Musing Mondays — Book Polyamory

Today's Musing Mondays question is... "I’ve seen several bloggers mention reading multiple books this week. Do you frequently read more than one book at a time? Do you try to limit this to a certain number? Do you have different books for different purposes/topics?"

I used to be a one-book woman, but with the start of the new semester I am finding myself meeting up with books in the car, in the bathroom, in bed... -eyebrow waggle-

This is almost entirely because of my newfound love of really short and simple audiobooks. I still wouldn't try to listen to something like Harry Potter or the Wheel of Time series, but give me a Lemony Snicket or Nancy Drew book and I am good to go. But since my attention span is weak, I can only listen to these books in the car or on the exercise bike, where I do not have the distractions of my computer or desk.

So of course, when I'm not in one of those places, I still need a book to read! So I have a book that I carry around with me in my bag and read at home or school or wherever. That's the book I consider my "main book."

Then, just one more! Every once in a while I want to read a book but I find it too difficult to concentrate on for very long (Pillars of the Earth, I'm looking at you) and so I relegate it to be my bathroom book and read it just a couple of pages at a time. Right now Pride and Prejudice is that book for me... I just cannot get into the story, but I really want to read it. I'll finish that one in a few months. :)

Chunkster Challenge 2010

I'm not sure how I missed this one earlier, but I am so in! This year's Chunkster Challenge is much like last year's, in that participants read humongous books and then wonder why they don't have any free time. Ahem.

I managed it last year, so I'm going to sign up for the "Mor-book-ly Obese" challenge, which means I'll read either six books longer than 450 pages or three books longer than 750 pages, all of the grown-up variety (no Harry Potter!). I didn't read any of the books I intended to last year, so I'm going to put World Without End and the Wheel of Time series back on the list and hope for the best!

Books eaten (om nom nom)
1. A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson (Review)
2. In the Woods, by Tana French (Review)
3. Gaudy Night, by Dorothy Sayers (Review)
4. Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters (Review)
5. The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss (Review)
6. The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters (Review)
7. The Secret History, by Donna Tartt (Review)

Links of the Week

Wait Wait Don't Eat Me, an (imagined) excerpt from my favorite weekly news quiz show circa the Zombie Apocalypse. (via BoingBoing)

J.D. Salinger: not a recluse after all.

Here's an interesting look at political correctness and its impacts on free speech. Note to self: stop reading books set in historical periods in which something bad happened. (via LISNews)

Speaking of books from historical periods in which something bad happened... good luck getting your hands on a shiny new Mein Kampf in five years, especially if you want some scholarly criticism with it.

Macmillan's titles still aren't on Amazon (see last week's commentary here, and this Times advertisement proves it. (via The Guardian) UPDATE: I guess they are back now! Good work, Amazon!

Cake Wrecks, by Jen Yates

Haaaaaaave you read Cake Wrecks? No? Well, read this first, 'cause it's short, and once you click on that link I can't be held responsible for your lack of productivity over the next several hours/days/weeks.

The book version is perfect for my hypothetical coffee table (I should really get one of these) — it's small, it's mostly pictures, and it is hilarious. There are cakes on which the baker has written the customer's instructions, like a white cake with ("Olympics Rings") written in red. There are cake decorations that look like poos and cake decorations that look like phalluses (Chrome informs me that "phalluses" is not a word, but "phalli" just looks silly). There are misspellings, like "Heppy Bertty" and "I Lave You." There are wedding cakes gone horribly, terribly wrong.

A few of the cakes in this book I've seen in my browsing of the web site, but the introduction informs me that there are never-before-seen cakes as well. Yay! There are also some funny cake stories, in case you start to forget how to read after looking at all the terrible cakes.

Okay. Go look at some wrecks now, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Rating: 8/10
(A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Booking Through Thursday — Season's Readings

Today's Booking Through Thursday question is: "The northern hemisphere, at least, is socked in by winter right now… So, on a cold, wintry day, when you want nothing more than to curl up with a good book on the couch … what kind of reading do you want to do?"

I don't think my reading moods are defined by the seasons so much as what's going on in my life at the moment... like, right now I am being attacked by work and homework from all sides, so my reading of Pride and Prejudice is going very slowly. I just don't want to take the time to figure out what's going on there! Boomsday, however, is going pretty quickly when I have time to read it because it's just a crazy story that I don't really have to think about, just enjoy. And at the extremes of my book reading, I sat down and read the Cake Wrecks book yesterday in one go, because I needed a break from reading articles and there are like no words in the Cake Wrecks book. :)

The Bungalow Mystery, by Carolyn Keene

Another Nancy Drew book, because it's way easier to "read" these audiobooks on my drives than to read a physical book right now! But they're still delightful, so that's good.

In this one, things really start heating up for Nancy. First of all, she and her friend Helen get caught in a storm while in a boat (she also gets stranded in a boat in The Secret of the Old Clock; I think she should really avoid the water) and just when Helen is telling Nancy to save herself, an attractive (because everyone's attractive in these books) 16-year-old called Laura shows up in her own boat to save the both of them! Huzzah!

The three of them take refuge in the titular bungalow (which we hear about all of maybe twice more in the book), and Laura tells Nancy her life sob story, which includes being a newly minted orphan and having to go live with new guardians soon.

Meanwhile, the lovely Hannah Gruen has sprained her ankle, so Nancy cuts short her adventurous vacation to go home and take care of Hannah while Carson Drew is off lawyering. Carson soon phones to get Nancy involved in his new embezzlement case, and while she's investigating she also gets drawn in to Laura's Case of the Really Crappy Guardians. These two cases [spoiler alert? I think not] end up being related in the end, and Nancy and Carson even find themselves in roles reversed from The Hidden Staircase, with Nancy all locked up and Carson attempting to rescue her.

These books are definitely getting more fantastic and melodramatic as they go; it kind of entertains me but at the same time I'm like, "Oh, come on, this totally does not all happen to the same attractive eighteen-year-old girl in the span of a few weeks!" But I guess it does, if said girl is Nancy Drew.

A fun note on the feminist side: Nancy Drew is such a threat at one point that she gets knocked unconscious by the bad guy. That's pretty bad-ass.

Rating: 8/10
(Nancy Drew Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge, A to Z Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Musing Mondays — Random Book Love

Today's Musing Mondays is an activity... "Go to your bookshelf and pick a random book. No cheating now, just reach out and pick one. Now tell us about it – where did you get it? Why? Was it a gift? Does it hold any special memories? Did someone recommend it to you? etc."

I closed my eyes and pointed, and came up with Many Waters, by Madeleine L'Engle, part of the Time series that starts with A Wrinkle in Time. I got this book for 14.7 cents back in June at the CWRU book sale of delightfulness, along with A Swiftly Tilting Planet. I just need to grab A Wind in the Door and my quartet will be complete!

As to why I got it... well, mostly it's 'cause I love A Wrinkle in Time. I read that book as a kid and then many times again, but it wasn't until my freshman year of college, about five years ago, that I even realized that there were more books in the series. At that point, my dear friend Amy was like, "Um, dude, there are totally more and you should read them," and we went to get them on one of our many trips to the Cleveland Public Library. Those are good memories — waiting for the Rapid, taking the trip downtown, walking over to the library in various types of weather, and spending an inordinate amount of time in the children's section, where the books we could read between assignments lived.

Oh, and that one time we were at the library and I was sleepy and got yelled at by a guard for napping in the library. That was fun, too.