The weekly Booking Through Thursday question for today is:

• Hardcover? Or paperback?
• Illustrations? Or just text?
• First editions? Or you don’t care?
• Signed by the author? Or not?

Mostly I just collect what I like to read, in whatever format. I like the idea of first editions, but not enough to pay the extra price. Books signed by the author are nice, too, and I have a few, but I don’t really seek them out. Most of my biographies, Christian fiction, and Christian non-fiction are paperback because most are easily available that way — some might be in hardback but would be harder to find. I do like the classics I’ve collected to be hardback, and most of them are. It just seems more…classic. Plus I would like to pass them on to my children: though currently none of them are really interested in the classics, maybe some day their wives or children might like them. Illustrations? In general it just depends on the particular book. I think most of my classics are pretty much just plain text; some have drawings at the beginnings of chapters. There is one I bought, though, for the illustrations even though I already had a copy, and that’s Little Women, one of my all-time favorites. I saw this one in a bookstore in the mall (which, sadly, all seem to have gone out of business, at least here locally, and I miss them), and it reminded me of the types of books I used to read when I was young. The cover is gorgeous, and it has many colored illustrations inside.

I’d love for at least all of my children’s classics to look like this. It might be a bit daunting to a child, though, as it is a pretty thick book — about 3 “, due to the larger type as well as the illustrations. But I do have dreams of reading this with a granddaughter some day.

The weekly Booking Through Thursday question for today is suggested by Kat:

I recently got new bookshelves for my room, and I’m just loving them. Spent the afternoon putting up my books and sharing it on my blog . One of my friends asked a question and I thought it would be a great BTT question. So from Tina & myself, we’d like to know “How do you arrange your books on your shelves? Is it by author, by genre, or you just put it where it falls on?”

I wasn’t going to answer this question originally because the answer that came to mind was only a couple of words. But reading Sally‘s and Janet‘s answers inspired me to elaborate.

The short answer is: by subject and genre. More or less.

We have four main bookcases, two in the family room and two in the sunroom. They used to all be together until we got furniture for the living room that was larger than what we’d had before, so we had to move two bookcases out. The ones in the family room are technically only half-bookshelves: the upper half has bookshelves with glass doors, the bottom half has shelves with solid doors which hold games, wedding and baby albums, and the boxes I keep for each of my children with special cards and keepsakes. (It sounds more organized than it is. The shelves with keepsakes are stuffed with such things that I squirrel away in there during a quick clean-up, but periodically I sort through and put the right items in the right boxes and make hard decisions about throwing some away (To my husband: I really do, honey, though it looks like I never throw anything away. 🙂 ) The books in the upper shelves are mainly Christian non-fiction. Some of my husband’s books, which are mainly on the subject of creationism and science, are in those bookcases as well.

The ones in the sunroom have six shelves each and four of those are double-stacked — they have two rows of books on them (you’d think a sunroom would have white walls, billowy curtains over open windows, wicker furniture, and plants everywhere. Not ours. 🙂 Ours has dark wood paneling and a hodgepodge of stuff that won’t fit in other rooms: two computer desks, bookshelves, treadmill, a table with assorted craft supplies on it, filing cabinets, tools, and boxes of my mother-in-law’s storage. The previous owners had a hot tub and exercise equipment in here.) Anyway, the bookshelves in here house my most-read books: biographies, classics, and fiction. I read a lot of Christian fiction but I don’t keep a lot of it: most of it used to be passed on to my mom before she died and is still passed on to my mother-in-law. I have one box set side for my sister. Some gets donated to thrift stores. I have a lot of “mom” books and organizational books, for some reason, spread out over two different bookcases (which I guess means I need to put some of the organizational ones to good use.) I also have a couple of shelves of craft books in here. If I ever get my sewing/craft room, hopefully I can move those there. One of the “double-stacked” rows is to-be-read books; another holds books I put away in a quick clean-up but need to move to their rightful spot (but usually there is no room left on the shelf where they would belong…)

Within each of those broad categories, books on like subject are grouped together.

I also have a small bookcase of cookbooks in the kitchen as well as a shelf of cookbooks on a baker’s rack. Each of my children has bookcases in their rooms, and we have boxes of children’s books in the attic (which I am really glad I kept in light of the CPSIA). I hope to have very bookish grandchildren to share them with some day. There are a few books on my nightstand and a few end tables and, of course, in the bathroom.

