BTT: Discuss!

This week Booking Through Thursday ask:

Do you like to talk about what you read? Do you have somebody to talk WITH?

     I love to talk about what I read.  In fact, one of the reasons that I started this blog.  To talk the books that I had read.

     When I moved to Miami, I found it hard to meet people that shared like interest.  The only book club in the area is far for me to travel since I don't have a car and it was on a weeknight.  Which meant that if I did go, I wouldn't return home until after 10 or 11 in the evening.  

     To solve this problem, a year ago I started my own book club on Meetup.  This has been a great experience, there are about 10 regulars that show up often.  Most book club meetings about 5 people (including my self) attend.  It's a challenge to find books that I think everyone will enjoy and that will lead to an interesting discussion but I love it.

     If you are looking to meet people that have bookish interest like you and can't find anyone I highly suggest starting your own book club.  Meetup is a great place to do it, even though it is not free but you can change yearly dues.

BTT: One or Many

This week Booking Through Thursday ask:

Series or Stand-alone?

Stand-alone.

My main reason to preferring stand-alone is because once I finish a book, I like to be done.  I like to move on to the next book, character, world.  I am not a person that likes to linger.  I might wonder what happened to the characters afterwards, but I really don't want to know.  Maybe this ties in with my pet peeves about epilogues.


I do read series, right now I have five different series in some state of completion.  It was not my intention to start series, but when I started to read urban fantasy/paranormal, most of the books were part of a series.  And I got sucked in.  I do enjoy them, but sometimes I get the feeling that authors keep adding elements to make the series last longer instead of just letting it end.    


When I read book blogs I find that I don't consider books that are part of a series, especially if it is not a completed series.  I hate waiting and I don't want to start another series until I have completed the ones that I   have already started.

So what about you?  Series or Stand-alone?

BBT: Guilty Pleasure

This week Booking Through Thursday ask:

What book(s) have you read that you’re secretly ashamed to admit?

There is no one book that I am ashamed to admit that I read.

But my guilty pleasure that I don't admit to often is romance/erotica.  I read them, but I don't review them.  Whenever I find myself in a reading funk, I pop on of these open and plow right through them.  In a weekend I can read about 3 romance/erotica books.

Romance/erotica is one of the main reason I love my Nook.  I don't drive so when I am on the bus I tend to pull out a book.  Nothing seems is more embarrassing then pulling out a bodice ripper.  Now, I can read them without having to worry about some seeming the cover.  There still is the chance that someone is reading over my shoulder, but I doubt that happens at all.  People in Miami don't seem to interested in books.

Another great thing about romance/erotica is that it is easy to find free or cheap eBooks.  The quality is not always the best, but I read them for enjoyment not for deep intellectual insight or beautiful, elegant writing.

What's your guilty pleasure?

BTT: First Teacher

This week Booking Through Thursday ask:

Margaret asks:
                                    Who taught you to read?

The simple answer:
      Mrs. Hershey in the second grade.

The longer answer:
     The beginning of my childhood was really unsettled and I didn't attended school that often.  Then my grandmother got custody of me and moved to a small town where she worked.  Since I was behind the school she enrolled me in at first made me leave my second grade class and go to the first grade class during reading time.  I hated it, it was really embarrassing to walk into a first grade class and have all the students look at you.  Only to walk out again and go back to my regular class a short time later.

    Then something change how the school handled kids that were behind in their reading ability (or maybe it was always there and I didn't know about it).  I still had to leave my regular class during mid-day but instead of going to the first grade class I went to see Mrs. Hershey.  Mrs. Hershey helped the students that were behind, she basically taught us how to read and spell.

     I will always remember Mrs. Hershey because even though she was just doing her job, she seemed to really care about what she was doing and her students (I was lucky and had a lot of teacher that cared).  Not only did she care but she seemed to enjoy what she was doing.  And she was a really sweet lady.  When I finished with her class, she gave me an ornament.  I don't have the ornament anymore but I remember it was as beautiful as she was.

BTT: Quotable

This week Booking Through Thursday :

Valentina asks:
                       Do you have a favorite quote from a book?

This one was really easy for me.  As soon as I read the question I knew the answer.

"All that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity."

- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.2

I didn't care much for William Shakespeare during my high school English class days but this quote stuck with me the most.

Maybe because it was the same school year that my grandmother died and death was on my mind.  But till this day when I think of favorite quotes this one always is first in line.

