Booking Through Thursday: Dog Days

This week, BTT asks: "...what animal-related books have you read? Which do you love? Do you have a favorite literary dog? (Snoopy, anyone?)"

Well, I love books and I love animals. But in general, I'm not really a great lover of books about animals. Especially the overly sentimental and maudlin works produced in the wake of John Grogan's hugely successful Marley & Me. And I really can't abide those books that introduce a pet only to kill it off, for emotional effect.

But one of my favorite mystery series, the Mrs. Murphy books by Rita Mae Brown, features cats and a dog who help solve the mysteries their human friend gets herself involved in; I'm reading one right now (Whisker of Evil). And one of my all-time favorite books is Conan Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles (although I don't suppose anyone would pick the terrifying gigantic hound as a favorite literary canine).


Another favorite "animal" book is one I read just a couple of years ago -- Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. There's really not a dog in the book (the main character has a pet rat), but the entire plot hinges on the investigation of the death of a neighbor's dog.

And yes, I do love Snoopy -- I've got a small collection of Peanuts books. I imagine Snoopy has been everyone's favorite literary pup at one time or another. But when it comes to cartoon dogs, I've also always loved those loopy animals drawn by James Thurber. Thurber was a writer, not an artist; but he loved drawing and he loved dogs. And that combination made for some wonderfully weird illustrations to his stories over the years.


And today I hope to finish reading Rebecca Hunt's Mr. Chartwell, about a sort of dog/monster haunting the book's protagonist. But Mr. Chartwell (or Black Pat as he's mostly called) isn't a nice doggie and you definitely wouldn't think of him as man's best friend.

Oh, and I almost forgot -- one more animal-related book: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH! Can't leave that one off the list. Read it for the first time just a couple years back and really loved it. Can't believe it took me so long to get around to it.

Friday's List: Samples

I've had my iPad for over a year now, and I still think it's a nifty little device. Pricey, but comes in very handy for travel or those times when I'm away from my main computer. And it's also a very efficient e-reader; in fact, I've looked at the Nook and the Kindle, and I think I really do prefer the iPad (but to each his own, of course). I haven't done a huge amount of e-reading -- just enough to discover (as I figured I would) that I really like reading actual books as opposed to the electronic kind. But one of the really nice things about having the Kindle app (downloaded free from Amazon) is that I've been able to take advantage of Amazon's sampling feature. And that's allowed me to download free samples of interesting-looking books before making up my mind about whether or not to read the whole work. Here's what I've "sampled" so far:

1. The Attenbury Emeralds. Jill Paton Walsh
2. Fall of Giants. Ken Follett
3. A Game of Thrones. George R.R. Martin
4. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Stieg Larsson
5. Henrietta's War. Joyce Dennys
6. In the Garden of Beasts. Erik Larson
7. Leviathans of Jupiter. Ben Bova
8. A Lonely Death: An Inspector Rutledge Mystery. Charles Todd
9. Love You More: A Detective D.D. Warren Novel. Lisa Gardner
10. Miss Hargreaves. Frank Baker
11. Mr. Chartwell. Rebecca Hunt
12. On Borrowed Time. David Rosenfelt
13. Separate Beds. Elizabeth Buchan
14. West of Here. Jonathan Evison
15. What the Night Knows. Dean Koontz
16. The Winter Ghosts. Kate Mosse
17. Wish You Were Here. Stewart O'Nan
18. Wolf Hall. Hilary Mantel
19. 13, rue Therese. Elena Mauli Shapiro

The samples are usually somewhere around twenty-five to fifty pages, or the first few chapters of each book. But after all these downloads, I've actually gone on to read just one of the titles (Mr. Chartwell). I've got another downloaded (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), but haven't read it yet. This doesn't mean I'm not interested in reading the other books I've sampled -- just haven't had the time yet. Maybe if I cut back on all that sampling....

Booking Through Thursday: Size Matters

This week's Booking Through Thursday topic is about personal library size. This could get pretty embarrassing, but here goes:

1. What’s the largest your personal library has ever been? What’s the greatest number of books you’ve ever owned at one time? (Estimates are fine.)
   
   I suppose our library is just about as big right now as it's ever been. My husband and I are both book people and acquisitive types, so we don't weed out the collection as often as we should. There are books in every room of our apartment, except for the bathrooms (gotta draw the line someplace), and we've got books in boxes, packed away in a couple of storage rooms. I have no idea exactly how many books we own; I've got over 2000 listed in my Library Thing account, but that doesn't include all my husband's lit crit books, Loeb classical editions, and most of the history books in our library. So, altogether, I'd say we own somewhere between 2500-3000 books.
   
   
2. Is your collection NOW the biggest it’s ever been? Or have you down-sized?
   
   See answer to the question above. Actually, we are in the process of downsizing; or at least thinking about it. In the past year, we've donated books to our local library and to an annual book sale at my husband's workplace (unfortunately, we keep buying new books to replace the ones we weed out). We have piles of books we really would like to find new homes for, but realize that in reality we'll probably end up simply throwing a lot of them out. (Sob!)
   
