Suggest-a-book

You’re a reader. You’ve arrived at a reader’s page. Perhaps you’ve browsed around and see that we may share a taste in books. Well, here is an opportunity to leave me (and others) a book suggestion. The comments are open!!

Truly comprehensive?

Wouldn’t it be utterly brilliant to have a comprehensive list of available online books?

This site seems to be a step in that direction. It is a no-frills webpage of links to so many of the online book (including audio books) locations that one would be hard-pressed to say if anything was missing. And if it is, suggest it to the website’s owner, and I’m sure it will be added.

Next, give me a book reader and I’ll be all set.

Since we’re on the subject, if you’re looking to get me a gift (“Really? For me?!?”), I’m opting for the iRex iLiad — pricey but has features that I’d love. Unlike the much-too-hyped Amazon Kindle — where they don’t tell you the fine print (I’ve read this on Cnet, in the user reviews). You know all those thousands of free books online? The ones that you already have on your computer? Well, if you want them on the Kindle, you gotta buy them from Amazon, ’cause they won’t go on otherwise! Yup, Amazon has found a way to inveigle all those book lovers into buying stuff that is otherwise free! [The moral of the story? Do your research before you buy!!]

Judge a book by its…website?

Can you?

More and more the author is required to pull together much of their own marketing, and the really savvy ones will come up some really imaginative ideas — like a website. But is a really good web-presence enough to inspire you to buy a book?

Check out this one: a novel entitled Specialty Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. I had never heard of the book until I stumbled upon this brilliant website. It appears to be a mystery, with a very literary main character…and if you dig a bit, you’ll find some tasty buzz for it.

Has anyone out there read this one? I must admit I’m tempted.

Your comments?

Surplus books — is it possible?

As the New Year approaches, some people like to think of ways to better their lives, and to some, that means reducing clutter.

But to declutter books — is that really something a book lover wants to do? No, I don’t think so…but the reality is that sometimes we may have to do it.

Over at 43Folders is a post about this very topic, with a link to the original source, a question and long series of rather good answers at Ask Metafilter on “Advice for clearing literary clutter” — although, for me, the asker loses some credibility for even thinking of the phrase “literary clutter”!

What do you think, O Loyal Reader? Is there such a thing as ‘literary clutter’? What does it look like to you? What do you do about it?

Or, as is the point, what are you planning on doing in the New Year to clear some space on your bookshelves (to make room for new books in 2008)?

Dictionaries, revisited

A while back I wrote about dictionaries, as all bookish bloggers are wont to do (aren’t they?). I really enjoy having dictionaries, knowing they are there for when I need them.

I like them in person, hard and weighty tomes. I enjoy contemplating what they represent — the unfathomable hours of labour by word enthusiasts, the preserving of ever-changing nuance, the slanting of opinion, even the dictating of form and sound.

I have physical dictionaries, dictionaries on my computer, and links to numerous language resources in my bookmarks.

And of course, there are the thesauri, word lists, menus, reverse dictionaries…ooh! I could go on forever!

But then, there are the visual dictionaries. The online Visual Thesaurus used to be something free, but now you have to pay. I’ve never been able to justify it, as I would not use it as intended, I would just follow the visual trails for hours, ignoring the original need for a synonym.

Today I stumbled upon another online dictionary: Merriam-Webster’s Visual Dictionary.  Probably more nouns than you’ll ever possibly need, but just in case you needed to know the name of the doohickey on a whatchamacallit, now you can just look for it.

4 Books

Stolen from casa az, who plundered it from alejna

Four childhood books

• Freddy the Pig — don’t really remember much about the books, but that I used to love them. (Animal Farm always sort of freaked me out, with my Freddy background.)
• The Donkey Rustlers by Gerald Durrell. Again, I don’t remember much about the story, but I do remember taking it out of the library again and again.
• Paddington Bear — of course. I think he is the root of my love of the absurd…how can you resist a world where people don’t think twice about talking to a bear in a coat carrying a suitcase full of marmalade sandwiches, with bacon hanging out of it and dogs following him?
• No fourth comes to mind…the Hobbit, the Narnia books — all begun in my childhood, and continued to be read and re-read in my teens, my young adulthood, my middle ages, my dotage…

Four authors I will read again and again

• Robertson Davies (I’m with az here)
• Lois McMaster Bujold
• JRR Tolkien
• Jasper Fforde
• [This is all really quite random...there are 100s (10s?) of authors I would re-read again and again, I could continue this list on to the next page...]

