What are you reading?

I've struggled with how to start this post or even what direction to take it. Part of me wants to say "do people read anymore?" because I don't know a lot of people who do that I can have conversations with about books. Or could say "Why aren't people reading stuff that is similar to what I read?" Or "why don't my friends and family read books I'd like?". And that could also leave them asking "well, why don't you read things WE like?" which is a good question BUT this post is about me and my reading habit, not yours. And I say that in jest and with good humor, you guys!

I miss being around people who share the same interests in reading what I read, or who have a diverse taste in books so we can have conversations about literature. I do not mean that to sound all smarmy or snotty or intellectually bitchy. My friends and family are smart and witty and fun, which are a few reasons why I love them. But we don't have a lot in common in the literary world. There's nothing wrong with that at all, but I just miss a stimulating conversation or debate about books and reading, best sellers, authors, context and characterization, new releases, and the merits of classics or anything other sort of strange bibliophile conversation.

Reading is essential to me as food and air and sleep; heck, sometimes I even sacrifice those things FOR books. And I love to talk about things I read. Daddy-O, bless his heart, will listen to me ramble or rage or tear on about a book; I'm so thankful he will hear me out and give an ear to my words about something I read, even if he doesn't give a hoot. I'm lucky and thankful he indulges me. And though he reads tons of stuff, we rarely read the same sorts of books. Which is fine. It just doesn't lend itself to a bookish conversation.  

One of my favorite things to ask is "what are you reading" and I hope for 1) a great book recommendation; and, 2) a stimulating conversation. I love the whole "oh I read that! What did you think of SoandSo?" and then we're off and running.

Daddy-O says what I read is intellectual/ smart stuff (I think he really means "weird") but I think I just read what I like, which is fairly diverse. He and I had the conversation that since I work where I work I don't often have a chance to flex my brain and engage in smart conversation or to have my brain motivated and all the synapses firing so he thinks I have to read "smart" stuff- chewy books so I can get my smart on/ turn on my brain.  I don't know about all that but it's as good as an explanation as any, I'd say.

But these days it's just not happening for me. There's no clicking for me, with other people, when talking about books lately. I miss book-ish conversation.

Mags

Will I be kicked out of the bibliophile club for this?

I can't believe it. I didn't read a single book in the entire month of November. I have no idea what happened. Well, I can fathom a guess...

In November I watched a LOT of TV. I mean, a LOT (I blame The Voice). I also watched more movies in November than I did in the entire year- 3 in the theater and about 10 DVDs. I also worked on 2 school extra curricular- our prom, which we do in the fall, and the art club. I worked my regular job. I also took a seasonal, part time job which took around 30 hours in November (there will be a post about this). AND I also took on a graphic design gig which was a bigger mess than the client realized so a quick 6 hour job turned into 22 hours. I was not happy about that.

My women's book club met this month and the selection was The Paris Wife, which I read earlier in the year so I did spend some time reviewing/ re-reading parts of it so I could possibly participate in the discussion.

November was also a high stress month. I bought a new car for myself (post coming soon with a picture of my new car and the BIG reveal about what I named the car). I gave my Malibu (aka The Blue Goose) to Mac and about 10 days later a deer ran into him so I spent 2 weeks straightening that out (post will be forthcoming...). Since Mac delivers pizzas a car is imperative so he was in high freak out mode which really stresses me out. And as always, there are the money worries associated with everything I do. Add the holiday in there and I was just a wreck.

I spent some time driving back and forth to see The Sam in the capital city.

 

I play LOTS of "Words with Friends" on my phone and I read Twitter.

By the time "free time" was available I usually had enough concentration left in me to gaze at the TV until I fell asleep. I could also skip the gazing step and lots of times just fell asleep. When I had enough energy to hold a book and look at the words and have some basic comprehension skills I couldn't settle on anything. Nothing was holding my interest. I started and abandoned the Tony Danza teaching book- though I do want to go back and read it all the way through. I've been reading a book about adopting a racing greyhound off and on this month, too, since I am adopting a retired racing greyhound on Dec 20 (yes a post about this is forthcoming). I downloaded 13 samples of books I thought I might want to read on my Nook. (Since getting the Nook I'm really selective in what I buy since I have to pay full ebook prices rather than waiting for it to be used at my local used bookstores). I know I read all the samples, one every few evenings. I also read some magazines. I just HAD NO FOCUS. Then about a week ago I started reading Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Book Store. I plodded through it. It was interesting at first but my attention wained. I was determined to finish solely because the book glowed in the dark. I finished it last night, which is Dec. which makes it official...

I read no complete book the entire month of November.

That must change...

