FolioFiles » mindful chatter

WWW Wednesday

Kirsten — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:19:25 +0000

WWW Wednesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. To play along, just answer the following three questions…

What are you currently reading? I’m reading The Perks of being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, and listening to Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings

What did you recently finish reading? I’ve just finished American Gods by Neil Gaiman

What do you think you’ll read next? I honestly have no idea; I have plenty of audiobooks lined up, but with most of my books still in boxes, it’ll likely be one of the other three I picked up at a yard sale on Monday – Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson, The Boy who Dared by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, or Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin. Anyone care to recommend one over the others?

What’s your WWW this week?

Happy Mother’s Day!

Kirsten — Sun, 09 May 2010 18:21:28 +0000

To all of the bloggin’ mommas out there, and to my own mom, who encouraged and supported my passion for books and reading, may today be a day full of love and appreciation for all that you do.

Reading is something my mother and I have always had in common; my first grown-up reads, when I was still in elementary school, were her Agatha Christie novels and the occasional Dick Francis, Reader’s Digest condensed books and Janette Oke Christian fiction. One of my mom’s favorite stories to tell is of the day she discovered that I knew how to read. I was three years old and she was reading to me, and decided to ask me what some of the words were. I told her without hesitation. She thought maybe it was because I was so familiar with the book, so she pulled out one I didn’t know. Again, I was able to tell her the words she pointed out. She asked me how long I’d been able to read, and apparently I answered, “Oh mom, I’ve been reading for a long time!” Exactly how long that is in three-year-old terms shall always remain a mystery, but to this day, she gets a kick out of my response.

Do you have a fun mom story to share, reading/book-related or otherwise?

Free-form Friday

Kirsten — Fri, 07 May 2010 16:42:02 +0000

It’s official: I am now the Social Media Editor for AudioFile magazine, the print and online resource for audiobooks! Tim Spalding, the founder of LibraryThing, let me know about the opportunity a couple of weeks ago, and it is truly a dream job for me on many levels. I’m very excited about the new community we’re launching on May 14, and will be sure to post an open invitation here once we’ve officially come out of beta. I hope you’ll join us even if you aren’t a regular audiobook listener; we’re going to have some exciting guest moderators, YA titles that you can download free from the publishing partners in our Sync teen summer listening program, and lively discussions about new and upcoming titles, technology in the publishing world, and so much more. I’m new to audiobooks myself, and have already been introduced to some great books and fabulous narrators.

That being said, what would your dream job in the bookish world be?

Manic Monday

Kirsten — Mon, 03 May 2010 18:01:52 +0000

Not much time today, but I did want to share these beautiful shelves I discovered yesterday, courtesy of Definatalie.

Aren’t they gorgeous??? I’ve already requested that Rachel build me some when the time and space are right :)

Have you seen any good accessories, furniture, or other bookish delights around the interwebs lately?

Teaser Tuesday

Kirsten — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:48:30 +0000

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS!
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

“Well, I don’t say it wasn’t a fine joke, Tom, to keep everybody suffering ‘most a week so you boys had a good time, but it is a pity you could be so hard-hearted as to let me suffer so. If you could come over on a log to go to your funeral, you could have come over and give me a hint some way that you warn’t dead, but only run off.”

It took me flipping pages for a solid five minutes to decide that a non-spoiler teaser from a Harry Potter book is relatively impossible if it’s to be interesting at all. So, I just re-downloaded Stanza to my iPod last night, and decided to find an e-book to use for my teaser today instead.

I read Mark Twain for the first time last year, and loved loved loved Huck Finn. Now, it’s time to move on to Tom Sawyer (though it’s now my understanding that I’m doin’ it wrong. Go figure!). I can’t get enough of the way Twain makes you truly hear the way the words are spoken; whenever I read this style of written speech, I will always think of my friend Rob, who took Huck Finn from me and read me the first page in exactly the accent I imagined as I was reading. I was delighted, and only wished he could have read the whole book aloud!

So your turn – whatcha readin’?

Free-form Friday

Kirsten — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 15:32:59 +0000

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about audiobooks this week, and I’m curious about the other bookish bloggers out there. Do you listen to audiobooks? How do you choose which books to listen to and which to read? Do you have favorite narrators whose audiobooks you’ll seek out? What resources do you use in order to choose your audiobooks? Do you get them from the library, buy them, use a web rental site? Have you ditched an audiobook because of the narrator? Do you think the quality of the reading affects your opinion of the book’s content?

Manic Monday

Kirsten — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:53:53 +0000

Mondays have a terrible reputation, and it’s not entirely fair… but at the same time? It’s Monday’s fault that my weekend is over. So how can I be anything but a bit resentful?

At any rate, it’s been another big week since the Readathon, with lots of planning and hoping and planning some more. I’ve officially become a fan of Lost, and we’re about halfway through the first season, maybe a bit further? on DVD and streaming Netflix. If you have a Wii, PS3, or Xbox (I think), you must request the disc to stream from your TV; it makes Instant Play a whole new feature, I swear. In the world of reading, I’ve got three books “actively” in progress, with two others in not-quite-abandoned states of partly-read, and still haven’t made my way over to my catalog to finalize all of the owned/lost/new since summer additions and tags. But, the weather is finally allowing for some fire pit action in the back yard, the beach is beckoning, and it’s baseball season! The Red Sox are playing crap baseball, but they only have one day off in the rest of April, so we caved and paid for MLB TV and watched them this weekend. We also managed to get some sightseeing in with a dear friend visiting from Chicago yesterday, and took lots and lots of pictures; tourist days are fun!

How’s everyone’s week kicking off? Anyone else do anything fun this weekend?

Best indie bookstores

Kirsten — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 06:11:53 +0000

I am so fortunate to live in a city with so many independent bookstores still in business. I could probably name off ten before I’d have to stop and think, but my favorite by far is Dog Eared Books on Valencia Street in San Francisco, along with Red Hill and Phoenix, its sister stores in Bernal Heights and Noe Valley, respectively. Between the three, I have hardly ever been at a loss for a book I’ve wanted or needed, and the used prices can’t be beat anywhere except at thrift stores. They also hold events at all three locations, which I’m hoping to take advantage of with Rachel this summer; yayyyy, bookish adventures!

Early Favorites

Kirsten — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 04:42:45 +0000

For this mini-challenge, we were asked for the first book we ever truly loved. This is such a hard one for me, as I have loved books for truly as far back as I can remember. The earliest, though, was probably a Little Golden Book, and the one that comes to mind first is The Poky Little Puppy. I’d go with either that or The Monster at the End of This Book, which popped into my head fractions of a second later. Both are books I’ve repurchased as an adult; regardless of whether we ever have a family of our own, I want to own them :)

Romancing your friendship

Kirsten — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 00:13:33 +0000

This was a simple challenge for me, though I hate to spoil part of the story for anyone, soooooo, I’m only going to post the cover here, and will put details of who and why in the comments. If you’ve not read Tipping the Velvet, I recommend you DO read the book, and do NOT yet read the comment(s) on this post! :)