Book Meme - Day 31

What would be on the soundtrack for your favorite book?

Well this is a bummer of a question to go out on, because I don't really have any idea how to answer it. Sometimes I'll connect a specific character to a certain song. Like Denna and Richard Thompson's "Beeswing". But coming up with an entire soundtrack? That just sounds like work I don't want to do.

And since no one is making me do it, I'm not going to.

Book Meme - Day 30

How many books do you typically read in a month? How do you feel about this number?

According to the spreadsheet I started keeping this year, I read 12 or 13 books a month. Which is honestly a little high. I'm reading more this year than I ever have in the past, and it's hitting the point where that's probably not a good thing.

Reading is an effective way to learn more about the world around you, to escape when things get too hard, to pass the time when your bored. But I need to start making time for other things again. I want to find time to practice yoga regularly or go for a bike ride. I want to hang out on the couch with my husband and watch TV or even a movie. I want to write more (actually, I'm doing way better at this this month).

Then again, all those things require a solid chunk of time - 45 minutes at least. And at Gavin's current age, it's hard to carve out that kind of time. It's much easier to find five minutes to read another page or two of a book.

I'm going to read more books this year than I ever have before. I think I want this to go down as my record year. Not that I'm going to stop reading altogether or anything. But I need to start getting back to other things.

If only there weren't so many books I want to read. A big part of this is that I need to stop buying books so I don't feel as much pressure to read so fast.

Book Meme - Day 29

Are there any books or topics that should not be published? What are they? Why?

No.

I support free speech and freedom of the press and that means even things I don't agree with. Every idea deserves to be heard. And then you can reject it, argue against it, and shoot it down. But you have to at least hear it first.

Book Meme - Day 28

What are you reading right now? What are it's strengths and weaknesses?

As usual, I'm reading several books at the moment:

The Name of the Wind. This is one of my favorites. I got the Tenth Anniversary edition for Christmas, and I'm finally reading it now. It has a bunch of new illustrations and some bonus material at the end. I love a lot of things about this book: the use of language, the world building, the magic system, the characters, the way it talks about music and poverty and the quest of knowledge. The dichotomy of the hero and villain and how it's mostly a matter of perspective. The way rumors turn to myths and legends. I wish there were more female characters. And that the hardcover wasn't so heavy. It's hard to read in bed at night.

Discount Armageddon: The first in one of Seanan McGuire's many, many urban fantasy series. And possibly my favorite of hers. This is a fun adventure that's bringing back a lot of the things I liked about Buffy (the heroine has a quick wit, a strong family, and a desire to have a life outside of monster hunting that she's struggling to balance with the monster hunting). McGuire has matured as a writer since the early Toby Daye books (which I also want to revisit - apparently I quit that series just before it got good). I dunno, I'm barely 100 pages into this book, but so far I'm loving it. I'll probably have more to say when I'm finished.

A Hat Full of Sky: One of Pratchett's Discworld books, the second about Tiffany Aching. This is a great young adult story about growing up and taking responsibility. It could be more diverse, as could all of Discworld. But I love it for being about a practical young girl who wants to help people.

Book Meme - Day 27

Describe your ideal book club

There would be an emphasis on SFF. Maybe that's all we'd read. I know most of the history of this genre, I'm familiar with it's tropes. I think there are a lot of exciting things happening there right now, and I'd love to discuss it with other people familiar with the genre.

All the members would be well-read and politically engaged. I want to talk about how books do or don't reflect the larger world, and I don't want those conversations to be a bunch of 101 lessons. I want the discussion to be on a higher level.

There would be a set meeting time, once a month. Roughly six people would show up each month, a mix of people who are there every month and people who only come occasionally.

There would be wine and snacks and it would be close enough to my house that I could walk home.

It would not fizzle out after 3 or 6 months.

Book Meme - Day 26

Do you return your library books on time? What do you think your answer means about other aspects of your life?

