Posts filed under 'Books'
Tonight we set our clocks ahead one hour. Tomorrow YOU WILL CHANGE THE BATTERIES IN YOUR SMOKE DETECTORS.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post.
You might have seen a variation on this making the internet rounds before. I think it was maybe four or five years ago when I first saw it. The idea was to ask people to name five famous people they would most like to meet at a party. At the time I thought it was intriguing because it made me think. And now that a few years have passed, I realize that the names I’d come up with today would be a little different. But famous doesn’t necessarily mean interesting (Sometimes the famous are the least interesting. Um, so what are they famous for?) And anyway, if I get to choose the five people I want to sit down to dinner with, why limit myself to reality? So much better to thumb through the pages of fiction and assemble my guest list from a much more entertaining group. Here’s my list, which is subject to change almost hourly as I think of yet another very cool fictional character:
- The Dowager Duchess from Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter mysteries. Of all the books in the series, my favorite passage is the letters to and from the DD at the beginning of Busman’s Honeymoon. She’s a much sharper cookie than she appears at first glance.
- Brother Cadfael from the Ellis Peter’s series. I’d love to spend some time talking with him. But not in the 12th century. He’ll have to come to me.
- Moist von Lipwig from Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal and Making Money. I really think he and Brother Cadfael would hit it off.
- Archie Goodwin from Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mysteries. Because the Yanks need representing, too, and it would be interesting to pit him against Moist in the wise-cracking department.
- Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell character. That will even the numbers up, and I think both the Duchess and Brother Cadfael would like her.
And, of course, all of you are invited, provided I can come to your party, too. What would your guest list look like?
March 7th, 2009
I was about to read an Ellis Peter’s novel. (Thanks to McB and RSS for recommending her.) As usual I couldn’t remember the title. Was it The Rose Rent or The Rent Rose? Then I started imagining what either title’s story could be.
Ms. Peter’s wrote The Rose Rent. So let’s write The Rent Rose. Maybe several.
March 1st, 2009
I like books. No big shocker there. But I like my books pretty. If I am going to spend 27 bucks, or even 8 bucks, on a brand-new book, I want a smooth, clean, straight, even, shiny, unmolested cover. I don’t mind getting used books that are a little beat up, but I’ll be damned if I’m paying that much for a cover with a bent corner when the book was just released yesterday. If it is a book I know I am going to keep forever and reread at regular intervals, I want it to be in good shape in order to stand up to my loving. And even after I buy it, I keep it in good shape. I do not open the book the entire way, spread-eagle. That would crack the spine and make unsightly creases in the spine cover. (I have a hard time loaning out books because of this, worrying about how other people are holding my book or, Bob forbid, if they have it laying pressed open flat on a table so they can read it without the use of their hands. *shudder*) And I never never never dog-ear the pages to hold my place.
So, I went to a B&N near me to get Lani Diane Rich’s Wish You Were Here, because the bookstore in Dayton didn’t have it, and Beth Ciotta’s Evie Ever After, which is the last in the trilogy, the first two being All About Evie and Everybody Loves Evie, all three of which you should go out and read right now. I’ll wait.
…
Oh good, you’re back. Anyway. I’ve been pining for Evie Ever After since last year after reading the second in the series. The B&N near me only had one copy. The middle top of the front cover was very slightly bent. Okay, maybe you wouldn’t have noticed it, but I did. And there was some black schmutz on the spine. I put it back and walked out of the store. No way was I going to spend $7 (well, OK, no way was I going to take $7 off my gift card…) for a damaged book. I drove 10 miles to the other B&N in my area. This store also only had one copy. And it was in worse condition than the first. The cover was not even applied correctly. The spine was all bunched up and creased right down the center, and the entire cover was pasted on haphazardly, so that part of the spine overlapped around into the front. Nope, not gonna buy it. So what did I do?
That’s right. I went back to the first B&N and got the book with the schmutz. Because while I need my books to be pretty, I also need my fix.
Do you have any habits with your books others might consider odd?
