TBR management- and The Dare!!

I saw this meme on So Many Books and thought to do it too, then got distracted (lots of work right now) until James' posting about the TBR Dare reminded me. So here we go.

How do you keep track of your TBR pile?
It used to be a handwritten thing that I jotted titles down on, and then often forgot about. The handwritten part got shuffled onto this list -as much of it as I could find. Then at some point I started making regular postings whenever I added a slew of titles to the TBR. It's not organized in the same way- the TBR page list I just delete titles when I finally read them, but with the postings I go back and link the title in the post to the current review of that book. I try to keep things sorted which books are in in my library's system and I can methodically look for with a good hope of actually reading them. Books that aren't at the library I just hope to come across someday when hunting at used sales or secondhand shops...

And then there's Library Thing. I do have a tag in my catalog for unread books. I use it to get a count every now and then. Or to quickly look up a title and see if it's a book I already own.

Is your TBR mostly print or e-book?
Well I thought it was mostly print. But I just looked and realized I have 67 unread books on my e-reader that I got from Project Gutenberg. One day I discovered this has a lot of older, out-of-print titles that interest me and I got all excited about it. I should look for more! But I only tend to read on the device when I'm travelling, so I have no idea when I'll get around to these...

How do you determine which books from your TBR to read next?
It varies. Sometimes I deliberately look for a book on my shelf related to a subject interesting me at the moment, or that another book or reader has reminded me of. Sometimes when I'm at the library with my kids I'll pop over to my favorite section (dewey decimals 570-590!) and look to see if I recognize anything on the shelf from my TBR list. And sometimes I just stand in front of the bookcase at home and pick something at random. Speaking of which, here they are:

Yes, I do still have piles on the floor. But I'm hoping that eventually I'll clear enough unwanted books out that everything will fit on the actual shelves again.

A book that has been on my TBR the longest?
List or physical? There are probably titles on that TBR page in the navbar that I jotted down on notepaper up to ten years ago, but I don't know which ones they are. According to my Library Thing catalog, there are only three unread books that have been on my shelf since 2007: The Wonder of Birds, Walden (which I've tried and failed to get through twice so far) and Famous American Illustrators- a reference book I acquired for a class in art school and hung on to.  I might have missed a few though; every now and then I read a book and when I go to update the LThing listing it simply isn't in there.

A book you recently added to your TBR?
Well, for the list it would be Leaf by Daishu Ma or Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman, which I've just tagged in my feed reader but haven't yet put in a TBR post. Also The End of the Game by Peter Beard, I just got this one from Paperback Swap in the mail today and I'm really excited about it!

A book on your TBR strictly because of its beautiful cover?
Hm. Lots of books are on my shelf because they were very cheap secondhand, and just caught my eye. I guess a good example is Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett. I don't know anything about this book, but the cover image certainly is striking. It has a sleeve over the cover that wraps all the way around

the front image without the sleeve wrapping is this:

I think it's about a painter, and a woman who sat for a portrait. Definitely intriguing!

A book on your TBR that you never plan on reading?
This would only be reference books, and they're not on my list, just shelved. I have a Healthwise Handbook which I dip into now and then for a quick answer. I have plenty of cookbooks I might never use (not even in my LThing catalog). I have a book on making your own custom picture frames from back in the days when I was painting, but I never used that one either.

An unpublished book on your TBR that you’re excited for?
Can't tell you. I don't usually keep track of what's up-and-coming. I do add such titles to my list when they catch my attention from others' blog posts, but I don't remember which ones they are.

A book on your TBR that everyone recommends to you?
I have Frost Dancers by Garry Kilworth on my e-reader because a fellow blogger not only recommended it when she found out I'd read the author's book about foxes, but she sent me the file! That was great. I can't really think of a title that's been recommended to me by lots of folks.

A book on your TBR that everyone has read but you?
I can't think of one right now. The books I like to read aren't of a very popular genre (nature writing and animals) so ...

A book on your TBR that you’re dying to read?
The End of the Game which I just got. It has awesome photographs and I just found out from the flyleaf that the author was Karen Blixen's neighbor and published some of Kamante's pictures in this book too!

How many books are on your TBR shelf?
Current best count is 153. Well, if I add on the e-books it's really 220. That's less than it has been in years. Mostly thanks to The TBR Dare! Which I am going to participate in one last time (if it really is the last).

Go on over to James' site and read about it.

Meme: Discussion

from Booking Through Thursday:

Do you have friends and family to share books with? Discuss them with? Does it matter to you? (Personally, I almost can’t remember the last time I was able to really TALK about a book I’d read with someone else who’d read it... Thank God for the internet.)

