Sometimes, All That Matters Is the Cover

I have to own this book. Possess and caress this book. Have it on my shelf.

The title–Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe–grabbed me.

GRABBED ME.

The cover just upped the ante.

Ordered!

And I didn’t even read to see what it’s about.

Are you ever that much a victim of a book’s cover?

WWW Wednesday 3-13-13

WWW Wednesday. This meme is from shouldbereading.

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

• What are you currently reading?

I feel absolutely decadent. I’m propped up in bed with a hot cup of tea reading. The Magicians and Mrs. Quent by Galen Beckett has been on my TBR pile for years.

What I’m Reading This Morning

I spied the lovely cover and snatched it up and bought it when my Kindle was fairly new, and I never managed to make myself actually read the book because it was a print book and not on my Kindle. I’ve come to the conclusion that such decisions were largely made because I find the adjustable font-size on my Kindle so much easier on my eyes, but at that time all I knew was that any time I picked up a print book I put it down quickly and went back to the Kindle.

You’ll also see my current Kindle on the bed (linked above–the Kindle Touch). It’s my second. The reason you might not recognize it is because it’s in a leather cover. This makes me purr with happiness. The feel of it is much like an expensive old book and it totally satisfies any desire I have to hold something weightier or more lush or more “real” than an electronic device. Plus, it’s so beautiful. Verso makes many beautiful covers but is a bit pricier than you have to go. There are some great covers for 9.99.

I’m also working in bed. I have notes I made in my Moleskine. Gotta get to work on the current novel, which has me more excited than I can even express. But enough of this, back to what I’m reading. I’m really, really enjoying The Magicians and Mrs Quent. I can’t imagine this book sitting on my shelf looking pretty all these years while I ignore it.  I am now waiting for Mr Rafferdy to discover that he is a magician, which I am sure he must be. (I hope.)

“You do read nicely, Miss Lockwell,” Lady Marsdel said one evening. “You have no impulse to insert your own comments or observations. You are content to defer to the wisdom of the author at choosing the best words. Quite unlike Mr Rafferdy, who turns everything into a comedy. You cannot trust him at all when he reads. He once tried to convince me that a book of famous members of Assembly contained an entire chapter pertaining to monkeys.”

“Well, if it didn’t, it should have,” Mr Rafferdy said to Miss Lockwell in a conspiratorial tone.

I am totally crushy on Mr Rafferdy. I’m glad to know this trilogy is already complete so I can keep reading without waiting for the rest to get written. I also will be keeping this book in my library. It’s pretty and thoroughly enjoyable. Two good reasons to call it a keeper instead of culling it out. It totally fits in with my desire to only have books I really, really like on my physical library shelves, not every book that I’ve ever managed to drag into the house. I no longer keep books just because they are (gasp) books.

I’m also listening to Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan. I’ve seen it all over WWW Wednesday and now I know why. So far, loving it. A weird cult of code-breakers (that is not Google) and wonderfully quirky genius coding-chick (who does work for Google) and a 24-Hour Book Store that is very, very strange… that is a piss-poor description but it’s the best I can do right now. Quirky, smart, fun.

And I’m also reading a book by Katharine Kerr that is not yet available for you to read. ~taunts you~

• What did you recently finish reading?

I mentioned this one before, Eleven Pipers Piping: A Father Christmas Mystery by C C Benison. It’s the second in the series, and I really am enjoying them. This time it’s Burns Night and there is such a blizzard coming down, half the participants have bailed out. They are left with eleven pipers, Tom Christmas (the local vicar) and an unexpected stranger with ties to the village from the distant past. All the elements needed for a murder and a mystery. Benison does an excellent job of characterization and clues, and is particularly deft at having Tom seem like not only a real dad and a real man but a real vicar with all that entails–and yet the books are never religious or even about religion. An interesting touch is that he’s raising his young daughter as Jewish, to respect her preference which reflects his late wife’s wishes.

• What do you think you’ll read next?

No idea. No freaking idea.

Paisely Vandermeir requests the pleasure of your presence.

What about you? What have you been reading lately? Put the link to your WWW Wednesday entry in comments, or just tell me!

I’m keeping a running total of my reading challenges–the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge (see banner at the bottom of the right sidebar) and my own challenge, the Embarrassment of Riches Challenge. The January wrap-up is here and here is the February Wrap-Up!

Decisions, decisions.

Pay attention. At the end, there will be a test.

