Archives

BBAW: Interview With a Book Blogger

Sep15

Gayle blogs at Every Day I Write the Book, and even though her blog is new to me, she has lots of fans. In fact, Every Day I Write the Book was nominated in five categories for Book Blogger Appreciation Awards: Best Literary Fiction Blog, Best General Review Blog, Best Reviews, Best Writing, and Best Book Club Blog, and it’s shortlisted in that last category, Best Book Club Blog.

The first thing I discovered in perusing Gayle’s blog is that we don’t read the same books. I only found two titles that she’s reviewed that I have read, too. This lack of congruence is a great thing as far as I’m concerned because it means I can find lots of books that Gayle’s recommended that I might want to read. I did find several titles that I want to read after reading Gayle’s reviews and teasers, including:

Factory Girls by Leslie Chang.

The English Teacher by Lily King.

Beginner’s Greek by James Collins.

Hello Goodbye by Emily Chenoweth.

Here’s what Gayle has to say about reading and blogging:

How did you start blogging, and why do you blog? Why about books?
When I was in my early 20s, I started keeping track of reviews of books that I wanted to read, mostly from traditional media sources like newspapers and magazines. I was always the one in my book club to make suggestions for our next read. I now work in social media and spend a lot of time reading blogs. One day in 2006, I started thinking about launching a blog to recommend books that my friends maybe hadn’t heard about, and to post my own reviews of books I’ve read. Once I got the idea in my head, I was so excited about it that I couldn’t wait to launch it. I blog now because I love the community of authors, readers and publishers that I have come to know, and I love the fact that so many people tell me that they visit my blog regularly for recommendations.
Why books? I have a very strong sense of what I like to read, and I thought I had something to offer in to other readers. Plus, I love to read – always have – and despite the amount of time it takes to keep up the book blog, it has encouraged me to read more. My reviews tend to focus less on characters and more on writing – I am fascinated by the process of writing fiction, and am in awe of people who do it well.

You’ve been shortlisted for an award at Book Blogger Appreciation Awards: Best Book Club Blog. Tell me about your book club. How does it work? How are the books chosen? How many participants do you have? How did you get started?
The book club component of my blog is probably the part I spend the least amount of time on, but I do enjoy it. It started in December 2007, when the publisher of Kelly Corrigan’s The Middle Place approached me to see if I wanted to host a discussion of that book on my site. Since then, I’ve hosted eight book club discussions on EDIWTB. Either I will select a book I’ve wanted to read, and will contact the publisher to see if they would like to participate, or I will be approached by a publisher with a particular book as a club suggestion. EDIWTB readers who sign up get a free copy of the book from the publisher, and on a pre-selected date, I open the discussion with a post on EDIWTB. The discussion continues in the comments. Usually, the author participates in a Q&A post the week after the book club discussion, answering questions that have come up in the comments.
I usually get somewhere between 20-30 participants. I always look forward to book club days, when the comments start rolling in.
It’s funny, I don’t think of my blog as a “book club blog”, except to the extent that people tell me they get ideas for books for their own book club to read.

What’s your favorite book blog (besides your own, of course)?
I have a few favorites – Stephanie’s Written Word, Booking Mama, Literary License, and Books for Breakfast.

You often blog about books you would like to read, future reads. Do you have a list? How do you decide what’s next up? Do you read more than one book at a time?
Yes, unfortunately, with a fulltime job and 5 year-old twins, I don’t have nearly as much time to read as I’d like. So I end up posting about future reads more often than I post my own reviews. I’d love for that ratio to be reversed… maybe someday. I don’t have a list – it’s basically a large pile of books on the floor of my bedroom. (Actually, it’s three piles and two bookshelves of books piled on their sides). The blog, in many ways, represents my TBR list.
I never read more than one book at a time.
Picking my next read is one of my favorite activities. It’s a rather unscientific process that involves thinking about what I am in the mood for, considering whether I want something very different from what I just read, and reading the first page or two of a few books to see what grabs me at that moment. I don’t participate in many challenges or book tours, mostly because I don’t want to feel constrained when choosing what to read next.