February 24th, 2009
So BCB wants to know about heroes and villains. Here’s my list that comes to mind of the heroes.
Diana Gabaldon (Outlander series): Jamie Fraser, Lord John Grey (also Lord John series), Murtagh
Sara Donati (Wilderness series): Hawkeye Bonner, Dan’l Bonner, Luc Bonner
Lois McMaster Bujold (Miles Vorkosigan series): Miles Vorkosigan, Aral Vorkosigan, Emperor Gregor
So what do these heroes (not necessarily the protagonists) have in mind? Well, they are ….Nope! That’ll wait ‘til you all give your heroes and the whys.
Villains?
Diana Gabaldon (Outlander series): Jack Randall
Sara Donati (Wilderness series): Richard Todd
February 7th, 2009
We’ve been recommending books and authors all along. Shall we give it a concerted effort and consolidate our recommendations to each other here? Well, at least for the first twenty or so posts.
I’m rereading Dorothy Dunnett’s Niccolo series of 8. Takes place in the mid 1400s all over Europe, especially Scotland, Italy, and France. Start with Niccolo Rising. ADVENTURE and INTRIGUES.
I’ve just reread Judith Ivory’s Angel in a Red Dress. Anything Ivory writes is great. She wrote 2 as Judy Cuevas, Bliss and Dance, the only ones that are a series, but don’t have to be read that way. And hard to find. ROMANCES, early 1900s, Regency, etc.
What do you recommend?
January 4th, 2009
How do you say goodbye to an old friend? Someone who was there for you through thick and thin, sickness and health, good and bad? The one who helped you through the long week of you grandfather’s funeral, the flu, writer’s block, the Great Blackout of 2003, boredom, and surgery?
You remember when you first met. He made you laugh. He enthralled you. He made your heart race. You couldn’t get enough of him. But now, something is missing.
Like page 163.
That’s right, my friend is a book.
It’s been my favorite book for about 6 years or so. I read it at least twice a year; last year more. But there is only so much a paperback can take. The spine is cracked, the binding’s shot, and the pages are falling out.
But I can’t bring myself to get rid of it. It’s always been there for me, so how can I just abandon it? How can I (gasp) throw it away?
Throwing it out is the reasonable option; I would relegate it to the Island of Misfit Books if I donated it to the Salvation Army or the local library—who wants a book with missing pages? But I can’t just leave it to a life of slow decomposition among used coffee grounds, brown banana peels, and dirty diapers.
I finally broke down and bought a new copy. The same exact book, the same friend, only without the dog ears and faded cover. So why do I feel disloyal? It’s almost like an illicit love affair and I am cheating on my beloved with someone younger.
I once read – and correct me if I am wrong because I am sure I am – that Jewish people consider books friends and treat them accordingly with a proper burial when they reach “the end.” This is a lovely sentiment, but not one that would be looked upon kindly by my condo association, let alone the people living below me. So that, too, is out as an option.
So what am I left with?
Free to good home: Friendly, loving book. Likes sitting on lap, snuggling in bed, laughter, and pina coladas, but please don’t let it get caught in the rain. Needs TLC.
February 25th, 2008
lou, good thoughts to you and DH. ((HUGS)) anything we can do, we’ll be there.
***
i have certain expectations when i go in to see a movie, or read a book, or hang with a friend, or go to class. these expectations may be good or bad, but they’re mine, and they’re from past experience/trailers/things i’ve heard. sometimes things fall far below my expectations (i have a list of movies/books, somewhere), and some so far exceed them i think something that was probably only “good” was amazing, and most times i met my expectations.
