Booking Through....

1. What’s your favorite time of day to read?
 First thing in the morning when I don't have to get up, or anytime after dinner until I go to sleep.

2. Do you read during breakfast? (Assuming you eat breakfast.)
If I have to go to work, no. Actually, I always read things online in the morning while I eat(comics, blogposts, etc.) but I'm not  sure if I'd count that as "reading."

3. What’s your favorite breakfast food? (Noting that breakfast foods can be eaten any time of day.)
French toast. Hands down, no contest. 

4. How many hours a day would you say you read?
Now that I've started knitting, it varys a lot more. 2-8 for a normal day. Maybe more on some days, never less. 

5. Do you read more or less now than you did, say, 10 years ago?
I read much much much less than I did 10 years ago. That would be senior year of highschool which was a lot of homework, but I put more effort into cramming reading into all my free time. Example, now I can't read in the car because I'm actually driving the car. I don't read on car trips, much, either, because there's only two of us. 

6. Do you consider yourself a speed reader?
No. I can skim things quickly, but it doesn't really register and it doesn't sink in. 

7. If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
 Teleportation.

8. Do you carry a book with you everywhere you go?
Not anymore. Now I spend a lot of time carrying books because I work in a library. I carry my Kindle around more than I carry books around, but that's mostly because I'm mooching internet.


9. What KIND of book?
These days, usually a mystery. 

10. How old were you when you got your first library card?
Wow. Small! I know I could write my name, so probably around 5? If you're familiar with LFPL, my first one was... yellow? I lost it at some point and ended up with one of the ones with a wacky book on it. That would be sometime after the peach ones, but before the current white ones. (I want a white one, because then I could put it on my keychain.) 

11. What’s the oldest book you have in your collection? (Oldest physical copy? Longest in the collection? Oldest copyright?)
I can't really say. I have quite a few disintegrating paperbacks from the 60s and 70s. Some of my favorite anthologies have stories that date before the last turn of the century. As far as longest in the collection... most of those would be Anne McCaffrey's that I absorbed from my parents in 5th grade. I don't think any of the ones I have with me here in Blacksburg date back farther than mid-college.
Edited: I take that back. I have my lurid purple book Wise Women, which is folktales and fairytales from around the world with female protagonists. I have had that for a long time. Elementary school sometime, maybe. It build a foundation for reading obsessions that started c.Fall 2006.

12. Do you read in bed?
Of course.


13. Do you write in your books?
Only textbooks and, of those, only the ones that are fiction. I used to dog-ear the pages like crazy to mark bits that I like, but I've found that if I don't remember the book well enough to find the bit I want, I should probably just reread it anyway. 

14. If you had one piece of advice to a new reader, what would it be?
Read things that you want to read and things that you enjoy, not what you "should" read. I read sci-fi stuff when I was too young to get a whole lot out of it. So what? I enjoyed them. I read things with sex in them. So what?  I didn't really notice it at the time. Recently, I've really enjoyed reading YA and various levels of children's literature. So what? I basically skipped the YA section of the library/bookstore when I was that age (admittedly it was a lot smaller then). I read Hamlet when I was in 7th grade because another book I read quoted bits. Did I miss a lot of what was going on? Yes. So what, it was still something I enjoyed reading.
Hm, this can pretty much be summed up as "Go for it!"

Summation

The year is nearly over, so here is my review of books in my life this year. Bullet point style.

•  Started off this year with a Kindle and an Amazon.com shopping spree instead of my usual book binge. Most of the acquisitions this year have been e-books.
•  Speaking of binges, purged a lot of  my collection in preparation for a move to a different state.
•  There are no bookstores in the town I moved to, other than the ones for textbooks. No joke.
•  As far as secondhand books, there's one store devoted to it and a Goodwill. I am filling in some books that I either got rid of before or that I have always wanted to read/own.
• The library is small but fairly good. And Overdrive books on the Kindle are easy to download and are going to save my butt on fines. 

Awesome books of the year include:

• Kraken. About squids, octopods, and cuttlefish. 
• Predators I have known, by Alan Dean Foster
• Any of the Father Brown books. Sister Fidelma was... ok. Too much repetition of basic facts from book to book. Brother Cadfael is also awesome, but easy to overdose on. Best read singly or two at a time.
• Arsene Lupin is showing a lot of promise.
• Hunger Games. 'Nuff said.
• Julia Quinn had a very sweet and funny romance... I forget the title but it was blue. 