Booking Through Thursday: Do-Over

This week Booking Through Thursday ask:

Have you ever bought a book, started reading it and then realized you have already read it? If so, how far did you get? (Can you tell this happened to me for the first time ever this week!?!)

And–did you keep reading??

I don't think this has ever happened to me.

But if it did, whether or not I continued to read would depend on how far along I was into the book before I realized that I had read it before and how much I remember.

If I had just started reading it and was only on about page 20, I probably would stop.  Because that means that I remembered enough of the book to realize that I have already read it.  

If I was about halfway through the book I would continue to read because that means that I don't remember that much of the book.

What about you?

Book Through Thursday: Siblings

This week Booking Through Thursday ask:

A while ago, I interviewed my readers for a change, and my final question was, “What question have I NOT asked at BTT that you’d love me to ask?” I got some great responses and will be picking out some of the questions from time to time to ask the rest of you. Like now. 

Heidi asks:

Do you have siblings? Do they like to read?

Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!

I am the oldest of four.  I have two younger sisters and the baby of the family is a boy.

I would love to be able to say that I come from a family of readers.  But that is not true.  There are only two readers in my family.  Myself and the second oldest.  The love for reading appears to have skipped the other two.  I like to think that by the time my other got around to having the other two, she had exhausted all of her good genes and that they were stuck with the leftovers.

You would think that my baby brother liked to read since he works at a library.  But I can't ever remember seeing my with a book.

Booking Through Thursday: Pet Peeves

This week Booking Through Thursday ask:

What are your literary “pet peeves”?

This is an easy one for me.  I have a couple of them, that I encountered in the last two books that I read (a good and bad example).

1.     Pop Culture References
       
          I believe it dates a book.  For example in The Replacement Wife, there are references to iPhones and Burberry to indicate economic status.  I feel there are better ways to do that.  In 20 years, some of these reference may mean nothing to readers and just go completely over there head.  Or send them to the internet to look it up.  The only time this works (for me) is to indicate a time period, for example a Walkman reference in the 80s or early 90s.

2. Epilogue

          When I see epilogue, it normally means that the author is about to tie everything up into a HEA scenario.  In my opinion not every books needs a HEA, sometimes there are no happy endings.  Just leave well enough alone.  Do I need to see ten years into the future and know that a character has moved on and now married with 2.5 kids, a house with a picked fence, and a dog? No.  Sometimes it is okay to keep the reader guessing.  Which is one of the reason why I liked Silver Sparrow so much.   There was an epilogue but not one that tied everything up with a nice little bow.

Booking Through Thursday: Own or Borrow

This week Booking Through Thursday ask:

All things being equal (money, space, etc), would you rather own copies of the books you read? Or borrow them?

If I had the space, money and all the other things that I needed in order to house books. I would own.

I have always had the dream of owning my own library. It dates back to when I was a kid. My grandmother was a reader and brought a lot of books. She use to have books shelved in milk crates that lined the landing of the stairs. Whenever I walked up and down the stairs all I would see is books housed in their square plastic crates. I think because of that experience I have a desire to have my own collection.

Maybe one day.

BTT: Recent Big

This week Booking Through Thursday ask:

What's the biggest book you've read recently?

(Feel free to think "big" as size, popularity or in any other way care to interpret)

I don't know what to consider recent. Does recently mean last three months, six months, year. I am going to take it as in the last year.

The top three "biggest" books according to size are all over six hundred pages. These three books have something in common, they all are considered classics. But the best part is that I enjoyed all of them. On to the books:

Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

The "biggest" books according to popularity are of course from The Twilight Series. I wish I could say that I enjoyed these books as much as I like the three classics but I didn't. I only reviewed two on this site:

New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer

Recent Funny: Booking Through Thursday

This week Booking Through Thursday ask:

What's the funniest book you've read recently?

This is going to be an easy and short BTT response.

The funniest book that I have read recently is Catch-22 by Joseph Heller during the winter last year. It has been awhile since I have read a funny book. But I am a list person and funny books are not on my planned list of books to read this year.

I really enjoyed Catch-22. In fact, I did much of my reading on a bus and felt silly sitting on the bus with a book in my lap and a big smile on my face. Much of the time I spent reading this book I was either fighting to keep my face neutral or not to laugh out right. Next time I read a funny book I'll do it in the privacy of my own home. I would hate to be known as a "bus crazy".