right now there’s a huge debate going on among the romance reader community, and it centers on Ward’s new book, Lover Unbound. (no spoilers for LU, i promise). people are having very mixed reactions to the book, and while most center on the end, there’s enough other stuff thrown in that makes you think. and the way people are reacting- i’ve seen people in the romance community go at it before. but i’m still surprised by how many conversations start off reasonable, listing things the person liked/disliked, and quickly move into a destructive fight between the rabid fan base who don’t believe anyone can hate her stuff (or utter a mean word) and people who think the book was a cheap-cop out with a host of other problems, normally ending with “you suck” and “no, you suck”. (i may be paraphrasing- it may be more “no, YOU suck, #%#^$%^%$, and your mom sucks too”). now, i see things all over the internet with conversations ending this way, from anime talks to the best water heater to choose (”you like X Brand? moron, someone should do the public a service and cut off your internet…and your mom sucks too”).
and though i’m oversimplifying things, it comes to expectations. from Ward, i expect a) Brothers and their relationships with other Brothers; b) a certain way of talking (”true”, “feel that?”, “(rapper and song title) pounded out of the speaker”, etc); c) a romance between a Brother and someone else; d) secondary stories; e) an extra “h” in words; and so on and so on. but basically, i expect a good book with a surprise twist ending. and the thing is, her books kept getting better. i mean, i liked the first two, and then Z’s book blew me out of the water. (Z…*sigh* have i mentioned how much i love Z?). for Butch’s, i really didn’t have very high expectations; i wasn’t that big on Butch, or Marissa, and while i liked V i was still on a reader high from Z. so that book was more about loving Ward’s writing style and calming my jones till the next book. and LR, while still not as good as Z’s, so totally passed my expectations that i still think of it as better than i probably would have if i read it the first time expecting magic again. and that’s the thing. how do you keep surpassing reader’s expectations? because from what i’ve been reading, for a lot of these posters, Ward fell way below, and readers are PISSED.
i truly believe no author can do it right 100% of the time, just like no actor is good in everything, and no friend stays the same, and no class will keep me entertained the whole two hours, no matter how much i like the teacher or subject. no one can do something a 100%- there will always be that one off day, or book, or movie, or whatever. but every time i go in, i expect it to be good, and for authors, maybe even a little better than the last time, or at least at the same level.
so i’m turning it over to you all, now. what have expectations done for you? and would you- with what seems like a lot of ex-Ward fans- drop someone just because your expectations weren’t meant? would you completely give them up if they missed the mark that one time?
it’s coming down to- do you believe in second chances?
October 6th, 2007
Terry Pratchett took one look at me and decided he needed a drink right away.
I’m assuming that this was a mere coincidence and that the phrase “send the ice water NOW” wasn’t code for “I need tequila immediately or I’m never going to get through this.”
On the other hand, I do tend to have that effect on men, so it could have been me. (Well, maybe her too.)
Confession time: I did not spend the whole evening in the company of Mr. Pratchett, neither were we alone very long. There were a couple hundred people packed into the book signing area at Powell’s that night. Mostly harmless. The woman next to me regaled me with talk of her very strange cat, who apparently has to spend most of his time on anti-depressants. (Yeah, I know, like you want to hear about that. Stop dithering, Mary.)
Pratchett came to Beaverton to promote his latest Discworld book, Making Money, but he also talked a lot about his latest children’s book, Wintersmith. In his opinion, this was the best book he’s ever written. (And considering he’s written over 50 books, that’s saying something.) He said he chose the heroine’s name Tiffany, because it was the “most non-magical name” he could think of. He said it sounded like a woman who was a pole dancer. Then he turned to a little girl in the first row and gravely said, “when you get home, be sure to ask your mummy what a pole dancer is.”
He seemed a lot more tired than from when I’d seen him last (it’s been a few years). He spoke about the death of his father, his mother’s illness, his own angioplasty, and how he’d kept writing throughout. It was as if a part of him were detached from all the things that were going wrong in his life, a part of him that stood back and wrote about what was happening.
From the part of the talk that he called “Questions and Lies,” here are some of the things that I remember:
- He said he read mostly non-fiction. To him, reading fiction was like a car maker looking at a car; you keep thinking about it in terms of how it was assembled. The fiction he read was George McDonald Fraser, Donald Westlake, Carl Hiassen. The non-fiction he was currently reading was A history of pigment, which sounds like the dullest book in the world, but has some fascinating (he said it) information about how we perceive color.