I do, in a way. My husband is not a big reader of books, but he reads a lot of other types of media. We have a lot of little conversations where I share tidbits of books I'm reading and he shares with me things he's read in news media. Of course, it's not quite the same as discussing something we've both read in depth, but that does happen from time to time. A few years ago he read some Harry Potter when I was re-reading part of the series (to prepare for a new movie release approaching) and we talked about those books in length. When we first got married we read a lot of Orwell novels together and discussed them. More recently we read through an Orson Scott Card series and had minor heated debates over issues in the books. You can tell how seldom these incidents of co-reading were, though, as I can remember them all clearly! For daily chat on books of course I love visiting all the bookish blogs, and it always thrills me to find a reader who's experienced a book I loved (especially the less-popular ones that no one else seems to have heard of). I ought to leave more comments, though. Things never get quite as chatty online for me as in real face-to-face discussions, seldom though I have them.

Meme: Bedside

from Booking Through Thursday

What books do you have next to your bed right now? How about other places in the house? What are you reading?

It's easiest just to show you a picture. My bedside table is a bookshelf, so right now it's full of books I'm hoping to read for challenges this year (progress middling so far). The ones on the top are what remains from my last library haul, with my current read Chasing Kangaroos, on top. (The other three are The Wild Trees, The Natural History of Unicorns and The Life of the Skies).

Across the room is another full bookcase that holds the rest of my TBR books. I have a goal to get enough read or discarded (the ones I end up not liking) so that my TBR books just fit in the bedside shelves, but I don't know how realistic that is!

As for the rest of the house, The Arrival is still sitting on the couch, because my husband just finished reading it to my daughter, and she's still enjoying looking at the pictures now and again. And then, of course, there's the wall of shelves that holds my permanent collection, which I've shown in pictures before, although it's been rearranged since and looks a bit different now. It was fun to look at those older pictures of my bedside shelf and realize I have gone through a third, at least, of the books that used to sit there. They do shuffle in and out. So I guess that's some progress!

Meme: Influence

from Booking Through Thursday:

Are your book choices influenced by friends and family? Do their recommendations carry weight for you? Or do you choose your books solely by what you want to read?

I think everyone who mentions a book to me is an influence! My parents and sisters often tell me about interesting books they've been reading, and I jot them down to take a look at myself. I've got a book on my pile right now that a family member told me about. I read Jackdaws on my father's recommendation, The Plain Truth and The Professor and the Madman on my mother's. My neighbor often shows me new books he's bought, and loans them to me if I'm interested. It's because of him that I read The Road and Guns Germs and Steel, instead of letting them sit on my TBR for ages.

But all the same, I don't usually rush out and acquire a book to read immediately because of who told me about it. Like any other source (mostly book blogs nowadays) that adds to my book list, I jot it down and wait until the time is right for that kind of book. Pretty much at any given moment I'm choosing a book just because I feel like reading that one right now, drawing titles equally off my list, regardless of how they got there. So yes, I read quite a few books recommended to me by family and friends. They're probably more likely to be books I really enjoy, as they know my interests pretty well! But once a book title lands on that TBR list, it could gather dust for quite some time before I get around to reading it.

book peeves

I saw this week's "Listful Mondays" at It's All About Books; it originated with Julie at A Small Accomplishment. I kept nodding my head at so many of their bookish pet peeves, decided I had to make a list of my own! I can't remember if I've done a meme like this before.... well, here are ten things that bug me about books:

1. Cover art that doesn't match the story, or has inaccurate details
2. Highlighted passages- underlining and marginalia just annoy me, but yellow highlighter is wrong!
3. Pages stuck together with gum- yuck! and you can never get it apart, either
4. Book plates, labels or stickers that cover part of a map or illustration on the endpapers
5. The first chapter (or more) just rehashing the last book in a series
6. Cigar odor- or anything else really stinky
7. Missing pages- especially at the end! Augh!
8. Loaning it to someone who breaks the spine
9. Trying to read a series in order but one book is always missing from the library
10. Books used for construction- okay, really, until they get left on the floor and stepped on

What are your book pet peeves?

from the 500 list

In celebration of her 500th post, Jessica put up a list of her 500 favorite books at Both Eyes Book Blog. I've read and loved many of the same, and she wanted to know which ones! So here's a little list of my own. Out of Jessica's 500, I've read 90.