Booking: Reading aloud

1. What do you think of reading aloud/being read to? Does it bring back memories of your childhood? Your children’s childhood?
2. Does this affect the way you feel about audio books?
3. Do you now have times when you read aloud or are read to?

I love being read to. Always have. My dad transitioned to novels at some point when he was reading to me. Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsong, after The Hobbit was too intense. I know there was also some Roald Dahl in there. Amelia Bedelia, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, Auntie Mame!
Um, back to the topic. Why yes, it does remind me of being read to. No kids of my own to read to yet, but hopefully someday....

I have mixed feelings about audiobooks. I can't get into the idea of them, but I really do like being read to...

Sometimes I read things to my husband (the Elephant's Child) and he reads me news and politics and economics crap. Not bad, just not what I'm interested in, mostly.

Catching up

I'm going to catch up on Booking Through Thursday, all at once, keeping my answers simple (ha!).

Sometimes I feel like the only person I know who finds reading history fascinating. It’s so full of amazing-yet-true stories of people driven to the edge and how they reacted to it. I keep telling friends that a good history book (as opposed to some of those textbooks in school that are all lists and dates) does everything a good novel does–it grips you with real characters doing amazing things.
Am I REALLY the only person who feels this way? When is the last time you read a history book? Historical biography? You know, something that took place in the past but was REAL.

I just finished reading Devil in the White City. So very recently. Within the past year, I've also read that salt book and The Immortal Henrietta Lacks. I have a few others in queue. This is a lot of nonfiction for me, but I've really been enjoying it.

While my town dries out of record-setting, epic flooding from Hurricane Irene, let me ask you:
What’s your book with weather events? Hurricanes? Tornadoes? Blizzards? Real? Fiction? Doesn’t matter … weather comes up a lot in books, so there’s got to be a favorite somewhere, huh?

The first weather that comes to mind is from Mercedes Lackey's Last Herald Mage trilogy. Mainly because I read those books many many many times when I was around the age of 13. Very romantic and dramatic and sad.

What are you reading now?
Would you recommend it?
And what’s next?

I'm in between at the moment. I'm planning on rereading one of Brian Jaques' Redwall books, plus trying to pick up a few that I've missed along the way. I also have the second two of James Patterson's Maximum Ride series. Those are all the library books in queue. On the Kindle, I have lot, but the first one is The Help.

Have you ever finished a book and loved it so much you went right back and started re-reading it again?
(And obviously, if so, we want titles!)

I did this most recently with Laurie R. King's The Pirate King. I tend to do that with all her new books, actually. There are assorted others that I've done this with on the first time around, maybe Dana Stabenow's Kate Shugak series, can't really think of specifics at the moment.

Do you carry books with you when you’re out and about in the world?
And, do you ever try to hide the covers?

I carry books around a lot less than I once did. Not being able to read in the car (because I'm the one driving the car) has a lot to do with the change.
I never hide the covers. If I'm that embarrassed to be reading a book in public, I don't take it out of the house.

Repeats

What’s the first book that you ever read more than once? (I’m assuming there’s at least one.)

Some of my favorite short chapterbooks that I reread when I was little were the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books. I'm sure there are picture books or something that I've reread more, but this series is the first one that I can clearly remember picking out at the library over and over and over again.

What book have you read the most times? And–how many?

I reread things almost constantly. I'll pick something off the shelves to read inbetween library books, hear something that sparks up a connection with a favorite story or character... all sorts of reasons. My most reread authors are Anne McCaffrey, Mercedes Lackey, and Laurie R. King.

In particular the following:

Dragonsong, by Anne McCaffrey--my father read it to me when I was four, and again once when I was a little older. I know I was rereading it at least once a year from 5th grade all the way through college.

