Feature and Follow Friday #20

Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly social blog hop between book bloggers. There are two regular hosts: Parajunkee and Alison of Alison Can Read, and two special guest hosts every week. If you want to join in, click on either of their blogs to get the details. The FF question of the day is: 

Q: Summer Break is upon us! What would be the perfect vacation spot for you to catch up on your reading & relax?

Since this is a fantasy hypothetical, I feel like I should pick someplace exotic that I've never been. But the place that I'd most like to read a book is Nantucket, an island off of Cape Cod in Massachusetts where I was fortunate enough to live for several years.

Nantucket is special for dozens of reasons, but it's uniquely suited for summer beach reading because you can frequently find an uncrowded stretch of sand to make your own. 

You're not part of a hive of humanity crammed onto the beach, so close to the people around you that you're forced to listen to their radios and chit-chat, smelling their sunscreen and snacks. On a good summer day at the right spot on Nantucket, the nearest people are far enough away to be little blobs moving back and forth between the ocean and their umbrella. 

In every other season, you can sit on the beach for hours reading and never see another soul. There's also the gorgeous library and cool bookstore(s), but the biggest attraction for me is privacy. Between the bluff and the ocean only your book exists, until the sun sets.

Feature and Follow Friday #18

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Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly social blog hop between book bloggers. There are two regular hosts: Parajunkee and Alison of Alison Can Read, and two special guest hosts every week. If you want to join in, click on either of their blogs to get the details. The FF question of the day is: 

Q: What is one thing you wish you could tell your favorite author?  

One thing and one favorite author? How can I possibly choose? If I had the opportunity to speak to Nabokov, Edith Wharton, George Eliot, Holly Black or Charlaine Harris, I would probably just incoherently gush with excitement.

But assuming I was able to be calm and cool, I would probably ask any of them for more information about particular characters or plot points. There's always something cut in the process of writing a novel, and getting the scoop on what didn't make it into the book would be akin to watching the cut scenes of a TV show or movie. 

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I'd ask Nabokov to tell me if he ever conceived the story turning out differently, if he ever envisioned Lolita surviving. I'd ask Wharton why she was so intent on torturing the vast majority of her characters. Was she ever tempted to give any of them a happy ending? If I could talk to Charlaine Harris, I'd beg her to pretty please write more Aurora Teagarden books. 

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I'd love to lobby all of my favorite authors, living and dead, to write more about the characters and worlds that I've fallen in love with. In the end, it's probably best that I would be reduced to squeaks and blushing if I ever met one of the above mentioned authors!

Feature & Follow Friday #17

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Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly social blog hop between book bloggers. There are two regular hosts: Parajunkee and Alison of Alison Can Read, and two special guest hosts every week. If you want to join in, click on either of their blogs to get the details. The FF question of the day is: 

Q: Have you had a character that disappointed you? One that you fell in love with and then "broke up" with later on in either the series or a stand-alone book? 

My character is from my childhood: Anne (of Green Gables). I loved that series so much. When Montgomery shifted the focus away from Anne and onto Anne's children, I was really disappointed.  It felt like Anne became a mother, and therefore she was no longer the central character in her series. (Book Snob has a killer post that describes the arc in detail.) I understand that focusing on child protagonists makes sense for a series geared towards children. But I was so emotionally invested in Anne's life that I wanted to read about her adulthood, even though I was still a child. 

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So, no break up. Anne just faded out of my life, and planted a tiny seed of suspicion that when you become a mother, you have to stop being a brave, bright, kindred spirit heroine. Of course, Montgomery was writing in a different time, and societal perceptions have changed drastically. But the ideas in a children's book feel current to the child reading, no matter how long ago it was published.

I wish that Anne was allowed to mature and deepen while still staying true to herself as the central character through her series, instead of becoming boring and invisible. I like to imagine that somewhere in an alternate universe, the second half of the "Anne of Green Gable" series allows Anne to have thrilling adventures with her children and grandchildren. Anne deserved that, and so did we.

Feature and Follow Friday #16

Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly social blog hop between book bloggers. There are two regular hosts: Parajunkee and Alison of Alison Can Read, and two special guest hosts every week. If you want to join in, click on either of their blogs to get the details. The FF question of the day is: 

Q: Fight! Fight! If you could have two fictional characters battle it out (preferably from books), who would they be and who do you think would win?