Eighty-two I liked, or loved:

1984 – George Orwell
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Aesop’s Fables
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten – Robert Fulghum
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl – Anne Frank
Antigone – Sophocles
Autobiography of a Face - Lucy Grealy
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
Beowulf
Black Beauty – Anna Sewell
Black Like Me - John Howard Griffin
The Bone People – Keri Hulme
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
Call It Sleep – Henry Roth
The Castle - Franz Kafka
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
The Color of Water – James McBride
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
The Crucible – Arthur Miller
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
Dandelion Wine – Ray Bradbury
Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus – Mo Willems
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes
Equus – Peter Shaffer
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
The Fellowship of the Ring – J.R.R. Tolkien
The Feminine Mystique – Betty Friedan
Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes
Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
Griffin and Sabine – Nick Bantock
Guns, Germs, and Steel - Jared Diamond
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone – J.K. Rowling
Heidi – Johanna Spyri
The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell – Susanna Clarke
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Maus – Art Spiegelman
Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
The Once and Future King – T.H. White
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
Out of Africa – Isaac Dinesen
The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
The Road – Cormac McCarthy
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Seven Gothic Tales – Isak Dinesen
Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
Silas Marner – George Eliot
Silent Spring – Rachel Carson
Stargirl – Jerry Spinelli
A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
The Tempest – William Shakespeare
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
Through the Looking-Glass – Lewis Carroll
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The Tragedy of Puddin’head Wilson – Mark Twain
Tuck Everlasting – Natalie Babbitt
The Velveteen Rabbit – Margery Williams
Watership Down – Richard Adams
Where the Wild Things Are – Maurice Sendak
Wicked – Gregory Maguire
The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
Winnie-the-Pooh – A.A. Milne
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – L. Frank Baum
A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L’Engle
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – Robert M. Persig

Seven I didn't care for as much:

Franny and Zooey – J. D. Salinger
Geek Love – Katherine Dunn
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Emma - Jane Austen
The Princess Bride – William Goldman
The Gunslinger – Stephen King
The Joy Luck Club – Amy Tan

Thirteen I tried, and did not finish:

As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
Dracula - Bram Stoker
Primary Colors – Anonymous
Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
Snow Falling on Cedars – David Guterson
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
A Thousand Acres – Jane Smiley
Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow
Dune – Frank Herbert
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Canterbury Tales – Geoffrey Chaucer
Then We Came to the End – Joshua Ferris

These I've been meaning to read:

The Art of Racing in the Rain – Garth Stein
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas – John Boyne
A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly – Jean-Dominique Bauby
Downtown Owl – Chuck Klosterman
Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
The Magicians – Lev Grossman
My Antonia – Willa Cather
The Monkey Wrench Gang – Edward Abbey
Out Stealing Horses – Per Petterson
Pigs in Heaven - Barbara Kingsolver
Stiff – Mary Roach
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
Walden - Henry David Thoreau

And these I added to my TBR because Jessica introduced me to them:

Animal Liberation – Peter Singer
The Coming Plague – Laurie Garrett
The Female Man – Joanna Russ
The Roaches Have No King – Daniel Evan Weiss
The World Without Us - Alan Weisman

Also, my husband has read half of Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter, which I never would have heard of otherwise.

There you go, Jessica!

the Meme-y Meme

I borrowed this meme from C.B. James. I'm sure most of you know what triggered it. I tend to steer clear of controversies around the blogosphere, so just a very few remarks here.

When I first started book blogging, I actually wanted my blog to be just about books. I wanted it to look austere and focused. I didn't plan on including anything personal. I thought some other blogs were way too cluttered-looking and felt that challenges would make my reading feel constricted. I even looked for other blogs that fit my idea of being strictly books. They were hard to find! Now I'm not so stuffy. I've come to enjoy the sense of community that all these other activities (memes, giveaways, interviews, contests, etc) bring into book blogging. So over the past nearly-three years I've really changed my mind a lot. More about that below!

Do you participate in memes?
Occasionally. I do Booking Through Thursday when I find the questions interesting, and sometimes pick up memes (like this one) from other bloggers. I like doing memes that have something to do with books or reading, since that's what this blog is all about, or that let readers know a little more about me. Sometimes I do more random ones just for fun!

Do you participate in Book Tours?  What about ARCS?
Never done a book tour. Don't plan to. I was thrilled to get my first ARCs, until I realized I wasn't falling in love with any of the books sent me, and then felt uncomfortable writing negatively about them (wanting to be honest). It's very rare now that I accept them. I just have way too many books already on my shelf waiting to be read, and don't like the sense of obligation they put upon me.

Do you encourage followers?  Do you follow?
No. Following seems redundant to me, when I already have all I can handle in my google reader. Can someone convince me otherwise? I just don't see the point, yet.

What do you think of giveaways and other contests?
They're fun! I like doing giveaways, just because it makes me happy to send people stuff, especially books to other readers who will appreciate them. I do giveaways of books (off my shelf) or handmade bookmarks a few times a month. I've entered some, too. Contests more complicated than a simple giveaway are too much trouble for me to pay attention to.

