Tuesday Thingers: Awards

This week, Boston Bibliophile’s topic for the Tuesday Thingers group is about book awards:

Awards. Do you follow any particular book awards? Do you ever choose books based on awards? What award-winning books do you have? (Off the top of your head only- no need to look this up- it would take all day!) What's your favorite award-winning book? LibraryThing's Common Knowledge feature tracks awards….

Well, once again we’re dealing with a LibraryThing feature I knew nothing about. It took me quite a while this morning just to find out how to get to the “Common Knowledge” feature, and I still haven’t found anything that looks like award-tracking. I’ll have to look around a little more.

As for award winning books, of course I do have some in my library. I suppose anyone with a fairly large collection is bound to have a few. Don’t know how many or what awards are represented. I usually do take note of which books win the Pulitzer and the National Book and NBCC awards every year. And the Edgar and the Hugo and the Booker and the Caldecott and Newbery awards. However, these days I rarely read the winners, and I’m not one to choose a book simply because it’s won a prize. In fact, I usually find I’m more likely to read the also-rans!

My favorite award-winning book? That would be hard to say. Especially if I include the Caldecott and Newbery books – so many of those are favorites from childhood. I suppose if I had to pick one adult favorite it would be Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry. It won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize, and I’ve loved it since I first read it back then – I guess it probably resonates a little stronger if you’re a Texan.

My other favorite award-winners are also from the Pulitzer list – Gone With the Wind (1937), To Kill a Mockingbird (1961), and A Confederacy of Dunces (1981). Hmmmm. They all seem to be set in the south, don’t they? Well, I guess that’s appropriate for a southern girl.

Added later:
OK, I found the author tracking feature. Had to click on the WikiThing link at the bottom of the page, and then Literary Awards under Member Projects. Wow, there are a huge number of awards listed. I've started going back through my library list and adding tags about the various awards. That should only take me about a year and a half to do, but it's what passes for fun when you're an obsessive-compulsive bookworm.

The Sunday Salon: Reading in Fits and Starts

Today has been a very scattered reading day for me – haven’t really been able to stick to any one thing very long. Several reasons for that. All of them ditsy in one way or another.

First, the Cowboys are playing today and M is watching the game on TV in the living room, and I have to keep going in to check the score. I’m not actually watching the game because I have this personal superstition that when I watch their games, they lose. So I’m doing Wade and Tony and Terrell and the gang a big favor by staying away from the tube. But curiosity keeps drawing me in for little peeks now and then.

Secondly, the book I’m reading is driving me batty, so I can’t really stick with it for long periods without a lot of breaks for screaming and throwing it across the room. I’ve been trying to slog my way through Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife this week, and it’s been very slow going (not to mention harrowing). Not that I don’t like the book – I’m not really saying that. Actually, I’m reserving judgment until I get all the way through it. I’ll just say that, at the moment, it’s really creeping me out.

Then I wasted spent quite a lot of time playing with the “blog following” feature on Blogger. When did they start that? I know, I know – it’s probably been there from the year one. But I just noticed it today. Transferred all the blogs that I usually read in Google Reader to my Blogger Reading List. Read about public vs. private following. Seems interesting and I like the idea of being able to read all my favorite blogs right from my Blogger dashboard page. So far, it doesn’t look like any of the blogs I “follow” have added the “following widget” to their sites – but then a lot of my favorites are on WordPress anyway.

Then I decided to update my ARC database (I use the Microsoft Works database program) and discovered I’ve got eight advance reading copies that I’ve never gotten around to reading yet (not counting American Wife). That’s way too many, folks. Especially for the world’s slowest reader. So I think I’m going to have to declare a little moratorium on ARC requesting for a while. Getting free books is lots of fun, of course. But I do feel an obligation to at least read the books once I’ve got them, even if I don’t go on to review them. I wonder how many is too many? How many unread ARCs do you have in your stack right now?