 

Oh, this is a tough one for me. Since "The Hunger Games" has been omnipresent lately, I have to go with Katniss Everdeen for one of my fighters. I love her ruthlessness, intelligence and heart. But choosing her opponent is slightly more challenging. In the YA Heroine Tournament, Katniss was paired with Tessa Gray from Cassandra Clare's "Clockwork" series. I just finished reading "Clockwork Prince," and while I really like Tessa, I don't think she'd stand a chance in any battle involving physical competition.

Keeping the fight within the YA realm, I'm going to go with Lila Zacharov from Holly Black's "Curseworkers" series. I was really surprised that she didn't even make it into competition in the Heroine Tournament. Lila's just as tough as Katniss. She's also killed, and like Katniss, has a lot to fight for and against in her life. 

Reluctantly, I have to give Lila a slight edge over Katniss. I think Lila would win since she makes the choice to enter a violent lifestyle, while Katniss was forced by circumstances to become who she became. I'm reluctant because really, these two heroines are very evenly matched. I'd rather see them team up and light their respective fictional worlds on fire than fight each other!

Feature & Follow Friday #15

Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly social blog hop between book bloggers. There are two regular hosts: Parajunkee and Alison of Alison Can Read, and two special guest hosts every week. If you want to join in, click on either of their blogs to get the details. The FF question of the day is: 

Q: Have you ever bought a book BECAUSE of a bad review?

 

No, never. It would never occur to me to do so. But that may be in part because I rarely read reviews  to find books to read. I rely on word of mouth, or browsing the library shelves far more than I do reviews. 

 

I'm sure I'd learn about a lot more books if I followed reviews more closely, but my feelings about the utility of reviews in general are mixed. If the reviewer has different tastes than you, then the review won't be valid for you as a reader. Even if the reviewer is like your reading clone, the review analyzes the book and reveals the plot in a way that takes away from the reading experience. 

 

But theoretically, I like the idea of buying a book because of a bad review. You could do it to support the author, or as some (largely pointless) gesture of spite towards the reviewer. It also could be pragmatic--if you know you never agree with the particular reviewer, than a bad review from her is practically a recommendation.

 

Feature and Follow Friday #14

Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly social blog hop between book bloggers. There are two regular hosts: Parajunkee and Alison of Alison Can Read, and two special guest hosts every week. If you want to join in, click on either of their blogs to get the details. The FF question of the day is: 

Q: Do you read one book at a time or do you switch back and forth between two or more?

 

 I am a serial monogamist, and I almost always read one book at a time.We're talking deep-seated personality hard wiring, so I feel weird taking on more than one book at a time. But if I'm not really into a book, I'll start reading another while simultaneously continuing to give the first a chance. If the second book's good, the first book's a goner. 

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I bet whichever side you align with could extend to all sorts of things in life! It's sort of like relationship modes--imagine most of the people at right replaced with books. 

Some of us are monogamists; some are polygamists. I'm not sure any of us practice exclusive promiscuity, because the books can't interact yet with each other. Maybe that's the future of digital books?

Feature and Follow Friday #13

Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly social blog hop between book bloggers. There are two regular hosts: Parajunkee and Alison of Alison Can Read, and two special guest hosts every week. If you want to join in, click on either of their blogs to get the details. The FF question of the day is: 

Q: What is the longest book you've read? What are your favorite 600+ page reads?

 

  My favorite 600+ read is JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL, by Susanna Clarke.  It was published in 2004, and I've been waiting ever since for Clarke to write another novel. The length of this novel is key to its success. It's so complicated and rich that the story simply couldn't be told in less than the 800 pages it clocks in at.

I gravitate towards longer books, because if I like the book, greater length means I get to stay in the book's world longer. But it's pretty rare that I come across a book that's 600+ pages.  The only book other than JONATHAN STRANGE that comes to mind is Diane Gabaldon's OUTLANDER (no doubt the rest of the books in the series are equally long, but I only read one or two after OUTLANDER). 

At least, that's what I thought until I did a bit of digging. A number of my favorite novels, like MIDDLEMARCH (900 pages) and ANNA KARENINA (872), are well over 600 pages long. The things you learn on Feature & Follow Friday!

 

Feature and Follow Friday #12

Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly social blog hop between book bloggers. There are two regular hosts: Parajunkee and Alison of Alison Can Read, and two special guest hosts every week. If you want to join in, click on either of their blogs to get the details. The FF question of the day is: 

Q: What is the best book you've read in the last month? What is the worst book you've read in the last month?

 

I've started a lot of books in the last month or so that I haven't and won't finish, like SHATTER ME and ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS. But I stopped reading because those books just didn't click with me, not because they were poorly executed or conceived. I've started a Pinterest board to record the books that I couldn't finish. My goal isn't to trash the books or their authors, but to record for myself the books that I didn't mesh with.