Once when I hinted to my husband that we needed more bookshelves, he said we needed to get rid of some books. 🙂 It’s true — there really is no space for more shelves. He once said he didn’t see the need to keep a book once it had been read, but he is very patient with my book collection. Believe or not, I have purged it a few times, and it is probably time to do so again, but I don’t want to do so hurriedly. Books are an investment, and it would cost more to replace them than to keep them, so I like to go through them carefully, making really sure I don’t think I’ll ever use a book again before parting with it. I admit I do keep some out of sentimentality. I almost tossed my college literature books out recently since most of their content can be easily found elsewhere, but when I paged through them and saw various notes and underlinings, I just couldn’t.

I once thought it would be nice to have a room designated officially as the library like you read about or see in films in old English manors, complete with the little rolling ladder (that I really don’t think I have the balance to actually use.) But I am not so sure I’d really like that. Books are some of my best friends, and it is nice to have a few close at hand in most of the rooms.

(Note: This is not a picture of my bookcases: this is a picture of a “dream library.”)

The weekly Booking Through Thursday question for today is:

Do you read any author’s blogs? If so, are you looking for information on their next project? On the author personally? Something else?

I haven’t really gone searching through a list of favorite authors to see if they have blogs, but as I have come across links to a few I have subscribed to them. It seems to stand to reason that if I like the author’s writing, I would like something about their personality and their thoughts on other things. I do like hearing about their upcoming projects, but I don’t want too much revealed, like a commercial that tells you the whole plot line or major points of a program before it comes on.

Some of my favorite authors don’t really keep up too much with their blogs, though, and that is fine with me — if they have to choose between blogging and their next book, I’d rather they used the time to work on their next book.

I’m not really looking for information on their families or personal lives. They do deserve some privacy. But if they choose to write about their personal lives, I don’t mind. I guess I look for the same basic things in an author’s blog that I do in others: interesting writing first of all, whether funny or serious or matter of fact. I’d like to hear about what inspires them, what led to the things they write, their general thoughts on things not having to do with writing, etc. Some of them do have web sites rather than blogs with information about their books, “coming attractions,” and maybe a page or two of other thoughts.

The author’s blogs I read regularly are Sharon Hinck’s Stories For the Hero In All of Us, Patsy Clairmont‘s blog, Sheila Wray Gregoire’s To Love, Honor, and Vacuum (though I haven’t read any of her books yet. I found her through a link elsewhere and didn’t realize she was an author at first. I do enjoy her blog and have one of her books waiting on my TBR pile), and Writes of Passage, a group blog for Robin Lee Hatcher, Lori Copland, Tracie Peterson, Kim Vogel Sawyer, and Tamera Alexander (I haven’t actually read any of the books of Kim and Tamera yet, but I have of the others). A group blog where an author is only responsible for one post a week might work well for those who don’t feel they can keep up with a regular blog. I also read some of Robin Lee Hatcher’s Write Thinking through her reader’s group on Facebook. I also occasionally check the web sites of Terri Blackstock, Beverly Lewis, and Jamie Langston Turner.

I would probably search out more if the list of blogs I read weren’t already so long, but, who knows — maybe I will find some interesting ones through others’ answers to the BTT question today!

The weekly Booking Through Thursday question for today is:

Have you ever been put off an author’s books after reading a biography of them? Or the reverse – a biography has made you love an author more?

I don’t think I have been put off of an author’s books after reading about the author — somewhat dismayed, maybe, but not to the point of never reading them again. One case in point is that of Robert Burns. I dearly love several of his poems — especially To a Mouse, but also To a Louse, A Red, Red Rose, O Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast — but some of his other poems are rowdy drinking songs, which I don’t like, and some are rather crass, and he had “a penchant for debauchery and drink” which contributed to his early death at age 37. Yet in The Cotter’s Saturday Night he shows he has been at least exposed to a godly family (I did read in some forgotten source a brother’s quote that he did not know what family Robert had in mind in this poem, but it certainly wasn’t theirs) and contrasts their simple faith and integrity with that of hypocritical religion, as shown in this excerpt:

Then, kneeling down to Heaven’s Eternal King,
The saint, the father, and the husband prays:
Hope “springs exulting on triumphant wing,”
That thus they all shall meet in future days,
There, ever bask in uncreated rays,
No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear,
Together hymning their Creator’s praise,
In such society, yet still more dear;
While circling Time moves round in an eternal sphere

Compar’d with this, how poor Religion’s pride,
In all the pomp of method, and of art;
When men display to congregations wide
Devotion’s ev’ry grace, except the heart!
The Power, incens’d, the pageant will desert,
The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole;
But haply, in some cottage far apart,
May hear, well-pleas’d, the language of the soul;
And in His Book of Life the inmates poor enroll.

