Friday's List: Jury Duty

Yes, jury duty. Don't know that I'll actually be serving on a jury, but next week I'm on call. And that got me thinking about books involving courts and trials and juries. So here's a little list of some of the titles I came up with. I've read most of them, but some are on my list to read someday. A few nonfiction, but mostly novels and plays.

1. The Eumenides. Aeschylus (Might as well start off with possibly the first literary trial in history.)
2. Anatomy of a Murder. Robert Traver
   
3. A Time to Kill. John Grisham (Haven't read anything by Grisham, but I want to. He's written so many legal thrillers, it's hard to know where to start; so I'm just using the book that started it all.)
4. The Caine Mutiny. Herman Wouk
5. Helter Skelter. Vincent Bugliosi (The story of the investigation of the Manson Family murders back in the 1960s and the subsequent trial, by the prosecuting attorney in the case. One of the best true crime tales ever written.)
   
6. Inherit the Wind. James Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee
7. The Merchant of Venice. William Shakespeare
8. Rumpole of the Bailey. John Mortimer (The first collection of stories or novellas, based on the wonderful British TV show.)
9. The Stranger. Albert Camus
10. Strong Poison. Dorothy L. Sayers (Lord Peter Wimsey meets Harriet Vane for the first time, when she's on trial for poisoning her former lover. When Lord Peter falls in love with Harriet himself, he has to prove she's not guilty or risk losing her forever! Great stuff.)
    
11. Kidnap: The Story of the Lindbergh Case. George Waller
12. To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee
13. The Trial. Franz Kafka
14. Twelve Angry Men. Reginald Rose (This one began life as a TV show, and then morphed into a much-performed play and a couple of movies.)
15. Witness for the Prosecution. Agatha Christie

Most of these have been filmed or turned into TV shows (or based on TV shows). That makes sense, I suppose, as trials are naturally packed with drama. Of course, I'm hoping any trial I might be involved in will be nice and quiet and (above all) short.

Booking Through Thursday: Interactivity

Wow, this week's BTT topic is actually quite a complicated one:

With the advent (and growing popularity) of eBooks, I’m seeing more and more articles about how much “better” they can be, because they have the option to be interactive … videos, music, glossaries … all sorts of little extra goodies to help “enhance” your reading experience, rather like listening to the Director’s commentary on a DVD of your favorite movie.

How do you feel about that possibility? Does it excite you in a cutting-edge kind of way? Or does it chill you to the bone because that’s not what reading is ABOUT?

But my answer is pretty simple. Assuming we're talking about reading for pleasure, I really prefer my reading to be non-interactive. Or, if it's going to be interactive, I want to choose my own form of interactivity. I'm a little dubious about having my reading experience "enhanced" according to someone else's tastes or ideas.

I'm not opposed to e-books and e-readers; in fact, I've read several books online or on my iPad. But when I'm e-reading, I like the experience to be as near to "real" reading as possible. Yes, I am a bookaholic, and love the look, smell and just general aura of real, physical books. Also, when I'm reading, I like to lose myself in the narrative and concentrate on the writing; I don't want videos, embedded music, sound effects, advertising, or author interviews intruding.

And since I'm also a VOB (very old broad), and I've had a lifetime of getting used to my bookish habits, I don't think my opinion is likely to change anytime soon -- I don't have anything against all the new electronic reading gadgetry; but for me, it's always going to be something extra. An interesting (and even attractive) something extra, but definitely not my main choice (as long as I have a choice). And when I do choose to e-read, I don't want a lot of bells and whistles distracting me.

Oh, and I don't usually watch or listen to directors' commentaries, either. I just wanta watch the movie.

WWW Wednesday

WWW Wednesday is hosted weekly by MizB at Should Be Reading. To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions:

• What are you currently reading?
  
  Whisker of Evil by Rita Mae Brown
  
  
  Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
  
  
  
• What did you recently finish reading?
  
  A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (see my review here)
  
  
  Tassy Morgan's Bluff by Jim Stinson
  
  
  
• What do you think you’ll read next?
  
  The Unbelievers by Alastair Sim
  
  
  Prophecy by S.J. Parris
  
  
  

Friday's List: Back in Time

Do you remember what you were reading around this time of year, ten years ago? How about twenty years ago? I've kept reading lists over the years, but not always by the month or week. And during the '90s, for a lot of reasons, my reading had fallen off alarmingly -- so there are tons of books from that period that I'd still love to read. In fact, I've got a sort of perpetual personal reading challenge going on, to nudge me into doing just that.