- He has no plans to write a final Discworld book; the stories have developed to the point where it would not be possible to wrap everything up in one book.
- A tall red-headed man in the audience asked if Carrot would ever claim the kingship of Ankh-Morpork. Pratchett said he thought not, but if Carrot did, there would instantly be a civil war, with Vimes on the opposing side.
- He writes by listening to two characters talk; he writes down what they say. Most of these conversations doesn’t necessarily appear in the book, but it tells him about the story.
- Someone asked if he would ever work with Neil Gaiman again on a book. Pratchett thought it would be good and bad to try another collaboration. It would be faster, certainly. In the old days, when they wrote Good Omens, they tried “modem-to-modem” communication, but it was slow and frustrating. In the end, they just ended up trading floppy disks back and forth. On the other hand, both he and Gaiman were a lot more time-crunched these days. “In the old days, he wasn’t ‘Neil Gaiman’ and I was barely ‘Terry Pratchett.’ Now, I’d have to clear six months from my schedule.” My own impression was that he had books he wanted to write, and collaboration wasn’t really high on the list of things he wanted right now.
Powell’s was so packed that they ran out of books (and they’d brought out quite a lot initially). I managed to get one of the last seats, because I was half an hour early, but people were thronged all around the seating area. I think Pratchett was, understandably, a bit intimidated by the thought of signing that many books. He told me to tell OH not to feel too bad about missing him in Kepler’s; apparently they’d run out of books even earlier than Powell’s.
Yes, I did get my picture taken with him, but the guy taking the picture had a lot of trouble with my camera. He kept telling me my batteries were dead, so by the time he actually managed to snap a photo, I had my eyes closed and Pratchett was inscribing a note in the book. Besides, we ain’t all photogenic like Jen-T. So you’ll have to use your imagination. Somehow, I don’t think this will be a problem. 
September 29th, 2007
I’ll get into the whack attack in Dayton in a moment, but I wanted to take a moment to let you know that the annual Banned Books Week is coming up soon, September 29 to be exact. Follow the link to the 100 most frequently challenged books of the previous decade and then go out and unleash the rebel inside you. You don’t even have to wait until then. http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bbwlinks/100mostfrequently.htm. Go on, what’s a little anarchy among friends?
So, Dayton …
Dee and DDD were schedule to pick me up at 7 a.m., but they ran into traffic so it was more like 8:30 when they got here. We got on the road after a quick stop at Panera (no, sadley Jenny wasn’t there, we looked). Dayton is a pretty straight shot west from where I live, just a quick cut through WV, PA and then WV before we hit Ohio. It was pretty uneventful except for the pit stops at the Cracker Barrel restaurants. One was for food, but Dee was collecting flamingo shirts and most stores were sold out. We did finally hit one in Zanesville that had a bunch and she pretty much cleaned them out. And if you don’t know why she wanted flamingo shirts, you are clearly new to our blog.
We hit the Dayton ‘burbs around 4:30 I think. I went to check in and was asked by the desk clerk if we were there to join the rest of the party. “Yes,” I replied, “we are.” She had been given instructions to pass along to us as to where to find the rest of our party. As it turned out, their room was just around the corner from ours so we discretely and ever so politely pounded like heck on their door before taking off at a dead run to our room. Well Dee and I did. We left poor DDD standing there when the door opened. She’s a good kid and took it all in stride. Dee and I wandered back and into the room to be grabbed and hugged and introduced to everyone we hadn’t met before. It was all a blur of arms and squeals. After warm greetings we went back to the room to deposit all our stuff and grab what we would need for the evening. Dee said something to me about OH being there and I confess I was a bit confused by new faces and asked which one. She said “the blonde.” So we get back to the other room and I’m looking around and the only blondes I see are Wapak (I remembered her because she had the photo of MAX! and JenB. That left me pretty confused. Turns out that OH is NOT a blonde and I have no idea who Dee was referring to.
