1. Favorite childhood book?
The Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum
2. What are you reading right now?
Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz
3. What books do you have on request at the library?
- A Vintage Affair by Isabel Wolff
- Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
- The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
Two of the three books I have on hold have baked goods in their titles. What does that say about me?
4. Bad book habit?
I have many, unfortunately. My worst would probably be reading in the bathtub. I’m ashamed to admit that most of my books show some sort of water damage.
5. What do you currently have checked out at the library?
- Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz
- Fanciful Quilts to Paper Piece by Wendy Vosters
- Hazard by Jo Beverley
- Jesus the Christ by James E Talmage on CD
- Little Shop of Horrors sheet music
- The Tony Awards Songbook sheet music
- Teddy Bear Redwork by Jan Rapacz
6. Do you have an e-reader?
Absolutely not
7. Do you prefer to read one book at a time, or several at once?
Almost always one at a time. When I read, I like to completely immerse myself in the world created by the author. You can’t really do that when you read more than one book at once.
8. Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog?
I think my reading habits have definitely changed. I’ve started analyzing the books that I read much more deeply. I also seem to be more purposeful in watching for beautiful language, instead of just skimming over it.
9. Can you read on the bus?
Yes. But not in a car.
10. Favorite place to read?
As previously mentioned, the bathtub. Although I also love reading outside, especially in the spring.
11. What is your policy on book lending?
I only lend a book to a person if I know that I would be comfortable asking them to give it back.
12. Do you ever dog-ear books?
Yes. :( That’s another of my bad-book- habits.
13. Do you ever write in the margins of your books?
Absolutely. But only in pencil.
14. What is your favorite language to read in?
Um...English. Although I did read a few chapters of Harry Potter in French, once!
15. What will inspire you to recommend a book?
Beautiful writing, believable characters, and a worthwhile plot. Also, I will never recommend a book that I felt was dirty or racy in some way.
16. Favorite genre?
Trade fiction.
17. Genre you rarely read (but wish you did?)
Biographies. I wish I had more patience with history books. I would love to learn more about the historical figures that I admire, but I cannot stand the dry writing style often found in biographies.
18. Have you ever read a self-help book?
From start to finish, no. I’ve read bits and pieces of several, though.
19. Favorite cookbook?
Anything from America’s Test Kitchen. I have never made a recipe from one of their cookbooks that has turned out badly.
20. Favorite reading snack?
I wish I could say carrots or rice cakes, but I must be honest and admit that my favorite reading snack is a warm chocolate chip cookie with glass of cold milk. Mmm.
21. How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews?
Although I sometimes feel bad about doing it, it must be done. If a book is not good, I’m certainly not going to tell people that it is!
22. Most intimidating book you’ve ever read?
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
23. Most intimidating book you’re too nervous to begin?
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
24. Favorite Poet?
Probably William Wordsworth, although I also LOVE William Blake.
25. How many books do you usually have checked out of the library at any given time?
Usually like 10. I’m a book hog.
26. How often have you returned book to the library unread?
I usually return unread books, unfortunately. My policy is that if the f-word is used more than once, I immediately stop reading. Consequently, I usually have one book in every batch from the library that I can’t get past the first chapter in. It’s unfortunate that authors use such vulgar language so often. I really don’t see how they think such crude language improves their work!!
27. Favorite fictional character?
GAH, worst question ever! There are so many. How about top 5 female characters? (In no particular order.)
1. Jane Eyre from Jane Eyre. An amazing woman with strong moral fiber.
2. Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejdice. I think that every woman admires Elizabeth Bennet because of her strength and her wisdom. She’s not an airhead like her sisters, and women like to think that intelligence counts for more than beauty! Elizabeth Bennet proves that it does. Also, she stands up for herself despite that fact that she is a woman. There are not many female characters from that time period who showed as much spine as Austen gave to Elizabeth. That is why I love her.
3. Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games. She kicks butt. The end.
4. Polly Milton from An Old Fashioned Girl. I think that the reason I love Polly so much is because I like to think that I’m a little bit like her.