So I've been looking at some of the best-seller lists from that period. Here's the New York Times best-selling fiction list for the week of June 9th, 1991:

1. Loves Music, Loves to Dance, by Mary Higgins Clark
2. Oh, The Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss
3. As the Crow Flies, by Jeffrey Archer
4. The Firm, by John Grisham
5. Heir to the Empire, by Timothy Zahn
6. "H" is for Homicide, by Sue Grafton
7. Bright Captivity, by Eugenia Price
8. Heartbeat, by Danielle Steel
9. Immortality, by Milan Kundera
10. The Crown of Columbus, by Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich
11. The Seeress of Kell, by David Eddings
12. Damage, by Josephine Hart
13. Object Lessons, by Anna Quindlen
14. The Cat Who Knew a Cardinal, by Lilian Jackson Braun
15. The Seventh Commandment, by Lawrence Sanders

It's interesting to see how many of those authors are still publishing best-sellers twenty years later. Also interesting that both Josephine Hart and Lilian Jackson Braun died just this month.

Sad to say, I have not read a single one of the books on the list -- not even the Dr. Seuss! I was reading quite a bit of Milan Kundera back then, but managed to miss the book listed here; it's going on my Reading the '90s Challenge list right away!

Teaser Tuesdays: Whisker of Evil

This week my teaser lines come from Whisker of Evil, one of the Mrs. Murphy mystery novels written by Rita Mae Brown and co-authored by her pet cat, Sneaky Pie Brown. I've read a few of the earlier books in the series, but this one is No. 12, so it's a little more recent. And these are the book's opening lines:

Barry Monteith was still breathing when Harry found him. His throat had been ripped out.

And we've jumped right into the murder with absolutely no lead-up. So far, I love it!


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

And please feel free to leave me a link to your Teaser Tuesday post in your comment here.

Friday's List: Recommended for Your Reading Pleasure

Library Thing has an interesting feature called Member Recommendations which generates a list of recommended books, based on other books in your LT library list. I've never really played with it before, but when I activated it this morning, this is the list it came up with for me:

1. An Unofficial Rose. Iris Murdoch
2. A Fine Balance. Rohinton Mistry
3. Cara De Plata. Ramon del Valle-Inclan
4. Lady Audley's Secret. M.E. Braddon
5. A Fraction of the Whole. Steve Toltz
6. Norwegian Wood. Haruki Murakami
7. The Virgin Blue. Tracy Chevalier
8. The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession. Paul Coelho
9. Trust Me On This. Donald E. Westlake
10. The Moses Legacy. Adam Palmer
11. Bereft. Chris Womersley
12. Lullabies for Little Criminals. Heather O'Neill
13. Ellen Terry and Bernard Shaw, A Correspondence. Christopher St.John
14. Summer Crossing. Truman Capote
15. Pride, Prejudice and Jasmin Field. Melissa Nathan

Those are just the top fifteen -- the entire list contains a thousand titles, and can be "refreshed" for a thousand more. I hate to admit it, but there are a few titles and authors on the list that I've never even heard of, and a couple that I'm pretty sure I'd never think about reading. But also several that are already on my TBR list. And one (Lady Audley's Secret) that I've actually read -- but I might not have that noted in my list of books.

So with all these recommendations to browse, I suppose I can never complain about not knowing what to read next!

Teaser Tuesdays: Picnic at Hanging Rock

This week my teaser lines come from Joan Lindsay's 1967 novel Picnic at Hanging Rock. I'm reading it for the Aussie Authors Reading Challenge and just got it from the library today, so I haven't gotten very far. The book tells the story of the mysterious disappearance of three schoolgirls and their teacher during a picnic in Australia in 1900. This snippet comes from the end of the third chapter, where the mystery is just beginning:

The awful silence closed in and Edith began, quite loudly now, to scream. If her terrified cries had been heard by anyone but a wallaby squatting in a clump of bracken a few feet away, the picnic at Hanging Rock might yet have been just another picnic on a summer's day. Nobody did hear them.... (p.34)

This is a short book and I have a feeling I'll be putting aside all my other reads until I finish this one.


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

And please feel free to leave me a link to your Teaser Tuesday post in your comment here.