Read-a-thon: Middle of Hour 3

Whee! Just finished Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging, and enjoyed it immensely. Good job, Alison!

Up next is High Fidelity, because if there's anything I've learned about books recommended by Mary, it's that I will put off reading them as long as possible. Commence habit-changing!

Mini-challenge for Hour 2, from Miss Wisabus...

"What were some of your favorite children’s books when you were younger? Do you have any new favorites now that you’re an adult? Have you included any children’s or YA titles in your Read-A-Thon stack this year? Leave a comment and share!"

The Phantom Tollbooth. Favorite book of ever. I also loved The Secret Garden when I was little, to the point where I owned three copies for some reason, but I couldn't tell you what that book is about today except that I think there was something about "Mary, Mary, quite contrary." I could be very wrong. And, of course, I was obsessed with the Babysitter's Club books, like any self-respecting child of the '80s.

Today's read-a-thon stack has two kids' books in it — Matilda, by Roald Dahl, and Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh, both of which I've read and loved and need to read again. In YA, I have The Dead-Tossed Waves, by Carrie Ryan; Death Note Vol. 5, by Tsugumi Ohba; and of course Angus.

Hour 3's challenge is to come up with six words to describe the read-a-thon, but I've not come up with anything great yet. Perhaps in another hour or so?

Read-a-thon: End of Hour 1

An hour into the read-a-thon, and 92 pages into the hilariously wonderful Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging. How have I not read this before?

Now that there is sun, let me share with you my reading spot:



And my delightful parking lot view:



And my ridiculous cat:



I've already warned him that if he falls off the balcony again (yes, again), I'm just going to laugh at him. I hope that's enough deterrent. :)

And here is the Hour 1 meme from the official read-a-thon website:

Where are you reading from today? Jacksonville, FL, in general; my balcony in specific.

3 facts about me... Hmm. 1) I am a newly-minted Master of Library Science, though without a job. I am also 2) a newly-minted Floridian, having moved about two months ago from Cleveland, OH. The combination of the latter part of 1) and the whole of 2) leads to 3) that I blog about my new home at An Unlikely Southerner, where you can find many more facts about me, like that I am now terrified of bugs.

How many books do you have in your TBR pile for the next 24 hours? -counts- Nine. You can see them here.

Do you have any goals for the read-a-thon (i.e. number of books, number of pages, number of hours, or number of comments on blogs)? Just to have fun and read!

If you’re a veteran read-a-thoner, any advice for people doing this for the first time? Have fun! Make new friends! Get your old friends to make you a sammich!

Read-a-thon: Hour 0

It is bright and early here in Florida (7am EDT), but also quite warm, considering (~15 degrees C, depending on which weather people you ask), and so I will be spending most of my reading time outdoors! Good work, Florida! I would take some pictures of my reading spot, but, um, sunrise isn't for another half hour. So you will have to wait. :)

But here is my stack of books, whose picture I took last night:

Stylish, no? George is even prepared to shade them from the Florida sun!

I'm starting with the delightfully titled Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging, because a) title! and b) I've heard good things about it from many trusted sources and c) it's short and I'll feel accomplished when I finish it. Who knows where I will move on from there...

Like I said last year, I've never actually stayed awake for 24 hours, and I doubt I'll be making it happen today. But I will do my best! I'll check in here at the blog every couple of hours, and you can expect many Twitter updates from my fancy smart phone, most of which will probably be fun quotes from whatever I'm reading.

The Quickening Maze, by Adam Foulds

-makes face- -makes another face- -twitches-

I think we're going to have to file this one under Novels I Don't Understand, Not One Bit. My impetus for starting this book was the A to Z Challenge, but then the prologue was just so darn good and I thought, hey, this could be awesome. And then it was confusing and odd and more confusing, but those first three pages! Good! And so I continued on, hoping that maybe the book would start to make any sort of sense and it didn't and it was never as good as the beginning. -pout-

I can't even give you a summary of what this book is meant to be about. There's this guy, right, and he has an asylum, and people... live there? And they go about their lives? And they tend to be crazy? And then this guy what runs the asylum, he has a Plan for going into business, and he gets people to invest, and then it fails. I think. It's going to fail, anyway.

And one of the investors is Alfred Tennyson, whose brother is a patient at the asylum, and another patient is John Clare, who I didn't know was a poet but apparently he was pretty okay, so maybe this book is about poetry, right? And then that makes a lot of sense, because I don't understand poetry, either, usually. There are a couple of poems in the novel. Maybe that's something.