 

I've also read a number of books that were mediocre.  I read them to the end, but they failed in either plotting, characterization, pacing, ending, or any number of other aspects. Several of Laura Lippman's and Kate White's books fell into this category for me this month. So did Lauren DeStefano's FEVER.

 

It's much harder to identify a best and worst book. Of the books that I've finished, nearly all of them have been mysteries. The worst book was probably Sara Blaedel's CALL ME PRINCESS. This novel would have remained in the mediocre category without its atrocious ending. It doesn't conclude so much as stop. The title figures prominently into the solution to the mystery, but in a way that feels forced. The solution to the mystery is bare bones, and the actual conclusion feels as though several pages were missing. 

 

The best book I've read so far in March is Tess Gerritsen's THE BONE GARDEN. I'm not very enthusiastic in deeming this the "best" book of my month. It was an engaging book, and it doesn't have any glaring flaws, but it just manages to rise above the mediocre.

 Here's hoping that since the month is only at the halfway mark, I'll stumble upon some better books soon. Perhaps even via this hop!

Feature and Follow Friday #11

Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly social blog hop between book bloggers. There are two regular hosts: Parajunkee and Alison of Alison Can Read, and two special guest hosts every week. If you want to join in, click on either of their blogs to get the details. The FF question of the day is:

Q: Have you ever looked at book’s cover and thought, This is going to horrible? But, was instead pleasantly surprised? Show us the cover and tell us about the book.

While I generally am far too influenced by book covers to pick up a book that doesn't appeal visually, I've had different reactions to two different covers of the same book.  Although I started with the cover that appealed, it's fascinating to look at the less attractive cover and measure my reaction against the actual book.

Brenna Yovanoff's THE REPLACEMENT is the perfect example of a book which shaped my expectations entirely because of its cover. I did not encounter the U.K. version, at right, until after I read it, but if I had, I would never have read the novel. It's horribly cheesy, and somehow reminiscent of the not soapy enough to be interesting TV adaptation of L.J. Smith's THE SECRET CIRCLE.

On the left is the U.S. cover that led me to buy this book off the bookshelf store, without having read any reviews or even having heard of the book at all. I love this cover, and was confident that the book would be frightening and original.  

The interesting thing about the two covers is that if I had to judge the book by its cover, it's actually somewhere in between the two. It's not as bad as its U.K. version, but it doesn't fulfill the promise of its U.S. version. 

Without resorting to the familiar cliche, I like the idea of reviewing a book by its different covers. Everyone has a different aesthetic sense, but I believe that there's a lot more commonality between what we can immediately judge as appealing or not in a book cover  than there is in reading a review. Since a review is always a reflection of the reviewer as much as the work, judging a book by multiple covers is almost an easier way to gauge whether a book will align with your individual taste. 

If only every book had multiple covers! Of course, sometimes the different covers aren't obviously better and worse. But when they are, it's very useful to be able say the book is more like Cover A than Cover B.

Feature & Follow Friday #10

Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly social blog hop between book bloggers. There are two regular hosts: Parajunkee and Alison of Alison Can Read, and two special guest hosts every week. If you want to join in, click on either of their blogs to get the details. The FF question of the day is:

 Q: Activity!!! Take a picture or describe where you love to read the most... 

 

My favorite place to read is the bath tub. But since I don't have a tub in my current residence, I'll have to go with a location almost as good--my bed.

I'm big into piling several comforters on, while the cat and dog sleep at my feet. Reading has some sort of association with being cozy for me, I guess.

Above is the fantasy bath tub I'd love to be reading in right now. I have such severe tub withdrawal that I created a Pinterest board of lovely bath tubs!

But I'm lucky to be curled up in bed, listening to the breaking waves coming from my sound machine, with an endless stream of ebooks available. 

The silver lining of the no bath tub cloud--you can't read on your Kindle for PC while in the tub. Or at least, you probably shouldn't!

Feature and Follow Friday #9

 

Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly social blog hop between book bloggers. There are two hosts: Parajunkee and Alison of Alison Can Read. If you want to join in, click on either of their blogs to get the details. The FF question of the day is:

Q:  I like unique names for characters and am looking forward to coming up with some when I start writing. What’s the most unique character name you’ve come across?

The most unique names are oddly enough the most difficult to remember. They're from hard sci fi; the kind of names with apostrophes in the middle. But if we're discussing unique as in appealing, memorable and rare, I'd have to say Delores Haze, aka Lolita, because of the way her various nicknames play into her characterization. 