5. Hermione Granger from Harry Potter. C’mon. She’s a nerd with a wand!!!!!
30. Books I’m most likely to bring on vacation?
Basically anything except for a classic. It’s just too difficult to focus on classics when you’re on vacation.
31. What distracts you easily when you’re reading?
TV. I simply cannot read when Dwight Schrute or Shawn Spencer is blaring in the background.
32. Favorite film adaptation of a novel?
BBC's Pride and Prejudice. SOOOOO GOOOOOODDDD.
33. Most disappointing film adaptation?
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It’s my favorite book in the series, and they completely butchered it. Terrible. Just terrible.
34. How often do you skim a book before reading it?
Never. Why would you do that??
35. Do you like to keep your books organized?
Theoretically, yes. In practice...Not so much.
36. Name a book that made you angry.
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I won’t say why it made me angry in case anyone hasn’t read it yet, but for those who have read it...you know why. Grr.
This book meme is from the Booking Through Thursday blog
Monday, October 25, 2010
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise by Julia Stuart
The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise describes how the life of a beefeater living at the Tower of London is turned upside down when Her Royal Highness decides to restore the royal menagerie. The story is full of amusing mayhem as the old guards attempt to cope with the influx of royal animals, however it also deals with the deeper issues of grief and loss.
The characters of the book are downright quirky. There were moments when I laughed out loud at their absurdity. I often found myself chuckling throughout the day as I recalled their adventures. However, the beauty of this book was that it was immensely amusing without being complete fluff. In my opinion, a book can only be “good’ if it changes you in some way. A “good” book touches you and helps you to grow into a better person. Despite the silly, nonsensical setting and occurrences, this book met this requirement through its very real relationships.
I would recommend this book to anyone. It’s light, witty, quaint, and heartfelt. I can see myself reading it again and again.
Here is the “Cast of Characters” listed at the beginning of the book:
- Balthazar Jones: Beefeater, overseer of the Tower's royal menagerie, father to Milo, and collector of rain.
- Hebe Jones: Balthazar's wife who works at London Underground's Lost Property Office
- Mrs. Cook: Balthazar and Hebe's 180 + year-old tortoise - the oldest tortoise in the world
- Arthur Catnip: London Underground ticket inspector of limited height
- Rev. Septimus Drew: Tower chaplain who writes forbidden prose and pines for one of the residents
- Ruby Dore: Barmaid at the Tower's Rack & Ruin pub who has a secret
- Valerie Jennings: Hebe's eccentric colleague who falls for someone of limited height
- The Ravenmaster: Philandering Beefeater who looks after the Tower's ravens
- Sir Walter Raleigh: Former Tower prisoner and its most troublesome ghost
- Chief Yeoman Warder: Suspicious head Beefeater
- Oswin Fielding: Equerry to The Queen
- Samuel Crapper: Lost Property Office's most frequent customer
- Yeoman Gaoler: Deputy to the Chief Yeoman Warder who is terrorized by ghostly poetry at night
Monday, October 18, 2010
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
This book explores the relationship between African American maids and their white employers in the 1960s. Although this is not a topic that I would normally be drawn to, I had heard so many good things about the book that I simply had to check it out. Everyone I talked to said that the appeal of The Help was the voice that Stockett gave to each of her characters. They were completely right. Stockett masterfully uses language to paint a picture of each character in such a vivid way that it feels like they are telling you their story in person. She brings the flavor of the South through the language without making it difficult to read or understand, as sometimes happens when authors try to use a specific vernacular.
My colleague (and reading buddy), Cindy, summed it up when I told that I had finished the book. She said, "Don't you miss them?" The characters become your very real friends and the ending (though satisfying) leaves you yearning for more of Minnie, of Aibileen, and even of mean Miss Hilly.
Favorite Quotes:
- You is kind. You is smart. You is important.
- All I'm saying is, kindness don't have no boundaries.
- Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision. You gone have to ask yourself, "Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?
- I used to believe in em (lines). I don't anymore. They in our heads. Lines between black and white ain't there neither. Some folks just made those up, long time ago. And that go for the white trash and the so-ciety ladies too
- That's the way prayer do. It's like electricity, it keeps things going.
