Speed of reading

Yesterday my brother asked me how I can read so many books.  He asked if I read every word, heard every word in my head, or did I speed read.  The answer to the first two questions is yes, no to the third.

The only appeal of speed reading is that I would be able to read more books.  But speed reading involves skipping words, getting a general gist of what's being said and that does not appeal to me at all.  When I read, I read every word so that I become even more enveloped in the world within the book.  Particularly when reading fiction, reading every word allows me to visualize the scenes depicted in the book.  Skipping words would be too distracting to me; instead of getting lost inside the book, I would feel more like an outsider, an observer.  I know this because I have done some speed reading: when I am no longer interested in the book and just want to know how it ends.  Thankfully, this doesn't happen often.

Another reason I can read so many books is because I read so often.  I have been reading as much as I can for as long as I can remember.  I make reading a priority in my day.  While others have television, Facebook, online games, gardening, sports, and other hobbies, my hobby is reading.  This gives me a minimum of five hours a day (depending on my schedule) for reading.  Just like other things, the more you do it, the better and faster you get.

And I've just started reading "Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read" by Stanislas Dehaene.  So I told my brother I'd let him know what I learned from it, since the index has quite a few references to the speed of reading.

On a side note, at Easter my mother gave me an envelope with all of my report cards in it (Junior Kindergarten to my last year of high school).  Yesterday, I read them.  One of the most interesting things I saw was on my Junior Kindergarten report card.  My family was posted to CFB Lahr in Germany, which is where I attended JK.  On the report card under "Reading and Writing Skills" are two criteria I have never seen on a report card before or since: (1) Shows a respect for books and (2) Explores books with interest.  Oh, how I wish those two criteria were on every report card forever!  I think those two things should be mightily encouraged in today's society.  Just because people spend more time online now than they ever have doesn't mean that books have lost their usefulness or power.  I think a respect for books is highly critical in humanity in general.  And I will do my best to promote that in others.

Read on,
Paula

Organizing my personal library

Because I have spent so much time in libraries, I have never given any conscious thought to how I organize my home library.  I just automatically organize it the way we do at work: fiction is sorted by author's name (last name then first name), except I then alphabetize by title for each author; non-fiction is sorted by the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system.  I know a lot of people don't understand how the DDC works but, in the simplest of terms, each subject has its own number.  Therefore, in even simpler terms, non-fiction is sorted by subject.  I then alphabetize by author within the subject.  To me, this seems the easiest way to organize any library.  Reading "Phantoms on the Bookshelves" by Jacques Bonnet (translated from the French by Sian Reynolds), he talks about how difficult it is to organize large personal libraries (his definition of 'large' being a collection of more than 1000 books), his own included.  Although my library is not large (almost 300), I can still imagine how easily I would be able to navigate my collection if I did have thousands of books.  This is because I easily navigate two such large collections every day at work.  Even if I don't know the exact DDC number for a specific title, I do know the general area it should be found and then I browse that area until I find what I'm looking for.

This is so much easier than Bonnet's arrangement by genre and sub-genre, with books being placed alphabetically within sections.  He has three main categories: literature; non-fiction; and the arts.  Literature is subdivided into languages.  Non-fiction has two main divisions: abstract (philosophy, theology, history of religions, science, psychology, literary criticism, linguistics, and literary history) and concrete (history, politics, anthropology, and biography).  The arts are subdivided by music, cinema, photography, painting and drawing, architecture, exhibition catalogues and art history that are then subdivided again.  His arrangement doesn't even work for him all the time:

"Sometimes I spend time looking for a book for which the logical place has been overtaken by events.  Or failing to find a book that I know I have somewhere.  Have I mis-shelved it or is it lost?  I cannot always answer that question, or else it is answered too late, when I have already bought another copy."

I know that I take my knowledge of DDC for granted.  I also know that I don't know it as well as I could; I still have to look things up.  Being responsible for cataloguing the collections of two different public libraries means that I've gotten a stronger sense of where specific topics are shelved.  And then I have my own collection which reflects my personal interests and subjects.  I know that my knowledge of DDC has been gained over almost ten years of working in public libraries.  I also know that library patrons generally have a vague idea of how DDC works.  I truly wish that all students were taught how to use DDC in elementary school and made to use it in all levels of education (elementary, secondary, and college/university) so that everyone in every generation could take DDC classification for granted like I do.

Read on,
Paula

Judging a book by its cover

Lately I'm finding that the titles that I am the most eager to read are the ones I think have the most appealing cover art.