Four authors I will never read again

I blank out the unpleasant in my life. I’ve not much interest in ever reading Dan Brown, Terry Pratchett (sorry az for putting those two in the same sentence), or Stephen King. Authors I don’t like, I just don’t remember.

The first four books on my to-be-read list

• Ulysses by James Joyce (az, alejna and I are threatening to read this together)
• Dante’s Inferno
• Plus a cast of 100s! Too many to list. (Wow. I’m being rather lazy with this one.)

The four books I would take to a desert island

• LOTR
• The complete Shakespeare
• Norton Anthology of Poetry
• a big blank book, with some pens

The last lines of one of my favourite books

• I don’t have any. Sorry to disappoint. Although I may think on this one, and change this some random morning at 4 a.m. when a line pops into my head and won’t let me sleep until I’ve added it here.

Anyway — tag yourselves on this one!

The Ubiquitous Pencil

As you may know, I have a weakness for cultural histories — “See the history of the world through this odd angle!”

So, the other day, when I was browsing the local 2ndhand bookstore, I happened upon a brilliant addition to my library — The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance by Henry Petroksi. ‘Tis a delightful romp through the history of such an amazingly simple, obvious thing (at least to us today), in the hopes that the mysteries of engineering become clearer:

“If we can capture the essence of engineers and engineering through the most elementary and least abstract of examples, then we can more easily get to the heart of the matter when confronted with something so large and unfamiliar that we can barely conceive of what it really looks like, let alone hold it in our hands and think about it.”

I have only just begun Chapter 5, Of Traditions and Transitions, the start of which should give you a more fanciful sample of Petroksi approachable academic, sometimes poetic style:

“The history of the pencil, when it has been written down at all, is full of erasures and revisions.”

Accurate, and cute.

To my delight, he’s written more, including an upcoming book (due in October of this year), entitled, simply enough: The Toothpick How can one resist!?!

It’s on the wishlist.

Digital Lending Library

I found a guy I like online — the Burgomeister, and his books. Not only is he a reader, he’s someone who prefers to read online (I’ve been looking for one!):

I love the great novels on my computer screen because, for me, paper is passé.

So, here we’ve got a reader who has found a solution to the problem of friends borrowing books and not returning them. (I just realized last night that I loaned out my only copy of Sei Shonogan’s The Pillow Book.) He is lending out his ebooks to anyone who wants to borrow them.

Brilliant. Not only is he cool, he’s got similar taste in reading to me…lots of SF and such.

Go visit, follow his guidelines, and read.

Childhood Faves

It is an unusual day over at Raincoaster’s blog that I get all nostalgic. Today, she was off on one of her normal rants, and she mentions Il Palio.

No, I’ve never been to Italy (although I want to go). I’ve never dreamed of attending any horse races. Nor am I really the least bit horsey. But, I was a girl who grew up devouring the Marguerite Henry books.  They were good books. And there was always another one to read.

One of my favourites, the plot points still dancing around in my head, was Gaudenzia, Pride of the Palio.

What were your favourite kid’s books? And how have they stood the test of time?

Seamus Heaney, it’s about time

Seamus Heaney recently won the TS Eliot Poetry prize.

Haven’t I written about Heaney before now? I know I’ve mentioned him, but I’ve yet to devote a whole post to the man.

So, you haven’t read any Seamus Heaney? Have you heard the man speak? He’s got the most beautiful, rich, rolling voice. I covet his audio recording of his recent re-working of Beowulf (have I mentioned it enough? Will I get it one day?)

Here’s a sample of his image-rich poetry, from the Internet Poetry Archive:

From Clearances

  In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984

When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives–
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

Now go back, and read it aloud. Trust me.

Now, go and hear him read it. And rejoice.