Do you read and/or conduct author interviews?
Nope.

Do you enjoy challenges?
I'm beginning to! Last year I participated in a few for the first time. Surprised how much I liked crossing titles off a list, and seeing what other bloggers were reading for the same challenge. This year I've signed up for more, probably too many to finish. So far I've been doing challenges that just help me focus on paring down my TBR, but next year I think I'll do some that stretch my reading boundaries and get me out of my comfort zone. Isn't that why it's called a challenge, after all?

I've also tried hosting my own challenge, but that hasn't been very successful. Maybe I made it too complicated? Due to lack of interest, I'm probably not doing to do it again next year. But I don't mind. I'm still going to have fun in other people's challenges!

Do you like giving/getting awards?
I was tickled pink when I got my first blog award. They're a nice way to show recognition to other bloggers. Lately though, I have trouble deciding who to pass them on to. There are so many blogs I love reading, how can I possibly choose between them all? I think I might start adopting the policy of just thanking who gave it to me and saying: you all deserve this award!

What is your opinion of cat videos?
Some are dull. Some make me cry, I laugh so hard. I don't mind if people have them on their blog, as long as it's not overwhelming and becoming the-blog-about-what-my-cat-ate-for-breakfast (instead of the about book I couldn't put down!) If I'm too busy I just skip it and read the bookish stuff. Same goes for photos of your flowers, birds in your yard, pics of your vacation, whatever. It's lovely to have a bit of that!

In summary- I do some of these things, not all. If a blog is becoming too full of "extras" I might gradually loose interest just because I don't find enough about books, and that's what I originally came for. But it's all a matter of personal taste. There's many different kinds of readers, and thus many different kinds of blogs. Serious ones, tongue-in-cheek ones, everything in between. Some have very lengthy analysis of the books, others just an emotional response. Everything from heavy literature to picture books! I've even seen bloggers share their kid's opinion on books they read together (or in C.B.'s case, how Dakota thought they tasted!) and that's fun, too. That's what I love about book blogging. There's so much variety out there, you're bound to find something you like.

Happy reading, everyone!

award

Janet at Across the Page gave my blog the Honest Scrap award. Thanks so much, Janet! So now I'm supposed to share ten honest facts about myself, and then pass it on.

Let's see....

1. I don't like ironing. I get frustrated with it.
2. When I was a kid, I didn't like tomatoes. Now I do!
3. My favorite color is blue.
4. I wear socks to bed all winter.
5. I've given up painting for the time being. Gardening is more exciting!
6. The first nightmare I ever remember having- when I was a kid- featuring a Care Bear recklessly driving a car I was in. I think he flipped it on a curve.
7. My hands are usually cold.
8. I find politics really really boring.
9. I'm not a very good house-cleaner. I get clutter out of the way, but things like dusting and washing windows tend to slide.
10. Up until last year, I'd never broken a bone. Busted my toe on a garden brick.

I know I'm supposed to pick ten bloggers to pass this on to, but I have a hard time choosing just a few out of the many, many I read. So if you're reading this and you'd like to participate, please join in! I'd like to hear some honest stuff about all of you.

Defined by books

A little while back I was tagged for this meme, and when I saw it on Paperback Reader this morning, realized I hadn't done it yet! The rules are:

1.) Go to your bookshelves...
2.) Close your eyes. If you're feeling really committed, blindfold yourself.
3.) Select ten books at random. Use more than one bookcase, if you have them, or piles by the bed, or... basically, wherever you keep books.
4.) Use these books to tell us about yourself - where and when you got them, who got them for you, what the book says about you, etc. etc.....
5.) Have fun! Be imaginative. Doesn't matter if you've read them or not - be creative. It might not seem easy to start off with, and the links might be a little tenuous, but I think this is a fun way to do this sort of meme.
6.) Feel free to cheat a bit, if you need to...

 So I walked along my permanent collection shelves, which line one wall of our living room, and closed my eyes to grab ten books. Here they are:

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell- this is one of those books I would never have read, if I hadn't met my husband! When I was in school I read 1984 and Animal Farm, but I never knew Orwell wrote novels, too. My husband and I discovered this together, and for a time every visit I made to a used bookstore I would search their shelves for any Orwell novels. We read and discussed most of them together. We're still trying to finish off our Orwell collection. This one's not really a novel; it's based on true experience, but it has the same style and feel.

The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerian- even by my standards, this book is kind of weird. It's about a group of talking animals on a farm ruled by the rooster Chanticleer, in a world before humans existed and ends up as a battle between the rooster and a monster from the deep. It has a lot of subtly religious themes; sometimes I feel like it's all supposed to be allegorical about something Biblical. I really don't know how to explain this one. I love it just because it's a great story and the characters are vivid and fascinating, and it makes me laugh out loud. I guess it just shows how much I like animals, fantasy, and books that are different from the rest. When I first read this book I was prone to underlining, it's full of pencil marks all over the place.