(In the photo)
*The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
*The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
*The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry
*The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas
*The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe
*Grayson by Lynne Cox

In general, we are taught not to judge a book by its cover.  And I fully believe that to be true, particularly when the cover includes people.  I try to ignore any cover art that attempts to represent the main character(s) because, almost always, the publisher fails to accurately capture my mental image of him/her/them based on the actual book content.  To me, the book content-to-cover art dilemma is a static version of the book-to-movie dilemma.  I think it is quite nearly impossible to visually adapt book content simply because the brain interprets book content far more dimensionally (aka through all of the senses) than is possible through one medium (vision).  Having watched the Harry Potter, Twilight, and Time Traveler's Wife movies and being disappointed with their adaptations, I have no interest in ever seeing the movie versions of my favourite books.  Even if they ever made the Corinna Chapman series into movies, I wouldn't watch them because I much prefer my mental images.

But I still love cover art in general.  I have seen cover art that I think is truly beautiful on a book that I have no interest in reading.  Cover art truly is an art...and, just like general art, some of it is better than the rest.

Read on,
Paula

Discovering publishers catalogues...dangerous!

Our library receives piles of publishers catalogues that the CEO goes through to choose titles for me to order.  Until recently, I thought nothing of it.  And then I wondered if the public can have access to these catalogues.  So I went online and realized how few publishers/imprints I know.  I went to Penguin's Canadian website and found access to their catalogues.  This was a bad idea...I now have 115 catalogues downloaded to my computer to peruse at my leisure.  And that's after not downloading the ones for children's books and audiobooks.  There are some imprints I'd never heard of.  Like Dutton/Gotham.  I thought it sounded like they would sell mysteries, thrillers, etc.  Yeah, so I opened one of their catalogues and have now downloaded them all because of "Every Day is an Atheist Holiday" by Penn Jilette and "The World's Strongest Librarian" by Josh Hanagarne.  And there are still a few other imprints I wasn't sure if I would like and will check out their catalogues later.  But here's the problem: this is one "publisher" and I've got 128 catalogues to browse through (2002-2013).  As I find more publishers, I will probably be downloading/viewing their catalogues.  I do believe that my love of books has officially become an obsession.  I think my TBR is about to become burdensome.  Up until now, my TBR has been achievable because, if I read nothing but what is on my list, I could feasibly read them all in less than 10 years.  Now that I've discovered publishers catalogues, I'm finally in danger of never getting them all read.  It doesn't help that I heard that 50,000+ titles are published every year.  And I never hear about most of them.  Even with my picky tastes, that's a lot of books.

But then, the hunt for books to add to my TBR has been one of my favourite things about reading.

This just happens to come at a time when I am actually craving buying books.  This is the first time that it's been an actual craving rather than a desire.  What makes this particularly painful right now is my need to save money.  So perhaps if I gave myself permission to buy one book a month, I wouldn't end up overspending when I finally do go book buying.

Read on,

Paula

"Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher" by Kerry Greenwood

Synopsis: Meet Phryne Fisher, the 1920s’ most elegant and irrepressible sleuth, in her first three adventures bound together in one great value volume. This is the perfect way to introduce your friends to your favourite and most stylish sleuth—or to catch up on some of Miss Fisher’s earlier career. Our unflappable, unconventional and uninhibited heroine, The Honourable Phryne Fisher, leaves the tedium of English high society for Melbourne, Australia, and never looks back. In her first three adventures, she encounters communism, cocaine, kidnappers, and murderers. Phryne handles everything—danger, excitement and love—with her inimitable panache and flair, and still finds a little time for discreet dalliances and delicious diversions. This brilliant omnibus volume presents Cocaine Blues, Flying Too High and Murder on the Ballarat Train.

My review: I absolutely adore Kerry Greenwood's Corinna Chapman series.  But her Phryne Fisher series is more prolific (6 in the Corinna Chapman; 19 in the Phryne Fisher).  "Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher" is an omnibus of the first three titles in the series (Cocaine Blues, Flying Too High, and Murder on the Ballarat Train).