I don't check out books from the library because I get too anxious about not finishing them before they're due. This is ridiculous. I believe library loans typically last 2 weeks, and I usually finish a book in 3-4 days. A week if it's really long. But I always worry that it'll take longer, and then I'll have to return it unfinished. Or renew it and then someone who was waiting to read it will have to wait even longer. I stopped going to the library years ago, because it was causing me too much stress.

I think this demonstrates rather well that I will spend money to avoid a stressful situation if at all possible. I'm lucky I'm rich. If I weren't, my anxiety disorder would be a much bigger presence in my life. As it is, I can avoid most things that cause me stress and manage my anxiety without medicine.

Book Meme - Day 25

Have you ever pulled an all-nighter to finish a book? Which was it? What made it so compelling?

I have twice stayed up all night (or at least way, way too late) to finish a book.

The first time was Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets when I was twelve. It was summer, so it's not like I had to wake up and do anything the next morning, which helped with the staying up all night aspect. I had initially intended to read the series a chapter at a time with my mom and brother. That conviction evaporated the second I cracked the cover. As many people can attest, JK Rowling created a truly magical world. And it sucked me in.

I probably would have repeated this feat when the fourth book came out, but I received it in the morning and spent all day reading. I don't know if I finished it or just fell asleep - either way, I didn't stay up too late with that one. And after that I had responsibilities that made staying up all night a less appealing prospect.

The second (and last) time I stayed up all night with a book was when my friend loaned me Wizard's First Rule, the first in Terry Goodkind's The Sword of Truth series. This time was more egregious because I actually had a test the next day at school (albeit, a state-sponsored standardized test, so I wasn't taking it too seriously). But right as I was preparing to go to bed, Richard was kidnapped and spent the next 200 pages in captivity. I simply couldn't put the book down and sleep until I knew he was safe. By the time he escaped I was so close to the end of the book that I just went ahead and finished it.

Book Meme - Day 24

Who was your first literary crush or character you wanted to be friends with? What drew you to them?

I'm not sure I've ever really had a crush on a literary character. My early exposure to vampires like Lestat certainly informed what I find attractive (without having much bearing on my real life). And I remember loving Renzo Leoni from A Thread of Grace in a way that made me wish he were real. But when I was first reading the Sookie Stackhouse novels and a friend at the time enthused about my meeting a character because he was "so hot" I was a little confused. I'm not great at visualizing book characters (or settings) unless there's a lot of detail, and there wasn't much in this case.

I guess there's a difference between thinking "I want Katniss to choose Peeta" and "I would choose Peeta". Even when I was writing fanfic, my self-insert wish fulfillment was reserved for TV characters. They loomed a bit larger in my imagination. (For me Lestat was initially an extension of Spike.)

But man did I want to be a member of the baby-sitters club. I could never fully map myself onto any single character. I had Mary-Anne's shyness, Stacey's math abilities, and Jessi's love of dance. I was an amalgam of all of them, and therefore sure that I would fit right in with them. I also loved the structure of their friendship - the frequent (though brief) meetings and the shared interest of babysitting.

My friends and I talked about starting a babysitters club of our own, but it wasn't meant to be. We couldn't meet regularly, and I could never quite figure out how to get my CPR certification that would make me hire-able to people outside my family. But I always had those books and the friends in them that I could revisit time and time again, until I finally outgrew them.

Book Meme - Day 23

Describe how your bookshelf is organized. Why do you organize it this way? What other organization methods might you consider?

For the most part I have my books organized by genre and then further into subgenre. Within subgenres I mostly go by feeling. I put books next to each other if they're similar enough or if they both evoked the same feeling in me.

So, for example, I've got a couple of book cases of fantasy books. I have a couple of shelves devoted to series (Discworld and The Wheel of Time). I have a shelf for urban fantasy, one for portal fantasy, one for epic fantasy, one for chosen one tales, etc. The urban fantasy shelf shades from the more realistic (magical realism, a la The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake) to the more fantastical (The Dresden Files). The Magicians sits next to The Chronicles of Narnia because the former is a direct reaction to the latter. Sometimes books might belong to multiple sub-categories, and they just get put on whichever shelf has more room.

