FolioFiles » weeklies

Booking Through Thursday

Kirsten — Thu, 13 May 2010 15:51:02 +0000

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?

The books I buy are almost exclusively based on recommendations from family, friends, and book bloggers whose opinions I value. Rarely do I pick up a book without having heard anything about it previously, though I’ve been broadening my horizons that way with audiobooks recently.

I’ve been reading quite a bit of memoir and “creative” autobiography, as Rachel is a huge fan of Augusten Burroughs, David Sedaris, and James Frey. We also have Sarah Silverman’s The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee on its way from AudioFile for us to listen to and review. Neil Gaiman’s Stardust was a recent read based on a recommendation from my roommates, and I think everything I have lined up for anytime soon was suggested by my partner, one of my closest friends, a new colleague at the magazine, or someone from the blogosphere. What on earth would I do if I had to choose my books entirely from scratch??? :)

Now it’s all you – what turns you onto the books you read?

Booking through Thursday

Kirsten — Thu, 06 May 2010 15:26:24 +0000

So … you’re halfway through a book and you’re hating it. It’s boring. It’s trite. It’s badly written. But … you’ve invested all this time to reading the first half.

What do you do? Read the second half? Just to finish out the story? Find out what happens?

Or, cut your losses and dump the second half?

I used to have such a hard time leaving a book unfinished, but in recent years, I have forced myself to abandon a book if I’m just not feeling it. There are far too many books I know I will actively enjoy, even love, and my reading time is precious. Why spend it trudging through something I’m not getting any pleasure out of reading?

This comes at an apropos time, as I’ve been struggling with my guilt around having only read part of The Mayor of Castro Street. It’s not Harvey, it’s the author. I’m just not into his journalistic style, and the attempts at making it sound more like a biography than a news article fall short of the mark; they’re clearly not his natural voice, and thus they stick out like sore thumbs. I needed a reminder that it’s okay to leave the book unfinished, and this served the purpose. Thanks, Deb!

Booking through Thursday

Kirsten — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 22:15:54 +0000

God* comes to you and tells you that, from this day forward, you may only read ONE type of book–one genre–period, but you get to choose what it is. Classics, Science-Fiction, Mystery, Romance, Cookbooks, History, Business … you can choose, but you only get ONE.

What genre do you pick, and why?

*Whether you believe in God or not, pretend for the purposes of this discussion that He is real.

First of all, thank all higher powers that I will never actually have to make this decision! Were I forced though, it didn’t take long to decide that I’d choose fantasy (provided I didn’t have to distinguish between adult, YA, and youth titles). The realm of fantasy is so broad that, though “it’s all been done” and of course there will be some formulaic plots and regurgitated settings, there is much more scope than with other genres, in my opinion.

How about you?

WWW Wednesday

Kirsten — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 16:12:41 +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 currently reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, A Million Little Pieces, The Mayor of Castro Street, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and listening to Aesop’s Fables.

What did you recently finish reading? I most recently finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

What do you think you’ll read next? Because five books in the works doesn’t keep me busy enough until next Wednesday??? :) I’ll probably finish HP6 this week and move on to book 7, and hopefully get through the Twain as well, which I’m reading on Stanza on my iPod. I feel bad for abandoning Harvey, but I’m just not great at soldiering on through non-fiction; I really ought to keep that one in my bag so I’m forced to read it on the bus, and have to be home to read the “fun” stuff.

What’s your WWW this week?

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?

Teaser Tuesday

Kirsten — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 11:08:57 +0000

I suppose the one benefit of insomnia is being able to post weekly memes early enough that being on PST doesn’t serve as a penalty, so here we are -

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!

“For all the complaints his neighbors came up with, Allan thought Castro Street was getting more like it used to be when he was a kid; for the first time in years, it seemed like a small town again where everybody knew each other and said hi on the street. Now Castro Street could also show that gays and straights could live together and get along just fine.”

This teaser is from page 94 of Randy Shilts’s The Mayor of Castro Street, a biography of Harvey Milk, which my partner and I are both reading right now. I’m only 40-some pages into it, and I’m enjoying the story bits more than the politics, which is typical for me – in books, and honestly in all aspects of life, my mind tends to wander off and get lost when too many names and dates are thrown my way. Rachel and I are both finding that this one reads quickly in some places and drags pretty significantly in others; Shilts’s style flops between journalistic and conversational, which seems to contribute directly to the “easiness” of the read in various spots. Though he tries to present the facts in a manner that is at once informative and engaging, he hasn’t much of a unique voice, in my opinion; it feels like more of a data dump than a storytelling, which is really too bad. Reading this definitely makes me want to watch Milk again, though, which is as good a reason as any to have picked it up. Maybe I’ll see if Rachel’s up for it when we both finish the book, and I’ll point you to her review over on Popcorn Popper.

