Tag Archives: meme

30 Day Book Meme – Day 5

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A book that makes you happy.

This question is actually hard for me. Most of the fiction I read tends to be pretty grim. Well, that’s not always true – but I read predominantly literary fiction and generally it’s not exactly uplifting. So, I stood in front of my book cases for a few minutes, trying to channel a book that I’ve read that actually made me happy…

Yeah. Maybe I need to start reading some happier material.

Sophie Kinsella’s Confessions of a Shopaholic made me laugh out loud. I had to literally put the book down and wipe the tears from my eyes. But did it make me happy? I dunno.

Maybe I’m looking at book happiness in the wrong way. Maybe I just need to choose a book that made me grateful to be a reader. I’m going to dip back into my childhood again and pick A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The story of Sara Crewe who is left by her father at Miss Minchin’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies while he returns to India to fight in the war in India is both heart-warming and heart-breaking. Sara is imaginative and kind. When her father is killed Sara’s  life changes dramatically  and she goes from being a special pupil at Miss Minchin’s to a scullery maid, forced to earn her keep.

Why does A Little Princess make me happy? It is one of those magical books that showed me a different world and made me care about a character deeply. Although Sara doesn’t get the happy ending she deserves, Sara’s story is beautifully told and A Little Princess is truly one of those childhood books that gave me hours of pleasure.

30 Day Book Meme – Day 4

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Favourite book of your favourite series.

Well, I know that my choice for favourite series was kind of juvenile given the number series out there, but I don’t care. When I think back to those years, I have to give credit to Laura Lee Hope (no such person, by the way – you can read the story about the books and their creator here) for giving me the gift of independent reading at an early age. Of course I left those books behind, but I loved them and they have a special place in my heart.

So, if I had to pick my favourite book from that series, it would have to be The Bobbsey Twins and the Secret of Candy Castle. I do not remember a blessed thing about this book’s plot (essentially they were all the same anyway; the two sets of twins solved some sort of mystery either around their home or while on vacation, which they seemed to do a lot, vacation I mean). What I do remember. vividly, is the cover of this book. I was thrilled when it turned up on my birthday. I don’t know where this candy castle was, but I seem to recall that someone disappeared in it and the twins had to figure out where he went – secret passages and doors were involved, I think. (And what kid doesn’t like those?)

By today’s standards, The Bobbsey Twins are pretty lackluster heroes. Today’s young readers have Harry Potter and cohorts and Katniss from The Hunger Games to admire. But it is impossible not to have affection for the first books that you curled up with, those books you read alone but never felt alone reading.

30 Day Book Meme – Day 3

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Your favorite series.

The series that immediately popped into my mind was The Bobbsey Twins. I know I am showing my age by saying that, but I read Laura Lee Hope’s novels about Nan and Bert and Flossie and Freddie avidly from the time I was about 7  until I was 10 or 11. My uncle used to give me two hard cover books for my birthday and I loved them…and still have many. In many of the earliest books these mystery solving twins were really young, Flossie and Freddie only 4, but they consistently solved the mysteries in and around Lakeport, Michigan. (And yes, I am remembering all these names without looking them up! I was a fan, I tell you!)

I am not really a serial reader. I associate serials with mysteries and detective stories – the same characters, different crimes. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy mysteries, I’ve just never really followed one character through a bunch of different stories. I follow authors, though and have several I admire: Carolyn Slaughter, Thomas H. Cook, Helen Humphreys, Helen Dunmore. If they’re writing, I’m reading.

30 Day Book Meme – Day 2

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A book that you’ve read more than 3 times.

If you saw my to-be-read shelf (350+ unread books that are physically on my shelf) or flipped through the notebook where I keep an alphabetical never-ending list of the books I’d like to read, you’d laugh at the notion that I have actually read a book three times.  But I have.

The hands-down winner is Kristin McCloy’s 1988 novel, Velocity. I purchased this book around the time it was published at The Strand in New York City. I was really excited to find it because I hadn’t been able to find it at any book store in my hometown and this was before the days of ABE and Bookcloseouts.

