Booking Through Thursday

This week’s BTT is about the condition of books:

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?

Most of the books I read have been read by someone else already (secondhand or from the library). I quite like that: I feel guilty whenever I break the spine on a brand new book! I also like to feel like someone else has enjoyed the book before me.

I have been known to dog-ear, but only when I have nothing else to hand. 99.9% of the time, I use a bookmark. I have one memory of being told off by a teacher at primary school for tearing paper out of my maths book to use as a bookmark, and I totally didn’t understand when she told me to fold the page over to keep my place – it’s a book! You can’t do that!

Bending the cover all the way round does make me flinch! There’s no excuse for doing that, unless it’s to keep it open at a certain page, and even then, it’s far better to use one of those book stand things.

Overall, I guess my book-treating philosophy is this: I treat books with respect, but I know that if you read them, it’s going to show. At the end of the day, reading is what books are for, and so it’s a good thing if they’re ‘pre-loved’! I feel sad if I come across a book that’s been badly treated, but I don’t mind a book that’s been enjoyed by someone else before me, especially since I like to pass on the books that I love as well.

Book statistics

Since my 13th birthday, I’ve written down all the books I read. Recently, I’ve made up a database of all of these, which has enabled me to run some quick tests and find out some statistics.

Altogether, I have read 235 books. This works out at about a third of a book a day, with each book taking 3 and a third days to complete.

Aged 13, I read 143 books (61% of the books I’ve read since I started recording them). I read about 40% of a book each day, with each book taking about 2.6 days to read. This means that when I was 13, I read books faster than my average over the last 2 years. I’m not sure if it’s true that I do read less now, but it’s definitely true that the books I read now are different to the books I used to read. My taste has changed quite considerably.

Aged 14, I read 79 books; barely more than half of what I read the previous year. That’s 34% of the total amount of books I’ve read ’since records began’. I read about 20% of a book each day – half as much as when I was 13 – and each book took me about 4.6 days to read.

Aged 15, I’ve so far read 11 books (5% of my total amount). I’ve read about 20% of a book a day, with each book taking me 5 days to complete. If I carry on at this speed, I should read 73 books this year.

I’ve reread 15 books. The most reread book is Want to Play? by PJ Tracy, which I’ve read 5 times in total. Dead Famous by Ben Elton I’ve read 4 times, and Dead Run, also part of the Monkeewrench series by PJ Tracy, I’ve read 3 times. I haven’t got any statistics to support this, but I’m pretty certain that as I’ve got older, I’ve read more new books and fewer books that I’ve read before. Definitely most of the rereading I’ve done was when I was 13.

The author I read most books by was Rhiannon Lassiter. I read 7 of her books. She’s followed by Dick Francis, with 6, then Kevin Brooke, Ben Elton, David Nobbs and PJ Tracy, all with 4, and then Dave Barry, Daphne du Maurier, Christopher Brookmyre, Dave Pelzer and Irvine Welsh, by whom I’ve read 3 books each.

I think it’s more interesting for me to look at what doesn’t appear in these statistics than it is for me to consider what does. For example, Anne of Green Gables, my favourite book for a long time, I’ve only read twice since I started recording the books I read, and I’ve only read one other in the series. Irvine Welsh and Christopher Brookmyre, who I would consider my favourite authors at the moment, barely feature in the table. Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which is currently my favourite book, I’ve only actually read twice (though having now bought my own copy, that might change). And while the number of books I read has decreased each year, I feel like I get more out of reading than ever before.

Booking Through Thursday

This week’s Booking Through Thursday is about literary couples.

This is pretty easy for me: it has to be Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe from the Anne of Green Gables series by L. M. Montgomery. I love the books for all sorts of reasons which would fill up an entire post by themselves. Anne and Gilbert have an idealistic relationship: I find it difficult to fault it in any way.

Jane and Rochester from Jane Eyre come a close second.

Third place is Pauline de Charmilles and Gaston Beauvais from Wormwood by Marie Corelli. They’re a failed couple, but the descriptions of Gaston’s feelings for Pauline are exquisite, as is his torment when she falls in love with Silvion Guidel.

It’s perhaps not that remarkable to see that two of my favourite couples come from two of my favourite books. Jane Eyre isn’t a favourite, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love it all the same!

I didn’t manage to participate in last week’s Booking Through Thursday, but I am hoping to get up a post of the books that are on my TBR pile very shortly!

Blackwell’s trip

My brother had to go to Oxford today for a uni thing (he’s applying to study there), so I went along for the ride and spent the day mooching about in Blackwell’s, which has to be my favourite bookshop on the planet.

I only purchased one book (Breakfast at Tiffany’s; I’ve wanted a copy for ages, and when I found some old book tokens in my bag, I decided to buy one), but I wrote down a whole pile. It’s expensive to buy new books, so I like to take a notepad with me and write down all the books that interest me. Then I can look for them in the library or on bookmooch.

Unfortunately, I still don’t have access to a public library! My local library is open, but I can’t get there (no public transport, and I’m too young to drive, so that’s a no-go), but you can’t reserve anything (even from the library itself) or search the online catalogue. The catalogue and reservations should be back up about Christmastime, but until then, I have absolutely no access to a library. Dammit!