What really bothers me is that part of the Thing of this novel is that it's based on actual things that happened to Tennyson and Clare, but... you know... I feel like there are other, more interesting, things that one could write about the lives of poets. Is that it? Is this book about how even poets live crappy lives and get swindled? But I already knew that. Maybe the whole book is just an asylum fever-dream. I could get behind that.

I will offer again that the first three pages are beautifully written, and in fact much of the novel is made up of pretty words that make pretty sentences and paragraphs and whatnot. But I can't survive on pretty alone.

Recommendation: I recommend this novel only for perhaps historians who are very well versed in the histories of Tennyson and Clare, or maybe also for people who have been told the secret of what this book is about. If you're one of those people, could you share?

Rating: 5/10
(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 — Travelling

Today's Booking Through Thursday question is, "When you travel, how many books do you bring with you? Has this changed since the arrival of ebooks?"

Well, I don't have an e-reader, and probably won't until they work out the whole DRM issue, so that's not a consideration.

But the number of books I take does depend on where I'm going and what I'm doing and how long I'll be there and how I'm getting there. If I'm headed out for a vacation, where I don't have to do anything in particular while I'm there, I'll bring one book for every day I'm going. Usually that ends up being just enough; sometimes I have to scrounge for more to read!

If I'm headed somewhere where I plan on being busy, and I'm flying there, I'll just bring a couple of books for the flights and hope for the best.

And if I'm driving, I've learned that I can't really get any book reading done because either I'm driving or Scott is driving and I'm talking to him, so I'll stock up on audiobooks. We've been working our way through the Series of Unfortunate Events books, which are good because they're short and easy to take a break from when it's time for a pit stop. :)

Mildred Pierce, by James M. Cain

I am pretty sure that the moral of this story is that I should never ever ever have children. Because clearly they will either be delightful children, in which case they will die awful and expensive deaths, or they will be evil incarnate and ruin my life all while making me think that I'm ruining theirs. I can't have either of these. I renew my No Babies pledge!

Really, though, that's pretty much how this book goes. Mildred has a deadbeat, cheating husband, who once had money but then the Great Depression happened and he's too proud to go out and find some more, and she (fairly rightfully) kicks him out to go live with his sugar momma, only to realize that now she's going to have to go get a job, which she does as secretly as possible because she is just as proud as that husband of hers. But she does find a job, and things start going pretty well for her, until they start going badly. And then Mildred fixes that, and things go well again. Until they go badly. And then things get fixed again. Then broken again. It is a terrible cycle, one that I am not unfamiliar with in my own life (can I have a job yet, economy?).

Mildred's problem, really, is that she puts too much faith in people who are out to screw her (figuratively and other figuratively), and takes for granted the people who are wonderful to her. And what's worse is that she mostly knows it, but lets herself get dragged into it anyway. But she is amazingly resilient, and while I would not like to have her odd thoughts running around in my head, I would be delighted to have her ability to overcome adversity.

And the last few sentences of this novel just sum up all of my feelings about it, so perfectly.

I may have wanted to punch every character (except maybe two or three) in this book right in the face at some point in time, but isn't that how life is? I think that Cain has really hit on a perfect description of a person with a pretty good life in a pretty terrible time, and all of the characters ring true, whether we'd like to know them or not. I have nothing but praise for Cain's writing, and I'm really glad that I got this novel as part of an anthology of his work so I can delve into some more of it soon.

Blast, this means that the rest of my book club is going to hate this book. I'd better start preparing a defense now!

Recommendation: Read this if you can deal with some incredibly frustrating characters and don't mind a story that doesn't really have a plot.

Rating: 9/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

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

Musing Mondays — Cold Weather Reads

Today's Musing Mondays question is, "What’s your favorite “cozy” book — and, by that, I’m meaning “curl-up-on-a-cold-day comfort read“? Or, if you don’t have a particular book, what genre do you most feel like reading when the weather starts to turn colder?"

I'm not sure I have any temperature-based reading habits... I mean, I definitely read more mysteries and such during September and October for the RIP Challenge, but that's not a personal temperature decision (and especially not with living in Florida now!)

But! I will say that if it's the kind of day where all I want to do is curl up with a good book and perhaps some hot chocolate, that book is probably going to be an easier read. I'm not generally one for reading long or difficult books in one sitting — I'd rather have time to digest everything — but I also don't want to curl up with too short a book and have to get up an hour later to find something else to read. So I would definitely pick something more like a classic mystery or YA or fantasy read, where I can float away to Bookland for a few hours without having to think about it too hard. :)