Four, from Veronica Roth's DIVERGENT, is another unique name (albeit a nickname) that comes to mind. But a lot of unique yet forgettable names run rampant in fiction. On a different note, there's the unique name convention that prevails in romance novels, in which a hero named Chance Strongfront or some such thing is accepted as having a totally unremarkable name.

Ultimately, I don't think it's as important that your character's name be unique, as it is that it fit the character. Nadine Cross from THE STAND struck me as such a good fit for the character that it took on unpleasant qualities as a name in and of itself. There's nothing wrong, per se, with the name Nadine, but just as it happens with a bully in elementary school or a horrible ex, the name became linked for me with the sliminess of the character and her subplot.

Feature and Follow Friday #8

 

Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly social blog hop between book bloggers. There are two hosts: Parajunkee and Alison of Alison Can Read. If you want to join in, click on either of their blogs to get the details. The FF question of the day is:

Q: What would your prefer: reading your favorite book over and over again until you got sick of it OR reading 100s of mediocre books? And why?

At first, I was inclined to say I'd rather read my favorite book (LOLITA) over and over. I've reread it maybe a dozen times, and I'm sure I'd get more out of it, and have different reactions to it, if I read it dozens more. But the sticking point for me is reading until I got sick of it. It seems like eating your favorite food until you can't stand the sight of it, never mind want to have some. It would be horrible to have my favorite book become something I couldn't even look at again.

Reading hundreds of mediocre books isn't a great choice, but it's slightly better than growing to hate my favorite. There's always something interesting to glean from a book, even if as a whole it's awful. 

I'm just glad I almost certainly will never have to make this choice in real life!

Feature and Follow Friday #7

 

Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly social blog hop between book bloggers. There are two hosts: Parajunkee and Alison of Alison Can Read. If you want to join in, click on either of their blogs to get the details. The FF question of the day is:

  Q: Define what characteristics your favorite books share. Do they all have a kickass heroine or is the hot love interest the Alpha Male?

My favorite books don't share a single concrete characteristic. I love good writing, cool characters, and a story that seems to be worth devoting X number of hours to it. I love being introduced to new worlds.

Some of my favorite books are Lolita, Middlemarch, The Handmaid's Tale, and Never Let Me Go. I suppose all of these books have a tragic heroine, and all of them are devoted to exploring women's experiences in different ways. If I had to guess, I'd say 70% of the books I read are written by women.

Feature and Follow Friday #6:

Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly social blog hop between book bloggers. There are two hosts: Parajunkee and Alison of Alison Can Read. If you want to join in, click on either of their blogs to get the details. The FF question of the day is:

Q: Which book genre do you avoid at all costs and why?

I think that I probably avoid certain sub-genres. For example, I like certain works of historical non-fiction, but I'm not interested in historical military non-fiction. I'm also typically not interested in spiritual or self-help books. What else? Humor! I dislike joke books and works by comedians.  In terms of fiction, I'll read any genre. I'm sure there must be an exception to that rule, but I can't think of it. I also dislike books that are meant to be hip or ironic. In other words, if it's being sold at Urban Outfitters, I will probably dislike it. Finally, I'm not interested in books about sports.

Just for fun, I compiled a top ten list of books that exemplify the sub-genres I'm not interested in. I've highlighted in blue the ones that I have read. If you put a gun to my head, I could read each of these without vomiting, but short of violent threats, I'm going to steer clear:

1. ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY by David Sedaris. 

2. ARE YOU THERE, VODKA? IT'S ME, CHELSEA  by Chelsea Handler
 
3. SEINLANGUAGE by Jerry Seinfeld

4. IN MY TIME: A POLITICAL AND PERSONAL MEMOIR by Dick Cheney

5. SAVED BY THE BELL GUIDE TO LIFE by Running Press

6. DOMO IN THE WORLD by Kate T. Anderson

7. ESPN: THE MIGHT BOOK OF SPORTS KNOWLEDGE by Steve Wulf

8. THE GREATEST MOMENTS IN SPORTS by Len Berman

9. REINVENTING THE BODY, RESURRECTING THE SOUL: HOW TO CREATE A NEW YOU by Deepak Chopra

10. THE SECRET by Rhonda Byrne

P.S. I'm always open to changing my mind, so if anyone has read any of the above and loved it, let me know!

Feature and Follow Friday #5: I must have that book!

 

Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly social blog hop between book bloggers. There are two hosts: Parajunkee and Alison of Alison Can Read. If you want to join in, click on either of their blogs to get the details. The FF question of the day is:

Q: What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done to get your hands on any particular book?

