Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Gift Cards Galore!


Coming off the Christmas gift card deluge, I'm still lusting after all the books I don't own but crave. I've got new World War II histories in my sites, as well as the YA fantasy release by Sarah J. Maas, Throne of Glass. Having skimmed my RT Book Reviews, I'm salivating over soon to be released erotic romance titles (cannot get enough!) and thriller titles by Karen Rose, Lisa Jackson and Wendi Corsi Staub.

What am I reading right now? I'm re-reading the Lee Child canon (which occupies all my time, so no, I haven't gone to see Reacher, because I have the perfect Jack Reacher in my mind and he's not NOT Tom Cruise) because Child's articles on writing have been hither and yon, including the NY Times, and I am now a fan of his writing advice as well as his fiction.

Just finished up "Not So Tiny Tim", a great, fun, hot read with a poignant finale. It's one of the 3 books in the Smutketeers Christmas collection and have got "Marley in Chains" and "Scrooged" queued up on my Nook.

I'm also very excited that my office (prominent entertainment law firm)has begun a diversity reading group. The first book up is awaiting me at my local B&N and I'm very intersted in reading Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights and having intelligent discussion re: same come next month.

I simply MUST mix up my reading - a few wonderfully entertaining romances, thrillers, and historicals, interspersed with illuminating and informing non-fic from history to bio. Makes me a well-rounded know it all!

And what, pray tell, are YOU reading for 2013?

So Many Books! So Little Time! AAArgh.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Say it ain't so, Lee!

I recently discovered a tremendous thriller author, Lee Child - and his uber macho hero, Jack Reacher. While on a Spring vacation I'd picked up a book for my Mother. When she'd finished it - and praised it highly to me (the last time we went through this little literary dance, she read One For The Money by Janet Evanovich and said "you'll love this", and off we went on a rollicking madcap whirl with Stephanie Plum, reading all her books one after another) I went out and bought her all the rest of the Reacher books, and started in reading from book 1, Killing Floor, myself.

And I was hooked. Utterly, completely in the thrall of the long, tall, taciturn Jack Reacher (as a romance writer, I'm a major Alpha male lover anyway!). Reading a book every day or two I finished up the first 13 and then had to make due with some other favorite authors until the next release, 61 Hours, on May 18. (WARNING: SPOILER ALERT! THIS POST CONTAINS INFO ABOUT THE CLIMACTIC ENDING OF THE NOVEL - DO NOT READ FURTHER IF IT WILL MAKE YOUR BLOOD BOIL TO KNOW THE END!!!!!)

On Tuesday, May 18, I was on vacation again (I'm a gardener and Spring vacations are fairly close together), and the car had to be taken in for repairs. In a torrential downpour I ran it in, walked home, and then made the reverse trip to pick up the car at 3:30 in the afternoon. BUT as it was the 18th, I did not head home but, instead, made a bee-line for the Barnes & Noble to get my very own copy.

Now, if you don't know me, you may be like me - and you may understand the quivering I felt as I dashed through the doors, breathless with anticipation, eager to the point of silliness to get my hands on Jack Reacher, um, I mean, the new Jack Reacher title. And there he, er, it was - a major front of store display with the sticker on the upper right-hand corner (be still my heart) indicating it was being sold at a 20% discount (which, with my B&N membership, means 30% off, total! Whoopee - what a savings, I suppose I should pick up another book, too?).

I ran home, and dumped it in my Mother's lap (I'd promised her first dibs) and said, "Read. Fast."

And she did. Thursday night she passed it off to me and I snuggled on my bed at 9:30 to read. But Thursday had been a long, physically exhausting day, and while I tried my best to keep reading - I'd been hooked from page one - I couldn't keep my eyes open.

On Friday morning, a sleepy, hazy, overly warm for May day, I did a few chores, all the while hearing Jack calling to me from the house. After planting, weeding, and a variety of other spring gardening type chores, I showered and said, "Now, I can read!"