I cleared out (well, still working on it) all my books that just exist in my life as “books” rather than “books I love for some reason” and am instead, building a library of books that are special for some reason or another. Books I love. Books I have sentimental attachment to. Books I admire deeply. Books that mean something.

And I came across this old, stained slipcase with a book in it as I was filling another box of books to give away.

Meh.

Pulled it out. Huh. I have never read this book. I don’t know why I have it. I do know it wasn’t on the shelves in our home when I was growing up. No sentimental value here.

Vague recollection of writing a Junior theme on Nathaniel Hawthorne. Very vague. Read The Scarlet Letter. Didn’t love. Again, never read this one. Didn’t even remember the title correctly. I didn’t know there was a second “the” in it. Hmm. Ho-hum.

Check publication date. 1935. Almost 80 years old. Still, not doing anything for me. Check abebooks and amazon, not a valuable book, either.

This is difficult. It’s kind of a cool book but I don’t even remember what it’s about. (I wrote that theme. I assume at some point I knew.)

And really nice illustrations at the top of each chapter.

Okay, Mr Hawthorne, here is the deal. I am going to read your book and hope it’s a keeper. Because if it isn’t, I’m not sure what to do with it.

For now, it’s part of the TBR and will be read at some point this year as part of the challenge.

First sentence of the prologue:

When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume, had he professed to be writing a Novel.

So, dear reader. What would you do? Let’s assume the worst. Let’s assume this book doesn’t keep my attention and I end up not considering it “special” by definition of “stories that appeal to me.”

Do you think it’s pretty enough to keep anyway? On the shelf it’s not. Open, it is. But… is that enough?

Side-discussion welcome: How shallow can Pooks get, holy chickadees, to judge a literary classic by its pretty-quotient?

I’m all ears. Okay, eyes.

And depending on how you do on this test, I have another for you. Only, it will be MUCH more difficult. Promise!

Blogging The Casual Vacancy, in conclusion

Yes, I am finally putting my final thoughts on paper, without spoilers, because even if I warn for spoilers, it bothers me that I might actually spoil someone’s discoveries and pleasure in reading. I do know people who won’t read the beginning of a book before they read the end. They want to know it ends in a way that is satisfying to them before they invest themselves emotionally in a book. All I can say about that is–I’m not sure this is your book, anyway. And yes, in my opinion, in ends brilliantly. But to jump ahead and read it out of order? Makes me shudder.

My earlier posts:

The Casual Vacancy, Part One

The Casual Vacancy, Olden Days

And then I stopped blogging my progress for numerous reasons.

The Casual Vacancy is social commentary, just as Dickens was social commentary. JK Rowling writes teenagers with such brilliance, and in this case, such brutality. This has none of the happy gloss that protected the reader in the Potter books, and instead, shows the vicious class warfare that exists in many adult hearts, and how it often shapes the lives of the young making it difficult to find a future beyond that of the narrow scope of their parents.

The Casual Vacancy also explores death, and how a community’s perceptions of an unexpected death or deaths can shape the future of the community–whether it’s three steps backward or one step forward.

The biggest problem in this book is the very deliberate choice to make this a story of various members of a village, rather than the story of a single member. We have no likable Oliver Twist or Harry Potter to give us an underdog to root for. Instead we have several equal points of view, none of whom are portrayed so generously. They are each portrayed with warts and flaws that make us eventually like them–if we do–despite their humanity, rather than because of it. The book is compelling, but it’s not comfortable.

I think it will make a powerful movie, and the movie most likely will choose one or two characters as its focus, as movies do.

Finally, at its heart is a young girl I knew from the beginning would possibly break my heart. She is the epitome of the kind of underdog that captures my imagination and heart in real life. And as I read her tale, it made me think of (forgive me) a few Dallas Cowboys who came from difficult circumstances and found fame and fortune–and in at least one case, whose story has yet to be fully lived. And I thought, how lucky–how absolutely lucky they were–to have athletic skills in a sport that has so much money involved. To be singled out and lifted up when so few are.

How fortunate, to be football players and not rowers.

Did I mention the end of the book was brilliant? Finally, the emotional catharsis I needed, the release.

I can’t figure out whether I would have liked this book better if it had been by an unknown author and I didn’t have any expectations about it, or whether I gave it extra credit because JKR wrote it. It could go either way. But the bottom line is, I never could erase from my mind who wrote it and how different it was from the Potter books, but by the end, I gave it full marks for being a damned good book that moved me.

