Booking Through Thursday: Encouragement

Wow, whole careers have been built on answering today's BTT question ("How can you encourage a non-reading child to read?"). So I'm just going to say, up front, I'm really not at all qualified to say much on the subject – never having been a parent or a teacher. And the idea that I might have had to accept that my child "is a non-reader" brings a chill to my heart!

I've always found it very hard to understand a child who doesn't like to read. I didn't understand it, even when I was a child myself. I wanted to read, pretty much from the moment I saw words printed on a page and began to figure out that those strange looking marks meant something to the big people who looked at them. Some of my earliest memories – I would have been about two or three – are of sitting on my parents' bed with some of their books spread around me, and pretending to read the pages. There were no illustrations to grab my attention – just the printed words were enough to hold me enthralled.

I don't really have any memories of anyone teaching me, although I remember that my mother and grandmothers and aunts used to read to me a lot. But whatever the case, I know that when I finally turned six and went to school (Texas didn't have a lot of kindergarten or pre-school programs in those days), I could already read a bit. So I ripped through those primers with Tom and Susan and Spot and Pony, and headed right for all the "enrichment" readers, with real stories and adventures to lose myself in. And I've been an enthusiastic reader ever since.

But I really don't have a clue about how to instill that love of reading. I know that the old patterns and routines and systems probably don't work as well on the children of today – they simply don't look at reading in the same way we did when I was young. They have so many more opportunities for "escape" and entertainment. Also, reading is such a solitary activity (even if we're talking about reading for a book club, the reading itself is usually done alone) – and today's younger generations are decidedly social and communal organisms. I'm sad to have to say it (and I hate starting the day off on such a pessimistic note), but I really think that reading for pleasure, for the simple satisfaction of enjoying a great story, or visiting new places, or taking wisdom from the masters is most likely a dying phenomenon.

Of course, I hope I'm wrong!

A-Z Wednesday: "A"

A-Z Wednesday is hosted by Vicki at Reading At The Beach, and here are the guidelines:

To join, here's all you have to do:

Go to your stack of books and find one whose title starts with the letter of the week.
Post:

1~ a photo of the book
2~ title and synopsis
3~ link(Amazon, Barnes and Noble etc.)
4~ Return to the host's blog and leave your link in the comments.

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This week's letter for A-Z Wednesday is "A." So I went to my shelves, and this is what I pulled out.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll (first published 1865)

1. Book Details at Wikipedia

2. Description:

I'm assuming just about everyone is at least a little familiar with the story of the little girl who falls down a rabbit hole and has amazing adventures in Wonderland. If not, you should grab a copy and read it right now. But the Wikipedia entry has a very thorough synopsis.

3. And a sampling of the many covers the book has sported over the years:

(Click on image to enlarge.)

Of course, the book is almost always paired with its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass (and What Alice Found There), published in 1872. That second Alice book has always been my favorite of the two. As a child, I was absolutely fascinated by the possibility of stepping through that mirror into a strange and lovely (and dangerous) new world. But if you haven't read either book, Wonderland is definitely the place to start.

Teaser Tuesdays: The Magnificent Ambersons

All this snow and ice is beginning to addle my brain (not that it wasn't pretty much addled already, of course) - I completely forgot about today being Tuesday. Please, please tell me that spring is just around the corner!

OK, enough of that. This week, my teaser lines come from Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons, winner of the Pulitzer Prize back in 1919. This snippet is from the book's first chapter, and the author is describing life among the upper crust in a "Midland town" during the last part of the 19th Century:

During the earlier years of this period, elegance of personal appearance was believed to rest more upon the texture of garments than upon their shaping. A silk dress needed no remodelling when it was a year or so old; it remained distinguished by merely remaining silk. [p.4]

Timeless fashion? Would that that were true today. I could still be wearing those pretty little velvet mini-dresses I loved back in the 1970s. Or maybe not. Yours truly in a mini-dress is definitely a sight we can all live without, velvet or not.


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by mizb17 at Should Be Reading. If you'd like to read more teasers, or take part yourself, just head on over to her blog.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is now being hosted by Sheila at One Persons Journey Through a World of Books. If you want to let the world know what books you're going to be reading this week, head on over to her blog and leave your link.

