Me Reading Truthwitch on my Kindle while recovering from surgery
Several days ago I had ankle surgery on my right ankle. For those wondering it was not related to an injury, just had a bum bone in my foot. I’m enjoying all the time I have to read, but to be honest I am getting restless. My foot needs to stay elevated to typing at my desk is hard, since there is no where to put my foot up.
I’ve read four graphic novels and that I got from the library and I finished The Color Purple. I’ll write about them as soon as I can, but in the meantime. I am afraid its back to my chair so I can put my foot up. Hang in there with me and I’ll get back to regular post just as soon as I can.
Publishers Weekly posted an article yesterday about a rise in book sales. While this is welcome news to any book nerd, myself included, I’m still so sad that there was such a dive in book sales to begin with. Don’t get me wrong I love reading on my kindle, iPhone and iPad, but I miss all the bookshops that once littered malls and especially the smaller mom and pop books stores, that sold new and used books.
These were the real diamond in the rough. I loved to be walking in a new small town and come across a bookstore selling new or used books. Browsing through bookstores is FUN! Even if you don’t come away with anything they give you this wonderful feeling knowing that they are there for a return visits, when next time you might find that real jewel of a book that becomes your new all-time favorite.
The article states that we hit 11.17 billion in sales last year, up from last year, but horribly down from the pre-2009 high of 17 billion. I hope we return to this number and I hope it is soon, because I want to see new bookstores opening up all over the place for book nerd browsing!
The Paris Wife by Paula McLain. $1.50 at local libraries used book store. Another one I’ve been wanting to read for a very long time. Now, I have a like new copy, still has the Costco price sticker on it ($9.49).
The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman. $0.75. Another used book find. Another that has been on my list to read a long time!
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. I can’t remember exactly, but lets say 75 cents. Another one I have wanted to read for a long time, I hope I get to it very soon!
The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz. Last 3 bought for $3.75 at local used book store.
My very own black Penguin Classic!
Areopagitica and Other Writings by John Milton. I finally got my very own little black Penguin classic book. I won it on Twitter and I love it!
The Joy of the Gospel by Pope Francis. $3. I got this not because I’m catholic or even particularly religious, but this guy is a very different Pope from what I’ve read and this is supposed to be his mission statement of sorts. I want to know what he wants to accomplish.
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. Ever since seeing the movie, I’ve wanted to read the book. I finally picked one up from a used book sale for fifty cents!
And finally, three beautiful books by Ian Fleming. Thunderball, Goldfinger and From Russia with Love. These were $0.50 each. Look at these, how could you say no? These are actually really hard to find. I looked on abebooks and they are not cheap or easy to find. Something to keep any eye out for in the used bookstores.
Ian Fleming Penguin Classics
The take away from this is that I bought 12 books for $33.74 in one month. It’s 2/9 and already I know there are at least 3 books that I have bought and I plan on visiting a book sale this Sunday. This all tells me I need to slow down and I’m buying books faster than I can read them. However, in the month of January I read 16 books. It’s too bad I never seem to catch up. Maybe, someday.
The other take away is that looking at these books again as I write about them makes me want to read them so bad! I can’t wait to get to them. I’m excited about it!
These are just the ones that were on my desk in arms reach
Okay, another 100 book reading challenge article is this thing from the Observer going to be any good?
Does your reading list keep growing? Did you buy books that you’ve never read? It might be time to cross more books from your list this year than ever.
Yep. They got me! At least I’m not the only one.
Most of the books you read are not planned in advance. You don’t sit down in January and say: “The first week of June I’ll read this book.”
Actually, I do do that. I have a pile that I get from the library and I read them in a certain order. Usually by due date and the availability of renewals on the title. Darius Foroux, the author of this article makes a point of saying you need to have a lot of books around. I agree, this helps, but he seems to have forgotten about libraries. To have many books around you need to buy them which costs money. No, again, library, it is free and you can usually check out somewhere around 20 books at a time. Most libraries lending period is between 2 – 3 weeks and you can renew sometimes more than three times. So, I don’t see why you have to have money to read a lot of books.
This doesn’t really apply to me, but I like to borrow books before I buy them. If they are not something I like why should I spend money on them when I can borrow them for free. Last year I saved over $800 by borrowing from local public libraries.
Darius, can I call you Darius, says not to overthink what book you are going to read next. I do like to read some of the reviews on goodreads before starting a book. I like to read the synopsis of the book too, just to see what I’m getting myself into. Before I open any book I also read the cover, front and back to see what I can learn. I think that is all part of reading the book. I also do not skip introductions or forwards. The only part I skips are the notes and acknowledgements at the end of books.
I’m beginning to think Darius’ rules are a little too strict. Reading shouldn’t have so many rules!
I do like this though:
I live by a different motto: Always Be Reading.
I find this makes me feel guilty though. Even as I write this blog post, I’m thinking should I be spending my time doing this or catching up on War and Peace or reading some more of Cold Comfort? I like doing the blog post though so I need to make time for my other projects as well as reading. Still….I do feel guilty any time I’m doing something that is not reading.
Darius is right, you must find time to read books if it is important to you do do so. Just last night:
Next Darius covers a very important point. Don’t read books you don’t like. He says only read relevant books which I think is completely different, but if you don’t like something than stop reading it, good advice, but nothing we haven’t heard before.
Oh, I love this, “read multiple books at once.” Yep. Right now, here is the line up:
These are the ones I can think of off the top of my head, but I think there are some I forgetting. You get the point though.
Darius’ last point “retain the knowledge”. I do highlight in my kindle and ibooks when I find something I like or something that interest me, but I could be doing a better job of this of course. I never make notes in a library book and I find that takes notes, takes me away from the story and out of “the zone” when I’m reading. Therefore, I stopped doing that years ago.
Good job Darius, you hit some good points and I got a good reminder to be more studious and retain something from all these books I’m reading. Because if you don’t gain anything from reading 100 books in a year, what was the point?
Last check-in I had read 2.5% of War and Peace. So, where am I in the book? I am 6.3% into the book. This is bad, this is very bad. I needed to hit 8.2% by the 31st of January. I’m 2 points or 129 pages behind on my reading. That may not sound like much, but combined with the February goal of another 8.2% of the book or 560 pages, that is going to be a tall building to scale.
I’m reading this on my mobile phone so the pages are very small, which means there are more of them 6,822 pages at the font size I have chosen. Do you think ‘ol Tolstoy would have every thought someone would be reading his work on a small glowing screen which made phone calls and ordered coffee in advance of their arrival at a cafe that charged over $3 for a cup of coffee?
I thought I might be able to find a group reading the book right now especially since the show is out now from BBC. I haven’t watched any of the episodes, but I would like to. We will see, maybe watching an episode or two would help me get more into the book.
The Open Syllabus Project, is an effort to make the intellectual judgment embedded in syllabi relevant to broader explorations of teaching, publishing, and intellectual history. It released the top texts taught from the top US universities over the last 15 years and Quartz released an article listing them. This is exactly the kind of thing that I love. I love to keep learning and the way that works best for me is reading because I also love that. So, they only hard part is choosing the right books. These are definitely some of them. See the list they released below:
I would so love all of these books. I’ve read only a few. Most if not all of them are available as a penguin classic. In their little black perfect paperback versions. I love these. If only you could buy all of them in one go, with of course an accompanying bookshelf! Someday, Someday, Maybe.
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!
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 by Virginia L. Carpenter
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.
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!