At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald- I can't remember how I first stumbled upon this book, but it's one I've read several times since childhood. I read all the George MacDonald I could get my hands on, at one time, and this one was always my favorite. It's a gentle little story about a quiet boy, different from the rest, who befriends the mystical North Wind, and she carries him away on a strange dreamlike journey.

Pinocchio by G Collodi- My copy of this book is very old, shabby and falling apart. I think I found it in a used bookstore somewhere. Once I found out that some of the well-known Disney fairy tales were based on actual books, I sought most of them out- Bambi, the Hundred and One Dalmations, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, etc. Pinocchio the book is quite different from its film counterpart- the storyline is a lot longer, and wandering, and full of many different adventures.

The Moorchild by Louise McGraw- a story about an odd girl who doesn't fit in with the other children in the village, until she discovers that she has fairy blood, and seeks out the fey people under the hill, to steal back the child that was switched with her at birth. What does this one say about me? I like reading fantasy, and books about strange children...

A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeline L'Engle- I loved the Wrinkle in Time series as a kid, but this book was always one of the more difficult ones for me. I loved that it had a flying unicorn in it, but the parts about Charles Wallace inhabiting different people in different times really confused me the first time I read it. It's one of those books I'm almost afraid to go back and read again, for fear the adult me won't like it quite as much as the young me did, and I'll be disappointed.

Illusions by Richard Bach- I was surprised and delighted when I first read Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and afterwards tried several other Bach books. None of the others struck me quite the same way, but this one was pretty good- it's about a pilot who travels the countryside giving rides to people in his small plane, and at the same time taking an inward journey into spiritualism. I haven't read it in ages.

In the Company of Newfies by Rhoda Lerman- love books about dogs, what more can I say? This one is about a woman who loves newfoundlands, and her life with the huge gentle dogs. It's very beautifully written as well, I really like the way Lerman uses words. If I can ever find another book she's written, I want to read it.

Eye of the Albatross by Carl Safina- another one of my favorite subjects is books about the experiences of naturalists in the field. Usually those are about mammals in Africa or something similar, but this one is about a small ocean island, and mostly focuses on the bird populations there. It's well-written and fascinating.

Making Things Grow Outdoors by Thalassa Cruso- I've always had something of a green thumb, but never really got into gardening until we owned our own house with a backyard I could dig up! It's only been two years, but already I've got a small collection of gardening books. Thalassa Cruso is my favorite author on gardening so far- she's so easygoing, fun and informative to read.

Well, I'm not sure I did that quite right. I didn't really get any hardcore fantasy or sci fi in there, or any of the classics that are on my shelf, but it's a pretty good sample of the books I own and love. I don't know how much this told you about me, but I do know it's made me want to go back and re-read a bunch of those books!

I can't think who to tag for this right now, and my husband and kid are bugging me to go cook up a huge waffle breakfast while the snow is falling outside, so I have to skip off the computer and into the kitchen. If you've read this and find it interesting, consider yourself tagged! I'd love to see what's on your shelves.

(If you're the person who originally tagged me for this meme, please let me know so I can give you credit! I can't remember and I thought I had your meme bookmarked but now I can't find it sorry).

Meme: Flapper, or Not?

From Booking Through Thursday, suggested by Prairie Progressive:

Do you read the inside flaps that describe a book before or while reading it?

I had to think about this. I'm kind of all over the place. If it's fiction and brand-new to me, I'll often read the flaps and all blurbs on the back before starting, to get an idea of what I'm in for. If it's an author I'm returning to, I usually skip it because I want to approach the book with an empty slate. Sometimes I go back and read it after I'm done, to see how the flap description matched up with what I thought of the book. Sometimes it seems way off the mark, as if whoever wrote the flap copy didn't even read the entire book!

With nonfiction, I often come up with a question somewhere in the middle of my reading that I think flap copy might answer (usually about the author) and read it then. I have a very old worn copy of Icebound Summer, with an awful-looking dust jacket that I've kept just because the flap copy is informative about the origins of the book itself, and I didn't want to loose that information.

And then there's always books of all descriptions where it never even occurs to me to read the flaps, and I just dive right in. I guess it depends on how much I want to know beforehand, and how informative the flaps might be.

What about you? do you read the flaps?