I’d love to know what you thought about this book. Please start your comment with SPOILER if you use one.

Do you have piles of books to be read, and want to join a mutual challenge to actually read some of them in 2013? Join us here! Any kind of book, as long as it’s in your possession on January 1, 2013. Let’s get this party started!

More on building my library.

yMy Kindle has freed me from the weight of way too many books.

I know, I know, you can’t have too many books.  But I did. I was drowning in books I hadn’t read but had accumulated because they looked interesting, and only kept accumulating more.

Not pretty books, like these, arranged artfully by the folks at http://www.hautelook.com/events#all, either.

Kindle gave me an unexpected benefit in psychic energy and financial sense.

I now download free samples because they look interesting. Those are free. When I eventually get around to reading the beginning of the book I either delete because I’m not interested or buy because I’m ready to read it at that moment. I am not sure this has saved me money because I am reading more than I used to (oh, that portable Kindle!) and am buying a lot of ebooks.  But at least the books I’m buying are books I am actually reading.

Which gets me to the psychic energy.  Where does that term come from, anyway? Psychic energy? I think maybe I made it up and it doesn’t mean what I think it means. But whatever.  I unexpectedly found myself getting rid of boxes and boxes of books that were just around in case I ever got around to reading them, but sometimes had been around for decades.  I found myself getting rid of books I’d read once and honestly probably would never read again.  I found myself emptying my crowded spaces and clearing the air and floor and suddenly seeing bookshelves as places to be filled with things I loved instead of “stuff I just happen to have.”  So yeah, I’m still spending money on books here, too. But I love this. It’s a new hobby, accumulating (in hardcover when possible, and seeking out the covers I like best when possible) books that I want to possess and caress.

And yes, appearance matters.

I will never spend money only on appearance (oops, I said “never” which is the surest way to suddenly do the opposite) but today‘s hautelook vintage collection tempted me. Fortunately I have no hundreds of dollars needing to be spent on nonsense today so am not that tempted.

Still. For your visual enjoyment, and inspiration.  I’m not going into detail individually.  Some are pretty foreign books. Most are rebound books that are 10-20 years old, described as “classic English titles.”  Patent leather, cow hair/hide, vistas and skylines. Enjoy!

Fortunately I have some pretty books–old books–that I own already because they were my grandparents’ or a close friend of the family’s or… you know, other reasons to keep them than only the shallow. Some, even because I have read them and love them! Yeah, what a concept!

Do you have any books you hold onto just because they look pretty on a table or shelf?

WWW Wednesday (October 17, 2012)

Again, this meme is from shouldbereading:

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

• What are you currently reading?

As I said Monday, I’m reading The Casual Vacancy, and blogging my reactions, section by section. Guess what, the further I get into it, the more I like it. This is not magic, it’s not “nice,” it’s not fun, it’s not kid stuff. And I finally got far enough into it to see that it’s a timely subject, the needs of the haves vs the have-nots. Or at least that’s how it seems right now. Join me here if you want to start the ride with me. I look foward to your reactions, whether you hate it, love it, or are somewhere in between.

I am also reading a book that is classified as the “New Adult” category. Easy, by Tammara Webber. This is another one of the self-published books that became a huge success on Amazon, and now is being picked up by Penguin and published in print. I wanted to see what it was like. So far I like it and can see why it’s popular with its target audience.. What it’s like is… hmm, a young woman gets almost raped in the opening, and doesn’t call the cops because she’s at a house where a lot of her underage friends are drinking and she doesn’t want them to get in trouble. I have a feeling this will come back to haunt her, don’t you?  She’s a college sophomore which is where the “New Adult” theme comes in. I don’t know how explicit it might get, but so far we know that she has been sexually active with her longterm ex-boyfriend, she drinks on occasion, and her friends toss around profanity a bit. I’ll let you know what I think when I finish.

Also, I’m listening to a medieval thriller, Martyr: A Novel of Tudor Intrigue, by Rory Clements. It’s the first in the “John Shakespeare” series.  I don’t yet know why the hero’s name is Shakespeare. So far, no references to Will that I’ve picked up on. This has some graphic violence against women (alas that seems to be a defining characteristic of most thrillers, including the one on my own back-burner). So far I like it. The story, not the violence against women. Just in case I needed to clarify that.

• What did you recently finish reading?