And I did. Throughout the afternoon, despite phone calls from friends and interruptions from Mother inquiring as to my progress ("I want to talk about the ending with you!" - it should have been a portent) I read and read and read. I felt the chill of the South Dakota blizzard taking the heat off my May Long Island afternoon. I fell for the intrepid heroine (unlike the prior Reacher novels, no love interest at hand, other than telephonically, for our boy Jack) the aged librarian Janet. I was repulsed by the vicious horror that was the antagonist, Plato (and let it be said that Child knows how to craft a compelling and worthy adversary for Reacher). I puzzled about the insider who'd gone over to the dark side. Was it Peterson, the young, earnest cop? Was it one of the two cops on desk duty as a result of an unknown incident? And what WAS that weird building that no one could identify?

On I read, and on, forging through the afternoon until I'd gotten too hungry and had to set aside time to make dinner. And there was the final day of the Jeopary ournament of Champions that I couldn't miss. Then, in the twilight (what better time to read a thriller as the sun sets and the darkness begins to close in, like a villain stalking his prey), I finished the book.

WTF?

Where's Jack? What happened to Jack? The building blows sky high, the ashes of the bad guys strewn about the countryside, along with the meth that leaves an entire town speeding and there is NO SIGN OF JACK REACHER!?!?!? ARRGHGHGH!

Okay. So you may have gathered I'm supremely unhappy with this tidbit. I wanted answers! This morning I scoured the net looking for stories with my Google question, "Did Lee Child kill off Jack Reacher?". And I can see that I am not alone in my anguish.

However, one of the posters commented that at the end of the book there is a "to be continued" and that another "Lee Child thriller" is to be released on October 19, 2010. It doesn't say another "Lee Child Jack Reacher novel", though. Is Child toying with us? Cold, cruel man!

Another poster quoted a scientific detail about the description of airflow in the chamber where Jack is battling desperately to escape. Flames upward, air sucked downward in a vent. Was that where Reacher managed to survive? If so, why have the very dum-da-dumdum ending of Susan, the aforementioned telephonic love interest closing the drawer on Reacher's file? Why no mention of the indominatable and (heretofore) indestructible Reacher walking on his laconic way (hitching, or grabbing the next bus out to parts unknown, as usual sans luggage and with just that toothbrush in his pocket)?

Please, please, pretty please - Mr. Child - Say it ain't so! Say that you've merely decided to leave your rabid reading public hanging by their fingernails off the proverbial cliff-hanger! Say that you have not grown weary of the tall man's escapades and moved on to another protagonist!

Say that Jack Reacher will be back - to kick bad guy ass and leave the women's hearts a flutterin' !

Saturday, January 2, 2010

A New Decade for Reading!



December 2009 was a tough month for my reading. I was trying to finish my (very first) full-length novel (Mother challenged me to do it, so, there you go). I read far fewer books - almost none in fact - than I usually do.

So here I am on January 2, 2010, with one completed manuscript that I have to edit, and THOUSANDS of books waiting to be read.

It's almost more than I can stand - too many books to even make a decision. I pick up a romance, but NOT, how about a thriller. No, wait, a non-fiction tome on the Civil War that I've been dying to read. Wait, how about that biography of Beatrix Potter. Or the latest paranormal by Laurell K. Hamilton. Or Robert Parker's new Jesse Stone mystery. I've got e-books, and short story collections. Plus some erotica that's sure to start my new decade off with a bang. Plus a World War II novel on the Navajo Code Talkers, an investigative history of Jack the Ripper and a book on literary theory.

Well, there's nothing else to do but pick one and get started.

Here's to another year of reading, of books, learning, knowledge, enjoyment, amusement, entertainment and pure, plain old fun.

If you didn't get a book for Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanza, or New Years, check out your library. Or head to the book store (trust me, they need the business). If cash is tight, try a used bookstore. Amazon.com has used copies of anything ever written for a few dollars. And, while you're at it, read to a kid, or buy a kid a book.

Now, let's see, I think I'll start with . . .

Sunday, November 1, 2009

No Time For Reading! It's NaNoWriMo Time!

Not that it stopped me. I bought 6 books today (Wicca craft, and the first Donald Maas writing book). Read the intro to that by Anne Perry. Otherwise - it's been NaNo (or chores) all day long. It's 4:54 - the time "fell back" and its nearly dark now. Boo hoo.

