Booking Through Thursday: Soundtrack

What, if any, kind of music do you listen to when you’re reading? (Given a choice, of course!)

I listen to internet radio stations through iTunes; my favorite is Anwarock, a station playing an incredibly diverse mix of rock and pop from mostly English-language performers. The station is based in Morocco and occasionally plays French, Spanish or Arabic music but its mission is to promote English-language rock for a North African audience.  I love the crazy mix of stuff they play; it could be Cat Stevens one minute or Metallica the next or Bénabar or Gypsy Kings or James Blunt. If I have the station on for more than a few minutes, I almost always end up buying a song or two for my own collection. And having a little music on in the background helps keep me alert and awake while I'm reading!

More Booking Through Thursday here!

Booking Through Thursday: Cheating

Do you cheat and peek at the ends of books? (Come on, be honest.)

No. I never look at the ending of a book. I might flip ahead to see how many pages are left in a book or chapter but I never read ahead for spoilers. I have been known to read spoilers for movies and TV shows- for some reason I dislike suspense on screen but I love it in my books!


More Booking Through Thursday here.

Booking Through Thursday: Great Debuts

There’s something wonderful about getting in on the ground floor of an author’s career–about being one of the first people to read and admire them, before they became famous best-sellers.
Which authors have you been lucky enough to discover at the very beginning of their careers?
And, if you’ve never had that chance, which author do you WISH you’d been able to discover at the very beginning?

Tough question! I wish I'd been reading A.S. Byatt and Margaret Atwood from the beginning but I would have had to start in the early 1970s; I learned to read young, but not that young!  I don't read a whole lot of debut fiction but I was glad to be have read Kathleen Kent's first book, The Heretic's Daughter, right away, and Abraham Verghese's first novel Cutting for Stone, but then he was already a well-known writer of memoir. That's what happens a lot with me: I fall in love with an established author thinking he or she is not well known, only to find out that that person is wildly famous!

More Booking Thru Thursday here.

Booking Through Thursday: The Largest Book You've Read

What’s the largest, thickest, heaviest book you ever read? Was it because you had to? For pleasure? For school?

The largest, thickest, heaviest book I've read is probably Robert L. Herbert's Impressionism: Art, Leisure and Parisian Society, a tome on the Impressionist art movement. I read it my junior year of college for a class I took called "Paris in the Nineteenth Century," an incredible class- probably my favorite class in my entire education- about art history, social history, literary life and more in 19th century Paris. I struggled through 14 long, dense chapters, carted this coffee table of a book everywhere I went for over a week, and then wouldn't you know it, there wasn't one question on the final exam that required us to have read anything in this book! Oh well. It's a wonderful book and I learned a lot but it's certainly not appropriate for the casual reader!

More Booking Through Thursday here.

Booking Through Thursday: Film to Paper

Even though it’s usually a mistake (grin) … do movies made out of books make you want to read the original?

Yes, all the time! Recently I picked up The World According to Garp, Revolutionary Road and a number of other novels after having seen the movies. One of my favorite reads, Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady, is one I read after seeing the movie and I loved it! The Wings of the Dove on the other hand, not so much! Another good one that I read after the movie was Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth.

I don't think it's a mistake! On the contrary I enjoy reading books that were the source for movies I liked; usually I like the books more but not always and sometimes it's just neat to experience the different interpretations of the story. Nothing wrong with that!

More Booking Through Thursday here.

Booking Through Thursday: Now or Then?

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.)

Before I started blogging I hardly ever read current fiction; for one thing, I didn't get advance copies or buy hardcovers. And hardcovers are still an indulgence. I do enjoy reading current fiction, especially by favorite authors, and it's hard not to get caught up in the hype of the latest-and-greatest from a favorite publisher or in a favorite subject. Having said that, I still love reading 20th century fiction, especially Booker Prize winners and other classic fiction. I have A Confederacy of Dunces on my TBR shelf right now, as well as The World According to Garp and The House of the Spirits, among many others. Basically, it's just really hard for me to turn down a good book!

More Booking Through Thursday here.

Booking Through Thursday: Signed Copies

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

I love signed copies. I've been collecting them since college and I think it's really fun to get a book signed. Here's one of my favorites:

and one of the prettiest:

According to my LibraryThing catalog, I have 62 signed copies now.

If I'm going to buy a book and I see signed copies at the store, I'll buy the signed copy, and I love going to readings and meeting authors to get my books signed. It's a great memento of the occasion, and an opportunity to tell an author I appreciate his or her work. I won't buy a book I'm not interested in just to have it signed but I've been known to make the occasional impulse buy at a reading. I have a special bookshelf in my office for my signed copies- and it's filling up fast!

And this is an old picture- I'm now on to three shelves!

More Booking Through Thursday here.

Booking Through Thursday- Influences

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?

My book choices aren't really influenced by anything except my own interests, both personal and professional. My husband will occaisonally suggest a science fiction title that I'll read, and sometimes even enjoy, but for the most part my family's tastes are very different from mine and I tend to be a more self-directed reader rather than one who relies on others' suggestions.