End of 2009

I saw this meme at The Book Zombie, and have been thinking about doing end-of-the-year stats instead of looking at the numbers on my blog's birthday (middle of August). So even though I kind of did this just four months ago, I'm looking at a year's worth of reading again. The questions are a bit different, and it sounds better to say "I read so many books in 2009" than it does "I read so many books in the last year since my blog began" ha ha. (So this is probably going to be tradition here from now on, with some other kind of hoopla going on here on my blogiversary).

The actual questions here are borrowed from Savidge Reads.

How many books read in 2009?
94. Not the most I've ever done in a year, but pretty good when you consider I'm raising a toddler, tending to the demands of two cats, and trying to get back into drawing and painting again.

How many fiction and non fiction?
31 fiction and 63 non-. Wow. I was surprised by that. I knew I was reading more non-fiction lately, but not that it was twice as much as fiction. I used to read so much more fantasy, too.

Books about animals?
(I added this question, because I read so many of them!) Fiction and non-fiction featuring animals: 51. Everything else: 43.

Male/Female author ratio?
40 women authors and 52 men. And two written by a man/woman team, which I assume were spouses. Pretty even. I never even thought about this before; I don't pay much attention to whether the authors I read are male or female. I don't really have a preference, either.

Favourite book read?
It's so hard to choose, but I think I would have to say Kon-Tiki. It was just so thrilling to read, and I remember at the end feeling charged with excitement and wonder, and blabbing on and on about it to my husband. I hadn't felt that worked up about a book in a long time.

Least favourite?
Emma. Sorry to say. There were a lot of other books that disappointed me, or got dull and I had to force myself to finish. But they were all within my normal reading interests, whereas Emma was not only a very dull book, but one of a genre I don't usually read, so it was more difficult to make myself read the whole thing.

Any that you simply couldn’t finish and why?
16. Once or twice a month I usually encounter a book I just can't get through. Usually just because they're boring me- or I'm much more interested in another topic at the time. For more details, you can always read the posts about each abandoned book.

Oldest book read?
No question that it's Emma. First pubished in 1816. Next-oldest was The Egg and I, published in 1945.

Newest?
I read nine books published in 2008. (Only half of those were sent to me by the publisher). Had to look at the actual month they were printed in to find the very newest, and I think that would be Chalice, which came out in November.

Longest and shortest book titles?
Assuming I can include the subtitle (some of those get really long!) the longest would be Compost This Book! The Art of Composting for your Yard, your Community, and the Planet. Three tied for short ones: Sand, Frogs, and Fluke.

Longest and shortest books?
The whopping door-stopper was Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, at 782 pages. The next contender was Daughters of the Sunstone, 697 pages. And Wolf Totem, 527 pages. Then a few four-hundred pagers, the rest in the normal range (two or three hundred pages). Shortest book was Poop, 61 pages.

How many books from the library?
3. Very, very few. I know I've been trying to plow through all the piles and piles of books that make their way into my house, but I really do want to support my local library more. I'm working on that this year.

Any translated books?
4. They were Wolf Totem, My Beaver Colony, The Little Prince and Kon-Tiki. The one that definitely felt the most foreign was Wolf Totem. (By which I mean that the sentence structure and use of foreign words made me feel like I was reading a work written in another language. Sometimes I like that).

Most read author of the year, and how many books by that author?

I think it was Clare Bell. I read 3 of her books.

Which countries did you go to through the page in your year of reading?

Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Mongolia, Sweden, England, Scotland, Argentina, Ecuador, Israel, Egypt, Chile, Kenya and several other countries in Africa. If I could count the imaginary places from fantasy and sci-fi novels, this list would be longer!

Which book wouldn’t you have read without someone’s specific recommendation?

I don't know if this really counts as a recommendation, as I can't recall her actually telling me I should read it, but I know I picked up Their Eyes Were Watching God because I've always seen it on my sister's shelf, and I think it's one of her favorites.

Which author was new to you in 2009 that you now want to read the entire works of?

A few. Betty Macdonald, Edward Abbey, Susanna Clarke, Thor Heyerdahl, Thalassa Cruso.

Any re-reads?

5. They were Red Fox, The Cats of Lamu, Daughters of the Sunstone, The Little Prince and Ratha and Thistle-Chaser. All but one are books I read as a child and loved (but didn't necessarily love the second time around) and they were fun to re-visit. The Cats of Lamu I had read once back in college when I found it in the library; read it again after finally acquiring my own copy.

Did you read any books you have always been meaning to read?
Yes. I'd had The Other End of the Leash on my TBR for ages, and when I finally read it I could see why it was always hard to find at the library! A very good book.

Meme- Weeding

This question comes from Booking Through Thursday, and it's rather long, so I've just included highlights here (or what I want to answer):

When’s the last time you weeded out your library? Do you regularly keep it pared down to your reading essentials? Or does it blossom into something out of control...?