What has blogging done for you, and how do you try to serve your readers? What should a reader expect to get out of a visit to Everyday I Write the Book?
I try to serve my readers by offering honest reviews of what I’ve read, and sharing titles of books that they may not come across in their own travels. I am honest to a fault – even if I am writing about a review copy or participating in the EDIWTB book club, I will say exactly what I think of a book, even if it’s negative. I don’t think sugarcoating or focusing only on the positive is helpful to anyone (except maybe the author). People trust my opinion, and that’s the best I have to offer, so I offer my whole, unedited opinion.
A reader visiting EDIWTB can hopefully expect to learn about a book that may be a bit off the beaten path (but not always – I have read some pretty popular books), and can expect honest and hopefully well-written reviews of the book I’ve read. I also do some author Q&As and guest posts, and attend frequent author readings, which I always write up for the blog.

When do you do your blogging? How much time do you spend on blogging every day?
I do most of my blogging late at night, between 11-12 PM. I usually post 3-4 times a week, and posts usually take me about 45 minutes each.
 
What is the best book you’ve read this year?
The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. I was late to the party on this one, but it has stayed with me.
 
What are your passions outside of reading?
I used to be a huge TV watcher, but with fewer hours to devote to it, and the everpresent temptation of the laptop, I am a much less engaged viewer than I used to be. I love my 5 year old girls, my basenji, and music, and I am somewhat obsessed with social media.
 
Where do you learn about new books?
I used to learn about new books from traditional book reviews and magazines, but I am getting my recommendations more often now from book bloggers and Twitter. I also get a lot of review copies in the mail, so I learn about new books that way too. One of my favorite activities is browsing the fiction shelves of bookstores I love, on the prowl for new books I haven’t heard of before.

Thanks, Gayle. You can see my answers to some of these same interview questions at Every Day I Write the Book Blog.

Of eReaders and Books

Sep14

There’s a special promotion going on at Book Blogger Appreciation Week in which IREX Technologies is giving away one of their new eReaders. To be in the running, we are asked to write a post about the most important feature in an eReader.

Since I was thinking about Kindles and similar book readers way back last spring, and I jotted down some notes but never transferred those thoughts to the blog, I thought this would be a good opportunity to write about the newest twist to an old technology–books.

Last spring, I wrote:

I think I want a Kindle. For the uninitiated, a Kindle is Amazon’s version of an electronic book reader. You download books from Amazon into your Kindle and read them on a page-sized screen. The Kindle is light-weight, like a book, and the print is supposed to be easy on the eyes. Right now it costs about $350. However, I figure either the price will go down, or the Kindle will acquire more features.

For that much money, I would like for my eReader to be an MPED—multi-purpose electronic device. I want it to be an eReader/Blackberry/iPhone thingy, without gaining weight. I want my MPED to:

* double as a cell phone with a port where I can plug in one of those cool headsets so that I would no longer be tempted to hold my cell phone and drive at the same time.

* get me on the internet to check my email and my favorite blogs just the way my iPhone does. No, I do not want to pay a subscription price per blog, and yes, I do want to be able to download books on the go wherever I can connect to free Wifi.

*receive TV and radio signals. I want to be able to download movies into my eReader, watch TV, and listen to the radio on it, too.

I like the size of the Kindle, lightweight and about the size of a sheet of paper, or an 8 1/2 by 11 inch book. Blackberries and iPhones are too small for reading comfortably, and laptops are too bulky to carry around just for reading. I like that the primary purpose of the Kindle is reading books. Even if it branches out, the focus will remain on books and applications for book people.

I don’t like this little episode. If I pay for a book, on my eReader or in print, I want to own it. No backsies. And I don’t want to be limited to one bookseller; I want to be able to download books into my eReader from multiple sources, just like I can buy songs for iTunes from anywhere.