Also, linking to LibraryThing above made me realize that we own three copies of this book, and not one of them is in the catalog yet – must remedy the LT backlog!

So how about you, what are you reading this fine Tuesday?

Free-form Friday

Kirsten — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:09:38 +0000

Prompted by a post by a close friend on a topic very near and dear to me, I think I’m going to make Fridays my “learn a little about Kirsten” day as opposed to learning about the books I’m reading. I’ll provide a link to a post, or create my own, about something related to my identity, my community, my little piece of the world. Maybe it’ll be deep and thoughtful, like today’s, or maybe it’ll be a photo-journal entry of my and Rachel’s most recent visit. Maybe a rant about the latest injustice in the workplace, or a rave about the new cosmetic product I couldn’t resist. Hopefully it’ll be interesting, fun, and enjoyable in some way for you.

Today’s link is to my friend’s blog entitled The Sartorial Butch (pictured above – isn’t she dashing?). This particular post is a bit off-topic from her typical stuff, but it really resonated for me and made me reflect on the ways misogyny is not reserved for males/men. I hope you’ll take a moment to read this thought-provoking post, and let me know what you think. How can you relate to the topic even if the language is different from what you’re accustomed to in your community and daily life? Is this something you’ve thought about considerably and have opinions to share? Something you’ve never really stopped to think about, but can come up with instances where it applies?

Head on over and drop a note, and let the SB know I sent you – take a look through her past posts, too; she’s got a fun blog with lots of useful hints and tips even for the non-butch-IDed among us.

Booking Through Thursday

Kirsten — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:58:46 +0000

Who’s your favorite author that other people are NOT reading? The one you want to evangelize for, the one you would run popularity campaigns for? The author that, so far as you’re concerned, everyone should be reading–but that nobody seems to have heard of. You know, not JK Rowling, not Jane Austen, not Hemingway–everybody’s heard of them. The author that you think should be that famous and can’t understand why they’re not…

Today’s question is a good one – it sent me to my LibraryThing catalog in search of a book I rated highly, by an author I haven’t heard, read, or seen much about in all of the places I do bookish things.

I picked up a remaindered copy of D. M. Cornish’s Foundling on a whim, and found the book to be far more intricate, richly illustrated – both in word and artwork – and thorough than I had anticipated. I happily purchased the second book, in hardcover no less (but with a coupon, of course), shortly after finishing the first in this series, called Monster Blood Tattoo. While both Foundling and its sequel, Lamplighter, are considerable in length and complexity of language, I found them to move swiftly and with great momentum. I’m looking forward to the third installment, and have only found one other reader in my on-line and real world travels who has read these books, as well.

My reviews for both books can be found on my reading challenge post for 2009.

What author do you think deserves more attention than he or she receives from mainstream booksellers, reviewers, and publishers?

Booking Through Thursday

Kirsten — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:27:54 +0000

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

It depends on why I’ve picked up the book. If it’s something that caught my eye but I’ve not heard of, I’ll read at least the first few sentences of the flap. If it’s been recommended by a friend or blogger, I typically get enough information from them and prefer not to gain any additional details from the blurb. I don’t rely on the flaps to decide whether I’m going to enjoy a new writer, as they’re not written by the author him- or herself; I’ll read the first page, or flip to somewhere in the middle and read a few sentences to get a feel for their voice.

How about you, how much do you like to know about a book going in? Do you go on intuition or get the details from the blurb, reviews, other sources?

A-Z Wednesday

Kirsten — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:00:03 +0000

My hunt for a Wednesday weekly was aided today by Joy, who introduced me to A-Z Wednesday hosted by Vicki at Reading at the Beach.

Simply select a book from your library whose title begins with this week’s letter and post a photo, title and synopsis, and a link, then swing by Vicki’s blog and drop a line directing everyone to your entry. Don’t forget to share it here, as well!

This week’s letter is “W,” and I went with The Westing Game (I didn’t see rules about articles counting or not counting for title beginnings, so I made up my own *wink*) by Ellen Raskin.

I first read this in elementary school, and didn’t realize it had been around for so long. I re-read it a couple of years ago, so forgive if my synopsis is vague or even imperfect in its details! The basic story is that a group of seemingly unconnected individuals and families all move into a new housing complex and are informed that they are beneficiaries of the recently-deceased multi-millionaire, Sam Westing. Westing has devised a competition for his fortune and set it forth in his will; the sixteen invited individuals are paired off and pitted against the other teams in a challenge for the inheritance. Raskin’s characters are brilliantly realistic, and her plot twists not reduced for an elementary reading level. Definitely recommended to anyone who enjoys a cleverly written puzzle novel.

Have you read this one? What did you think? Do you have a good “W” book on your shelves? Tell me all about it!