I wasn't sure if I was going to like this series or not.  I'm not into murder mystery novels and police procedurals.  I don't like blood and gore.  Thankfully, reading these, I was able to let my mind gloss over the details and not work too hard at imagining it too closely.  But I loved these books because, like the Corinna Chapman series, I really enjoyed the characters themselves.  I enjoyed their depths and the environment created in each novel.  In reading all three, my personal enjoyment of tea has been refreshed.  In the second book, Dot (a grown woman) gets her own room for the first time in her life and it made me appreciate that I have my own apartment and can keep it just as I like.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first book I've read set in the 1920s.  Phryne Fisher is a woman born of poverty, granted wealth later in life (I believe she's in her 30s).  She is fashionable, strongly independent, has no interest in having children, and has casual sexual relations with good-looking men.  She's free-spirited, smart, widely skilled, and is able to solve mysteries.  In short, I like her a lot.  She makes me want to be a bit more glamorous than I am.

In fact, Phryne Fisher is so fashionable that the first novel went into a lot of detail of her clothing choices.  Not being a fashion maven, I didn't understand a lot of it and didn't care to find out.  That doesn't happen so much in the other two novels.  But there was enough for you to understand that her clothes were stylish, expensive, and beautiful.

I read somewhere that someone complained about the abrupt change to another character's point-of-view without indication (like, in the same paragraph as another character's POV).  Yes, it caught me off-guard the first time it happened but you get used to it as you continue reading her books.  If you want to talk about writing style and form, fine, go ahead and complain.  But for me, it blends well with the story.  Instead of waiting until later in the story, Greenwood cuts to what the other character in the scene is thinking (usually about Phryne) or gives some background to the character that explains something about them in reference to the scene or what is happening to them within the plot.  I didn't mind it and usually it was only a few sentences. A brief aside, as it were.  Not so horribly distracting from the story.

Yes, so I did indeed enjoy this book (and therefore the first three novels in the series) and so now I will have to hunt down copies of the other 16 novels.  I have five non-consecutive titles from later in the series on ebook; I'll just have to find the earlier ones.

On another note, I recently bought a copy of Kerry Greenwood's "Salmancis/Jetsam" from Amazon; it was published in March 2013 and is only available for Kindle.  And we got a copy of her "Out of the Black Land" (published in February 2013) at one of my libraries but I haven't completely decided whether or not I will read it, simply because it is set in ancient Egypt.  And in case I haven't already said it anywhere else, Kerry Greenwood is my all-time favourite author.  If we count "Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher" as the three separate titles, I have read nine of her books and loved all of them.  I happily look forward to reading more.  And I sincerely hope she writes more in the Corinna Chapman series.

Read on,
Paula

Date a girl who reads

If you haven't heard the horrible news, Google is discontinuing their Reader.  I am heartbroken.  I love Google Reader and may have difficulty finding anything good enough for me to replace it.  In preparation for its demise in July, I've been going through old starred blog posts and printing the ones I want to keep.  And that's where I found an entry with the quote "Date A Girl Who Reads" by Rosemarie Urquico.  Here's the link to the full quote on Goodreads and here's the first paragraph:

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

I absolutely adore this whole essay.  My dream is to fall in love with a guy who totally gets my book addiction.  Since I have no intention of having children, I am already planning which books to give my nieces/nephews as they get older.  I want to be the book aunt.  Although I don't sniff the pages (damned allergies!) and my reading tastes are different from those prescribed in the quote, I would dearly love for my would-be-partner to hold me while I cry over a book simply because he understands how a book can affect you.

Frankly, everyone should read Urquico's quote, but most especially all of us girls who read.

Read on,
Paula

Inventory ; and author visit

For some reason, I've never actually kept a list of what books I own.  Not physically anyway, and not even online until I joined LibraryThing in April 2007.  But yesterday, I began creating a spreadsheet.  Knowing from LibraryThing that I currently own 278 books, I now know how imbalanced my personal library is when it comes to fiction vs nonfiction.  I have 88 fiction books.  That doesn't include the approximately 25 children's books that I haven't entered yet.  I also haven't gotten to the non-fiction yet.  And that certainly doesn't include the hundreds of ebooks I have on my computer.

I'm now in a mad rush to download as many ebooks as possible of the titles that are high on my TBR.  One of which is "Up and Down" by Terry Fallis.  He's coming to do an author talk at my library later in a few months.  I want to read it before he comes.  If I love it, I can get my own copy and get him to sign it for me.

Read on,
Paula

"The Boy in the Dress" by David Walliams

I was actually disappointed with "The Boy in the Dress" by David Walliams.  It wasn't as funny as I was expecting.  Even though it has an "accept others" philosophy, it only applies to religion and cross-dressing: Dennis' best friend is a Sikh and other male characters in the book wear dresses.  But Dennis is not gay; he has a crush on Lisa, the girl who gets him to wear the dresses.  There is also a hint of peer pressure because, although he loves looking at fashion magazines, Dennis is not actually interested in wearing dresses until Lisa convinces him to do it.  She also gets him to put on makeup and high heels.  She convinces him to go to school as a girl.

