. Allyn, for the great advice, BTW!). The book that my kiddo picked out was Out From Boneville, the first book in the fantastic Bone series by Jeff Smith. My son was hooked, insisted I read the books too, and I became hooked as well.

So here I am, mid-2012, with close to 25% of my reading this year consisting of graphic novels, and I thought I’d share a few of my favorites:

As mentioned:

The Bone series by Jeff Smith – not just for kids! The tale of the three Bone cousins is a mix of adventure, epic quest, and high fantasy, with plenty of humor as well. This series also features the stupid rat creatures, probably my favorite villains ever.

Stupid Rat Creatures!

Buffy season 8 and 9 – If you watched the TV show, you’ve just got to read these. The whole gang is back, and the story that unfolds in season 8 and 9 is considered “canon”.

Plus a few more:

Fables by Bill Willingham – I’m about halfway through this series, and I can’t stop raving about it (as the people around me can verify, with much eye-rolling). The story may sound simple – fairy tale characters have been exiled from their homelands and have taken refuge in New York – but the plot and character development are complex, engaging, and surprising.

N. by Stephen King – truly one of the most frightening things I’ve ever read. N. isn’t very long, but each page is packed with creepy images and a looming sense of evil. Wow.

The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch by Neil Gaiman – I haven’t read the short story from which this was adapted, so I have no point of comparison, but I really liked the way the plot works in graphic novel format. Great illustrations, and the pacing maintains a sense of the mysterious throughout.

The Griff  by Christopher Moore – I’ll read anything Christopher Moore chooses to write, and this story of dragons wiping out human life on Earth featured his trademark humor, alongside heaping spoonfuls of chaos and destruction. Good times!

What’s next for me in the world of graphic novels? I’m just finishing up a small handful of Dresden Files graphic novels, and then it’s back to Fables! Volume 11 is calling my name…

What do you think? Do graphic novels “count” as real reading? What are the best graphic novels you’ve read lately? Share your thoughts and recommendations below!

Art for book lovers

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Just had to share this fabulous blog post from Tor.com, focusing on books in paintings. What an amazing collection!

Check out all the pretty, cool, surreal, and fantastical here.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Artist: Gerard Dubois

Artist: Paul Serusier

And finally… quite possibly my favorite of all…

Artist: Shaun Tan

Seriously, check out the full selection over at on the Tor website, which includes links to info on all of the artists.

Now I’m off to daydream about living in a house with all of these on the walls. Heaven!

My problem with short stories

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For an educated, literate person, I’m an absolute philistine when it comes to short stories.

I know, I know… according to People Who Matter, the short story is writing as an art form, a purer literary expression than the novel, forcing a writer to use an economy of words in order to convey some larger truth. Or so I’ve heard.

But here’s my larger truth: I just can’t get into them. Even when written by authors I adore, I can’t stomach more than a story or two before my eyes start to glaze over. I find myself rushing through, skipping ahead, and pining for a “real” book — aka, a big, meaty novel that I can really sink my teeth into. It happens every time, no matter how good my intentions.

I’ve had this experience countless times, whether with anthologies featuring stories by multiple authors or a book of short stories by a single author. Some recent cases in point:

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman: I love Neil Gaiman! I read about 95% of the stories in this collection, and there are some that I know I’ll return to over and over again, especially “Snow, Glass, Apples”, “Nicholas Was…”, and “The Wedding Present”. But, finally, I just had to stop — I thought my brain would shrivel up if I read one single story more.

The Baum Plan For Financial Independence and Other Stories by John Kessel: “The Lunar Quartet” stories in this collection were absolutely brilliant. I read a couple of other stories as well, liked them all well enough, and then put the book down.

Fire Watch by Connie Willis: I picked up this collection because I’d like to read the author’s time travel novels and wanted to read the story that came first (“Fire Watch”), and actually read quite a few of the other stories as well. In addition to “Fire Watch”, I especially liked “A Letter From The Clearys” and “And Come From Miles Around”, although “All My Darling Daughters” was so creepy that I can’t quite say I enjoyed it.

