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Reading Log

Stockholm Public Library by Samantha Marx

I ran across a link to May McLay Patterson’s enormously long titled I Read 164 Books in 2015 and Tracked them all in a Spreadsheet. Here is what I learned. article. It starts of a little too wordy for me and then the first tip is not to finish every book you start. So far, this sounds like the same advice I’ve heard from a million other people, most notably Nancy Pearl.

I track what I’ve read and what I want to read on goodreads, but I also have a spreadsheet. Just something simple on google sheets. In 2015 I was interested if I read more male authors work or female. So I started tracking it (67% male). Patterson mentions that Amanda Nelson of Book Riot not only records their gender but also their nationality, and whether or not they identify as a person of color. I thought this is great finally a way to better my existing system.

I loved that Patterson liked Stacy Schiff’s The Witches: Salem, 1692 because that book is on my short list of to TBR. It drives me crazy that I haven’t read it yet.

Last year, the BBC reported that translations comprise just 2 to 3 percent of English publishing, compared with 27 percent in France and up to 70 percent in Slovenia.

Wow! I’ve read two books this year that are translations The Stranger and Missing Person. Both, oddly enough French translations. Go figure! Make that three, I didn’t realize that Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist was a translation.

I’m reading the article as I write this. Patterson is a librarian and the more I read of this article the more my desire to be a librarian increases. I’ve known for several years that I would like to do that kind of work, but I haven’t acted on it yet. To many responsibilities to try to make this happen right now. Maybe much later?

At the end of every book I loved, I felt transformed. I wanted to tell everyone about it…

I find this frustrating as none of my friends read as much as I do. The ones that come close are not people I talk to as often as I would like. I work with them and I’m too busy at work to have a long book conversation most days. This is frustrating, I assume if you are a librarian you get to talk books a lot more. Again, jealous!

I’m done now, and I feel that you would do well to read this article if you are a reader of books. I enjoyed it. Have fun and keep reading!

On Schedule to 100 Books

Book Stack — 4 books from the library on my to read list

Here is the short list for the rest of the month. I hope to read these all by the end of the month. I’m starting The Stranger today. The rest will follow in the order they are in the picture. Most of these are from my reading list, but The Stranger is a suggestion from a great virtual book club on goodreads called Catching up on the Classics.

Here I am going on and on and totally forgot to get to the point. I just finished my 9th book of the month (review coming soon). You know what that means? I’m on track to read 100 books this year. I need to read at least 8 books each month (8.2 really). So I am very excited to be on track and can’t wait to dive into The Stranger.

The group does a few reads every month. They have a new school read, which is a modern classic. An old school classic which is what you think it is. They also have a long read, usually over 500 pages and a short read under 200. February’s short read is The Stranger, weighing in at only 123 pages in the paperback pictured above.

I hope they can forgive me for starting it early, but I have already read The Little Prince which is January’s pick. By the way, if you haven’t seen the 2015 movie, you should. It is really fantastic and lets you re-think the book entirely. I’m putting the trailer in here below.

I have another review coming soon, but for now, I really need to get back to my reading. See you in the stacks!

Placentia, a Pleasant Place

This is a story that should prove why your local library is so important. I found a video on my twitter feed from the city of Placentia. The video reminded me of a book that I found at the Placentia Library, Placentia, A Pleasant Place by Virginia L. Carpenter. She literally wrote the book on Placentia. I stubbled upon this browsing through the books in the Friends of the library section of the Placentia Library. They were asking $20 for the book. At first, I thought this was a little steep, but being new to the city, I wanted to lear about the history of it. After all I am a history buff.

I was wondering a little more about Virginia today as well. I’m not finding much about her except links to her book, now selling for $95 most places! I did find a little on the Placentia Library website. She was hired as a librarian there in August 1953. In April 1978, she helped dedicate the California room in the library where she signed copies of her book. I have the revised edition pictured above that was published in 1988.

I also found some 1984 minutes from the city where the then major Richard Buck presented a proclamation that July 17, 1984 be Virginia Carpenter Day in Placentia.

Finally, I tweeted to the Placentia Library to find out more. They have reached out but only to schedule time in the history room. I’m a little disappointed in that, because I just wanted a simple answer. Hopefully, I’ll learn more when I have time to schedule time with them.