We got our acts together and made it over to the Cheesecake Factory. Jenny and Bob had indicated that they wouldn’t be eating before the signing but some of us were pretty hungry so we were ordering food and beverages. I got the tiramisu cheesecake which is really to die for so you should get it the next time you’re at their restaraunt. We talked and laughed and caught up on everyone’s adventures on the way into Dayton all the while look in the direction of the door for J&B to show up. We really hoped they could make but knew that they had a schedule and it might not work out. Then we saw them both walk in and a few of us waved. They started over and around the corner of the partiition and then stopped gaped. There we were, 15 of us stretched out on either side of a long row of tables and Jenny says “Is this all you could get?” Clearly inspite of the long week her snark was still in fine form. I think GP already gave you the run down on that so I’ll move on to the bookstore.
The Books & Co. in Beavercreek, OH is a very cool two level store. It’s really gorgeous with a wide sweeping stair case up to the 2nd level which is bordered by wrought iron railing. I regret we didn’t get there early enough to browse more thoroughly because the store really deserved it. Instead we headed directly to the second story where the signing was to be held. We spotted the rows of chairs lined up right away and they were already filling in. In fact there was some doubt as to whether they had enough chairs available. But before tackling that problem we got distracted by the display of AGNES AND THE HITMAN. Here we are, doing what CherryBombs do best.
As you can see, we were all stocking up. That’s WapakGram facing you and I think Me (not I, but her) facing away. They had some copies of LOST GIRLS out, but not nearly enough and we let them know it. Some kind bookseller went to get more while another one took one look at the loads we were carrying and got us some baskets. What can I say; in spite of Wapak’s warning they clearly were not expecting us. 
In this next photo, from the left, DDD, Scope and Mandy. Look at that grin. She might be only recently down from the attic, but she’s definitely a CherryBomb.
As it turned out we did have to corral some more chairs. Everyone was supposed to be in front of Bob and Jenny but, rebels that we are, we arrayed ourselves off to one side. It made us easier for him and her to ignore us as a group. Okay left to right, I think that’s Bryan hiding behind the book, followed by RSS, Mandy and Christa. Christa is a friend of Lori’s. She was a good sport about our wackiness and we’re hoping she’ll stop by the B&G and say hello. 
Peeking out from behind RSS is OH and on her right is GP. And that person waving to you on the right is Dee wearing one of the flamingo shirts.
Standing left is CMS and on the right is Me. I mean her. 
And sitting in front is JenB.
And then there were these other two people whose names escape me at the moment but who spent the next hour trying to ignore us “touble makers” as Jenny put it. .thumbnail.JPG)
Of course we wore the title proudly. But we actually we’re pretty well behaved and even encouraged others to go ahead of us when it came time for the signing. Never let it be said that Crusie/Mayer fans are rude. Boisterous, yes; but not rude.
Following the signing we hung around for a few minutes and got a group pic taken with Bob and Jenny. GP already showed you that. I have to say that the Bob and Jenny show was very much a class act and although I know they had to be tired they were really great sports. As were were getting ready to leave, some of the Books & Co. folks came out with even more books for them to stock sign. Living the dream they might be, but they definitely have earned the life. After this, and excursions by some of us back to the Cheesecake Factory, we headed back to the hotel. Many things ensued. I’ll leave that for the next poster.
September 3rd, 2007
Okay, I think we need to get a little more organized about this. We’ll keep this on-topic so that we don’t distract from Wapak’s post.
- Are you planning to go to the J&B signing in Dayton on 8/30?
-
Do you need a room or roommate?
- If you are not going, do you want one of us to get a copy of AATHM signed for you?
What I’m thinking is that someone can be in charge of figuring out where we stay and pairing off those who want to save $$ by sharing a room. Also someone can keep track of who wants books and then we can split it up amongst those of us in Dayton.
Also, for those of you not aware, I think the bookstore is actually in the Dayton ‘burbs. Someplace called Beavercreek off of Indian Ripple.
And if anyone has suggestions, please speak up.
July 27th, 2007
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