So that’s how my Sunday reading is shaping up so far. I guess it’s time to get back to Alice/Laura and see what new enormities she’s having to put up with from Charlie/Dubya. I’ll try not to do any more book flinging until I get to the final page. Oh, and right now the Cowboys apparently are ahead at half-time. I’m thrilled but I also apologize to any Browns fans who may be reading this.

A Ghostly Challenge

I know I shouldn’t be adding another challenge right now – this fall is already shaping up to be a pretty busy one around here. But I just couldn’t resist that button – it reminds me of the Little Lulu comic books I loved as a kid.

And since I’m already reading spooky stuff during the next couple of months for Carl V’s R.I.P. III Challenge, I think I might as well join this one, too. It’s called A Ghostly Challenge, and it’s being hosted by Callista, of SMS Book Reviews. Here are the guidelines:

For this challenge, you have from September 1 to October 31 to read 2 books that feature ghosts or are otherwise ghostly. Use your discretion.
1. All books are allowed, audiobooks, picture books, non fiction, fiction, short stories, whatever.
2. Books of short stories count as one book though.
3. Crossovers allowed.
4. You can make a list beforehand or add to it as you go.
To sign up, sign the comments [on the challenge announcement page] with either a link to your blog post or the url of your blog post where you mention your intention to participate. If you don't have a blog, just give me your list of books.

Well, I’ll probably be using the same list that I’m already using for the RIP Challenge – but maybe different books. Or maybe not. Have to see how much time I can make for reading before Halloween rolls around.

Review: The Gargoyle

Written by Andrew Davidson
Published by Doubleday, 2008, 468 pages
This review refers to an advance reading copy of the book

Just a short note about The Gargoyle. There’s not a great deal to say about the book that hasn’t already been said, and said again. Unless you’ve been buried in a coal mine for the last few months, or out mapping the migration of the yellow-headed parrot through Ecuador, by now you’ve heard all about Andrew Davidson’s best-selling debut novel.

Briefly, it’s the story of a nameless (unless I’m mistaken?) porn film maker who is badly burned in an auto accident. This happens in the first chapter, and the next hundred or so pages are mainly filled with pretty gruesome details about his hospital treatment and recovery. If Davidson were a less talented writer, most readers would probably give up somewhere around page 7 when the doctors are performing their first “escharotomy” – slicing through the main character’s charred skin with scalpels to give the swollen tissue room to expand.

But if you hang on, you get to the best part of the story. One day, a beautiful and mysterious sculptress of gargoyles appears suddenly at the burn victim’s bedside and begins to tell him tales of their lives as lovers in an earlier incarnation, hundreds of years ago. She insists her stories are true; and over the next months, she takes him into her home, nursing him back to health, and giving him more and more details about their former lives together. She tells him stories of other lovers, too. And reads Dante to him. And cooks him elaborate feasts. And takes him for midnight swims at the beach. All the while, madly sculpting more and more of her “grotesques” – until eventually their situations are reversed and our hero has to begin looking after his caretaker.

This is a first novel and, of course, it shows. It’s not fine literature, but it’s a darn good read. I took it to the beach this summer, and it kept me up late every night. The characters are engaging, and there’s quite a lot of humor for a book about such an appalling situation. It’s a really good love story – no, it’s several really good love stories. And it even has a bit of a literary mystery thrown in at the end. It'll make a terrific movie - I wonder if Johnny Depp has read it.

Booking Through Thursday: Peer Pressure

This week's BTT topic:

Have you ever felt pressured to read something because ‘everyone else’ was reading it? Have you ever given in and read the book(s) in question or do you resist? If you are a reviewer, etc, do you feel it’s your duty to keep up on current trends?

I’ll assume we’re talking about reading for pleasure, not for a class or a job. Of course, we’ve all had the experience of being “pressured” to read something that we’re not particularly interested in, because of a school or work assignment.