I finished The Ringed Castle, the fifth of six books in the Lymond Chronicles. So many things happened in this book that I wanted to happen and now I want to see what happens next, but–I’m postponing the sixth book because it is the last and I want to savour it. I also think I’m going to start buying this series in hardcover for my personal library which (other than research materials) is a collection of books I want to possess and caress, not just any book I happen to buy. Those days ended when I bought my Kindle and started using it for those kinds of reads. Building my library is becoming a truly enjoyable hobby.

• What do you think you’ll read next?

I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll move onto the last of the Lymond books or if I’ll grab something else. Only time will tell.

Warning: My notifications aren’t working. If you leave a comment, I will reply to it! But you won’t know unless you check back to see. Sorry. I’m having wordpress issues!

NOTE: I am running another contest to reward reviewers on Amazon. If you’re interested, here is your chance to win a $20 Amazon gift certificate.

Blogging The Casual Vacancy: “Part One.”

I‘ve decided to blog my reactions to The Casual Vacancy.

Not because I think they are particularly meaningful to anyone but me, but because I think I might want to look back on them later for various reasons. This will not be any sort of literary approach. I don’t do literary criticism. This is just how a Texas writer who has a deep passion for all things English, whose dream is to spend time living in an English village, and who owes some of her most wonderful reading experiences to JK Rowling views her first book post-Hogwarts.

If you think it’s interesting or want to join in, please let me know; please do. Without some sort of feedback I may slip into not writing about it and I know I’ll regret that later. I do ask that you not spoil me on things that haven’t happened in the section I’m discussing. I’m going to employ a “more” type command here in wordpress that will allow me to put all my own “spoilery” specifics behind a cut and label well so that you can click to read more, or stop and come back later if you haven’t begun your reading yet.

I ordered my copy from the UK so if some details seem different, please say so. It would be interesting to see how it was changed for the American reader.

First, the title. This much I think can be said without spoiling anything. The book begins with a definition of “casual vacancy”:

6.11 A casual vacancy is deemed to have occurred:

(a) when a local councillor fails to make his declaration of acceptance of office within the proper time; or
(b) when his notice of resignation is received; or
(c) on the day of his death…

Charles Arnold-Baker
Local  Council Administration
Seventh Edition

Since all I knew before the book arrived was that it is some sort of murder set in an English village, I assume that the murder results in (is caused by a desire for?) a casual vacancy on the local council or governing body.  Local politics.

Okay, and, we’re off!

In which I ramble a bit about my reactions to Part One (pages 3-50 in the UK edition)…  This is where to bail out if you haven’t read it and/or don’t want to read farther. If so, see you next post when I will probably be talking about something else!

This and that for the weekend

So. What’s up? First of all, the annoying bit of the technology called the fitbit was less annoying than usual today.

Today was a day when I had to run some errands and damned if I didn’t walk 3 miles, just shopping.  I hit Lowe’s twice, looking for a lamp with a swivel-arm so I can read more easily in bed. Got it! It even came with a shade!

Gotta say, I wish it weren’t so heavy and masculine but it was cheap plus the only swivel-arm I found so, okay, it’s mine.

Then I went to Half Price Books and scored an amazing find. Amazing. While I was accomplishing “decluttering” by selling them a box of books, I went looking at science fiction and discovered a first edition hardcover with dust jacket of Ursula K Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness.  I’ve been looking for a banned book to read next week.  Guess I found one.

Mind you, I now I have to order the one I just linked to, because no way am I going to carry around a first edition and mess it up. Plus, I believe in buying new books when they are still available so that the author gets paid. If I were starving it would be different, but I believe in artists getting paid for their work so if something is still available new, I’m not going looking to buy it used. That’s just me.

Then I went to Whole Foods Market and did a lot of wandering back and forth because it’s a location I rarely shop at, and I couldn’t find the stuff I usually get. I bought a sugar pumpkin. What is that, you ask? I dunno.  A pie pumpkin. I am going to stuff it with something tasty and bake it.  Any suggestions?  I’ve never tried this before.

So by the time I got home I was over 2.5 miles, and now I’m over 3 miles.

Now, in case you’ve been under a rock, I have a new book, SOME ENCHANTED SEASON (about the football season, doncha know) out for sale right now here and here!

Also, right now you have excellent odds of winning the $20 Amazon gift certificate I’m giving to some lucky reviewer here! In fact, you will always have excellent odds because it’s not like fifty people are suddenly going to run read and review, so what are you waiting for?