David Case the Voice of Hundreds of Audio Books

If you listen to audio books you have probably heard of David Case’s voice. I first heard his voice when he was reading Shogun one of my all time favorite books. When I started reading Jude the Obscure this week I heard a familiar voice so I looked up who the reader was and I saw that the reader was Frederick Davidson. Next, of course came the google search to see if I could find out who this person was. I was very sad to see his obituary listed on the LA Times Seems he would not give up smoking cigarettes and died of throat cancer in 2005. He was nominated for a Grammy. He recorded over 700 audio books! So rest in peace Mr. Case and thank you for all the wonderful hours of audio!

Review: Lords of the Sith

Lords of the Sith by Paul S. Kemp is a great book for anyone wanted to read an action packed Star Wars novel, but for those who loved the 6th movie in the Star Wars films, this is even better. It gives the blow-by-blow of an adventure that involves Darth Vader and the Emperor and there may be even a few references to the animated series Rebels in there for you fans.

Before we get to deep it is important to mention a few things. First when Disney bought the Star Wars film franchise they said all the books that had been written before their purchase don’t count. Now, these were wonderful books and I loved many of them. So they DO COUNT, but the story line will not be followed by Disney in the new movies. So, now that that has been said there is a huge vacuum that needs to be filled with new books and stories. Some of these stories will be in Rebels, some will be in other movies that are off shoots from the movie that came out in December 2015. Some of the stories will be told in books and graphic novels/comic books.

To learn what books are part of the “new cannon” the post-Disney story, the best place to look is Wookieepedia…get it? Yeah. Anyway, check the link to see what books to read if you want to fill in the gaps that the new movie left. I read Dark Disciple in 2015. This year I want to continue reading the story of Star Wars and the next book up was Lords of the Sith.

I enjoyed this book very much. There is an action scene a little more than half-way through the book that was just amazing! The foreshadowing to what fans already know lies a head is great. I don’t want to say too much more because I don’t want to spoil it. If you are a Star Wars fan and you read, the decision should already be made for you. While there are no huge revelations made in the book the story is solid and if your a Vader fan you will not be disappointed!

By the way. Paul S. Kemp, the author, is on twitter. He was nice enough to retweet some of my comments as I read the book and I recommend following him to see what he is up to.

SPOILERS BELOW:

This is a good video review that IGN did, but it does have some slight spoilers in it. If you like to go into a book without knowing anything about the story, don’t watch this. Otherwise, enjoy.

Reading More

Pile of Books — Ca. 115 and counting by Horst Gutmann

My goal of 100 books this year is a little daunting. I know it is going to be difficult because I’ve tried before and failed. Hannah Sander of the BBC has some tips that might help though in her article How could I read more books. She discusses speed reading as one possible solution and as a matter of fact I took a speed reading course when I was still in high school. It was listed at a local junior college and curious I signed up when my parents said they would pay.

I’m glad I took the class it was fun. And for the first time someone taught me how to read a book. I mean I already knew how to read of course, but the instructor, I forget his name, taught me how to begin. He liked to read the book jacket, everything on it. Then start in on the book, not skipping any introductions or preface. Before the class I often skipped both. He then taught us the basics of speed reading, but also stressed that we need to still maintain an understanding of what we had read.

We would read in groups of two to ourselves. We did this for about 10-15 minutes. We would then tell our partner how much we had read, lines or pages, then we would tell our partner what we had read. At first I was going so fast that I didn’t have any idea what had happened in the passage I read. As we kept at it I got better. I don’t use everything I learned from that class and I have purposely slowed down my reading speed, because I want to enjoy the books I am reading.

An instructor mentioned in Sander’s article read 150 books last year. Which I think is doable, but I wonder how much he enjoyed it and what the rest of his life is like. His suggestion was to become bored as reading is a great way to pass the time. I find this especially true when flying across country. Here you find yourself in a seat hurtling trough the air in a tin can. The seat so small you can barely move and you are discouraged from moving around the plane. So you are basically a prisoner to this smelly, cramped seat for hours. This for me is a place I can polish off books no problem. Even when the book is slow, what else are you going to do? Watch the horrible little tv? Some planes still don’t have this, even in cross country flights.

Besides, I find there are very few tv shows or movies as good as a well selected book. Lastly, the article suggest reading with the time you have. If you only have 15 minutes, read. You don’t have to set aside hours at a time to read. I read while waiting for my daughter to finish in her dance class. With three dance classes a week I have a lot of time to read. I see the other parents staring at their phones, but who knows, maybe they are reading too. After all, I have War and Peace on my phone.

100 Books in a Year

Now, I’ve never read 100 books in a year. Well, I probably have, but I don’t count the books I read to my kids in good reads, so only 96 in a year a few years back. So, when I saw Aliza Weinberger’s article, What happened when I tried to read 100 books in a year, I was intrigued.