Mags

The first time

I've been able to do a lot of reading this summer, more than usual. Obviously summer vacation has allowed me time to wallow in a pile of books.

But I have a problem, which then turns into several problems. Only bibliophiles has issues such as this one.

What happens when you love an author and have read all their books and there are no more? I know I have to just wait for another one but when there some serious author- reader loving happening, waiting just sucks. I bought, for example, Sacre' Bleu by Christopher Moore. I pre-ordered it and it was on my Nook when I woke up. It was released on April 3. I just read it last week. I kept prolonging reading it because I've read all the Christopher Moore books and I hate waiting for another one. I couldn't stand it any more (or Moore?) and just had to read it; the suspense was killing me!

I've done the same thing with other books in the past. I buy them or borrow them and then just hang on to them, holding out to read while I anticipate the next one. Some authors I like quite a bit so I read them when I can and am content for the next one, but some authors, I go a little crazy: Christopher Moore, Janet Evanovich, Susan Whittig Albert, Jodi Picoult (had 2 out this year!), Greg Iles (finally his new one comes in December!), Nicholas Evans... I get these books ASAP and then I carry them around, savoring the fact I could read it if I want.

I realize I could re-read books by my favorite author. Re-reading to me is like trying to recreate a first kiss- it just can't be done. No matter who great and exciting, engaging, wonderful a book it the first time I read it, I can never get that sort of magic again. I do re-read books, but it better be damn good if I'm willing to give up time to do that. I also want to say that life is way to short to read books- this is how I feel most of the time. I have about 350+ books on my to read list and it's not complete. There is only so much time left in the world for me and I don't usually want to re-read something where there are so many new authors for me to fall in love with, to experience, to... 'kiss'. So I don't often re-read.

And then there are books that have just disappeared. Michael Allegretto hasn't written a book in years but I can't seem to figure out if he died or not. And RIP to Maeve Binchy... ah those at the Scarlet Feather and Quinton's... I shall miss them. And there was a character called Callahan Garrity written by Kathy Hogan Trocheck- she wrote 7 and then no more. It just pains me!

So I wait. I want for Evanovich's 19 in the Plum series. I wait to see if Evans will ever write a new one again. I have to wait at least a year or even more for more Moore, and Picoult. I have to just try to be patient for December for Iles.

And maybe go re-read turning Angel or Fool to get my through...

Mags

Beach reading

I went to the library and picked some books. I thought I just needed to get away from young adult literature for awhile so I got some grown up books.

We all know I like, on occasion, to read with a theme, like that one time a few years ago when I was on a kick with food/ cooking memoirs or the time I read a bunch of books in a row that all had a female gender word in the title or when I read historical fiction, a bunch in a row. So, sometimes I do that consciously.

Apparently, I must do it unconsciously as well. I got 4 books at the library and when I got them home and started reading them and then scrutinizing, I discovered they all have to do with the beach, or they all take place at the beach or near water. I didn't do this purposely; it just happened. So I guess my first theme of the year is going to be beach books. Appropriate since it is summer time and all- a way to welcome the season, I guess.

Mags

The dark side of the book shelf

Right now I have a huge group of students- mostly girls- who like to read "dark books". By that I mean, topics that are real, heavy stuff. It can be as fiction or as non but they like to walk on the dark side. I can get the boys to try lots of different things but the girls want the sad and tragic, or what I think of as depressing.

The most popular topics are anything to do with the following: drugs abuse, rape, domestic/physical/ sexual abuse, alcohol abuse, teen violence (school shootings, etc), self harm or self mutilation, tragic relationships, suicide, and gangs. It's really rough.

I understand this, to a certain degree. This population of students at my school come from straight from the pages of books like these. It's not a joke. But it's so serious and heavy and depressing and sad. I know they want to read what the relate to, but... wow. I don't expect these kids to want to read all rainbows and sunshine and Christian fiction and happiness, but all this hard hitting reality stuff seems like too much. On the flip side, I want kids to read and if this is what they read, then so be it.

It's a real struggle for me as I don't read stuff like this- usually. One of those topics might be peripheral to a novel I take up, but usually not the main thrust. And I sure can't read that sort of stuff in large quantities. Does anyone have any suggestions? i ask my students what they like to read and I search the net, Goodreads, and library magazines as well as publisher magazines. I find lots of the same titles repeated. I need some new stuff.

I do have quite a good collection going of the dark and miserable (i swear it's what I call the genre, in my head, not to the kids). I have all the books by Ellen Hopkins. I have Go Ask Alice and Jay's Journal. I have the Bluford High Series. I have all of Laurie Halse Anderson novels. I have Smashed, Trigger, Cut, Prey, A Million Little Pieces, We all Fall Down, Tweak, Glimpse, Blackout Girl, and 13 Reasons Why. I have Boost, Hate List and all the books by Allison Van Diepen, as well as those by Simone Elkeles. Any other suggestions of stuff in this genre/ category would be helpful.