After The Apocalypse by Maureen McHugh: A collection that I actually finished! My Goodreads review is here.

Black Juice by Margo Langan: Includes one of the best, most haunting stories I’ve come across recently, “Singing My Sister Down”. The other stories in the collection are good, but just don’t quite measure up to the first story’s power. And yes, I did skip one or two.

Looking at the list I just put together, I must admit that my problem is not really with individual short stories. Clearly, there are many that I like, or even love. But as a whole, I just can’t feel the same enthusiasm for my reading time when I’m sitting down with a book of stories. Maybe I’m too goal-oriented when I read — I’m always looking ahead and planning what to read next, eager to finish more and more of the books on my to-read shelf — and just don’t get the same sense of satisfaction from a story collection. Maybe it’s that I’m looking for more of a long-term commitment; when I develop a relationship with fictional characters, I want it to last hundreds of pages, not 10 or 20. Or maybe I’m just not sophisticated enough to appreciate the beauty of short fiction.

My 22-year-old daughter — to my delight — discovered the joys of Vonnegut a couple of years ago, and has been reading as much of his work as possible ever since. This week, after finishing a 1,000 page novel (A Clash Of Kings, if you must know), she decided to read something a bit shorter and picked up Vonnegut’s Welcome To The Monkey House. She seemed to love it at first, then came to me a day later to ask to borrow a book (#2 of the Jane True series, if you must know this too), saying “You know what, Mom? I think I’m just not a short story person.”

At least I’m in good company.

My shelves runneth over (a bookish sort of survey)

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My piles of books are having babies overnight, I swear. The stacks keep growing. My shelves are all double-layered, with a few extra paperbacks squeezed in on top of all the neat, orderly books. I have bags of books on my office floor, which will remain where they are until I get some more shelves or until the magic book fairy turns my living room into a Tardis-style library that’s bigger on the inside.

I do take books out of the library. I lend my books (reluctantly, and only after extracting severe promises to maintain my books’ pristine conditions). I sell the books I can live without back to my local friendly used book dealers — although I often walk away from these transactions with more used books to take back home with me. I give away the books I really don’t want any more, and sometimes the ones I’ve picked up but then never really felt like reading. And yet… my shelves runneth over, my house is filled to bursting with books, and I keep getting more.

So what’s a book lover to do? What do you do with your books after you’ve read them?

A word from my reluctant reader

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“Mom, it’s not that I can’t read. I just prefer not to.”

Courtesy of my 9-year-old. Proof that being an insatiable reader isn’t genetic after all.

My aha moment

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I’m not talking about the 80s pop band, famous for Take On Me. (Dammit! Now it’s stuck in my head!)

And until I just did a quick Google search, I had no idea that Oprah has somehow cornered the market on “aha”, turning it into something very likely trademarked if written with the appropriate punctuation and capitalization.

I’m talking epiphany here, as in “Eureka! I’ve found it!” Or in my case — “OMG, I finally figured it out!”

e·piph·a·ny

a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.

(Thank you, Dictionary.com!)

For the past year or so, I’ve been complaining about the lighting in my house. When I’m ready to read, I move lamps, angle light bulbs just so, or burrow into corners of the couch where the overhead illumination shines perfectly on my page. And wouldn’t you know it? It’s just never quite right.

Suddenly, a few weeks ago, it finally hit me. Maybe it’s not the lighting. Maybe — gasp — it’s my eyes. Sure, I should have caught a clue sooner. Perhaps all that squinting at the teeny, tiny print on my IPhone should have woken me up to the cold hard facts.

The solution was staring me in the face, as it were:

Behold, my very first pair of reading glasses! I swear, it was like being struck by a bolt of lightning when I put them on for the first time. My house wasn’t poorly lit after all. Hallelujah! The letters on the page had sharp edges, like little tiny razor blades. The print was practically glowing, it was such a beautiful sight!