You can find more Booking Through Thursday answers here.

Booking Through Thursday- Taking Breaks

Do you take breaks while reading a book? Or read it straight through? (And, by breaks, I don’t mean sleeping, eating and going to work; I mean putting it aside for a time while you read something else.)

I sometimes have more than one book going at a time but I almost never take extended breaks from a book. I read just about everything straight through. Now that I think about though, in the case of War and Peace, I guess you could say I've taken a 18-month break since it's been at least that long since I picked it up!

More Booking Through Thursday here.

Booking Through Thursday - Plain or Pretty?

Which do you prefer? Lurid, fruity prose, awash in imagery and sensuous textures and colors? Or straight-forward, clean, simple prose?

(You thought I was going to ask something else, didn’t you? Admit it!)

I prefer simple, clear language to flowery and overblown prose. I think good writing can transmit more information more effectively without all the pyrotechnics.

More Booking Through Thursday here.

Booking Through Thursday- Grammar Police

In honor of National Grammar Day … it IS “March Fourth” after all … do you have any grammar books? Punctuation? Writing guidelines? Style books?

More importantly, have you read them?

How do you feel about grammar in general? Important? Vital? Unnecessary? Fussy?

I have Strunk & Whites The Elements of Style, and yes, I have read it, though I'll say that I don't think that the style the authors promote is the end-all of good writing. I think grammar is very important and it bothers me so much to read writing with poor grammar that I will put a book down if it's sloppy enough. (I've also been known to stop reading poorly-written blogs.) Of course, most professionally published books aren't that sloppy and the most I really ever notice will be some misused pronouns- "She was taller than me" is a typical example. It's I, folks- "She was taller than I". It's a big reason why I dislike reading books written in dialect. Sometimes that technique can really help a reader get inside a character's head, but sometimes if it's not done well it just strips the character of his or her (notice how I didn't say their) dignity and makes the character sound stupid. So yeah, I'm not crazy about bad grammar!

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Booking Through Thursday - Why Do You Read?

Suggested by Janet:

I’ve seen this quotation in several places lately. It’s from Sven Birkerts’ ‘The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age’:

“To read, when one does so of one’s own free will, is to make a volitional statement, to cast a vote; it is to posit an elsewhere and set off toward it. And like any traveling, reading is at once a movement and a comment of sorts about the place one has left. To open a book voluntarily is at some level to remark the insufficiency either of one’s life or one’s orientation toward it.”

To what extent does this describe you?

What a depressing, pessimistic view of reading! Reading is an escape, but not because the world is so dismal. Books are a special part of the world- a part that broadens us, opens our mind and shows us something different, not because the world we live in is insufficient but because it's limited by the depth and breadth of our own experiences. Why do I read? I read because I love good writing and a good story, and it's a means of pursuing my manifold interests. And because I love to learn, and I learn something new every time I turn the pages!

More Booking Through Thursday can be found here.

Booking Through Thursday - Encouragement

How can you encourage a non-reading child to read? What about a teen-ager? Would you require books to be read in the hopes that they would enjoy them once they got into them, or offer incentives, or just suggest interesting books? If you do offer incentives and suggestions and that doesn’t work, would you then require a certain amount of reading? At what point do you just accept that your child is a non-reader?

In the book Gifted Hands by brilliant surgeon Ben Carson, one of the things that turned his life around was his mother’s requirement that he and his brother read books and write book reports for her. That approach worked with him, but I have been afraid to try it. My children don’t need to “turn their lives around,” but they would gain so much from reading and I think they would enjoy it so much if they would just stop telling themselves, “I just don’t like to read.”

I'm not a parent, but my instinct here would be to lead by example. In other words, I think if I wanted my children to be readers, I would make sure to be a reader myself and surround them with books. I would talk about the books I'm reading and make sure that they saw me reading and enjoying reading. I would also make sure that there wasn't some other problem like a learning disorder that might be interfering with their desire to read, and talk to their teachers about what might be going on. After that, I would take them to the library and help them pick out books on things they're interested in- maybe nonfiction books about a hobby or a sport or a celebrity that they like. I would make an effort to not impose my own tastes but work with them to find out if maybe there's something they'd like to do or learn more about- almost the same approach I use with library patrons. And I'd just talk to them and make sure that they knew that I love them no matter what!

You can find more Booking Through Thursday answers here.

Booking Through Thursday- Twisty

Jackie says, “I love books with complicated plots and unexpected endings. What is your favourite book with a fantastic twist at the end?”

So, today’s question is in two parts.

1. Do YOU like books with complicated plots and unexpected endings?

I do like books with complicated plots and unexpected endings- but only if the ending makes sense for the plot and characters and doesn't violate the spirit of the book. In other words, I don't like an ending that comes out of nowhere but I think a good writer can generate an unexpected ending that still makes sense.