   
3. What’s the fewest number of books you’ve ever owned (not counting your pre-reading years)?
   
   Hmmm. Hard to answer this one. I suppose my book collection was at its tiniest when I was about ten years old, right after my father died. My mother and I moved in with her parents and there just wasn't room for all my toys and books to move with us. I had to choose a few of my most precious possessions to hang onto, and the rest were given away to "less fortunate" kids. At the time, of course, I couldn't imagine any kid less fortunate than I was. But I survived -- and started rebuilding my library very quickly. Occasionally my mother would have one of her clearing-out fits and pressure me to winnow out the books I no longer wanted. The problem with that is that I wanted all of them! It's a problem I'm still living with today. (Hello, my name is Joy and I'm a bookaholic.)
   

Teaser Tuesdays: Shut Your Eyes Tight

This week my teaser lines come from the new John Verdon thriller, Shut Your Eyes Tight. I just started the book, but I read Verdon's first Dave Gurney thriller, Think of a Number last year and really enjoyed it, so I have great hopes for this one. So far, it's passed the 50-page test with flying colors. This snippet is from page 12 of the ARC, and has retired police detective Gurney thinking about Jack Hardwick, another cop he worked with on a few cases, some years ago (please note that these lines are from an uncorrected proof of the novel, so they might differ in the finished edition):

If he were to be completely honest about it, Gurney would have to admit that he and Hardwick did have, in at least one respect, a unique relationship. Ten years earlier, working in jurisdictions a hundred miles apart on different aspects of the same murder case, they had discovered separate halves of the victim's severed body. That sort of serendipity in detection can forge a strong, if bizarre, bond.

Well, sure it can. Not to mention nightmares and post traumatic stress syndrome. I guess Gilbert and Sullivan were right when they said a policeman's lot is not a happy 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.

Friday's List: Best Read

It's been a while since I took a look at the Best Read Books list, published every week by the Friday Reads group (see their Facebook page). Here's their list of the most popular books for last week (June 17th) -- just the top twenty books, although the list actually runs to over fifty.

1. STATE OF WONDER by Ann Patchett
2. BEST KEPT SECRET by Amy Hatvany
3. HOURGLASS by Myra McEntire
4. THE BLIND ASSASSIN by Margaret Atwood
5. A CLASH OF KINGS by George R R Martin
6. BEAUTY QUEENS by Libba Bray
7. MAINE. J. Courtney Sullivan
8. THE HELP by Kathryn Stockett
9. THE BORROWER by Rebecca Makkai
10. THE HAPPINESS HYPOTHESIS by Jonathan Haidt
11. THE WEIRD SISTERS by Eleanor Brown
12. BOSSYPANTS by Tina Fey
13. CUTTING FOR STONE by Abraham Verghese
14. IMAGINARY GIRLS by Nova Ren Suma
15. IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS by Erik Larson
16. ROOM by Emma Donoghue
17. THE BOOK THIEF by Marcus Zusak
18. THE END OF EVERYTHING by Megan Abbott
19. THE MAP OF TIME by Felix Palma
20. THE PARIS WIFE by Paula McLain

Once again, I'm not very up-to-date here: I've only read one of the books on the list -- Eleanor Brown's Weird Sisters (see my review). But I see several titles that are already on my TBR list, and a couple more that are definitely strong candidates.

Booking Through Thursday: Soundtrack

This week's BTT question: What, if any, kind of music do you listen to when you’re reading? (Given a choice, of course!)

And my answer: Most of the time, none. Although I'm not really opposed to the idea: I like listening to music and I like reading. I just don't usually think about doing the two at the same time.

But if and when I do combine them, then the music has to be something that will fade nicely into the background. Jazz is usually my first choice, or "light" classical -- but nothing too raucous. Occasionally, I'll even listen to what used to be called "New Age" music while I read. Have to be careful there, though -- some of that "alternative" music puts me right to sleep.

Teaser Tuesdays: The Unbelievers

This week my teaser lines come from The Unbelievers by Alastair Sim. Set in Scotland during Queen Victoria's reign, the book follows Inspector Allerdyce and Sergeant McGillivray of the Edinburgh police force as they attempt to solve the murder of the powerful (and rather improbably named) Duke of Dornoch. This snippet is from page 47 and has Allerdyce thinking about his young second wife and their family:

Every day of his seven year marriage to Margaret he'd felt an impermanence, as if she might be torn away from him at any moment. Sometimes he'd almost persuaded himself that this was an irrationality, that she was young and healthy and he had no reason to fear. But now, watching how painfully slowly she was regaining her strength after the baby's birth, he knew it was permanence that was the illusion.

I've only just started this one, so I'm just getting acquainted with the Inspector, but the book certainly seems like the beginning of a series, so far.


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.