Or do you simply not get rid of books? At all?

And–when you DO weed out books from your collection …what do you do with them? Throw them away (gasp)? Donate them to a charity or used bookstore? SELL them to a used bookstore? Trade them on Paperback Book Swap or some other exchange program?

The last (and pretty much only) time I seriously weeded my library was when we moved from California to Virginia. We had a volkswagon type van and filled it to the brim with all the stuff we could carry, and drove it across the country. There was little room (or weight capacity) for all my books. I left half of them behind (a few hundred). It really hurt to cull them all out! Once we found a permanent place here I settled all my books on the shelves, and after a while started missing many of those left behind. Over the past few years I've gradually found new copies of many of them. If I run out of shelf space I might start getting a little more picky, or ferret out those books I don't truly love, but for now I'm not putting a cap on it. Dangerous, I know!

Only two times ever have I thrown a book away. Both had come to me used. One had such an awful odor I felt sick every time I tried to read it. Trash can. The other had some pages stuck together with gum, no way I could get that apart and still read it. That book got composted into my garden.

Books that I don't want to keep- that I'm not enthralled with or don't see myself reading again- either get traded on Paperback Swap or Book Mooch. Sometimes I make up a box and send to Powell's for credit so I can buy more hard-to-find books I really want from them. (I used to trade books in for credit at used bookstores in person, but there aren't any close to where I live now). At my local community center they have a book trade every month, I take a lot of books there and look for new ones. And the last time I traveled to my in-laws I left a book behind that I read on the trip, decided not to keep and found someone who wanted to read it. One route or another, the books I don't want find their way into the hands of new readers.

What about you? Do you regularly cull through your book collection, or only (like me) in dire straits? What happens to the books you decide not to keep?

Meme: ABC's of Me

Sandy Nawrot at You've GOTTA Read This! tagged me for this fun ABC meme several weeks ago, and I never got around to it until today. So here you go, some tidbits about me: Available or single? Nope. Married! Best Friend? my husband Cake or Pie? Cake Drink of choice? Horchata Essential item for every day use? Birkenstocks Favorite color? Blue Google? Yeah, I google everything Hometown? Born in San Francisco, grew up in Seattle. I consider Seattle my hometown. Indulgences? Chocolate. Books. Steaming hot baths. With candles. Preferably all together. January or February? um, what? Kids and their names? Isabel, 4 Life is incomplete without…? A cat in residence Marriage date? Jan 2nd. We wanted it to be New Year's Day, but that didn't happen Number of siblings? Three sisters Oranges or apples? Apples. Organic, so you can enjoy chewing the skin without a bitter taste of pesticides. Phobias and fears? Mold. Especially on food. Freaks me out. I can squash spiders and chase snakes, but have to call hubby to remove a fuzzy orange from the fruit bowl. Quote for the day? "A good novel tells us the truth about is hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author." - G.K. Chesterton Reason to smile? The smell of rain in springtime. Blooming nasturtiums. A purring cat. Season? Fall. I love the crisp smell in the air, and the colors of the leaves. Tag 3 people? Caribousmom, Jenny, Trish or anyone who wants to join in! Unknown fact about me? I played the clarinet in high school (not very well) Vegetable you hate? Turnips Worst habit? Chewing my nails X-rays you’ve had? My broken toe! Your fave food? Right now I'd love some chicken mole Zodiac sign? I don't read horoscopes, but I'm a Libra

Meme: Preferences

quick questions and answers, from Booking Through Thursday

• Reading something frivolous? Or something serious? Depends on my mood
  
• Paperbacks? Or hardcovers? No preference
  
• Fiction? Or Nonfiction? A good mix of both
  
• Poetry? Or Prose? Prose
  
• Biographies? Or Autobiographies? no preference
  
• History? Or Historical Fiction? Historical fiction
  
• Series? Or Stand-alones? I like both
  
• Classics? Or best-sellers? Something in between
  
• Lurid, fruity prose? Or straight-forward, basic prose? Again, in-between
  
• Plots? Or Stream-of-Consciousness? Plots
  
• Long books? Or Short? Medium
  
• Illustrated? Or Non-illustrated? Non. I like to think up my own images
  
• Borrowed? Or Owned? Library! Owned books are for keeps
  
• New? Or Used? Used suits me just fine.

Hm, I think I was really undecided on a lot of those. O well, it was fun. How about you? Any preferences?

Meme: Unread

from Booking Through Thursday:

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!’