I have a non-fiction book case with pop science and history books and memoirs. I have a couple of shelves devoted to science fiction, broken further into dystopian fiction, space adventures, and time travel. Actually, I had to put time travel next to WWII, because I own a surprising number of time travel books about WWII. Or possibly WWII books with an element of time travel. Again, sometimes it isn't so easy to categorize a book.

Years ago I attempted to organize all of my books alphabetically by author then title (keeping series in order). It lasted less than a week because I couldn't find anything.

Conversely, a few months ago I put together a rainbow bookcase, expecting to take a picture and then put everything back where it went. But I ended up really liking the rainbow bookcase (it's actually two bookcases, next to each other). It's fun to look at. It's surprisingly easy to find books because I actually have a pretty good visual memory (this might be related to the fact that I was always better at geometry than algebra and physics fell apart for me when we started treating time as a dimension - I need to be able to turn word problems into pictures).

The thing I really like about my rainbow bookcases is that it provides a neat snapshot of who I am as a reader. I've got everything jammed in together. Memoirs next to young adult and fantasy next to physics text books. The individual books in each series are scattered all over the place. I love the contained chaos of it, possibly because it feels like it reflects what my life is like right now.

The only thing I don't like about the rainbow book case is that I can't apply it to my entire collection. It represents roughly a quarter of the books I own. Most of my books have either solid black or solid white spines. Or they have colorful spines that can't be easily called blue or green. And so those books are still being shelved according to my gut feeling genre system.

Honestly, the whole thing is a bit of a mess. But it works because I know exactly where every one of my books are. And that's the whole point of organizing your collection.

Book Meme - Day 22

What author, book, or series do you refuse to read and why?

Somewhat recently, an older, beloved author died. I had never heard of him until that day, or at least not in a way that made an impression. I read his obituary and a couple of other articles about him and reactions to his death. And I decided that I had no interest in ever reading anything he'd ever written. As someone who reads a lot of books, there are few things as satisfying as learning about a new author and then decisively not adding them to your to-read list.

It might help if I could remember the name of this particular author. But forgetting about him is just as effective as purposely avoiding him.

Actively refusing to read something isn't generally something I do. If I'm not interested in something, it doesn't stay on my radar long enough to show up on my to-read list. And if I keep hearing about someone, well, never say never. There's always a chance I'll get around to them someday.

Possibly the best example of this is Stephen King. A lot of people love him. He's incredibly prolific and has had a profound impact on both horror and science-fiction. He seems like a cool dude. But trying to pick a starting point is honestly overwhelming. It's not just that he's written so many books. It's that so many of his books are so long. I'm not sure I'm ready for that kind of commitment right now.

I did finally decide to try The Dark Tower, his magnum opus. A sprawling, science-fiction series seemed like as good a starting point as any. But I read the first two books, and I just didn't care. And now I'm worried that I won't like any of his other books. Too worried to pick up a 1000-page tome just because other people love it.

I'll probably never pick up another Stephen King book. Not because I actively refuse to read him, but because there's pretty much always something else I'd rather read. Then again, never say never. My curiosity may just get the better of me one of these days and compel me to finally pick up Carrie or It or The Stand. It just won't be anytime soon.

Book Meme - Day 21

What author of color deserves a bigger audience? What will you do to help introduce more people to this writer?

This is a tough one. The truth is that I don't read all that many authors of color. I'm actively working on fixing that. But most of the authors I come across are already award winners, which tends to lead to a sizable audience. There's not a ton I can do to add to that.

I have been pushing Octavia Butler on more people in the past couple of years. Her science-fiction is short and, I think, particularly pertinent to the world we live in. I wish Parable of the Sower was as popular as 1984 or Fahrenheit 451, because I think it's just as good and important as those classics. But it has also spawned it's own religion, so it's not like no one is reading that book.