Last day of vacation and I did amazingly far less than I planned. I mean work, of course. I read the entire week - Lisa Jackson, Mariah Stewart, Julia Quinn, Ridley Pearson, Stephanie Laurens. I also picked up the new Dorothea Lange biography, and a few other titles - both fiction and non.

For the time being, it is nose to the grindstone and churning out that NaNo novel - Pom Poms of Death. Cheerleaders, sex scandals, suburbia ... what more could a reader want! (No, I SAID it is a NOVEL - I don't care what the newspaper headlines say!

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Vacation Reading (& book buying!)

I never travel or go anywhere for my vacations. I work at home, cook, lounge around and - you guessed it - read up a storm. I also tend to take a trip (or 5) to the book store, thus adding to my already Everestian to-be-read (or "TBR") book pile(s).

This week I've actually gotten sidetracked by internet work and writing (National Novel Writing Month - NaNoWriMo for those "in the know" - begins on Sunday and I'm participating again this year, but with great hopes for a successful conclusion, unlike last year's crash and burn ending).

But I have been reading. Regency romances mostly - Julie Quinn's "Mr. Cavendish I Presume", and a Stephanie Laurens. Plenty more where they came from too!

What I'll be picking up today, however, will be the various writing research and craft books that I'll steep myself in (again in prep. for NaNo to get my authorial juices flowing and my mind back in 'writer mode').

I got the newest Nora Roberts ("Bed of Roses") but Mom got to it first. I also have to find my copies of Gilgamesh that is the first Great Books project I have undertaken. (See other blog for that challenge!)

You know what? I suddenly feel a bookstore trip coming on!

Gotta run!

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Talk Books To Me

Just thinking about books gets me all excited. When was the last time you heard someone say that?

But it is the honest-to-gosh truth. I love reading more than just about anything else in the world. Writing my own stories? Well, let's say neck-and-neck, all right?

Writing about horror on my horror blog, What Evil Lurks In Men's Hearts I could not help but get thrilled anew by the memories of some of the great horror fiction I've read throughout my life. It made me want to rummage through my 20,000 + titles and find Something Wicked This Way Comes. Or that old yellow-bound hard cover of the complete H. G. Wells collection (how do you think I got these muscles? It was carrying around that humongous book as a teen).

And it reminded me just how precious books have always been to me. When I collected them by the dozens as a kid in elementary school through the Scholastic book service for school kids. The teacher would hand out those slips and I'd check darn near every book. Bless her heart Mom never made an objection - even when we were poor as the proverbial church mice because dear old Dad had run off with his favorite librarian mistress of the month ... but I digress.

I'd drag home bags and bags of SBS books. I read them again and again and I can still remember my favorites. About Helen Keller, scientists, boys from other planets, a girl who befriends the bad boy, Harriet Tubman, The Red Badge of Courage and umpteen books about girls and their horses.

Those questions that ask, "if you were stranded on a desert island, what book would you want with you?" Crap, they throw me into such a state because there's no way in hell I could pick one. Sure, OK, the complete Shakespeare. And my favorite novel of all time is Possession by A. S. Byatt. But then again ...

No. I'll stop there, as it is hopeless.

When I read one book, it invariably reminds me (for whatever reason) of another book I want to read, or re-read (I do that a lot, too, and given the number of titles in my personal library, I should not be re-reading anything if I expect to get through them all before Death knocks). I have a huge collection of biographies and histories of British monarchs. But start with one, and I realize I should have started with the prior monarch (how else can one get a grasp of the latter monarch's tiem?). Same thing with civil war histories. Can't start with Antietam - what battl came before? Ditto World War II. I once tried to start but realized that WWI led into WWII. But other events led to WWI, and so on and so forth and before you know it I was reading about Boudica and the Romans.

But the fact that I'd rather spend time with a good book that a human?

I think that about sums it up.

Welcome to a bibliomaniac's world. At least it's quiet ....

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

The Holy Grail

It costs $1,000. There are 20 volumes. It is the one, the only, Oxford English Dictionary. And I WANT IT.



