Ever Bethany

Obsessive Book Lover's Month of Books - Day Nine

Day 9

Make a mini-list of things you have pre-ordered (at the store OR library) or at least bought fresh off the presses. If N/A, why?


For things I bought...well, I preordered Conspiracy of Kings, and The King of Attolia and Queen of Attolia are pretty much the ONLY books I have bought new besides having gift-money in my pocket, in a bookstore, and deciding for once to not burn it on chocolate or socks.

So that tells you how I feel about Megan Whalen Turner's work, and the Queen's Thief series. They also have covers that are their own small passion of mine:



 

The paintings are so beautiful, so masterful, and by an artist who knew enough of the details for it to be a treat to look at.
:lovelorn:
Ahem.    (They are out of order, except for the little order that my favorite two of the bunch are on top...)


Now, preordering at the LIBRARY, that's a much more common theme.




Well, that last isn't a book, of course, but it got me all kinds of fired up to write, so in a way it's more useful...
Apparently Maybe This Time (Crusie's retake on Turn of the Screw) is coming to me as we speak!
Yay!
Can't say the same for the Karate Kid DvD my sister has on hold on my mom's card...

Day 6 of the Obsessive Book Lover's Month of Books

What books lift your mood when you don't want to talk to people?

Okay, well mostly any book will do. But if we're talking about a book that will immediately send me rocketing off in search of convivial fellowship with mankind (that is, going to bother my mom in the kitchen) it is Eloise.

It is presented as "a book for precocious grown-ups" (which does not work out to an insult, but I think it *does* work out to mean adults who can remember what being a child is like, which makes them much more mature than most) and this is a good way to put it.



The drawings take the oddball story one step further into hilarity. This book laughs, not at the expense of the people it pokes fun at, but instead treating them all as part of the idiosyncratic world we know.
Nanny is a boxing fan who drinks and yells while watching matches, though otherwise is quite presentable. Eloise is a child whose energy and disregard for adults as she lives a fairly independent life are not that of a little monster (though no doubt many of her neighbors regard her so) but that of a small person. The personalities around her are undiminished by the largeness of hers.

Distilling it down, it's like reading a P.G. Wodehouse novel without the brain-wracking plots to push through, a moment of "cheerful humanity".


This was one of the first books I bought with the express purpose of having for my own house, as my own property, rather than just because I wanted it handy all the time.
If you now need to see it, I do lend it from time to time, and my brother tore the dustjacket already, so it's not an enshrined copy, to which no harm may befall. Feeling a need of Eloise?

***

I have an amendment to make, about picture books and being read to.



I remember my mother loving the Madeline books! This may be one of my earliest experiences of her enthusiasm for something I didn't think she should be so excited about causing me to be contrary. Sadly, it is not the last. Nor was it the only  time I was proved wrong in my skepticism. XD

The fun, unexpectedly strong-willed heroine is much more impressive to me as an adult looking back, than it was at the time.
But fabricalchemist  ...I didn't much like this art either. T_T I find it fun now, but back then it just seemed simplistic, and dumbed down... Forgive me?

Day 4

What books are the first you remember reading for yourself?

I remember very clearly reading the books where I was learning to read, the little books for the program, and feeling it coming together in my head.

Soon after this I had my first encounter with sneaking books. That's right...right from my first little reading-program readers I was sneaking books to read more stories. Rereading the books my mother had read aloud to me and my brother Dan took up a lot of my reading time as a young child, so the Hobbit and some of the Chronicles of Narnia, and the Little House on the Prairie books were revisited often.

Here's the other kinds of things I read that I remember, though:



I don't remember reading many picture books--my tiny little town had a tiny little library where the kids books were kept in the basement.
I remember reading those series books from an early enough age I was puzzled by many of the words and missing great swathes of what was going on. Nancy Drew had very interesting settings that changed every book, so that was awesome. I got tired of the formulas eventually, though. I hated not being able to find THE FIRST ONE of a series, and things not moving on to a great wonderful ending that was THE END.

I more clearly remember checking out all the books they had in the A Very Young... series by Jill Krementz, many, many times. "Ballerina" and "Gymnast" were my favorites, though Rider was always checked out and had the allure of being rare.

Reading about people who were excellent in their field was awesome--though it also made me want to be a dancer and gymnast, and think that if you weren't awesome by 13, it was over for you, cupcake.

When I discovered this awesome book I got out called The Writer's Desk was created by Jill Krementz, I nearly shrieked with joy at finding work tailored just for me, as an adult, the same way her children's books had felt.

There are so many facets to life, I keep thinking of different things about this new year I want to declare.

Ah-yah, I am big into goals.
It works for me to have it concrete. Even if I never look at the paper again, I've made sense of what I am thinking by anchoring it in ink or graphite.

As a reader I want to accomplish these things:


~ Finish The Tempest (William Shakespeare). First!
~ Finish the Spidey comic collection
~ Read Name of the Wind (I had to return it, and was waiting for a good moment to start again--I have it out now for that moment)
~ Commit Girl-Genius/Star Wars fic    (let's just say I had a little ditty pop into my head about modified light-sabers)
~ Continue reading Women of the Wolves, and chronicling it.


Now, I have some thoughts about certain books, as A Reader, to share.

I don't think I'm going to be able to read this:


Which is sad, because the first (Hound of Rowan) was so much fun.
And it's not that it's fallen off. It's just that everything's still there...and it feels like a second book.
There was something shiny about the first, and it was probably the world. Well, it's the same.
No new-world-smell.

I did get through this:


Though it wasn't so awesome as the first, to me...
it felt like a sophomore slump. Promising better when it gets the car past the Doldrums.
Plus. "Valkyrie"'s shadow got killed, and is now hiding something from her. That has "promise" written on its forehead.

Meanwhile...


I'll be getting back to you on this.
I am such a sucker for arrogant males, one worries for me...
(Then again, point me to an unarrogant male, and I'll take it as a challenge to needle it out of him. It's the secretive ones that bother me, actually.)
No offense to any un/arrogant males who read this blog...  :P