I don't know. It's just so sad...There's so much good stuff out there for teens. There's a lot of wonderful 'adult books recommended for teen readers' too like Defending Jacob, The Night Circus, Water for Elephants, The Help, anything by John Grisham (who actually writes a series for young adults!), some of Stephen King's stuff, Lev Grossman's Magician series, most of Jodi Picoult's stuff... I could go on and on about adult books for teens. There's also good stuff for YA written for Young Adults. Okay, there's a lot of garbage but there's good stuff. I think anything by Neil Shusterman is awesome, for example. Harry Potter. Of course Twilight (okay kids like it...). The Bone books by Jeff Smith, Veronica Roth's stuff, John Green write stuff for kids as well as Cassendra Clare, Kelley Armstrong, Lurlene McDaniel, Caroline B. Cooney, Michael Scott, Beth Goobie, Alyson Noel, Sarah Dessen, Meg Cabot, Melissa de la Cruz, and Scott Westerfeld (and many more, but this was just off the top of my head!). Jennifer Weiner even has a teen book coming out this summer.

But right now, for my students, the darker and the more depressing, the better they seem to like it. Recommendations anyone?

Mags

Book Struggles

I can't seem to get my read on. This is a first time my entire life. I've had "readers block" before but it usually only last for a few days, or a week at most. This is bad this time. Proof: in the month of January I read 1 book. Yes, one whole book, and only 1. If that doesn't seem like a big deal, let me point out that in January 2011 I read 6, January 2010 I read 5 books, and in January 2009 I read 9 books. See, the numbers never lie!

I just can't seem to find anything that really attracts my attention right now.

Also, I can't seem to focus on words on the page either. I find I read the same line or paragraph over and over again. I think my life is stressful that I just cant concentrate. It's so much easier to stare at the tv and not move.

Another issue could be my eyes. They are so sore and feel "tired" by the end of a day. I haven't had an eye exam or new glasses since summer of 2007 and I can feel it each day. I can't see jack far way and doing small work like reading, quilting, paper crafting, all seem to cause eye strain and give me headaches. I know staring at my computer screen each day doesn't seem to help either.

Whatever the reason I just can't seem to get myself into reading.

So, I'm begging for some good suggestions from you, my readers. You can go to my old books blogs ( 2009 and 2010-2011) of past to get some ideas of what I like, if you want. Or just go out on a limb and give a suggestion. I need something that's going to engage and grab me from the first few pages, please!

need to get my that readin' feelin',
Mags

A book is a gift you can open again and again

As I've been reading book blogs this holiday season trolling for 2012 reads since this year's selection was pitiful (but another post about that later!), I found a wonderful idea that I too am going to take part in: Bochus Yule.

Bochus Yule (Library Christmas) is the idea of donating books to your local library during this holiday season and is such a wonderfully simple idea that I read about on Shelf Love, that I can't believe I never thought of it myself (there's even a place to use a Mr. Linky to show your support at the Literary Omnivore).

So, this week I plan to take a bag of books to my local library.

Libraries have had such a huge influence on my. I always wonder if I hadn't grown up a mere block from the public library, would I have been such an avid reader. I've written about my love of libraries here before.

I've also taken the liberty of reprinting a post I wrote a few years ago about my love of books and reading... such wonderful childhood memories.

Because I am bibliophile, one of my favorite things in the whole wide world to do is spend a day in a used book store, listening to the rain outside and drinking Starbucks coffee while just browsing. I love that. I always check out a library when I go on vacation as part of my sight seeing excursions. I love Barnes and Noble- this is one of my favorite places in the world. I usually have three or four books going at one time. I can't name a favorite book because there are too many to choose from, same with trying to list a favorite author.

I grew up living 1 block from the public library and by the time I was age five I would walk to the library alone, with my mom standing on the side walk in front of our house watching me the whole way. The librarian would walk outside and watch me cross the street and I was then entering my own childhood version of heaven.

I would read anything and everything I could get my hands on. When I was in junior high school I got a job working at used book store for 4 hours on Saturday mornings. Then when I was in high school, I landed what was then my dream job- working in the children's department of the local library. I loved that job and worked there for 6 years. I then worked at a public library in the town where I went to college for 2 years and I worked in the campus library for a year. Yes, total nerd.

