BTT: Weeding

Weeding (from Booking Through Thursday)

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?

A few months ago, I culled my TBR from 800+ down to 400+, I also culled my home library.  I seem to feel the need to weed my library about once every year or two.  In previous years, I have done a lot of book buying (via Amazon, Chapters, and The Word On The Street festival in Toronto).  I have learned my lesson the hard way to borrow books from the library first before wasting my money buying a book I end up not liking.  I now prefer to buy only books I know I loved and want to reread.  The rest of my library is made up of books I have bought, were free, or had given to me that I haven't read yet.  When I do weed my library, I either donate them to one of the two libraries I work at, offer them to friends, or (depending on age and condition of the book) I recycle them.

Read on,
Paula

All I needed was a little time??

It seems I fell into the terrible self-perpetuating hole of the reading equivalent of writer's block.  Is there such a thing as reader's block?  According to Mr. Google there is.  Anyway, I noticed today that I am doing much better.  I took a week off work last week and managed to finish two books that I had been slowly working my way through.  That made me feel so proud of myself.  I am currently working my way through my e-book version of "Bad Science" by Ben Goldacre.  It's good and I am enjoying it.  And I have evidence that I am retaining what I read because I have noticed a few times now that there are chunks of pages that repeat themselves.  Because of that, I have no idea how much more of the book there actually is to read.  Although my iBooks app says I am on page 985 of 1474, I don't know how many of those remaining 489 pages will be repeats.  I'm hoping to finish it in the next few days either way.  I have so many enticing books taunting me to read them so I hope my reading habit will continue to pick up its pace but all I can do is be patient.  Like writer's block, if I stop thinking about it and just give it a chance, hopefully the inspiration to read will come flooding back.

Perhaps this would be a good time to read a book about reading.

Read on,
Paula

Book bingo

The Books on the Nightstand podcast has created book bingo cards for your summer reading pleasure.  I printed two cards for myself because I am hoping it will finally eliminate my reading slump.  I am reading but not nearly as zealously as usual.  However, the book I am currently reading (slowly) checks off four of the boxes.  Here is an example of one of the cards available.  Because they are random, I couldn't find again the ones I printed off for myself.

One of the things I love about this is that it is timeless.  You can reuse them over and over no matter what time of year it is.

Read on,
Paula

"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot

Synopsis:
Henrietta Lacks, as HeLa, is known to present-day scientists for her cells from cervical cancer. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells were taken without her knowledge and still live decades after her death. Cells descended from her may weigh more than 50M metric tons.

HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb's effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks was buried in an unmarked grave.

The journey starts in the "colored" ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s, her small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia -- wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo. Today are stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells, East Baltimore children and grandchildren live in obscurity, see no profits, and feel violated. The dark history of experimentation on African Americans helped lead to the birth of bioethics, and legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

My review:
Due to my reading slump, it actually took me months to finish reading this book.  I started it at the end of September 2013 and I just finished it this week.  It was an interesting read and I did enjoy it very much.  Despite the complex science involved in biochemistry and genetics, the writing is done in such a way that you could understand it.  The main focus of the book is the search for the identity of HeLa and the personal history of Henrietta Lacks and her family.  It's a mix of biography and science history book with more emphasis on the personal story.  The writing style felt like the author were talking to you rather than trying to teach you something.  I liked how the topic of race relations in general but most specifically regarding Lacks and her progeny was interwoven with the history of biochemistry and genetics.  It was an enjoyable read and I'm glad I finally finished it.

Read on,
Paula

Rereading

Sadly, I am still suffering from a reading slump.  That being said, I am still reading.  I have been rereading books I've already read.  And I have been dipping in and out of a variety of non-fiction books. I think part of the reason for my book slump is an underlying fear of reading a book that I don't like.  I have so many books on my TBR that I worry that anything I pick to read won't appeal to me and I won't like it but that it's just a matter of timing.  Most of my reading is done by whim based on how I'm feeling.  And since there is so much change in my personal life, I am having difficulty finding previously unread books that interest me enough to actually read them.  But I long for the days when I can get lost in a book that I love.  I miss them very much.

Read on,
Paula

Rereading children's books

Listening to The Readers podcast episode about children's classics reminded me of when I reread the first book in the Nancy Drew series (The Secret of the Old Clock) last year.  I had bought a reprinted edition a few years ago and had never gotten around to reading it.  I LOVED the Nancy Drew series when I was a girl.  I loved that it was a smart young woman who solved mysteries.  I loved the stories that featured hidden passageways.  I had such fond memories of the series.