It’s love, I swear it. These babies come with me wherever I go. I love them so much, I might marry them. And, I must say, I think I look pretty good when I rock my new specs. To paraphrase the Doctor’s wise words about fezzes, “Reading glasses are cool.”

I haven’t felt this enlightened since the day I realized that I needed HDMI cables in order to get a high def picture on my giant HDTV. (I’m embarrassed to admit that I had said TV for almost a year before that particular epiphany hit me.)

So my bursts of insight come to me in their own sweet time. So my epiphanies aren’t exactly earth-shaking. I’m okay with that. My new reading glasses rock my world, and considering how many hours a day, a week, a year I spend with my nose buried in a book, that’s really a life-changing “aha”!

When worlds collide, part 2

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What’s on my mind this week? The two book-ish happenings that really got me thinking in the past couple of days were:

  1. Finished reading Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness
  2. Jumped up and down after hearing that Outlander might, just might, be made into a TV series or mini-series.

… which led me to this:

Outlander vs Shadow of Night — compare and contrast!

Teensy disclaimer: I’m not taking this too seriously, and neither should you. But just for fun, I started my own little list of the various ways SON made me think of OL. (Keep up with the acronyms, OK? We’re too busy here to keep typing out the full book titles.) I started meandering down this random path early on in SON, when I began chuckling over Diana’s soul-deep shock over discovering what being a woman in the 16th century really felt like. As a historian professor, she thought she was prepared, but boy, is there a difference between knowing information and living it!

Diana’s experiences made me think immediately of Claire Beauchamp Randall of Outlander, who was rudely thrust back in time and just had to deal with it, no warning, no preparation, no nothing.

With that in mind, here goes — a quick OL/SON primer (minor spoilers, so beware!):

Claire (Outlander)
 Diana (Shadow of Night)
Degree MD PhD
Belongs in 1946 2009
Travels back in time About 200 years About 400 years
Anything fishy? Accused of being a witch Actually is a witch
Challenges Learning how to dress appropriately Ditto
Learning a woman’s place Ditto
Being criticized for speaking her mind Ditto
Treated with respect by those she meets? Relevant quote: “There seemed to be some question as whether the lady was or was not a whore.” Relevant quote: “I had no idea there was a brothel in Woodstock that specialized in over-tall women. Most of your whores are more delicate and appealing.”
Love interest Taller than average, remarkably good-looking Scot Taller than average, remarkably good-looking vampire
Lover’s talents Leader of men, warrior, has a gift for languages Leader of men, warrior, has a gift for languages
Lover’s connections Historical connections include Bonnie Prince Charlie, King Louis, Governor Tryon, and many more Historical connections include William Raleigh, Christopher Marlowe, Queen Elizabeth, and many more
Royal interest Bedded by Louis XV, King of France Pursued by Rudolf II of Prague, Holy Roman Emperor
Ability to time travel Genetic inheritance Genetic inheritance
Ease of time travel Painful and scary, but it can be done Difficult and requires great concentration, but it can be done
Scary witches? Geillis Duncan, murderous and crazy Satu, Peter Knox, and a host of others, murderous and fanatical
Must stand up to Colum MacKenzie, clan chieftain, a fearsome and exceedingly smart leader Phillipe de Clermont, patriarch, a fearsome and exceedingly smart leader
Endures time displacement in order to be with the love of her life? Anything for Jamie! Anything for Matthew!

There you have it in a nutshell, the trials and tribulations of Claire and Diana, two well-educated modern women who move through time, endure hardships galore and suffer countless fashion outrages, all in the name of love.

What did I miss? Add your thoughts!

PS – I seem to be formatting-challenged today. Don’t know why my cute little table has weird shading, and can’t make it go away. Yikes. Will try to be prettier next time.