At this point I'm trying to expose myself to a bigger variety of voices. And when I find a book I like, I recommend to anyone else I think I might like it. I also have a dedicated boo blog, though it doesn't get that many hits. And I've been trying to steer my book club to books that are written by women of color (we're two for three so far). But the truth is that this is an area where I need to do better.

Book Meme - Day 20

If you could only read classics or contemporaries for the rest of your life, which would you pick and why?

I would definitely do with contemporaries. This isn't even a difficult choice.

The truth is that I hardly read classics anyway. And when I do, they tend to be more "modern classics" than actual classics. Things that are less than a century old. There are a lot of barriers to the older classics, and the truth is that I probably get just as much from a Wikipedia entry or the spark notes. Mostly I'm just reading them so that I understand references in newer books anyway.

The world has changed a lot since most of the classics were written. And it's only changing faster. It's not just the language in older books that's burdensome, it's the almost complete lack of diversity. Reading older books is like looking back at a time when the world was a lot smaller and more narrowly defined.

I'm not trying to say classics are bad. They tend to be classics for a reason. They're foundational to a lot of what we read today. But when I'm trying to learn more about the world we live in, it helps to read something that was published more recently. The authors are more diverse and so is their subject matter. It makes for a better overall reading experience.

Book Meme - Day 19

What is the perfect reading snack? Why?

I have no idea how to answer this question.

The truth is that I don't really snack. About a decade ago I dislocated my jaw, and then I had to wear a bite guard full time until it healed. And I got out of the habit of snacking. I sort of started again when I was pregnant, but quickly reverted to my three meals a day after Gavin was born.

I'll read a book during a meal sometimes. And in those cases, I prefer food that can be eaten one-handed. That way I can hold my book with the other hand. So nothing that has to be cut up, and generally no sandwiches.

But just snacking? Not for me.

Book Meme - Day 18

Do you feel pressured to read the latest book or are you more of a backlist kind of person? Why?

I'm definitely a backlist kind of person. Paperbacks are cheaper than hardbacks, and used books are even cheaper. Which is important given my reading habits. But more than that, sticking to the backlist helps me keep my to-read list to a reasonable length. New book always get a lot of buzz, which has more to do with the advertising campaign than the content of the book. But if people are still talking about a book 3 or 4 years after it was released, it's more likely to be good.

That said, there are a few categories where it makes sense to favor new releases over the backlist. I talked about this in romance - where the newer books are more likely to reflect current sexual mores. Political books are another category that can get outdated quickly. And there are a handful of authors who I like enough to pick up their books soon after the release, especially if those authors do a local book signing.

Book Meme - Day 17

What is your relationship with poetry like?

Every now and then I come across an amazing poem. One that seems to speak directly to my soul or illuminates things I hadn't considered or is just neat. And then I think that I should really read more poetry than I do. But it never quite pans out.

I think the issue is that those gems are rare. And you have to wade through a whole lot of poems to get to the few that speak to you directly. And even though poems are short, that can get boring pretty quickly.

I've signed up for a poem-a-day email. Every morning while I'm eating breakfast, a poem arrives in my email box. It should be easy to read a single poem once a day during a time when I'm often actively searching for short things to read. The reality is that I read maybe one of these a week. Maybe less. Often they just don't capture my attention.

Recently I bought a slim volume of poetry. I liked a couple of them. But I found most of them trite. And I read the entire thing in less than an hour. I had to bring a second book that day because the one volume of poetry couldn't sustain both my morning and evening commute.

Maybe part of the problem is that I can't quite slow down enough to appreciate poetry. At least not on demand. Which is a little odd, because I'm generally pretty good at slowing down in other areas of my life. But there's so much to read that I just don't have the patience for poetry unless it's exception. And that's such a subjective measure that it's hard to seek out poetry that I'll like.