Last week I didn't get as much reading done as I hoped I would. Between the power outage caused by the snowstorm, and the hours I spent zonked on pain killers after dental surgery, there wasn't much time left for reading. But I'm hoping to get back on schedule this week.

• Almost finished last week:
  Quattrocento, by James McKean. I should be able to finish that one up tonight.
  
  
• Reading this week:
  Continuing with Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons. I've put Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays aside for the moment - good book, but just a little too depressing for this time of year.
  
  
• Next up:
  Haven't decided yet, but I'm thinking of People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks - it's been on my "must read" list for quite a while now. Or maybe a nice cozy mystery - preferably set in the tropics with lots of beaches and sunshine!

Booking Through Thursday: Winter Reading

This week's BTT topic is about seasonal reading habits: "The northern hemisphere, at least, is socked in by winter right now… So, on a cold, wintry day, when you want nothing more than to curl up with a good book on the couch … what kind of reading do you want to do?"

I really don't think my reading habits change a lot from season to season. I read pretty much the same sorts of books all during the year. It probably is true that, during the winter months, I usually read more than I do at other times of the year. So maybe I'm just more serious about my reading then - you know, starting a new year with all those newly-minted resolutions and all.

When I look back at my reading list from last year, I can't really detect any special patterns except that I read the largest number of books in the months of January and May. But the types of books or genres don't seem to change at all - mostly literary fiction, humor, and suspense. I guess I'm just one of those "this is what I like and I'm sticking with it" types. Boring but consistent.

Random Notes: The Lost Man Booker Prize

Today's Shelf Awareness newsletter has this announcement about the "Lost Man Booker Prize":

The 22 authors on the Lost Man Booker Prize longlist have waited a long time to contend for the best novel published in 1970. . . .

The Guardian reported that the new award "aims to commemorate the works that 'fell through the net' in 1970 after changes to the Booker rules. In 1971, two years after the prize was first given, it ceased to be awarded retrospectively and became, as it is now, a prize for the best novel in the year of publication. The date on which the award was given was also moved from April to November, creating a gap when a wealth of 1970 fiction could not be eligible." The shortlist will be announced in March and the winner named in May. The longlist:

• The Hand Reared Boy by Brian Aldiss
• A Little of What You Fancy? by H.E. Bates
• The Birds on the Trees by Nina Bawden
• A Place in England by Melvyn Bragg
• Down All the Days by Christy Brown
• Bomber by Len Deighton
• Troubles by J.G. Farrell
• The Circle by Elaine Feinstein
• The Bay of Noon by Shirley Hazzard
• A Clubbable Woman by Reginald Hill
• I'm the King of the Castle by Susan Hill
• A Domestic Animal by Francis King
• The Fire Dwellers by Margaret Laurence
• Out of the Shelter by David Lodge
• A Fairly Honourable Defeat by Iris Murdoch
• Fireflies by Shiva Naipaul
• Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian
• Head to Toe by Joe Orton
• Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault
• A Guilty Thing Surprised by Ruth Rendell
• The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark
• The Vivisector by Patrick White

I haven't read any of the books listed, and several of them look really intriguing, so this is a bit of good news.

Teaser Tuesdays: Quattrocento

This week my teaser lines come from James McKean's debut novel Quattrocento, a strange tale of Renaissance art and time travel. I'm only a few chapters into it, but so far I'm enjoying it even though I'm not really sure exactly what's going on. This snippet is actually three sentences, and comes from page 185:

"Someone once asked me where I would go if I knew I only had twenty-four hours to live," Matt replied. "There was no question in my mind. The Brancacci chapel, I replied right away, without any hesitation."



Here's a photo of the place mentioned in the quote - the Brancacci chapel, located in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence (photo from SelectItaly.com):


Beautiful interior, and it contains some of the greatest Florentine art of the period. But I don't think it would be my choice of a place to spend my last twenty-four hours. I'd probably head for the Texas hill country to watch my last sunset.

Where would you go?

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Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by mizb17 at Should Be Reading. If you'd like to read more teasers, or take part yourself, just head on over to her blog.