Jenn invites people to play along on this meme she found:
These are the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users (as of Oct. 1). Bold is for books you’ve read. Italics for books you’ve started but haven’t finished. Strikethrough is for books you found unreadable. Leave the ones you haven’t read as they are. Put an asterisk before each book you want or plan to read. (more…)
Does anyone have any recommendations for authors I should hear at the National Book Festival this Saturday?
The authors who will be in attendance are (Bolded names include authors I have a stronger interest in seeing):
Jenn expressed interest in hearing about the literary portion of my weekend, so I shall oblige her whilst uploading Flickr shots to illustrate future posts.
I have three bookish things of interest to share:
1. I stopped by the Olsson’s 35th anniversary sale on Sunday. I bought a number of things, many of them gifts for upcoming birthdays or Christmas. Yep, that’s right; I started my holiday shopping. Olsson’s is a small local chain and probably the bookstore I spend the most time in year-round (particularly at their two D.C. stores in Penn Quarter and Dupont Circle). They have a free membership program that rewards you for spending money, which I, of course, enjoy doing. A terrific place to hear authors read from their work, they sell books, movies, and music and now rent DVDs, as well (although I’ve yet to take advantage of that portion of their business). Thirty-five years is nothing to sniff at in any small business, but particularly in a high-rent area like D.C. and its environs. Four locations have closed since we moved down here in 2003 and one has opened. I hope that they have reached some stability with their current store locations and that these spots continue to serve them well. I look forward to spending many more hours and dollars with them in the future.
2. The Yarn Harlot is coming to Arlington on Thursday and Rudi’s agreed to go with me out to Bailey’s Crossroads. He might listen to part of her talk; he might not. But his love for me includes making sure that the highways in Virginia take me where I want to go. I swear that they shift like the stairwells in Hogwarts and that even if you start out on the right road that halfway there, you’re headed someplace else entirely different!
3. Through a forum post on Ravelry*, I have discovered DailyLit. This lovely service has collected more than 500 works of unabridged literature in the public domain and broken them down into 5-minute bits. Choose amongst their titles, which range from poetry to foreign language works to philosophy, and opt to receive a daily selection from the book via your email or RSS reader. It’s a great answer to people who claim they don’t have time to read and is eminently customizable. It’s particularly nice for me because there are so many classic novels and writers I mean to read but don’t ever pursue at the library. I’ve chosen Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Towers as my first selection. No, I’d never heard of it either. But I have heard of Trollope and thought it might be better to start with him than with Proust, who was the other author in serious contention last night.
* I’ve tried not to overmention Ravelry here because many knitters are still on the waiting list. The innovators of the community networking site recently increased the number of people they’re adding every day, so I’ve decided it’s okay to talk about now. I’m “sprite” on the site and anyone who reads the blog should feel free to add me as a friend.
Madeleine L’Engle, one of my favorite authors growing up, has died.
Her books featuring young adult heroes combined the spiritual and the scientific and played up smart, misunderstood characters negotiating the chasm between childhood and adulthood. She understood teenagers in a way that many people don’t and tried to offer some insights to help you to navigate through the mess of life.
I pulled out A Wrinkle in Time only last week. I must have felt her soul rustling in the cosmos…
I leave you with this quote from that esteemed old friend:
Mrs Whatisit: A sonnet is a very strict form of poetry is it not? There are fourteen lines, I believe, all in iambic pentameter. That’s a very strict rhythm or meter, yes? And each line has to end with a rigid rhyme pattern. And if the poet does not do it exactly this way, it is not a sonnet, is it?
Calvin: You mean you’re comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it?
Mrs Whatsit: Yes. You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.
A lesson worth remembering…
This week’s Booking Through Thursday question (posted early on Deb’s blog) is one that interests me, so I thought I’d take a crack at it:
Okay, so the other day, a friend was commenting on my monthly reading list and asked when I found the time to read. In the ensuing discussion, she described herself as a “goldilocks†when it comes to reading — she needs to have everything juuuuuust right to be able to focus. This caught my attention because, first, I thought that was a charming way of describing the condition, but, two, while we’ve talked about our reading habits, this is an interesting wrinkle. I’d never really thought about it that way.
So, this is my question to you — are you a Goldilocks kind of reader? Do you need the light just right, the background noise just so loud but not too loud, the chair just right, the distractions at a minimum? Or can you open a book at any time and dip right in, whether it’s for twenty seconds, while waiting for the kettle to boil, or indefinitely, like while waiting interminably at the hospital — as long as the book is open in front of your nose, you’re happy to read?
Ha! I’m anything but a Goldilocks reader. While I sometimes can’t read a particular book at a certain moment, there’s rarely a moment when I can’t read at all.
And I’m a fully absorbed reader. Mum used to ask me to do chores and would come back an hour later to yell at me for leaving them undone. “When did you ask me to do that?” I’d complain. “I never heard you.” But, she’d point out, I’d replied, so clearly I had. Since then I’ve discovered the part of me that will talk to you while I’m reading is the same part of me that will pick up the phone in the middle of the night and converse logically and lucidly with you while the conscious part of my brain is still occupied with the task at hand (in that case, sleeping).
I read while I eat. I’m learning to read while I knit. Hell, I even read while I walk home from work. There is always a book in my bag and piles around the Burrow, just waiting for me to decide I cannot wait a second longer before opening it up and diving in.
So, no Goldilocks reading for me, thank you very much. I’m an all books all the time kind of girl.
This post is designed to make Sweetpea feel better than the last few months’ book reports have. I finished a mere three books this month and ditched the aforementioned awful one. If I want to reach my goal of 50 for the year, I’ve got to pick up the pace a bit… (more…)