Folly, by Laurie R. King-- I enjoy everything by this author, but this book has such a compelling main character, I keep going back (re-reading right now, in fact). How many books do you know that are written about a woman in her 40's, trying to rebuild a house on an island, and her life at the same time? Oh yeah, she also has bouts of severe depression that cause breaks with reality. I don't want to give Rae Newborn away to you, so let's just say that what I love about her the most is that when Laurie R. King writes about her, you're not sorry for her. Yeah, her life has sucked in various ways and it's awful. What the reader feels is awe. Awe for the things that the human spirit can overcome, its resiliency.

The Beekeeper's Apprentice, by Laurie R. King-- The whole Mary Russell series is one that I enjoy, but I always come back again and again to the first one. (Really looking forward to Pirate King. Five days!) 

When I want something with magic in it, I always head towards Mercedes Lackey. She's written tons of books and the ones I enjoy the most have shifted over the years. At one point it was the Last Herald Mage trilogy, hands down. Recently I've preferred some of her other series more. But one of the best is always The Black Gryphon. It's the first of another trilogy (nearly all the Valdemar books are published that way) and I've read it so many times that my favorite chapter (5) fell out of my hardback copy.

There are a lot more that I reread, but nothing touches these books. They will always have a place on my bookshelf (physical and digital).

Booking it

Since my dog is turning 10 today … what animal-related books have you read? Which do you love? Do you have a favorite literary dog? (Snoopy, anyone?) 

I don't know if you'd count Brian Jaques's Redwall series, but I loved those when I was around the age of 10.
Non-fantastical animals that I loved (still love) are Marguerite Henry's horse books. Particularly King of the Wind. I love that book particularly. The book starts out talking not about the Godolphin Arabian (the titular King of the Wind), but about his descendant Man o'War. If you're in Lexington, Kentucky, you can be assured that the street is named after the horse, not a jellyfish, as had once been suggested to me by some classmates who were clearly not from around here. As someone who grew up going to the Derby Museum at least once a year with school, and spending the first Saturday in May glued to the TV... well, it makes sense to be a bit obsessed with horses.

My favorite dog is definitely Mutt. 

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In other news, I have all (every single one) of my books packed up, either in storage to be moved, or stored for the foreseeable future.

Booking Through Thursday

What’s the largest your personal library has ever been? What’s the greatest number of books you’ve ever owned at one time? (Estimates are fine.)
Is your collection NOW the biggest it’s ever been? Or have you down-sized?
What’s the fewest number of books you’ve ever owned (not counting your pre-reading years)?

Probably the largest my personal library has been was what it was once I moved back home a year and a half ago.
I've been working on the downsizing. I've gotten rid of 8-ish bags of books. Each bag holds around 30 books, so I'm down around 240 from when I started. Given that, I'm estimating that the original collection was around three thousand? Maybe four thousand? It's hard to say since so many of them came out of storage boxes, were divided into new keep or store-again boxes, and all of the boxes put into storage until our upcoming move to Virginia. I'd say that less than a thousand are going with us, currently.
The smallest my personal library has ever been was when I was studying abroad in Spain. (I won't address any of the time I lived in Lexingon, it's not too far from Louisville so the separated bits still counted as one collection). I came with two fiction books, two Spanish-English dictionaries and my 501 verb book. I bought books for classes (1 poetry anthology, 4 novel/short story collections, 1 art book, 1 GGM book, 1 Jose Saramago) and was given 2 other ones (Spanish-Spanish dictionary, their version of a verb book).
One of the first things I did when I found the Corte Ingles was to buy a copy of Murder on the Orient Express... in Spanish. I accumulated two Anne McCaffrey books in Spanish (still have them, never getting rid of them), one Terry Pratchett that I don't think translated well, and a copy of Laurie R. King's The Game that I bought in an airport in Portugal. Oh, and a copy of Paradise by Judith McNaught that a friend gave me when I visited her in France. I think I read a book a day when I was staying with her-- it was like water on dry ground.

It was a rough semester. I ended up reading all of the written-in-English books half a dozen times. I read all of my class books cover to cover, even the parts that weren't assigned. Right when I was getting ready to leave I found a used bookstore run by a lady from England that accepted things in trade. My quality of life would have been a lot higher if I'd known that earlier. 

So here's a PSA:
Petra's International Bookshop
Hours: 11AM to 9PM Monday thru Saturday
c/Campomanes 13
28013 Madrid
info@petrasbookshop.com