The weekly Booking Through Thursday question for today is:

Suggested by Barbara:

I saw that National Library week is coming up in April [12-18], and that led to some questions. How often do you use your public library and how do you use it? Has the coffeehouse/bookstore replaced the library? Did you go to the library as a child? Do you have any particular memories of the library? Do you like sleek, modern, active libraries or the older, darker, quiet, cozy libraries?

Thanks for using my question!

I remember the thrill of getting my very own library card in elementary school. I don’t remember going to the library other than through school. When my children were small I wanted them to have that “thrill,” too. We went to the library from the days they were toddlers, took out heaps of books that they then wanted me to read to them the rest of the day. I loved it. They got library cards when they were old enough to clearly print their names. We went to some of the special programs (meeting Mr. McFeely at one. Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood was their main childhood program, so that was fun). We participated in every summer reading program.

They loved to be read to when they were younger, and my oldest loved to read for himself, but the younger two left off reading for pleasure. That makes me so sad — I think they’d enjoy it if they tried it again, but they both say they’re not a “reading kind of guy.” 😦 But, consequently, somewhere along the way we gradually stopped going to the library.

I worked in the university library while in college. I enjoyed studying there, particularly since I had access to a couple of quiet spots away from the crowd, but it was too busy then to wander around looking at books for pleasure. I do remember when I was being trained for the reference room that I was pretty scared of the responsibility of helping students find resources they needed (in the day before the Internet), but I also discovered the library had a wealth of resources that were probably unknown to most people. In my senior year they began building the new library, so it’s not recognizable to me any more.

I don’t go to the library much these days unless I am looking for a classic or trying out a new author. I read mostly Christian fiction, and most libraries aren’t current in that genre except for the best sellers, like the Left Behind and Mitford series.

There is something cozy about the older, darker libraries. If I were going to the library to sit down and read, I would prefer the old-fashioned kind. The sleek modern ones were a little intimidating to me at first — they just seemed so busy and bright and scattered. But I have gotten more used to them now and I love the efficiency of them. They still don’t seem very inviting to me, though. They seemed designed more to get your business done and get out.

My oldest likes to go to the coffeehouse bookstores. To him that’s a pleasant evening out. I haven’t really gone to them to sit down and read — I guess I am still not used to being able to take coffee over to a chair and pick out a book to read there. I’d be expecting someone to tell me food and drink aren’t allowed where they could be spilled on the merchandise (do they have a “you spill, you buy” policy, I wonder?), and I keep expecting someone to tap me on the shoulder and tell me if I am going to read the book, I need to go ahead and buy it. Usually when I go I know what I want, and I get it and leave. But if I wanted to check a book or author I was unsure of, I’d welcome the opportunity to sit down and read a little more extensively before deciding to buy the book. In that case I probably would check the library first.

I’ve just realized that I’ve lost that pleasurable strolling through aisles of books and discovering treasures. I remember finding books I really enjoyed just by looking around within a certain category. I should probably try that again — after I get my to-be-read stack whittled down.

There is another special memory the library holds for me: that’s where I met my husband. ♥

The weekly Booking Through Thursday question for today is:

Suggested by Janet:

The opposite of last week’s question: “What’s the best ‘worst’ book you’ve ever read — the one you like despite some negative reviews or features?”

I’ve been pondering this question for the last hour or so while going about my morning routine. I can’t think of anything recent, though there might be something not coming to mind. I don’t really choose books based on what the general public or professional reviews say, but I do like to read reviews and recommendations of people I know to some degree.

In that vein, I’ve been surprised to see through various book challenges and memes that a lot of people don’t like Dickens. I love Dickens. His were some of the first classics I read as an adult. I recently saw David Copperfield describes as somewhat vapidly standing still while all the action happened around him. I was shocked. To me David Copperfield is all about character development. Here is a child starting out with several strikes against him — his father dies before he is born, his mother marries the cold, hard, authoritarian Mr. Murdstone who eventually sends David away, he faces cruelty at boarding school and a brief stint in factory work, his mother dies — he could have turned into a criminal, a “victim,” or a hard and bitter man, yet he becomes a man of character and decency. In fact, he is one of the few normal people in the book amidst the almost caricatural Micawber, Uriah Heep, and Aunt Betsey Trotwood.

I’ve also been surprised to discover that a lot of Christian women don’t like Janette Oke, and the term “prairie romances,” which I think must be aimed at her work since her first series (Love Comes Softly) and many of her other books took place on the prairie, used derogatorily. (I don’t know why we can say a certain genre just doesn’t appeal to us without having to be negative about it). Though I had read Not My Will by Francena Arnold and a couple of Eugenia Price books beforehand, my love of Christian fiction began with Mrs. Oke. Her books weren’t just simple stories to me, or even “romances” — there were illustrations of spiritual truth fleshed out in both the crises and the everyday lives of her characters. To me that’s what the best of Christian fiction does.

Some time I’d love to revisit both Dickens and some of Janette Oke’s earlier works to see if they still speak to me as they did years ago. I think they would: I think that’s what defines a classic.

If you like, you can visit the Booking Through Thursday site to see what others thought about this question.

(Updated to add: since I mentioned Janette Oke, I thought some might be interested in reading about author Kim Vogel Sawyer meeting Janette at the Christian Book Expo here.)

The weekly Booking Through Thursday question for today is:

Suggested by Janet:

How about, “What’s the worst ‘best’ book you’ve ever read — the one everyone says is so great, but you can’t figure out why?”

The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas was a big disappointment to me. I don’t know how much of the disappointment was due to the ending being totally unlike any of the film versions I’ve seen. It was totally depressing. I wasn’t crazy about The Three Musketeers by the same author, either, and I usually like swashbuckling “defender of the good and right” stories. I did enjoy Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, though.

I was also surprised not to really like Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen as much as I thought I would, though the DVD of the latter is one of my all time favorite films. I did really enjoy Persuasion, Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park. I’d seen film versions of most of them before reading the books, so I don’t think that was a major cause of not liking the first two.

I would be willing to give all of these books another read, though, some day — maybe there was just something else going on at the time of my first reading that influenced my impressions.

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.