I guess I'm basically a passive appreciator of poetry. Every now and then I come across a poem that I really like while I'm engaging in some other activity (often surfing the web). I love when this happens, and I'm doing what I can to increase these random encounters. But at this point I think I have to accept that I'm never going to dig deep into poetry and learn to appreciate it as a form they way I did with comic books and am slowly learning to do with plays.

Ah well, there's plenty of other art to enjoy and plenty of other people to enjoy poetry.

Book Meme - Day 16

Who is one author everyone seems to love but you can't stand? Why?

For this one, I think I'm going to have to go with Jodi Piccoult. She's a best-selling author, which means a lot of people must love her. Indeed, she's many people's favorite author. Not that I've ever met anyone who loved her, but I'm sure these people exist.

Which is why I picked up one of her best-known books, My Sister's Keeper, a few years ago. It's about a girl who has leukemia, her younger sister who was conceived and born in order to aid her sister's health struggle, and what happens when the younger sister exercise her autonomy and refuses to provide transplants anymore.

I found this book to be incredibly manipulative. Like, nakedly manipulative of my emotions. I saw right through Piccoult's tricks, and I didn't think they were clever. Even as I was crying, I was mad at myself for being taken in by her. And then the ending was just a terrible betrayal. It was a twist for the sake of a twist and attempted to patch it over into a happy ending when this story could never be wrapped up with a happy ending.

I guess it felt cowardly of Piccoult to attempt to relieve the reader's tension rather than let them sit with it in the wake of a story about an incredibly difficult situation. If you're setting up a no-win scenario, it undercuts it to let someone win.

So I haven't read any more of her books, and I likely never will. There are better writers out there who can handle these subjects with more nuance and courage.

(Sidenote: I'm a little made that this is the post going up on my birthday. I want to talk about happy things)

Book Meme - Day 15

Do you let friends borrow books? Why or why not?

I let friends (family, neighbors, acquaintances) borrow books all the time. It's one of the main reasons I haven't made the switch to e-books yet. I love nothing more than telling someone about a great book and then being able to shove it right into their hands so that they have a chance to read it.

The key to this strategy is to always be pleasantly surprised when you get a book back. More often than not I do, but a handful have vanished into the ether. The good news is that these tend to be my favorite books by authors I love, so I'm happy to buy another copy and send them a little more money and incentivize their publishers to print more of their books.

But really I just want people to read more so that I can talk to them about books. And the best way to get someone to read a book you love is to remove all barriers to acquiring that book.

All that said, there are a handful of books I don't lend. These tend to be special or irreplaceable books. Books that I don't even take out of my own house, and I do almost all of my reading outside my house. Some books are special. But most are easily replaced.

Book Meme - Day 14

If you could only read one book for the rest of your life, what would it be? One author? One genre?

I don't know if I could handle reading only one book for the rest of my life. I hesitate to pick one of my favorites like The Name of the Wind or The Night Circus because, honestly, who knows if I'll still feel the same way about them in 20 or 30 years? I might try and cheat by picking The Complete Works of Shakespeare (which is sitting on my book shelf in a single volume) or The Wheel of Time (which PBS at least agrees counts as one book). They're both long and rich and lend themselves to multiple re-readings. Or I might pick something like The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Stories, which release a new volume every year and would let me stay up to date with the goings-on in the industry, even though that's technically cheating, too.

If it came to it, I'd probably pick an epic classic, like Les Miserables or The Count of Monte Cristo or something. Something that would take me a while to get through and which tackles themes that are evergreen.

Honestly, though, if I had to restrict myself to a single book for the rest of my life, I might as well give up reading completely and focus on other activities. The point of reading, for me, is to read widely.

Picking a single author is a little easier. It would have to be someone prolific who likes to experiment. Someone like Brandon Sanderson or Seanan McGuire, who publishes multiple books a year and builds up intricate worlds that can easily be revisited.