- Frying chicken always makes me feel a little better about life.
My colleague (and reading buddy), Cindy, summed it up when I told that I had finished the book. She said, "Don't you miss them?" The characters become your very real friends and the ending (though satisfying) leaves you yearning for more of Minnie, of Aibileen, and even of mean Miss Hilly.
Favorite Quotes:
- You is kind. You is smart. You is important.
- All I'm saying is, kindness don't have no boundaries.
- Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision. You gone have to ask yourself, "Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?
- I used to believe in em (lines). I don't anymore. They in our heads. Lines between black and white ain't there neither. Some folks just made those up, long time ago. And that go for the white trash and the so-ciety ladies too
- That's the way prayer do. It's like electricity, it keeps things going.
- Frying chicken always makes me feel a little better about life.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
What an amazing, amazing, amazing book. Instant top-ten book, for sure. It's a futuristic book describing a society in which books are illegal. The story follows the journey of a "fireman" whose career consists of burning illegal books.
There are two things that make this book so fantastic. First, the writing. Bradbury has a unique writing style that is brief and yet incredibly descriptive at the same time. I felt like I was getting the detail of Dickens in every profound, precise sentence. Bradbury truly understands how to manipulate the English language. Second, there is so much truth in this book. I found myself nodding in assent throughout the book as statements rang true in my mind.
Rather than attempting to review the entire masterpiece, I thought I would simply share some of my favorite quotes:
1. "Many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet ... was a one-page digest in a book that claimed: 'now at least you can read all the classics; keep up with your neighbors.' Do you see? Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there's your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more."
- Ummm...Internet Sparknotes?
2. "We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against."
3. "People want to be happy, isn't that right? Haven't you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren't they? Don't we keep them moving, don't we give them fun? That's all we live for, isn't it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these."
4. "If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war."
5. "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."
There are two things that make this book so fantastic. First, the writing. Bradbury has a unique writing style that is brief and yet incredibly descriptive at the same time. I felt like I was getting the detail of Dickens in every profound, precise sentence. Bradbury truly understands how to manipulate the English language. Second, there is so much truth in this book. I found myself nodding in assent throughout the book as statements rang true in my mind.
Rather than attempting to review the entire masterpiece, I thought I would simply share some of my favorite quotes:
1. "Many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet ... was a one-page digest in a book that claimed: 'now at least you can read all the classics; keep up with your neighbors.' Do you see? Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there's your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more."
- Ummm...Internet Sparknotes?
2. "We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against."
3. "People want to be happy, isn't that right? Haven't you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren't they? Don't we keep them moving, don't we give them fun? That's all we live for, isn't it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these."
4. "If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war."
5. "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."
- This quote definitely hit home for me. I watched Jeopardy every single day until I was twelve and I still try to catch it when I can. (They changed the stupid time...pff). For many years my dream job was to be the next Alex Trebek. I know an enormous amount of absolutely trivial information...that I will never ever, ever use, and yet I am remarkably proud of my knowledge. *Sigh...* I am one of those useless stuffed people.
6. "Our civilization is flinging itself to pieces. Stand back from the centrifuge."
- What profound imagery! It reminds me of Yeats' poem "The Second Coming." Look it up.
7. "Everyone must leave something in the room or left behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime."
- Every time I read this quote I get warm and fuzzies.
8. "Some day the load we're carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn't use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us. We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And some day we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddamn steam-shovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up. Come on now, we're going to go build a mirror-factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them."
- And this is why we learn.
6. "Our civilization is flinging itself to pieces. Stand back from the centrifuge."
- What profound imagery! It reminds me of Yeats' poem "The Second Coming." Look it up.
7. "Everyone must leave something in the room or left behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime."
- Every time I read this quote I get warm and fuzzies.
8. "Some day the load we're carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn't use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us. We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And some day we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddamn steam-shovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up. Come on now, we're going to go build a mirror-factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them."
- And this is why we learn.
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