And then I reread the first book in the series.  Bad idea.  As an adult, the book just didn't stand up to my childhood fascination.  The plot was unrealistic.  I found it so different from my remembered expectations and so unpalatable to my adult mind that I couldn't even finish it.  And that's part of what the episode of The Readers is about: how rereading childhood favourites can be detrimental to your love of the books.  I have also found this to be so with beloved childhood television shows.  They just don't stand up to the test of adulthood.  And I so wish that were not the case.

Read on,
Paula

Getting out of my reading slump *fingers crossed*

Listening to book-related podcasts is always good for boosting my mood.  I almost always find a title that either I want to read or I think patrons of the libraries I work at would be interested in.  My current reading slump included not listening to book podcasts.  Yesterday I listened to 13 back episodes of Books on the Nightstand, two episodes of The Readers, and a few of Dear Book Nerd and BookRiot.  And they have fired up my interest in reading again.  One of the BOTNS episodes talks about book slumps and I feel better now.  Until I heard that episode, I felt guilty and uncomfortable about being in a book slump.  Especially because I work in two libraries and therefore surrounded by twice as much reading material.  And somehow, I forgot about the iBooks app on my iPhone that I have loaded with 68 books.  And then there is still my home library with books I haven't read yet.  I have plenty of material to read.  The problem is that where I used to automatically pick up my book and read for hours, I have not been doing that for a while.  I still want to read, I just haven't been.  But hopefully that won't be for long.

Read on,
Paula

What could be worse than not reading?

It took me a month and a half to read "Invisible Chains: Canada's Underground World of Human Trafficking" by Benjamin Perrin because I was only reading it on my hour-long meal breaks at work.  Currently at home I have three titles on the go and another one waiting to be started.  They, too, are taking me so long to read because I am distracted by other things going on in my life.  I still love reading...I just don't do it as often as I used to.  Tonight I actually broke down and cut my 2014 Goodreads Reading Challenge in half just because I'm not sure this current trend will change.  We'll see how it goes.  I miss being such a prolific reader though.  I see others reading and wonder where their imagination has taken them.  I am still finding titles of interest since that is a by-product of working in libraries.  I find I am reading predominantly non-fiction these days though.

Read on,
Paula

BTT: Conditioning

Conditioning (from Booking Through Thursday)

Are you a spine breaker? Or a dog-earer? Do you expect to keep your books in pristine condition even after you have read them? Does watching other readers bend the cover all the way round make you flinch or squeal in pain?

I prefer my books to stay in pristine a condition as possible.  I have learned this the hard way.  I keep contemplating replacing my copies of the Harry Potter books because I made the horrible mistake of highlighting parts I thought foreshadowed events to come and wrote notes in the margins.  It HORRIFIES me to see it now.    I regret it so much.

Any curling of the paperback covers during reading will eventually be pressed out by being shelved generally tightly in my home library.

I am definitely not a dog-earer.  On the rare chance that I do not have a bookmark with me, I will use anything (a scrap of paper, kleenex, paper towel, any flat object) to use as a bookmark.  In fact, I am so not a dog-earer that I will un-dog-ear any dog-ears I find in books I'm reading.

Granted, this is how I feel about my books and this is my opinion.  But I still cringe when I see the way other people treat books.  Working in a library makes this a common occurrence when you see people return books ruined by food, drink, or other unacceptable substance and think that the book is perfectly fine for other people to read.  *shudder*

Read on,

Paula

Cookbook expectations

I borrowed "Gordon Ramsay's World Kitchen" by Gordon Ramsay and "Jamie Oliver's Food Escapes" by Jamie Oliver recently.  I have only ever seen a few episodes of each of their television shows and have formed an opinion of the men based on those shows.  So when I picked up these books, I was expecting Ramsay's to be pretentious and convoluted and Oliver's to use common ingredients.  Wow, was I wrong!  In fact, it was the opposite.

Jamie Oliver's book is more of a travelogue with food.  It focuses on the stories and photos of his trips.  The recipes stay true to the country's food culture and it was nice to read but I found no recipes I was interested in trying.  The recipes called for ingredients that I couldn't find because I live in a small town, not in London or the appropriate country.

Gordon Ramsay's book was more to my tastes since I found a few recipes I would like to try.  There was a French recipe for Brandade with Garlic Toast that sounded complex but is really just cooked fish shredded and mixed into mashed potatoes.  Perhaps it is the nature of cookbooks to seem more complex than it really is just because of the step-by-step process that is required.

I guess you could say that I have learned not to judge a cookbook based on the chef's personality.

Read on,
Paula