For a single genre, it's a no brainer - SFF. It's almost an effort to read other stuff as it is, and I would happily just fall into this genre forever if I had an excuse. Especially because I can argue that just about anything is fantasy.

Book Meme - Day 13

What is a genre or author you wish you read more of? Why haven't you read more of this genre or author?

This is a somewhat timely question.

The truth is that I do my best to read a bit of everything. Most of what I read is science fiction or fantasy, because those are my favorite genres. And once you get embedded in something, it's easy to keep finding more good things to read in that genre. But I make an effort to read widely. I pick up memoirs and young adult contemporaries. I read pop science and family sagas and thrillers. I'm not as familiar with any of these genres as I am with SFF, but when something grabs my interest, I happily throw it on my stack of books to read.

The genre I've been circling for a while is romance. I never read any of it growing up. And even as I matured as a reader and understood that it's not just trashy chick-lit (and as I embraced my own love for romantic comedies and soap operas, and specifically Jane the Virgin), I never quite found time to try it out.

The thing is, it's overwhelming to leap into a new genre. Where do you start? How do you determine whether a book will be a good fit for you? How do you handle the enormous backlog of books?

I started with Book Riot, where I get most of my book recommendations. And that led me to a handful of individual bloggers who reviewed books against various criteria. I started seeing a few names pop up frequently: Sarah MacLean, Courtney Milan, Tessa Dare, Alisha Rai. And then the next time I was in a book store, I picked up the first book I found by one of them.

I loved it. I bought another one, and I loved that one, too. I'm not sure I'm quite ready to tackle the romance section at the used book store, but I think I'm getting there. And in the meantime, the mass market paperbacks are so affordable that I've made it my mission to buy one every time I go into a bookstore for something else. It will help fold this genre into my existing to read list gradually.

The next one on my list is actually a bit of a departure: it's a choose your own adventure romance with ten possible happy endings with ten possible partners. I'm looking forward to it for the novelty of an adult choose-your-own adventure. But I'm also looking forward to what I expect will be a bit of an overview of different tropes. I want to see what I'll be drawn to and what will turn me off. I expect it will help me hone in on what I like when I'm picking future books.

There is one other rule that I'm applying to my forays into romance which is that I'm sticking to contemporaries. Normally I loved digging into the classics and seeing how the genre has changed and where various tropes got their start. And maybe I will eventually work up to a place where I want to do that exploration. But the culture has changed dramatically in the past decade. The way we talk about consent and gender roles and rape culture has changed. The fact that we talk about some of these things at all has changed. That's going to be reflected in (most of) the literature, and it's also going to color my enjoyment of the books. So until I'm a bit more submerged, I'm sticking to the books that are less likely to offend my modern sensibilities. It's not like there's any shortage of them.

And maybe in a few more years I'll be willing to give Danielle Steele a try. If only for context.

Book Meme - Day 12

What is the ideal reading weather?

Years ago, in mid-April, back when I could still spend an entire Saturday afternoon sitting on the couch reading, I was doing just that. It was an overcast day and drizzling. Not enough that you could hear it unless you were really quiet. Which, since I was reading, I was being pretty quite. The trees had all blossomed and now, with the help of the drizzle, the petals were falling to the ground. It was the first day the petals were falling, so there were a lot of them.

I was on the couch by the door to the backyard, so I had a great view of the outside world. Every time I looked up, it was like being in Fairyland. Just cool enough that I had a blanket and a mug of tea and with this magical rain of flower petals outside my window.

It was a perfect day, and that's the ideal reading weather.

Barring that, I'm happy reading in lots of different weather. Freezing days with piles of snow and more coming down. Warm days before the bugs are alive and the sun gets too high, when I can enjoy laying in the backyard. Rainy, stormy days, when I can practically feel the rain hitting the roof and windows. Chilly, foggy days when all I want to read about are witches and vampires. It's all great.

But those flower petals - that was a perfect afternoon.