Category Archives: Booking through Thursday

Illustrious – Booking Through Thursday

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How do you feel about illustrations in your books? Graphs? Photos? Sketches?

I think illustrations are essential in some books and not in others. Non-fiction cries out for them. They enhance biographies for example. Cookery books without photos are just not as explanatory, they demonstrate how the cooked dish should look. Imagine travel books without photos or drawings – each reader would ‘see’ different places in their mind’s eye; or gardening books without examples.  And art books – impossible without illustrations.

I’m not so good at interpreting graphs and diagrams, though. I need words as well.  I’m not so keen on the tips in boxes that are dotted about such books as the Complete Idiot’s Guide series. I find them irritating and distracting. Maps are better – I love maps and plans in fiction as well as non-fiction.

As for fiction. I like it plain. Although, just this week I’ve been tempted to read The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco. This has a generous helping of illustrations  – photos, drawings, extracts from newspapers and magazines sprinkled thoughout. And it looks as though they are essential to the plot.

(Click on the photo to see a larger and clearer picture.)

All of which brings me to graphic novels. I haven’t read any. Each time I look at the selection in a library or bookshop I can’t find any that appeal and yet other bloggers have written reams in praise of graphic novels. I loved comics as a child and liked reading the comic strips such as The Gambols and Shultz’s Peanuts with Charlie Brown. Those of you who love graphic novels – please recommend a good one to get me going, bearing in mind that I’ve looked at and discarded graphic novels of Jane Austen and other classics.

Winter Reading – Booking Through Thursday

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This week’s question:

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?

It is cold here, but looking at what I’m currently reading it’s the same as if we were in a heatwave. In both scenarios I’d be reading indoors – today it’s too cold to sit outside reading and when it’s hot I can’t read outside either. So, the weather does not affect my choice of reading at all. If it’s cold I like to get warm and if it’s hot I look for somewhere cool to sit and read, but my choice of reading is the same.

Surprise Endings – Booking Through Thursday

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The question this week is from Jackie:

I love books with complicated plots and unexpected endings. What is your favourite book with a fantastic twist at the end?

So, today’s question is in two parts.

  1.  Do YOU like books with complicated plots and unexpected endings
  2. What book with a surprise ending is your favorite? Or your least favorite?

This is easy – I do like complicated plots and unexpected endings. And the book with a surprise ending that immediately came into my mind when I read this question is The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve. It’s a love story, which had me enthralled. The ending took me completely by surprise. I just hadn’t seen it coming. Sometimes I’m tempted to look at the last few pages when I’m part way into a book and I’m so glad I didn’t with this one.

 As for my least favourite, that’s not so easy. There have been quite a few that I think are disappointing and a let down, but I tend to forget about them.

Booking Through Thursday – 2009 in Review

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It’s the last day of the year, and you know what that means … nostalgia and looking back.

What were your favorite books of the year? (Books that were new to you in 2009, if not necessarily published this year.)

This year I’ve read more crime fiction than ever before in one year and I’ll be writing a post on “My Top Ten Crime Fiction Reads 2009″ very soon. As usual it’s hard deciding which are my favourite books and I could easily list more than ten. These are what I have settled on – not in any order of preference.

Life is Too Short – Booking Through Thursday

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Suggested by JM:

“Life is too short to read bad books.” I’d always heard that, but I still read books through until the end no matter how bad they were because I had this sense of obligation.

That is, until this week when I tried (really tried) to read a book that is utterly boring and unrealistic. I had to stop reading.

Do you read everything all the way through or do you feel life really is too short to read bad books?

Like JM I used to read books to the end even if I didn’t like them, but I soon decided that life really is too short to read a book I wasn’t enjoying.  It’s easy with library books – I take out books that look interesting and quite often return them unread. If it’s a book that I’ve bought I’m more reluctant to give up on it and will return to it at a later date. Sometimes it’s the wrong time to read a book, or I’m not in the right frame of mind. But if it is truly boring me I stop reading.

It’s All About Me – Booking Through Thursday

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Deb’s question today is: Which do you prefer? Biographies written about someone? Or Autobiographies written by the actual person (and/or ghost-writer)?

I’m not sure I can decide which I prefer.

I read both biographies and autobiographies and they both have their pros and cons. Both can be biased and written to present a certain portrait, either flattering or otherwise. Biographers are trying to reconstruct a person’s life from different sources, including letters, diaries, and personal accounts. The end result may seem as if it is factual, but it is an interpretation and quasi-fictional. I don’t like biographies that make general assumptions about a person’s thoughts and motives based on speculation and the author’s own views and impressions.

Inevitably neither a biography nor an autobiography can retell the whole of a person’s life so there has to be a selection and the skill is deciding what to include and what to leave out. This does of course mean that secrets/events a person doesn’t want reveal may be revealed by a biographer with a particular axe to grind or be left out to paint a more flattering portrait.