2. What book with a surprise ending is your favorite? Or your least favorite?

Possession, by A.S. Byatt, has a heartbreaking surprise ending that made me love the book even more than I was loving it as I read it; Godmother, by Carolyn Turgeon, had a surprise ending that made me want to throw the book out of the window! The ending to Ian McEwan's Amsterdam was likewise infuriating!

You can read more Booking Through Thursday here.

Booking Through Thursday: Favorite Unknown

Who’s your favorite author that other people are NOT reading? The one you want to evangelize for, the one you would run popularity campaigns for? The author that, so far as you’re concerned, everyone should be reading–but that nobody seems to have heard of. You know, not JK Rowling, not Jane Austen, not Hemingway–everybody’s heard of them. The author that you think should be that famous and can’t understand why they’re not…

I have two- one who really is sort of famous and one who isn't. My first choice is Iris Murdoch, a British writer who won the Booker Prize in 1978 for The Sea, The Sea, about a theater man who retires to a small cottage by the sea, only to become obsessed with a woman he had loved when he was younger. It's wonderful! I also read her The Black Prince and Nuns and Soldiers, both serious, complex novels. Murdoch was the subject of the film "Iris" with Jim Broadbent and Judi Densch and one of the 20th century's most brilliant novelists, critics and philosophers. I'd like to see more younger people reading her. She's really amazing.

The second writer I'd like more people to read is the Croatian-American writer Josip Novakovich- actually, I need to read more of him myself. Several years ago I read his fabulous collection of short stories, Yolk, about the Balkan Wars. I remember being absolutely enchanted and haven't gotten it out of my mind since. He's got more books out- more stories and a novel, and I have them in my piles of TBRs somewhere, I know. I need to make time for them- and you should, too!

You can read more Booking Through Thursday answers here.

Booking Through Thursday - To Flap or Not to Flap?

Suggested by Prairie Progressive:

Do you read the inside flaps that describe a book before or while reading it?

I skim the inside flaps before I decide to buy a book; I might reread it once I start to get myself situated. But, since most of the books I buy and read are paperbacks, my books rarely have flaps to flap!

You can read more Booking Through Thursday answers here!

Booking Through Thursday - Historical Truth or Historical Fiction?

Given the choice, which do you prefer? Real history? Or historical fiction? (Assume, for the purposes of this discussion that they are equally well-written and engaging.)

Tough one! I'm more of a fiction person generally but I think if I really wanted to learn about something I'd choose nonfiction. Historical fiction is fun but you have to take it with a grain of salt and it's not all created equal. Some of it is alarmingly disconnected from historical reality; some of it is quite faithful to it. To get anything out of historical fiction- to be able to distinguish the good from the bad- you have to be pretty well-informed about the period you're reading about. If I'm not well-informed, I treat historical fiction like pure fiction and leave it at that.

There's more Booking Through Thursday here.

Booking Through Thursday- or, Do You Book Through Your Books?

Suggested by Barbara H:
What do you think of speed-reading? Is it a good way to get through a lot of books, or does the speed-reader miss depth and nuance? Do you speed-read? Is some material better suited to speed-reading than others?

I know there are people who read 20 books a week and swear to God that they have perfect comprehension and appreciation for the literary arts, but I don't believe them. I think speed readers miss a lot, never mind that I don't think that reading should be a race, or an endurance test, or a quantity-over-quality, don't-stop-till-you-drop marathon. Reading should be a pleasure, and should be taken at the pace of enjoyment. I read because I enjoy good writing; speed reading misses the point. I read, on average, one book per week- or rather, I finish one book per week and usually take 1-2 weeks to read an average-length book. Wolf Hall took over a month, being 400+ pages and a challenging literary read; on the other hand, I blazed through Secret Son in three days because it was short and light. Some things just go faster than others but reading fast as a habit defeats the purpose of reading.

Booking Through Thursday- Marking the Spot

Suggested by Tammy:

What items have you ever used as a bookmark? What is the most unusual item you’ve ever used or seen used?

I found this in an old copy of Sholem Aleichem's Tevye the Dairyman I bought at a library booksale:

So if you can read this and tell me what it is, I'd love to know! But whatever it is, it's definitely the most unusual thing I've found in a book!

UPDATE: After consulting with a colleague of mine in the Jewish library world (my boss, actually!) I've confirmed that the document is a ticket to a High Holy Days service held in Tel Aviv, in pre-state Israel. HaZafon is a neighborhood there and all of the other geographic markers check out. Thanks for everyone who wrote in with their ideas and translations!

As for what I use, mostly I just dog-ear. I know- I know. Bad!

More Booking Through Thursday answers can be found here.

Booking Through Thursday

But enough about you, what about ME?

Today’s question?

What’s your favorite part of Booking Through Thursday? Why do you participate (or not)?

I participate because it's fun way to build community and meet other bloggers, and because I like having a random question to answer each week that gets me to think about some aspect of books and reading. I've been making an effort lately to do more opinion pieces on the blog and Booking Through Thursday helps inspire me! And it's nice to have a pre-made topic once a week- kind of like a little break! What about you? Why do you participate (or not) in weekly memes like BTT?

More Booking Through Thursday here.