But my love of books has continued. I still love children's books. My son had the biggest collection of books of any child, enough to start our own library, and I started reading to him while he was womb residing. Bedtime would take an hour at night because we had to read a stack of bedtime stories. Whenever I feel down and sad, I love to read kids' books- they make me smile no matter what. Some favorites I think complete every child's library are The Napping House, Where the Wild things Are, Good Night Moon, The Giving Tree, Amelia Bedlia, The Day Jimmy's Boa ate the Wash, King Bidgood's in the Bathtub and He won't get Out, Green Eggs and Ham, Max's Chocolate Chicken, Hegedy Peg, Christina Katrina and the Box, Angelina Ballerina, Alexander and the terrible-no good-very bad day, and A pocket for Corduroy. Obviously, this list can go on and on and on. And these are just my picture book favorites.

My own personal book collection is quite extensive, even with all the books I sold for cash when I first moved back here to Civilization. Friends told me they are not helping me move my books again- I had 48 boxes when I got back here from the Wild West. One time when I moved everyone was so sick of moving these boxes they wrote messages on the boxes. Where I had written "books" friends add "Another box of *books*" or "more fucking *books*" or "another damn box of *books*"... uh, yeah.

So... in this season of giving, I'm going to give the gift of reading and donate some some books, and hope many of you will as well!

Your bibliophile,
Maggie

Reading should be fun, damn it!

As the 2011 is winding down, I was looking at my reading goals I set for myself and I failed miserably. Last year I said I wasn't going to really make any reading goals but I did somehow- they just seemed to evolve- and I didn't achieve them and I feel like I let myself down.

I was reading around on some book blogs and found a wonderful blog called Shelf Love. I have no idea how I've never discovered this blogger before but she writes and reviews like I want to when I grow up. There are some amazing things on here other than just book reviews. She blogs about what I think of as essay style posts, all things about reading, books, writers, book news or just stuff about the literary world. All that being said, i stumbled on a post about reading and goals and fun. This inspired me to write my own post because I completely agree with her!

Reading should be fun. Period. I have no idea why this strikes me in epiphany fashion but it does. I tell my students all the time that reading should be fun and that reading is fun. I tell them that even though they might have to read a novel or a book for class, they should find things to read that the like otherwise. I don't' care if they read fiction or non, magazines, newspapers, comics, graphic novels.... as long as they read something they like and it should be fun. So why in the world can't I follow my own advice and why did I have to read it on a random blog before I had my "Ah- HA!" moment?

Reading SHOULD be fun, damn it! And when I make reading goals for myself it's not fun. I just want to read for fun, regardless of how many books I read. Or what genres. Or what style. I just want to read for the sake of reading.

There are several book clubs online that I could join and I was thinking about it until I decided I didn't want to be locked into reading any specific. There's one that encourages readers to get through all their "I own these books" pile. I can't remember the specifics but the deal was to read nothing except the books you bought to help decrease that stack since most of us bibliophiles own more books than we can ever get through. Another book club is to concentrate on new release books, reading books that only come out in 2012. Another book club that appealed to me was the "read all the books I bought in 2011." I like both of these ideas but again, it puts some constraints on my reading which is going to turn it into a "job" rather than something for fun. Of course, there's the traditional way of having reading goals like targeting a certain number of books to read (which I've done before) or a certain number of a specific genre (which I've done before).

Last year I finally gave myself permission to not finish a book if I don't like it. I was usually invested in completing what i started and I just finally said, "Maggie, it's okay if you don't read the whole book if you hate it." It's really hard for me but I do now abandon a book if I don't like it. That doesn't happen very often but I average about 10 books a year that I don't finish. That's not so bad. So that was my first step in lessening my reading stress, and allowing myself to have fun- and I didn't even know it!

So this year my reading goal is to have fun. I guess I'm allowing 2 small goals: 1) the first is that I want to joining a Read-a- thon on April 21, 2012. I can read anything i want but the whole day is devoted to reading. I want to do this. And it's reading for charity! The other goal, #2, is that I'm going to continue my membership in my book club with my friend Photographer. I have the list of books we're reading in January, February, and March. I will attempt to read the book for book club each month but if I don't like it, I'll not read it and skip the meeting that month, or go and admit I didn't like it an why.

Other than those 2 LITTLE things, my reading goal for 2012 is to have FUN! Fun is defined differently for everyone. I often read stuff that my dad calls "smart people books"; I think that's a compliment. And to me that's fun reading. I'm also going to ready just about anything I want from cotton candy for the brain to chick lit to beach reads to the smart stuff. Anything I want to read and I'm not setting any goals. Even if I did read 117 books in 2010 and I feel I should be able to do that annually. But that is not going to sway me! No numbers! Just reading fun!

Maggie