BOTNS causes TBR overload

I heard about the Books on the Nightstand podcast through the Readers podcast.  The thing about finding a podcast that's been going on for a while is that you have to catch up on all the past episodes.  There are 213 episodes of BOTNS and I've finished listening to the first 29.  The good-yet-bad thing about this is that my TBR is going to suffer under the weight of all the new titles I'm adding.  In two days, I've added six titles to my TBR.  What I do like though is that the titles are eclectic:

*Firmin: Adventures of a metropolitan lowlife - Sam Savage
*The Gargoyle - Andrew Davidson
*Hands of my father: A hearing boy, his deaf parents, and the language of love - Myron Uhlberg
*The Mystery Roast - Peter Gadol
*Pictures at an exhibition - Sara Houghteling

This means that I've added 21 titles to my TBR based on the two podcasts so far.  That might not seem like much but when you consider that my TBR now has 837 books on it...dangerous.  But one of the nice things about the two podcasts is that they talk about the books in a way that blurbs on Goodreads and Amazon don't.  For example, BOTNS talked about "Water For Elephants" by Sara Gruen.  Having read the blurbs, I wasn't very interested in reading it, even though I read "Ape House" two years ago and loved it.  But listening to Ann describe "Water for elephants" convinced me to add it to my TBR.

Will this stop me from adding more titles?  Probably not, because I get a little book-high when I find new titles that I want to read.

Read on,
Paula

2013 reading goal (revamped)

Three weeks into the new year and my 2013 reading goal has already been called into question.  It sounded like a great idea.  Since I'm so picky about the books I own, I know that the ones I haven't read yet will be interesting and are of interest to me.  The problem is all the new books that I want to read that I don't own.  The temptation is just too much.

I went on to the Chapters website to order a book I desperately want to read and the first thing I see on their header is the advertisement for the new Dan Brown book.  "Inferno" (aka Robert Langdon #4) is coming out in May.  I know my library will be getting it and I will want to be the first one to read it since I am a fan of the series.  The final book in the Jane True series by Nicole Peeler is also coming out in May.  The final book in the All Souls trilogy by Deborah Harkness is supposed to be coming out this year.  And now that I've started listening to the Books on the Nightstand podcast, I'm finding even more titles to add to my TBR.  All of this does not bode well for the 2013 reading goal.

So I've decided to modify the goal.  Instead of reading ONLY the books I own, I will do my best to read as many of them as possible while weaving library books in as well.  After the letdown that was "The Museum's Secret", I'm taking a break to read a library book called "On Chesil Beach" by Ian McEwan (which I heard about on BOTNS).  I've discussed my goal with my library coworkers and got some suggestions.  I could read one library book a month.  I could read one library book for each owned book I read.  Considering how many books I read each year, one library book per month doesn't sound like enough to me.  And one-for-one sounds like too much.  So I'm currently modifying the goal to be one library book for every two owned books I read.  I know I shouldn't feel guilty about all this since it is my own goal that I decided to do myself and no harm will come to anyone should I decide to give it up.  So I'm hoping that one-for-two will be enough to keep my silly guilt at bay while still accomplishing the goal I set for myself.  We'll see how it goes.

Owned books: 2
Borrowed books: 1

Read on,
Paula

"Museum's Secret" by Henry Chancellor

My first un-review*:

The Remarkable Adventures of Tom Scatterhorn #1; The Museum's Secret

It wasn't as good as I was hoping for.  It just kept getting weirder and weirder.  And there were too many plotlines.  By the time I was fed up with all the twists, I was halfway through the book and emotionally invested enough in the main characters that I wanted to find out how it ended.  I was so relieved when I finished it.  Yes, there's a bit of a happy ending but the book was just too "out there" for my taste.  Time travel and immortality I've read before and have no problem suspending my disbelief for that.  But stuffed museum animals that come to life?  Not so much.  And the bizarre over-the-top true identity of the bad guys.  At both the beginning and the end, there are particularly gruesome scenes that I didn't like.  While I was reading it, the pacing was done well enough that I never felt like the story was dragging.  Frankly, I'm surprised that this is classified as children's literature, even though the main character is an 11-year-old boy.  Considering the various events in the plot, I would consider it closer to young adult literature.

  Although I own the next two in the series, I worry that they will be just as weird and unnerving.  I'm not sure if I will read them.  It is because the pacing and the characters were so well done in this book that I might read the rest of the series at some point in the future.

*In case you've never heard the term before, an un-review is basically a review of a book you didn't like.  I like this idea because even though I didn't like the book, that doesn't mean that others won't.  I firmly believe in the individuality of personal reading tastes.

Read on,
Paula

Inside Amazon

I found this Twitter post through a Twitter post through a Twitter post etc.  Let all the bookish people drool!!

Read on,

Paula

Gender balance and personal library character

A recent episode of The Readers podcast talked about gender balance in reading.  Basically, do you read more books by male or female authors?  I don't consciously think about this.  If a book interests me, the gender of the author is irrelevant to me.  Since this is one of the topics of my year-end review, which I've only done in the last two years, I know that I tend to read more female authors than male.  I'm not sure why exactly.  Perhaps being female has something to do with it but I'm not 100% sold on it.  And since I read such an eclectic range of books, I can't say why the gender balance is so scewed.

Speaking of my eclectic reading, a new coworker asked me about the character of my personal library.  Oooh, hard question.  My library consists of more non-fiction than fiction.  My non-fiction collection consists of books on music, popular science, size acceptance, astronomy, travel, self-help, how-to guides, and books about books.  Of the 96 books in my fiction collection, 40 of them are series: Harry Potter (all), Twilight (all), Corinna Chapman by Kerry Greenwood (all), Jane True (all), Neanderthal Parallax by Robert J. Sawyer, Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences by Philippa Ballantine (all), Phryne Fisher by Kerry Greenwood (3/19), and Reincarnationist by M.J. Rose (2/4).  The rest of my fiction tends toward literary or general fiction.  Because books are becoming more expensive, I find myself being really particular about the books I add to my collection.  Usually, I tend to only add books I've read and loved and want to reread again and again.  But sometimes a book will sound so fantastic that I'll buy it before reading it.

Read on,

Paula

Avoiding temptation...FAIL!

Not even a full two weeks into my new reading goal for 2013 and I've already broken my own rule.  Well, if I want to get real technical about it, I could say that I never said I couldn't borrow books from friends.  I said I was going to read the ones I own and not read library books until I was finished them all.

The funny thing is that not a frisson of guilt went through my body when my friend handed me her copy of "Soulless: The Manga, Volume 2".  I immediately started reading it...even though I was at work.  It made me realize that I need to put the novels on my wishlist.  I loved them and would like to reread them at some point in the future.

My friend apologized to me a few times for handing me the book even though she knew about my reading goal.  I accepted her apologies but wouldn't let her feel bad about it.  Even though I should have avoided temptation, I don't feel guilty about this because I will have the book finished before the night is over and I can go back to my own books.  In this particular case, I already know what happens in the storyline and am enjoying seeing how the graphic novel expresses that.  If it were a book I'd never read before, I'd be less tempted.

Will this be the last time I break my own rules this year?  I'm not sure.  I doubt it but it all depends on the specific situation.  But I'll keep track of the totals just to see how well I do.

Owned books read: 1, 1 in progress
Contraband read: 1

Read on,
Paula