And because I’m in a mood to be generous, I’m also selling La Desperada at the same price if you buy it at Book View Cafe and use this discount code:  OCT2012LD

Have a great weekend! And while you’re at it, find a banned book to read. Because Sunday is the beginning of Banned Books Week!

Tonight’s step-count, 7087 and I haven’t cleaned the kitchen.  I have yet to hit 10,000, but hey, one of these days…

Books and Bitches

I didn’t intend to start something, honest!

But I’m glad to return the favor.  My WWW Wednesdays are owed to Should Be Reading.

(Missed this week but I hope to catch up next week, because I’ve read several books since I last posted.)

I commented on her post that I purged my books and now reserve my bookcases for books I need (research, reference) and books I love (for emotional or sentimental reasons, or because I really and truly love them).  And she decided she liked that idea and purged her own shelves.

For someone who is a reader, books are life’s blood.  To have the luxury of owning the ones I love most–that is sheer joy.

I haven’t bought any new ones lately, but I uncovered a few old ones that have long been amongst my treasured possessions.  Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific, Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda (Oxford World’s Classics), and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, 75th Anniversary Edition. These are all books I bought from a book club many years ago in special (cheap) binding that looks much nicer than it is. I have several others, as well, but these are the ones I was looking for.

Gone With the Wind is problematical for me. How did I read it twice before I figured out it was racist? And yet, it’s a magnificent character study of one of the very few female characters in popular culture who is loved even though she’s a bitch. The other one? Aurora Greenaway in Terms of Endearment: A Novel.

And by bitches, I mean characters who have truly done despicable things. Scarlett sure does. And Aurora is a mother from hell.  These aren’t cute girls who do naughty things. These are real bitches.

We love our bad boys (just about any character James Dean, Danny DeVito or Jack Nicholson played, for starters) but damn, we don’t let our women get away with much without deciding they are bitches and we don’t like them.

Am I missing any bitches that are accepted by popular culture?

Have you ever gone and hunted down a book to buy after you read it–because even though you’ve already read it, you want to own it?

Do tell.

Late to the party, as usual.

What is it about me? As soon as I see that something is really, really popular, I kind of sneer to myself and ignore it. There was this book people were talking about, and I kept hearing about it from my friends who keep up with all things England, and that book was something Harry Potter.  Does that sound at all special to you? Nor me. And the more I heard about it, the more I ignored it. Then it was a huge best seller in the US and that kind of sealed the deal. No way was I interested in whatever “trendy” bandwagon everybody was hopping on.

Oh hush.

It has happened many times, whether it’s television shows or books or movies. (Oh, did I mention how long I held out before I finally went to that movie I knew I’d hate, that one called Star Wars? I mean, how silly is that?)

I got on the Twilight bandwagon early, if you count reading the first book when it was new. But I kind of missed the “bandwagon” part, if you count the “couldn’t remember if I’d read it or not” by the time the third one came out.

It’s happening again, I’m pretty sure.  Everybody in the world has read The Hunger Games and now the movie is coming out, and I know–KNOW–that if I ever actually read the books I’ll be just like everybody else, telling anybody who will listen, YOU HAVE TO READ THESE BOOKS.

All that said–right now I’m listening to the audiobook, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.  I’d seen it here and there, mentioned everywhere, popping up on various best seller lists, but I ignored it.

Then one of my students told me it was set in England. That got my attention.

Two days ago I started listening to it.

I’m in love.

I am in love with “eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison.”  She has stolen my heart.  And did I mention she lives in an old pile of a Tudor manor house with her eccentric, grieving father and two older sisters, and a shell-shocked chauffeur/gardener/man-of-all-trades who sometimes flashes back to war so that Flavia has to [figuratively] cover his back until he feels safe again?

And that she finds a dying man in the cucumber patch, who breathes his last word into her face before expiring?

By the way, the reader, Jayne Entwhistle, is a delight.

This is one of those books that is so wonderful, with this turn of phrase, that use of language–that I am going to buy it in hardcover to put in my personal library of favorites.

Yes, it’s that kind of book.

[Oh decisions, decisions, which one? The green US edition or the UK edition? No contest. I want the UK spellings on this one, I think.  Sorry, just talking to myself here.]

I’m late to the party on this one, but better late than never.

Have you read it?  Or The Hunger Games? Have you ever resisted something that seemed too trendy, only to discover that it was worth the hooplah?

Or is it just me?