Of course, I haven't got $1,000. Haven't got the space for 20 volumes, either, but I'd get rid of a chair if I had to. Instead, I started small. The fat paperback Oxford American Desk Dictionary and Thesaurus. Then I got the condensed, 2 (massive) volume $75.00 OED. That's when the hankering got really bad. I keep coming across ads, offerings, sales (imagine, for just $900 I can have the entire thing ... but I don't have $900 either).

I love dictionaries. Thesauri, too, if I'm going to make a full breast of it. I have numerous dictionaries, large and small, hardcover and paperback, etymological dictionaries, synonym and antonym dictionaries. Slang dictionaries. Foreign language dictionaries. American Heritage, Random House, Oxford, Websters and many more. Old and new. Dictionaries so old there is no reference to the atomic bomb. And so new they have entries for blogging (imagine that!).

But at the bottom of it all, its all about words.

It's rather like being a part of a secret society. We lust after words. We covet the dictionaries of others that are filled with words - words we crave. Words that, somehow, we can't truly touch or feel or experience unless we OWN them.

The legendary book about the compilation of the OED, The Professor and the Madman, details the initial operation that put together this massive undertaking and the sources from whence the selections were made (everyone was invited to suggest words for inclusion and one of the primary collaborators turned out to be a man sequestered in an insane asylum. And it continues to be a huge event - the annual revision of the OED. What words have evolved into a usage popular enough to warrant their inclusion in the bible of linguists? What words, sadly, have failed to meet that standard and must be abandoned? Arguments ensue. Debates proceed. There is always an American editor involved in the practice, but such jargon as applies to the internet, for example, and high-tech industries and current situations (witness the inclusion of WMD, after the misspent 8 years of the Bush presidency) will be included because of their popular appearance in everyday use.




Of course, sadly, not every word can be included. There are antiquated words - fun, amazing, ingenious words - that have been left out, abandoned by the literary wayside as the world moves on, embracing such words as are deemed au courant. Relevant. Can you imagine the number of volumes required to include every word in the English language that has ever been uttered or used? The words of Medieval London. Elizabethan London. 1776 US. 1100 Scotland. 1888 Dodge City. Words that will never be uttered again. Never be used in writing or known by the vocabulary-curious.

It makes me want to find those words. Investigate and unearth them and then use them. Speak them aloud. Write them down. Ensure that they will stay alive in the lexicographic universe. Prevent them from extinction. Even if it is only in my own mind that they live. Perhaps I will begin a journal. A word journal. A rescue mission, if you will, wherein I will record and save them. Keep the words safe for whosoever discovers my journals later. An alien, perhaps? Perhaps this being from another world will find my journal and believe these words to be the most important of words. Imagine a wealth of words disappearing, in favor of Middle English phrases, Regency slang or 1970's hip. Nodcock and groovy rule!

People whose business and hobby it is to study words - The Linguistic Society of America, for example - must lament these losses. Do they squirrel away old editions of dictionaries? Do they seek out the thesauri of days of yore? Are their homes repositories for a wealth of words?

I know I do my part. I have so many dictionaries and thesauri that I never want for a source for pronunciation, definition, etymology. And as I am my Mother's daughter, not a day goes by that I don't reach for one of these tomes. To look up a word, to confirm my belief about a tertiary definition of a word. To determine how, really, a word like "sepulchral" is pronounced. Or simply to find a word that means what I want to say more closely than any of the pedestrian choices that may immediately come to mind.

Am I peculiar? An oddity who would rather read a dictionary than watch a QVC show? Someone who would prefer to investigate a linguistical mystery than figure out who will be voted off the island?

Perhaps. But I am not alone. There are many others, however secluded and hidden. Subscribers to the magazine, Verbatim. Crossword puzzle afficianados. Writers. Poets. Scrabble players. People such as Ammon Shea, who spent an entire year reading the unabridged OED, cover to cover, wading through the "uns", the interminable "s" section - but who found a veritable treasure trove of knowledge about words, their use, their origin and his affinity for certain ones that just, well, tickled his fancy.




So I am in good company. Weirdos, one and all, but hey, weirdos with most excellent vocabularies.

Ka-ching.

Can you hear that? It's my new OED piggy bank. I'm saving up. One farthing, yen, Euro, deutschmark, penny, quid, pence, buck, franc - at a time.