Velocity is the story of Ellie, a young woman who leaves her life and boyfriend in NYC and returns to her teensy hometown after a car accident kills her mother. Her father, a local police officer, is lost in his own grief and he and Ellie spend their summer tiptoeing around each other. Ellie doesn’t, however, tiptoe around Jesse, the Hell’s Angel biker who lives down the road; her grief manifests itself in an all-consuming sexual relationship with him.

I tell myself, Once he was mine, and that was enough. But it wasn’t. It was never true, and it was never enough. You hunted down your needs – simple and precise – and in those days it was me.

So, back in the day, Velocity spoke to me because I was madly, crazily, obsessively in love with the quintessential bad-boy. Her story was my story (without the dead mother.) Her crazy, reckless lust for Jesse mirrored my own doomed relationship and I couldn’t get enough. My relationship ended, but my love affair with this book did not. I still read it once a year and have done for over 20 years.

Why? I think it’s the quality of McCloy’s writing and the story’s emotional weight. Ellie’s story has stayed with me all these years because ultimately this is a story about loss and reconciliation and Ellie is intelligent and fragile and so desperate to be strong that she implodes. Jesse is not just her sexual foil; he is not without shades of gray and he’s impossible attractive.

Kristin McCloy, as far as I know, has only written one other book and I haven’t read it. I don’t know this for sure but I’ve always felt that Velocity was a very personal book for her. I have passed it on many times – but only if the borrower promises to return it!

30 Day Book Meme – Day One

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Well, school is just around the corner and that means the return of routine. I love the summer. I love the lack of structure –  the simplicity of the days, knowing the kids and I can just take off if we feel like it. (I have the luxury of being off during the summer because I am a teacher.) I thought that in an effort to get back into the swing of things and sort of turn my brain back on, I’d use these book-related questions courtesy of Portrait of the Would-Be Artist as a Young Woman. I’ll post one answer a day for the month of September.

What is the best book you read last year.

I am going to tweak this question slightly because it’s September and the year’s not done and I haven’t really started to reflect on the books I’ve read this year.

The best book I’ve read in recent memory, though, has got to be John Connolly’s tremendously moving novel The Book of Lost Things. I was teaching a writing course at the time I was reading it and I took the book in to one of the students in my class and said: “You have to read this book.” Although an avid reader, this young man mostly read fantasy stuff, but The Book of Lost Things has an element of the fantastical about it and I thought the student would like it. The very next day we passed each other in the hall and he said: “I am on page 280. I can’t put it down.”

The Book of Lost Things did everything a really good book should do: it transported, it instructed, it illuminated. As if that weren’t enough,  it was exciting and creepy and made my cry. I don’t think you can ask for much more than that. I have a couple other Connolly titles on my bookshelf. I hope they live up to my very high expectations!

2009 in review

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Once again, SavidgeReads is inviting people to do something cool…take a look back at your reading for the year.  So, I’m making a new pot of tea and doing just that!

How many books read in 2009?

48…which is not nearly as many as some readers out there…and I am hoping to squeeze one more in before the 31st

How many fiction and non fiction?

I rarely read non-fiction, but this year I read two: The Art of Meaningful Living and Traveling with Pomegranates.

Male/Female author ratio?

20 men and 27 women and I know  the math doesn’t add up…but I read two novels by Thomas H. Cook this year.

Favourite book of 2009?

This wasn’t a stellar reading year, sadly. I had a horrible slump in the late fall where nothing appealed to me at all. Of the books I read, though, Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones was far and away the best. I said about it:

” Mister Pip is a fantastic book about the power of reading and imagination. It is also a powerful and startling novel about bravery and sacrifice, love and forgiveness.”

Least favourite?

Lots of potential here:

Love: A User’s Guide by Clare Naylor was god-awful.

At a Loss for Words by Diane Schoemperlen and Dismantled by Jennifer McMahon were hugely disappointing, particularly Dismantled because I had so loved the author’s book Promise Not to Tell.

Any that you simply couldn’t finish and why?