TBR: Booking Through Thursday

This week Booking Through Thursday asks follow-up questions from last weeks Booking Through Thursday:

Do you keep all your unread books together, like books in a waiting room? Or are they scattered throughout your shelves, mingling like party-goers waiting for the host to come along?

All the unread books that I physically own are in one place, on a bookshelf in my room. I keep them there because I don't have my own place. Instead, I have housemates. So, I try to keep my stuff all in one place otherwise I would buy whatever I wanted whenever I wanted and have a big mess to clean up when I leave.

If I had my own house, then I would probably have books everywhere. When I was a kid my grandmother would keep plastic milk crates filled with books at the bottom of the staircase. I use to love looking at the books as I walked up and down the stairs. So, I probably would have books in the common rooms and the hallways, if there is space.

Unread: Booking Through Thursday

Another Booking Through Thursday:

An idea I got from The Toddled Dredge (via K for Kat).

Here’s what she said:“So here today I present to you an Unread Books Challenge. Give me the list or take a picture of all the books you have stacked on your bedside table, hidden under the bed or standing in your shelf – the books you have not read, but keep meaning to. The books that begin to weigh on your mind. The books that make you cover your ears in conversation and say, ‘No! Don’t give me another book to read! I can’t finish the ones I have!’ “

I don't own a lot of books but I have collected a lot. I try not to buy that many books because I don't place to stay where I am for that long. But I do have a book shelf.

Currently waiting to be read is:

The Damned - LA Banks

Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe

Summer Sisters - Judy Blume

Adulthood Rites - Octavia Butler

Dawn - Octavia Bulter

The Hand That's Dealt - Rosalind Coats

My Soul To Keep - Tananarive Due

Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison

26a - Diana Evans

A Lesson Before Dying - Ernest Gaines

Water for Elephants - Sara Gruden

Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

Sapphire's Grave - Hilda Gurley- Highgate

Not Without Laughter - Langston Hughes

The Color of Family - Patricia Jordan

Cujo - Stephen King

Pet Sematary - Stephen King

Brown Girl, Brownstone - Paule Marshall

The Warmest December - Bernice L. McFadden

Mama- Terry McMillian

Sula - Toni Morrison

Fear of The Dark - Walter Mosley

Fresh Water Road - Denise Nicholas

The Bonesetter's Daugher - Amy tan

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere - ZZ Packer

The Fifth Vial - Michael Palmers

The Kingdom Keeper - Ridley Pearson

His Dark Material - Phillip Pullman

The Well and The Mine - Gia Phillips

The Witching Hour - Anne Rice

The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

Coffee Will Make You Black - April Sinclair

Ain't Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice - April Sinclair

I Left My Back Door Open - April Sinclair

The Coldest Winter Ever - Sister Soulja

Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift

Flyy Girl - Omar Tyree

The Blacker The Berry - Wallace Thurman

Celebrity Memoirs: Booking Through Thursday

Suggested by Callista83:

Do you read celebrity memoirs? Which ones have you read or do you want to read? Which nonexistent celebrity memoirs would you like to see?

I have not read any celebrity memoirs. Unless you count "Confessions of a Video Vixen", and that was such garbage that I didn't even get halfway through with it.

There are a couple of memoirs that I would like to read. Rick James has one that sounds interesting. Or at least the except that I read dealing with Prince did. I also would like to read Michael Jackson's Moonwalk. I can't say that there is too many celebrities that I like enough to want to read about.

If I were to read a memoir it would be about someone who did something great (like MLK, Malcolm X, etc) or who have been through traumatic things (like Holocaust, Slavery, Genocide, etc).

A Second First Time: Booking Through Thursday

What book would you love to be able to read again for the first time?

(Interestingly, I thought that I had thought this one up myself, but when I started scrolling through the Suggestions, found that Rebecca had suggested almost exactly this question a couple months ago. So, we both get credit!)

When I first read this question the book that popped into my heads was Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eyes". This book happens to be my all time favorite. I have read it a least three times and I normally am not a re-reader. I have a fear of read reading books because I think that I will not enjoy them as much as I did the first time (I feel the same way about movies). But I always enjoy "The Bluest Eyes" when I re-read it and still have the same intense emotional reaction.