A good example of a biography is Jane Austen: a Life by Claire Tomalin. It’s well researched, detailed, based on documentary evidence such as diaries and Jane Austen’s own letters.

Memoirs are what a person remembers about their life. Generally they’re more about a particular part of a life rather than the whole. I’ve recently read Somewhere Towards the End by Diana Athill, which is a good example of an autobiography/memoir. It won the Costa Biography Award in 2008 and I think the judges comment sums up what makes a good autobiography/biography:

A perfect memoir of old age - candid, detailed, charming, totally lacking in self-pity or sentimentality and, above all, beautifully, beautifully written.

 

Blurb – Booking Through Thursday

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Suggested by Jennysbooks:

Something I’ve been thinking about lately: “What words/phrases in a blurb make a book irresistible? What words/phrases will make you put the book back down immediately?”

 I had to think about this one! I don’t know that any blurb makes a book “irresistible” but if I’m choosing non-fiction such as autobiography/biography – words like “honest”, “factual”, “candid”, “enlightening”, “well researched”, “detailed”,  ”a fluent narrative style” would attract me.

For fiction it would be words such as”mysterious”, “intriguing”, “richly evocative page-turner, “a ghostly yarn”, “atmospheric”, “rich and subtle”, “funny”, “original”, “clever plot”, “tense”, “moving”, “perceptive”.

Words that put me off are: “gruesome”, “vampire”, “bloody”, “the blockbuster read of the year”, “horrific”, “disturbing” and so on.

Words like “the number one bestseller” are really irritating – so many books have this – when was it the number one and who rated it?  That said it wouldn’t actually make me put the books back on the shelves.

Weeding – Booking Through Thursday

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Deb writes:

We’re moving in a couple weeks (the first time since I was 9 years old), and I’ve been going through my library of 3000+ books, choosing the books that I could bear to part with and NOT have to pack to move. Which made me wonder…

When’s the last time you weeded out your library? Do you regularly keep it pared down to your reading essentials? Or does it blossom into something out of control the minute you turn your back, like a garden after a Spring rain?

Or do you simply not get rid of books? At all? (This would have described me for most of my life, by the way.)

And–when you DO weed out books from your collection (assuming that you do) …what do you do with them? Throw them away (gasp)? Donate them to a charity or used bookstore?  SELL them to a used bookstore? Trade them on Paperback Book Swap or some other exchange program?

We’re moving house too so this is very appropriate. We’ve been going through EVERYTHING and have got rid of a lot of stuff, but not books!  We’ve looked through all our books trying to decide whether we could bear to part with some of them and guess what – there were three ! I suppose that’s because I do occasionally go through and pull out ones that I think I won’t want to read again, but usually that’s not many anyway.

The ones that we can bear to part with go to a charity shop or an Oxfam Secondhand Bookshop. If I take them to Oxfam I have to be very quick in and out of the shop, not looking at the shelves or shop window as otherwise I’d be sure to buy some more books!

Would You Lie? Booking Through Thursday

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Suggested by Monibo:

Saw this article (from March) and thought it would make a good BTT confessional question:

Two-thirds of Brits have lied about reading books they haven’t. Have you? Why? What book?

I don’t remember ever claiming to have read a book when I haven’t.  There are books I think I’ve read but when I look at them I realise I haven’t – I just know the story either from a film or TV programme, just as there are books I don’t think I’ve read and then when I start reading I realise that I have! It’s bad enough not being able to remember all the books I have read without having to remember which books I’ve lied about reading as well!!

According to this article 1984, War and Peace, and Ulysses come high up on the list of books people lie about having read and the main reason given was to impress the person they were speaking to. (1984 is a book I think I’ve read but maybe I haven’t, I’m not sure.)

It wouldn’t impress me at all if someone claimed to have read a book and then it was obvious they knew next to nothing about it. But then it doesn’t impress me what anyone reads – I’m just happy they read at all, as so many people don’t!

Recent Serious – Booking Through Thursday

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Today’s question is

What’s the most serious book you’ve read recently?
(I figure it’s easier than asking your most serious boook ever, because, well, it’s recent!)

Iafter-the-victorians thought at first this would be an easy question to answer, but as I looked back over the books I’ve read recently I began to define “serious”. Does a serious book have to be non-fiction? If so then I didn’t have to think too hard and the book is one I’m currently reading – After the Victorians: the World Our Parents Knew by A N Wilson. I’m up to 1938-9, the build-up to the Second World War. What could be more serious than that?

However, “serious” isn’t limited to non-fiction. Fiction can be very grave, austere, earnest, thought -provoking and heavy (as opposed to light and fluffy). Thinking of books in this way it’s more difficult to choose “the most serious” book I’ve read recently.

remember-meBut I think the most serious and powerful novel I’ve read this year is Remember Me … by Melvyn Bragg. This is the tragic, emotional and heart-rending story of Joe Richardson as he tells it to his daughter. It’s a long book, very intense and very moving.