I started several books that I had to put aside. I finished Traveling with Pomegranates last night and I am hoping to finish The Drowning Tree by Carol Goodman before the 31st. I never did get around to finishing The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson…that’s a book I will have to restart. The buzz was crazy about it and I’m not sure why I didn’t finish it at the time I started…there was just something. Other titles I started and the set aside include: The Almond by Nedjma, What Love Means to You People by NancyKay Shapiro, Under My Skin by Alison Jameson and Birds of America by Lorrie Moore

Oldest book read?

Cue for Treason by Geoffrey Trease, 1940. This is a book I am teaching to my grade nine class.

Newest?

The Art of Meaningful Living and Traveling with Pomegranates both came out in September and, strangely, are the two non-fiction titles I read this year.


Longest and shortest book titles?

Longest: Charlotte and Claudia Keeping in Touch by Joan Barfoot

Shortest:  Envy by Kathryn Harrison. I had several one word titles, so I chose the one with the fewest letters. *g*

Longest and shortest books?

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski – 576 pages

The Pearl by John Steinbeck – 96 pages

How many books from the library?

None. And I do have a library card!

Any translated books?

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson (translated from Norwegian)

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (translated from the French)


Most read author of the year, and how many books by that author?

Thomas H. Cook, a fabulous writer of literary mysteries. I read two of his novels this year: Places in the Dark and Red Leaves.

Any re-reads?

Yes, I reread The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier, a novel I first read 35 years ago. I also re-read Lord of the Flies by William Golding because I was teaching it to a grade ten class.

Favourite character of the year?

There were several interesting characters in the books I read this year. I fell totally in love with Claire Cooper, the narrator in Kelly Simmons’ terrific debut novel Standing Still. Claire is a fully realized character, fragile and brave. I also really loved that Claire is a woman who is trying to reconcile motherhood and marriage with the fact that she was, once, a very successful career woman. I loved her wild past, her ability to fall in love with a man based on a single characteristic, her yearning for that simple pleasure once again.

I also loved Caroline, the protagonist in Amanda Eyre Ward’s fantastic book How To Be Lost. Caroline is self-destructive and selfish and afraid. Her journey to find the woman in the picture (the  younger sister who has been missing for years) is ill-advised and necessary because by making the journey she is making her first real attempt to leave the past behind.

And, of course, I can’t leave out Matilda and Mr. Watts, the central characters in Lloyd Jones’ not-to-be-missed Mister Pip. As Mr. Watts unspools Pip’s story from Great Expectations,  thirteen year old Matilda begins the often painful journey from innocence to experience.

Which countries did you go to through the page in your year of reading?

Greece, France, Turkey – Traveling with Pomegranates

Norway – Out Stealing Horses

Poland, Switzerland – The Silver Sword

Brazil – The Trade Mission

England – Talking to the Dead

France – The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Papua New Guinea, Australia – Mister Pip

West Africa – The Book of Negroes

India – The White Tiger

Which book wouldn’t you have read without someone’s specific recommendation?

There are a couple books which might not have made their way onto my reading list so soon except for the fact that they were chosen by members of my book club and therefore I had to read them. For example, I would probably have never read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle – certainly not in hard-cover. I might never have given The Elegance of the Hedgehog a second chance; I really didn’t like it the first time I tried to read it, but managed to get through it the second time…and didn’t hate it.

Which author was new to you in 2009 that you now want to read the entire works of?

Lee Martin. I just finished his book The Bright Forever and it was terrific. I’ll definitely be looking for more work by him. I am also anxious to read Kelly Simmons’ new book The Birdhouse which is due out in February.

Which books are you annoyed you didn’t read?

You’re kidding, right? The bookshelf to the right contains about 200 yet-to-be-read books…so it’s not annoyance I feel when I don’t get around to those books…it’s more like panic!

Did you read any books you have always been meaning to read?

Not really, although several of the titles have been on my tbr list for a while: Out Stealing Horses, The Trade Mission, On Chesil Beach.

I’ll just add that the book I will be beginning 2010 with  is Kathy Hepinstall’s debut novel The House of Gentle Men. This novel is actually my pick for book club in January.  When Book Closeouts was having their massive fiction sale around American Thanksgiving, I bought each member of my group a copy of the book to give them as a gift at Christmas. I paid $1.24 per hard cover book. Score!

If you do this meme, I’d love the link so I can go check your answers out!

Happy New Year.