If you visit me on Shelfari, you can see the books in my ‘I plan to read’ pile, many of which come from today’s visit. Here’s what I wrote down:

• An Equal Music by Vikram Seth
• What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn
• At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien
• Le Testament Francais by Andrei Makine
• The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer
• Jigsaw by Sybille Bedford
• The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland
• God is Dead by Ron Currie
• White Noise by Don DeLillo
• French Tales by Helen Constantine
• Autobiography of a Pocket Handkerchief by James Fenimore Cooper
• The Gift by Lewis Hyde
• Madame Bovary by Flaubert (found on bookmooch!)
• The Devil’s Labyrinth by John Saul (found on bookmooch!)
• Extracts from the Red Notebooks by Matthew Engel
• The Write Type by Karen E. Peterson
• Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton
• Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerny
• The Have-Nots by Katharina Hacker
• Perfume by Patrick Suskind
• Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky

I also visited Borders for the first time (we don’t have one locally). It was very different from the bookshops we have round here; the shelves were much lower, and it felt a lot less like a library. There was also a Paperchase and a Starbuck’s, and there was music playing. I didn’ t like it to start with, but it grew on me pretty quickly. I also liked that there was a mixture of old and new titles (though that may have been due to the size of the shop). I’m going to see if I can find out where the nearest one is; it was definitely a good experience!

Write on Wednesday

This week’s Write on Wednesday is about making time to write every day.

Ever since I started NaNoWriMo, my writing has been ridiculous. I write like a crazed maniac for a month, then barely write at all for the rest of the year. I hardly ever finish anything: that’s incredibly rare for me. However, I do write things every day: schoolwork, blogs, forum posts…obviously it’s not the kind of writing we’re talking about here, but at least I try to make some kind of use of my creative energies!

Do I think everybody should? Absolutely! I’m fully aware that I’m speaking as a hypocrite here, but writing is a craft and it needs practising. Even just writing in a diary is practising writing, and good writing is essential for everyone, not just those who want to write for pleasure. It’s a way to explore ideas and communicate with others. So many people have such poor standards of writing and pretty much give up at the soonest available opportunity, and I think that probably a good percentage of them would actually enjoy it if they made the time to do it.

This year, November’s going to be very busy for me with exams and such, but I’m still participating in nanowrimo. I’m not aiming for 50,000 words, though: I’m aiming to write every day and maybe even finish some stuff. I’m sick of being a hypcrite; if I think everyone should write every day, why shouldn’t I?

Given up on a book

A couple of days ago, I gave up on The Little Friend by Donna Tartt.

This was supposed to be part of my 2nds challenge, but at the end of the day, I just couldn’t take it. I read 200 pages, looked at the amount I had left, put the book down and walked away.

There wasn’t one single thing that made me want to keep reading, and if there isn’t something after 200 pages, then it’s dubious it’s going to be there at all. None of the characters interested me. The ‘plot’ (such as it was; maybe something happened after that, but again, if it’s not there by page 200…) didn’t hold my attention. Even the writing style that had me spellbound in The Secret History didn’t seem to be there.

I was reading my mother’s copy. She also gave up, so it looks like this is one for the charity shop.

Book Review: My Godawful Life

I saw this in the window of a bookshop and immediately wanted to read it. I, like much of the planet, have had enough of stories of people’s terrible lives. I’m sure their lives were indeed very, very terrible, but there’s just been a few too many books written about that now (okay, enough for WHSmith’s to have an entire shelf labeled ‘tragic life memoirs’) and I’m just ever so slightly bored.

My Godawful Life is a parody of those memoirs. The author – Sunny McCreary (a nom de plume; the book was actually written by Michael Kelly) – endures pretty much everything that can go wrong. They have an abusive childhood, are forced into prostitution, have a baboon’s arse grafted onto their face, suffer an addiction to helium, have problems with necrophilia, anorexia and overeating, spend time as a Nazi leader, have their first love destroyed by a terrible disease…the list goes on.

To start with, I found the writing style quite irritating, but it grew on me. Things happen thick and fast; there’s absolutely no pretence at making this read like a terrible life memoir. This irritated me because I felt some of the humour was lost, but as I said, it grew on me, and as the book went on, things happened more slowly and more time was spent on each horrible happening.

There were also some very funny adverts in the back for other memoirs (‘Daddy, Pots!’ – A Memoir of Incest and Dyslexia).

Overall, this was a mildly amusing book. I don’t think I’d particularly recommend it, mostly because much of the humour was lost in it being so obvious and fast, but it wasn’t a particularly bad read either.

Shelfari

Today, I came across Shelfari, and so far I’m really impressed.

Basically, it’s another book cataloging site. You make lists of books you have, books you’d like to have, books you’ve read…yeah, we’ve all seen these before.

I do like the easy way of adding books to the shelves: search, click, done.

I’ve been looking for a way of keeping track of all my ‘must read this someday’ books, and this looks like it could be it. I’ll keep adding them to my save for later list on bookmooch, just to be sure, but still, it’s worth a try, eh?

You can visit my profile here.

Write on Wednesday

This week’s Write on Wednesday: what’s your wildest writing dream?

Mine: to write a book and have it published.

There: short and sweet. Someone once said that no book is ever finished but abandoned, but if it’s published, then someone, somewhere thinks it’s good enough to abandon now and thinks that someone out there will want to read it. That’s enough.

Book review: Past Mortem

Ever since I was bored on holiday and picked up Dead Famous from the shelf, I’ve been a big fan of Ben Elton’s books. They’re funny and modern yet still manage to retain a dramatic edge. Priceless reading.

Fortunately, Past Mortem did not disappoint.

It’s centred around the website friends reunited. In it, a police inspector (who just happens to be in love with his comely sergeant, who is having relationship problems of her own)ends up on the tail of a serial killer with some really bizarre modus opperandis (is that the plural?). He also gets his knickers in a twist when he starts to meet up with his old schoolfriends through friends reunited – and it just so happens that friends reunited has a bearing on his case as well.

This was a great book. The plot was well controlled. The murder scenes had me shrieking with laughter at the same time I tried to turn over the pages faster to find out what happened next. There weren’t even too many of the ridiculously gratuitous sex scenes that occasionally marr Ben Elton’s books.

This book is a winner all round.