Well, I don’t know that I ever feel really pressured to read anything just because everybody else is reading it. I’m not usually a follower of fashions, in books or clothing or anything else. I generally find that if I do break down and buy something “just because everybody else is buying it,” I end up not reading/wearing/using the item and swearing that I’ll never do that again. I do keep up on current trends in book publishing – always have – but that’s because I’m interested in the subject, not because I feel it’s a duty or a responsibility.

In the past I seldom read books that I really had no interest in – no matter how enthusiastic the “buzz” about them might be. I’m not saying I’ve never read a book just to find out why it’s a bestseller. I’ve done that often enough (Advise and Consent, The Exorcist, Exodus, The Name of the Rose, the first Harry Potter book, and The DaVinci Code all come to mind, to name just a few) – but I always stuck with titles that sparked some curiosity or interest in me, something more than just a desire to be trendy.

That’s changed just a bit since I’ve started doing reviews online and getting advance reading copies of books – a few of those have turned out to be disappointments, books I would never have read without that obligation. But not many – I generally stay pretty well inside my comfort zone when it comes to choosing reading material, so I only ask for ARCs if the books really look like something I’d enjoy.

Now, as far as the Twilight books go – I’m not a big fan of vampires or teenage angst novels. So I think I can safely say there’s no way I’ll be doing any sampling there, no matter how hot the title might be.

RIP III Challenge

If it’s September, it must be time for the R.I.P. Challenge. This year brings the third incarnation of the challenge, hosted by Carl V. at Stainless Steel Droppings; and since I missed the first two, I’m definitely getting in on this one.

The challenge runs from September 1 (yes, I’m a little late getting started, as usual) and runs through October 31, 2008. Once again, Carl is offering three different versions of the challenge – three different “Perils” – and including several different genres, so participants can tailor their reading to their individual interests and schedules. You can get all the info by visiting the Challenge’s announcement page, here.

Given that I’m a slow reader and I’ve already got a lot going in September and October, I’m opting for Peril the Second: Read Two books of any length, from any subgenre of scary stories that you choose. That sounds extremely do-able. Also sounds like lots of fun.

So, here’s my pool of possible reads:

All Hallow’s Eve, by Charles Williams
At the Mountains of Madness, by H.P. Lovecraft
Complete Ghost Stories, by M.R. James
Eva Moves the Furniture, by Margot Livesey
Lost Boy, Lost Girl, by Peter Straub
Nocturnes, by John Connolly
Tales of the Uncanny and Supernatural, by Algernon Blackwood
The Book of Lost Things, by John Connolly
The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories, by Algernon Blackwood
The House With a Clock in Its Walls, by John Bellairs
The Stress of Her Regard, by Tim Powers
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, by Kate Summerscale
The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story, by Susan Hill
We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson
Widdershins, by Oliver Onions

Tuesday Thingers: Shared Books

This week, Boston Bibliophile has yet another interesting topic for the Tuesday Thingers group:

Members who have your books. Do you ever look at this feature? Do you use it to make LT friends, or compare notes? There are three tabs- weighted, raw, and recent. "Weighted," which means "weighted by book obscurity and library size" is probably the least self-explanatory of the three, whereas "raw" and "recent" are more so. Do you get any kind of use out of this feature?

Well, since I’m something of a natural snoop, I have to admit that I have used this feature once or twice to check up on LTers who have some of the same books I do. But I never really noticed the three different tabs (yes, I am an idiot).

And I’ve never used the feature to make friends with anyone. Actually, I only have one friend at LibraryThing – author Hannah Holborn – and that’s only because she contacted me. I’m really too timid to do a lot of “friending” (and I’ll fight anybody who says I’m not). I did send out a friend request to my cousin, who also has a LT account, but I’ve never heard back from her (Cuzzie! Check your LT profile right this minute!). Now if you can’t get your own cousin to be your friend, I guess there’s not much hope.