While I had the swine flu a couple years back, I was pretty much incapacitated. I was in bed for over two weeks, and I didn't have anyone to run errands for me. While running a high fever, I drove about 10 minutes to the bookstore to get my hands on a bunch of Sookie Stackhouse books. I had just started the series, and I needed something fun to read while I was stuck in bed cursing fate. But I was really out of it, and pretty sick, so I shouldn't have been driving. What can I say? I needed my Sookie fix. I would definitely recommend the series as excellent illness reading. They're quick, engrossing reads that don't tax your brain!

That's my fairly mild anecdote. Hopefully there will be some juicy stories about extreme measures taken to get ARCs out there, or the equivalent, as I read around the book blogs!

Feature and Follow Friday #4: Favorite Music

Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly social blog hop between book bloggers. There are two hosts: Parajunkee and Alison of Alison Can Read. If you want to join in, click on either of their blogs to get the details.

Question of the Week: Many readers/bloggers are also big music fans. Tell us about a few of your favorite bands/singers that we should listen to in 2012.

 

I have no original or underground music suggestions, because I'm the type of person who listens to something I like until everyone around wants to poke pencils into their ears.  In college, I had a Chuck Berry phase in which I kept playing a few songs over and over in my shared dorm room: "Sweet Little Sixteen" was one, and "Johnny B. Goode" was another. I don't know how my roommate kept from strangling me. 

 

Today, I have the same repetitive listening patterns. Lately I've been obsessed with The Blood Arm, Cake, old Liz Phair, the Fratellis, and Robert Plant & Alison Krauss. I bet I'm going to get some new material for my obsessive-compulsive listening list as I jump around the other blogs. Onward!

Feature and Follow Friday #3: Unread Books

Feature & Follow Friday is a weekly social blog hop between book bloggers. There are two hosts: Parajunkee and Alison of Alison Can Read. If you want to join in, click on either of their blogs to get the details. The FF question of the day is:

Q: Go count the number of unread books sitting on your shelf. How many?

 A. About ten. There would probably be more if it weren't for the fact that I mainly use the library for the books I read. So anything that doesn't get read doesn't hang around long.  However, I do have two Kindle books I also haven't read. I have a feeling my number may be pretty low, but this doesn't mean I'm all caught up with what I want to read--they're just not here!

Feature and Follow Friday #2: New Year's Resolution

For those pretty new to this book blog hop, like me, Feature & Follow Friday is hosted by Rachel of Parajunkee and Alison of Alison Can Read. The directions for participation are explained on each of their blogs, so check it out!

Question of the Week: The New Year is here -- and everyone wants to know your New Years Blogging Resolution! What are you going to try to revise, revamp and redo for 2012 on your blog?

 

 I am morally opposed to New Year's resolutions, so this question is tough. Okay, not morally opposed, but really not into them. But, I'm going to rationalize answering this question by focusing on the fact that it's about my blog, not about me.

 

Actually, it's a good question to ask yourself as a blogger. I'm very new to blogging--started in October--so the easy answer is to keep toddling along, doing what I'm doing, and trying to stay with it. I do have a few future goals that move beyond my usual routine:

1. I've learnt so many nuts and bolts things that I didn't know before, like a rudimentary understanding of the html involved in embedding comments and pictures. So one goal will be to keep learning more about the innards of blogging. 

 

2. I'd like to connect more with other bloggers. It's easy for me to feel like I'm sending out time capsules or something (even though I have a small, lovely group of people who read and comment; many thanks to them). Communicating with other bloggers, doing blog hops and tours and all that jazz, helps me feel like there's some kind of community involved. It's funny, because I know everybody and their uncle's dog has a blog. But I still feel like I'm making this unmapped journey. Since it's my first time doing anything like this, it is unmapped in a way. But it's good to remind myself that everything I'm doing has been done before. 

 3. My biggest goal is to serialize a story on my blog, and present portions once a week. I love the concept of serialization, going back to Dickens and Wilkie Collins and their contemporaries. But I feel like I have a lot of writing projects going on, and that doing a serial is beyond me at this point.  So, I'll make this one a long-term goal.

 

I'll stop with these three fairly long-winded goals, and go check out everybody else's resolutions!

Feature and Follow Friday #1

Friday's the day for Feature & Follow Friday, the book blog blog hop (say that three times fast!). For more info go visit the hosts, Parajunkee and Allison Can Read. I'm off to explore the vast universe of book blogs!