The contrast between the different types of poetry he wrote, the combination of the thoughtful and tender with the less than admirable qualities work together to make an intriguing whole.

After all, we all have our less than admirable qualities. I didn’t stop reading David’s Psalms after learning of his various sins, though they broke my heart. Then again, he was repentant. If I read biographical notes of an author that showed he led a profligate lifestyle, I might be put off from further reading, but I don’t think I read the types of books that someone like that would write in the first place. I would also be put off from reading books by someone with a New Age type philosophy.

The reverse is quite true: reading biographies of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott, Dickens, C. S. Lewis, Janette Oke, and others made me love their writing all the more and enhanced my understanding and enjoyment of it.

The weekly Booking Through Thursday question for today is:

Something a little different today–

First. Go read this great article from Time Magazine: Books Gone Wild: The Digital Age Reshapes Literature. (Well worth reading.)

Second. Stop and think about it for moment. Computers and digital media are changing everything we do these days, whether we realize it or not, and that includes our beloved books.

Third. DISCUSS!

It is only natural that technological advances in other areas are also going to affect the world of reading, just as the invention of the printing press did.

I don’t read much in the way of actual books on the computer. It bothers my eyes after a while and it’s not terribly comfortable. There is just something soothing and comforting about curling up on the end of the couch with a good book, a throw blanket, and a cup of coffee that is not quite the same at the computer.

On the other hand, if I am studying something, I like having various sources opened up in different tabs on the computer and being able to just click back and forth between them rather than having the same number of books spread out on the table.

I’ve not gotten into reading on a cell phone or PDA or e-reader. I like the idea of the portability of it, but I can barely get through a text message on my cell phone without it bothering my eyes, and the idea of reading very long on a tiny screen just doesn’t sit well with me.

However, the only one of my sons who is an avid reader reads almost exclusively via electronic means. I wonder if the “coziness” we bibliophiles feel with the tactile sensation of a book will be replaced in the next generation with the feel of a electronic device.

I didn’t realize until this article that publishing houses absorbed the economic failures of the trade, from giving advances to authors whose books don’t sell to taking non-selling books back from stores. No wonder the industry is in trouble. I can see the appeal of electronic publishing in alleviating those factors.

I don’t know if I like the idea of publishing houses being the “gate-keepers” of what is considered good literature. They are going to be more interested in marketability than quality, and the two are not the same, so I don’t think traditional publishers are the last bastions of quality against the perceived cheap and common offerings that will proliferate with the availability and ease of self-publishing. There are a lot of cheap, common, even trashy books, and there will be a lot of the same in any other venue. But I don’t think self-published pieces are any threat to literature any more than YouTube is to Hollywood. There is a lot of junk on YouTube, but there is also a lot of clever stuff that otherwise would never see the light of day.

But I do hope there will always be physical books. I can’t imagine life without them.

The folks at 5 Minutes For Books host What’s On Your Nightstand? the last Tuesday of each month in which we can share about the books we have been reading and plan to read. You can learn more about it by clicking the link or the button. This month’s participants are here.

When I posted my lengthy list last month, I guess I wasn’t thinking about this being a monthly meme, because I posted almost everything I have stacked up to read, more than I possibly could finish in a month. And then I found a clearance sale at our Christian bookstore and added another stack.

In January I completed What Women Wish You Knew About Dating: A Single Guy’s Guide to Romantic Relationships by Stephen W. Simpson. I had seen it at Deena’s, and have sons in or near dating ages, and the excerpt I saw looked interesting. I ended up having mixed emotions about it — a longer review is here.

I also finished Falling For You Again, the third in the Four Seasons series dealing with marriage by Catherine Palmer and Gary Chapman, and reviewed it here. Each book is about a group of couples in a community in various “seasons” of marriage, but this one primarily focuses on an older couple dealing with declining health and a couple of unresolved issues testing the foundation of their long marriage. It’s sweet but sad, and I loved it.