I would have liked to see more reviews in the article. All her ratings where listed but nothing too much about what she thought of the books. Just a few little sentences here and there. To me it was more about her journey reading 100 books and less about what it meant to her or why she was doing it, other than just to do it.

She does later say:

…this project wasn’t really about the number of books I could read. It was about finding books that made me feel what reading had always done for me: that connection, that sheer joy of reading a book that both entertains and moves me.

That was nice to see in there. The worst part was all the little gifs and advertisements that popped up while I was trying to read the article. I can’t take Mashable articles seriously with all this junk popping up while I’m trying to read a article that genuinely interest me. Good content is not going to keep me on the site, if it is observed by all this other stuff.

I was going to read another article that Weinberger linked to on Mashable, but I gave up after having so much trouble loading the first article. I hope they clean that site up, thy have some good content.

I don’t think I will have as rough a time reading my hundred as Weinberger did. I know what I want to read, I have a TBR shelf of hundreds of books. Getting through them all will be the tough part. Wish me luck!

Reading Shakespeare

Shakespeare the Complete Works

Below is a list of all the plays, at least the ones we know of that the Great Bard wrote. I have a book with the complete works and this is the order it lists them. I’m working very slowly through these. I would like to finish all of these in 2016, but the chance of me completing these and the BBC 100 are low.

Progress: 9/46 or 20%

Two Gentlemen of Verona
The Taming of the Shrew
2 Henry VI – Part II
3 Henry VI – Part III
1 Henry VI – Part I
Titus Andronicus
Richard III
Venus and Adonis
The Rape of Lucrece
Edward III
~~The Comedy of Errors~~ – August 10, 2014
Love’s Labour’s Lost
Love’s Labour’s Won
Richard II
~~Romeo and Juliet~~ – January, 1998
~~A Midsummer Night’s Dream~~ – July 7, 2014
King John
~~The Merchant of Venice~~ – July 30, 2014
1 Henry IV – Part I
The Merry Wives of Windsor
2 Henry IV – Part II
~~Much Ado About Nothing~~ – August 28, 2014
Henry V
~~Julius Caesar~~ – June 20, 2015
As You Like It
~~Hamlet~~ – January 2013
Twelfth Night
Troilus and Cressida
Sonnets and ‘A Lover’s Complaint’
Poems
Measure for Measure
Othello
King Lear
The Life of Timon of Athens
~~Macbeth~~ – August 19, 2011
Antony and Cleopatra
All’s Well That Ends Well
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Coriolanus
The Winter’s Tale
King Lear
Cymbeline, King of Brition
~~The Tempest~~ – August 20, 2014
Cardenio
All is True
The Two Nobile Kinsmen

Print Book Sales are Up!

Good news, according to Publisher’s Weekly the sales of print books are up. Not dramatically, but still this is good news. For the second year in a row sales are up. 2.8% over last year and the year before that it was up 2.4%. Thats the right direction!

So, whats driving the growth? Independent and chain bookstores, as well as Amazon lead the growth with an increase of 5.4%, which offset a drop of 8.8% from mass retailers like Walmart. Looks like people are turing away from buying their books at Target and increasingly buying at Amazon.

I have to say I love getting a view of these numbers. As a reader and someone who wants to promote reading, this is great news. The article at Publisher’s Weekly had some analysis and tables, but I think seeing these numbers graphed helps tell the story better.

Below is the sales broken out by Category. We can see the fall in 2014 in Adult nonfiction and the increase again in 2015, although not quite to the point it was in 2013. Thats a shame, I love nonfiction. Fantastic to see Juvenile non fiction grow like this year over year. A 11.7% increase year-over-year!

One more graph and then I’m done, promise. I read all formats of books, print, audio, ebook, etc. But here is the sales for the last 3 years broken out for your perusal.

I’m very happy to see hardcover sales up, this means, to me at least, that people are purchasing copies to keep and re-read. They are building their libraries, hopefully, not just for themselves but for everyone in their family to enjoy. Board books are up the most at 14.5% year-over-year. This is very encouraging. This means to me, that people are buying books to read to their very small children. Start them young on a hobby (nay life choice) that will forever change them for the better!

Lucy the Reader

I ran across this, I forget how, but tell me how cute is she? I think it is the accent! I just love watching her videos! I’ll be stuck watching these for the rest of the week now!

You can find her on youtube and her blog.