You must have read my mind, BTT. I really wasn't going to post again today, but I was already planning to take stock of the remaining piles after my challenge-progress evaluation earlier this morning. I rearranged all my books so that the unread ones are in, on or around my bedside shelf. It's overwhelming! The ones I'm planning on reading next, for various current and upcoming challenges, are stacked on top. I have 132 total unread books, and if you want to see what they all are, the list is on Library Thing. Hm, even though I feel I've read a lot of books since the last post, I don't feel like I've made much progress... somehow more books come in than go out...

Meme: Niche Reading

From Booking Through Thursday:

There are certain types of books that I more or less assume all readers read. (Novels, for example.) But then there are books that only YOU read. Instructional manuals for fly-fishing. How-to books for spinning yarn. How to cook the perfect souffle. Rebuilding car engines in three easy steps. Dog training for dummies. Rewiring your house without electrocuting yourself. Tips on how to build a NASCAR course in your backyard. Stuff like that.What niche books do YOU read?

I think books about making compost tops the list. Vegetable gardening books, natural history, animal training/behavior and novels from an animal's viewpoint are more favorites of mine that don't seem that common with other readers. What about you?

Meme: Sticky Books

At first when I saw this meme from Booking Through Thursday on so many blogs, I thought it was a "sticky post" about favorite books, but actually it's about books that stick in your mind. "Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes." For me these are books I might have read years ago, but they made such a lasting impression on me I could easily tell you all about the characters, the setting, the plot, practically quote lines and conversations right out of the book. Perhaps when I'm not quite so tired I'll come back here and mention something about the less familiar ones...

Roots- Alex Haley
Amy's Eyes - Richard Kennedy
Gentle Gorilla- Susan Green
Ratha's Creature- Clare Bell
Ender's Game- Orson Scott Card
The Poisonwood Bible- Barbara Kingsolver
Watership Down- Richard Adams
Call It Sleep- Henry Roth
The Chosen- Chaim Potok
Dogsbody- Diana Wynne Jones
The Hobbit- J.R.R. Tolkien
Ariel- Steven Boyett
Dragonsbane- Barbara Hambly
An Edge of the Forest- Agnes Smith
The Clan of the Cave Bear- Jean M. Auel

Meme: Book Glutton

from Booking Through Thursday:

Are your eyes bigger than your book belly? Do you have a habit of buying up books far quicker than you could possibly read them? Have you had to curb your book buying habits until you can catch up with yourself? Or are you a controlled buyer, only purchasing books when you have run out of things to read?

Of course I'm a book glutton! I simply can't resist. The last time I remember having actually read everything on my shelves was back in high school. Usually I have more books on hand than I can catch up to and still acquire more, somehow. Currently (if my Library Thing tags are up to date) I have about 125 books sitting in the bedroom that haven't been read yet. The only way I make any inroads on the piles is due to the fact that if a book just isn't interesting me, I have no qualms about clearing it off my shelf. So out of those 125, I probably won't like -and won't finish- maybe a third of them. And just yesterday I was thinking it's about time to go to that thrift store nearby where I can get thirty books for four dollars.... wouldn't you?

Meme: Numbers Game

from Booking Through Thursday:

Some people read one book at a time. Some people have a number of them on the go at any given time, perhaps a reading in bed book, a breakfast table book, a bathroom book, and so on, which leads me to…

1. Are you currently reading more than one book?
2. If so, how many books are you currently reading?
3. Is this normal for you?
4. Where do you keep your current reads?

Right now I'm reading two books (see the sidebar). Usually it's just one at a time, occasionally two or more. (They have to be on different subjects. Currently, it's a large historical fiction novel, and a book on gardening). My current reads rest on the bedside table, or hang around the couch during the day. (They often go along in the car, too!)

Meme: Best Worst Book

from Booking Through Thursday, the flip side of last week's question:

What’s the best ‘worst’ book you’ve ever read — the one you like despite some negative reviews or features?

I can't really think of any books I've liked that got lots of bad reviews. I have plenty of favorites that seem to be kind of obscure or unpopular- like Call It Sleep, The Bone People, The Lute Player.... Oh, and I do still like The Clan of the Cave Bear (read it at least four or five times) even though it's sexist, the protagonist is practically a Neanderthal superwoman and a lot of the historical details are totally inaccurate. (The rest of the series was junk, though. I struggled through The Valley of Horses and quit a few chapters into The Mammoth Hunters. Too much sex, flat characters, pointless plots).

As for a book I really liked in spite of negative features, I still have admiration for Richard Monaco's books Parsival and The Grail War, even though I found a lot of the details distasteful, nothing admirable in the characters, and the storyline wandering to the point of confusion, there was just something about the descriptions and the writing that enthralled me. I continue to puzzle over those books and wonder what to do with them- I can't imagine reading them again, yet I can't quite bring myself to pull them off my shelf for good, either.