But when I really thought about the question I decided that I would love to be able to read "The Outsiders" for the first time again. Why? because when I read it as a teenager, I had a huge crush on just about every actor in the movie. So, all the characters in the book in my mind looked like the characters in the movies. Not that that was a bad thing. But I think it made my enjoyment of the book so much better. I don't think that I will be able to get that feeling back because one because I am older now, and don't have the same crushes and two I haven't seen the movies in years. All I remember was the Patrick Sawyze looked hot in it. And the hair dying scene.

I do plan to re-read "The Outsiders" in the future and hopefully I will enjoy it the second time as much as I did the first.

Worst "Best" Book: Booking Through Thursday.

Booking Through Thursday asks:

How about, “What’s the worst ‘best’ book you’ve ever read — the one everyone says is so great, but you can’t figure out why?”

The "worst 'best' book" that I have ever read (at least that I can remember) has to be "Frankenstein". I just could not finish it. The writing was so heavy. I know that Shelley wrote the book in a style and manner that was popular for her time but so me it was just too much. It was like trying to learn new words for the SATs. I had to stop reading it.

But as a good note, Learn Out Loud, has a great summary of the book. It is really cool because they have a reader who reads important passages of the story that give you most of the basic information that is needed. It is read in the writers actual words so the style doesn't really change. I really felt after listening to the 22 minute audio that I had read the book myself. I even felt that I should go back and read it.

Inspiration: Booking Through Thursday (01/22/2009)

Booking Through Thursday Ask:
Since “Inspiration” is (or should) the theme this week … what is your reading inspired by?

My reading list is not inspired by much. Just different recommendations from people or things that I saw that looked good.

But I am inspired to read because when I was younger, I couldn't read that while. In fact my reading was so bad that in the second grade I use to have to leave my class and go to the first grade class during their reading time. I did not catch up until I was in the fourth grade. But that experience had a positive influence on my love for reading now.

Also, my reading is inspired by my grandmother. I lived with her through most of my life and she felt that my difficultly reading was more due to a lack of interest and opportunity. So, she always brought home books that she thought that I should read. I hated most of her selections until she brought "The Boxcar Children" series through the mail. I loved them and would wait for them to arrive.

So, thank you Gwen.

5 of Favorites: Booking Through Thursday

Today's Booking Through Thursday Questions Are:

1. Do you have a favorite author?

I don't think that I have a favorite author. But if I had to make a choice I would say Paulo Coelho. I read "The Alchemist" and feel in love with his work.

2. Have you read everything he or she has written?

I have not read all his books. I have read two of them ("The Alchemist" and "By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept) and have a third one that I have hope to finish this month ("The Witch of Portobello")

3. Did you LIKE everything?

No, I didn't like both of the books that I read. "By The River Piedra I Sat Down And Wept" was a little odd of me. I really didn't like it that much.

4. How about a least favorite author?

I am going to have to say Stephenie Meyer. I really don't care for her. I don't know if it is because she is over hyped or what. I tried to read her adult book "The Host" and couldn't finish it. She goes on and on.

5. An author you wanted to like, but didn’t?

Tananarive Due. I really want to like her work but I just can't. I have tried two of her works, "Joplin's Ghost" (which I blogged about) and "My Soul To Keep"(which I didn't finish and plan to re-read")

Honesty: Booking Through Thursday

This week's Booking Through Thursday question is:

I receive a lot of review books, but I have never once told lies about the book just because I got a free copy of it. However, some authors seem to feel that if they send you a copy of their book for free, you should give it a positive review.

Do you think reviewers are obligated to put up a good review of a book, even if they don’t like it? Have we come to a point where reviewers *need* to put up disclaimers to (hopefully) save themselves from being harassed by unhappy authors who get negative reviews?

I, should point out the fact that I have never received a free book from an author for review
because I have just started blogging. Everything that I write on this subject is just be hypothetical.

That being said. I think that it is important for reviewers of books to be honest. But I also

think that if you receive the book for free you have a responsibility to the author to inform them that you are going to write a negative review and send them a copy before hand. It is a persons right to say I did not like this book and state why. Just because the book is free does not mean that you have to like it. State the truth and back it up.

Authors also have to realize that not everyone is going to like their book. It is the risk that

comes with putting something out for public consumption. I think that a author would be asking for too much if they give a book to someone and expect a good review. There will be positive and negative reviews. You have to take the good with the bad. It is part of the risk.

If (and most possibly when) I decided to put myself out their as a someone who is willing to
review books directly from the author (or publisher), I will be honest and state when I do not like a book. I will treat that book no different than any of the other books that I read.