I also finished @ Home for the Holidays with the same characters from SAHM I Am by Meredith Efken about a group of stay-at-home moms who stay in touch via an e-mail loop. I didn’t review it. It was…ok. I liked the camaraderie and support of the ladies for each other. I did think some were a little catty, and the conservative viewpoints were given to the over-the-top self-righteous member. Not to open a can of worms, but I disagreed with one lady taking over preaching for her pastor-husband while he was ill.

Currently I am still reading the unabridged Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, now on page 612 of this 1,463 page book (up from 366 last month at this time!) I truly rejoiced when I reached page 500 — it seemed like such a milestone!

I’m also reading the last of the Four Seasons of Marriage books by Palmer and Chapman, Winter Turns to Spring, focusing on the youngest couple of the group with perhaps the stormiest relationship, and I just started rereading To the Golden Shore by Courtney Anderson about Americas’ first missionary, Adoniram Judson. It’s a classic missionary biography I read years ago and wanted to revisit.

I also started one of the books I came across at that clearance sale, a daily devotional book titled Our Daily Walk by F. B. Meyer. When I saw it my first thought was that I didn’t need yet another devotional book, but I had been wanting to read something about or by Meyer for a long time. I kept coming across his name in other Christian biographies but didn’t really know anything about him personally. So this is probably a good introduction to him. I have already been blessed beyond measure as there have been several days the reading for the day has been just exactly what I needed. Funny how God directs through what we think was a random choice.

The devotional book will, of course, take me through the year, and the others will probably take the month until the next “nightstand” posting to complete. If I do get done before then, I have plenty of others waiting for me!

The weekly Booking Through Thursday question for today is:

Since “Inspiration” is (or should) the theme this week … what is your reading inspired by?

I’m wondering why inspiration should be the theme? Just curious. I don’t mind that it is, I’m just not sure what inspired inspiration as the theme.

This question can be taken two different ways: what inspires me to read, and what inspires me to read what I read.

I didn’t grow up in a reading family. My dad read the occasional Zane Grey novel but otherwise didn’t read much. If he saw me sitting and reading he thought I was being lazy and gave me something to do. (He did discover a love for reading in his later years.) I don’t remember my mom reading much except at night before she went to sleep. I probably had some books before I started school, but I don’t remember them. So it was probably when I started school and learned to read than I discovered the wonderful world of books. What wonderful worlds to explore, people and places to learn about! I think I’ve been an insatiable reader ever since.

My grandmother was a reader, and for a few years when we lived in the same town I remember spending the night with her, making dinner, watching a little TV, then reading in bed. She had an extra bed in her room, and we’d spend what seemed like hours with the bedside lamps on and our books open.

Semicolon and Janet have written excellent posts about reasons for reading, and they list many factors that have inspired my own reading over the years.

As to what inspires the specific choices I make to read, there are many factors.

I love to learn and books are my primary means of learning. I seem to learn best from a narrative or story format. I can read non-fiction informative books, but usually things make sense and stay with me better from a story format.

I also love reading books that make me think. I can and do occasionally read “lite” books just to relax, but even then I want to get something beneficial from them.

I often read biographies or true-life stories because I love finding out what makes people tick, what shaped them into the people they became.

I love to be inspired. I was reading some time back about a book of Victorian stories for children (wish I could remember what it was) but the men who published it, though they thought the stories charming, discounted the clear moral teaching of the stories. They were almost apologetic about that aspect. But I have always loved book that did inspire me to be a better person in some way.

I developed a love for biographies of missionaries and other Christians, both leaders and average ordinary people, when I was in college and heard a lady speak about missionary biographies. I wrote a post about missionary biographies earlier, but one paragraph from that post says:

We learn history for a number of reasons, among them: to better understand our current times, to appreciate our heritage, to avoid repeating mistakes. There are heroes in our national history who inspire us to a love of country and duty and courage. There are heroes of our spiritual heritage who inspire us in love and dedication to God and to greater faith in remembering that the God they served and loved and Who provided for and used them is the very same God we love and serve today and Who will provide for us and use us. Though times and culture change, human nature at its core doesn’t change much, and God never changes.

Plus I benefit from reading how others lived out their faith, how they wrestled with hard questions or truth, how the Lord taught them and used them.

When I find an author I really like, I am usually inspired to read others of his or her works. Plus I am often inspired by recommendations of other people I have an affinity for. Sometimes I am inspired (influenced might be a better word for this one) by mood.

I’ve been inspired to read the classics mainly to find out for myself why they are classics, what has made them appeal to so many people over so many years.

With all those inspirations to read and an ever-growing “to be read” list, I expect to keep busy for many years!