The thing I most disliked about this book was the anti-fat thread running through it.  Dennis' dad is fat and so is one of the boys at school.  In fact, every time the schoolboy, Mac, is mentioned, there is also a food reference.  Not all fat people eat constantly and I took offense to this depiction.  In this book, it's okay for boys to dress up in girl's clothing but god forbid they be fat.

This book is also very British.  When I first read that the main character loves football and wearing dresses, I thought they meant American football.  No, they mean British football, which is American soccer.  There are also other British cultural terms and -isms that North American children might not know.

It only took me a few hours to read it and I'm sorry I bought it.

Read on,
Paula

March Chapters shopping

You've heard of 'dinner and a movie'.  Well, my girl friends and I went to 'dinner and Chapters' for my friend's birthday.

I probably would have spent more had I not forgotten my wallet at home (not realizing this until after dinner) and had to rely on a loan from one of my friends.  Also, I bought two books I hadn't intended to buy just to compensate for the fact that Chapters was sold out of "Dust and shadow" by Lyndsay Faye.  Silly me, I assumed Chapters would have copies considering it's a new-ish title.  Apparently, I was wrong.

I bought:
*The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
*The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht
*To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
*Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
*The Boy in the Dress by David Walliams

When I got home, I ordered a hardcover copy of "Dust and shadow" because Chapters only had the trade paperback available.  I wanted hardcover so I was happy to find that Better World Books had it.

Read on,
Paula

"Dust and Shadow" by Lyndsay Faye

Synopsis: From the gritty streets of nineteenth century London, the loyal and courageous Dr. Watson offers a tale unearthed after generations of lore: the harrowing story of Sherlock Holmes's attempt to hunt down Jack the Ripper.
As England's greatest specialist in criminal detection, Sherlock Holmes is unwavering in his quest to capture the killer responsible for terrifying London's East End. He hires an "unfortunate" known as Mary Ann Monk, the friend of a fellow streetwalker who was one of the Ripper's earliest victims; and he relies heavily on the steadfast and devoted Dr. John H. Watson. When Holmes himself is wounded in Whitechapel during an attempt to catch the savage monster, the popular press launches an investigation of its own, questioning the great detective's role in the very crimes he is so fervently struggling to prevent. Stripped of his credibility, Holmes is left with no choice but to break every rule in the desperate race to find the madman known as "the Knife" before it is too late.
A masterly re-creation of history's most diabolical villain, Lyndsay Faye's debut brings unparalleled authenticity to the atmosphere of Whitechapel and London in the fledgling days of tabloid journalism and recalls the ideals evinced by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most beloved and world-renowned characters. Jack the Ripper's identity, still hotly debated around the world more than a century after his crimes were committed, remains a mystery ripe for speculation. Dust and Shadow explores the terrifying prospect of tracking a serial killer without the advantage of modern forensics, and the result is a lightning-paced novel brimming with historical detail that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

My review: When I heard about "Dust and shadow" and the idea of reading the account of the Jack the Ripper murders as investigated by Sherlock Holmes, I was intrigued and immediately added it to my TBR.  I also recommended it for purchase for both my libraries since I figured it would interest enough people.  Well, if people love it as much as I did, it will never stay on the shelf for long.

I've read only one Sherlock Holmes novel, "The Hound of the Baskervilles", while in high school and haven't retained much of it in my memory.  At the same time, I am only vaguely aware of the Ripper case.  In this manner, I felt at times to be in-the-know and on the outside at the same time.  I frequently wondered just how much of what I was reading was fact.

This book is well-written and absorbing.  The wit and sarcasm make this a fun read, which sounds contradictory considering the content.  I loved the characters, especially Miss Monk, and the language of the time period.  There were times where a description implied a reference to a previous Holmes novel.  "Dust and shadow" is so brilliantly written that I, a decidedly non-murder mystery-reader, loved this book so much that I am buying myself a copy for rereading in the future AND buying the complete Sherlock Holmes works.  

Unfortunately, this book has further solidified my conviction NOT to read the Mary Russell series by Laurie King, no matter how good people tell me it is.  Although I'm normally fine with romances with an age gap, I just don't feel comfortable reading about a 38-year difference.

"Dust and shadow" is now my favourite read of 2013.  That's how much I loved it!  Oh, and I love that it was written by a female author.

Read on,
Paula