Come to think of it, an eReader that is just a reader, not a phone or a Wifi internet device or a radio would be fine, as long as I can get books for it wherever I want and as long as they belong to me to do whatever I want with them after I purchase them.

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

Sep14

Recommended by 3M at 1 More Chapter. Also recommended by Random Wonderer.

I told my Algebra 2 teacher in high school that I hated math. He should have handed me this novel by award-winning author Yoko Ogawa (translated by Stephen Snyder), not that it was even a spark in the eye back then. I still don’t care much for mathematics, but if you can put it in a story, a really good story, I’ll go along with it, and even, almost see the beauty. I always enjoyed the story problems a lot more than I did the ones that were just straight numbers.

The Professor is a brilliant math professor, retired as a result of an accident in which he sustained a head injury. Now he’s a solver of math puzzles living on the bounty of his widowed sister-in-law because The Professor can only remember the last eighty minutes of his life, and everything that happened before 1975 when the accident took place.

The Housekeeper is the fifth in a succession of housekeepers hired to care for the professor —and to be re-introduced to him each morning and several times a day since the professor has no long term memory. The Housekeeper is able to give the professor acceptance and the gift of no expectations. The Professor is able to give the Housekeeper and her son, Root, the gift of friendship and of mathematics. Numbers are the Professor’s friends; and he has the ability to make those numbers and their properties tell stories, provoke thought, and give life to those around him, especially to The Housekeeper and to Root.

The novel includes a bit of mystery: what is the Professor’s relationship with his sister-in-law? Why does she tell The Housekeeper not to consult her about anything concerning the Professor? I’ll even warn you that the mystery is never fully resolved. However, the central relationships are those between The Professor, The Housekeeper, and Root. The book is a lovely exploration of friendship without conditions attached and passion for the depth of God’s creation in the form of mathematics.

And I explored imaginary numbers, triangular numbers, square roots, primes, and factorials, and amicable numbers, painlessly and delightfully explained and illustrated in the life and stories of The Professor. Do you know about the relationship between the numbers 220 and 284? I do now, and it’s rather incredible.

Read the book.

Hymn #34: ‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus

Sep14

Lyrics: Louisa M.R. Stead, 1882.

Music: William J. Kirkpatrick

Theme: Every word of God is flawless;
he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.
Proverbs 30:5

Louisa Stead lived an amazing life, one in which events must have tempted her many times to lose trust instead of resting upon His promise. And yet . . .

Louisa had always felt a calling to be a missionary and go to China. But due to fragile health she was kept home in the US. She married Mr. Stead, and the couple had a daughter named Lily. When Lily was four years old the family went on vacation to a nearby beach. While there, relaxing and enjoying their vacation, they saw a young boy drowning in the ocean. Mr. Stead swam out and tried to rescue him, but he was pulled under by the boy and both Mr. Stead and the boy drowned as Louisa and her daughter watched from shore. Louisa was left without any means of support except for God’s care. She and her daughter were in dire poverty. One day when there was no food in the house and no money to purchase any, Louisa opened the front door to find someone had left groceries and money sitting there for her. That same day she sat down and wrote “Tis so Sweet to Trust in Jesus.” She later became a missionary to Africa, remarried and once again was forced to return to the US due to her health. But once recovered she went back into the missionary field in Rhodesia and later died in Zimbabwe. Her daughter Lily married and became a missionary as well.

1. ‘Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus,
and to take him at his word;
just to rest upon his promise,
and to know, “Thus saith the Lord.”
Refrain:
Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him!
How I’ve proved him o’er and o’er!
Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus!
O for grace to trust him more!

2. O how sweet to trust in Jesus,
just to trust his cleansing blood;
and in simple faith to plunge me
neath the healing, cleansing flood!

3. Yes, ’tis sweet to trust in Jesus,
just from sin and self to cease;
just from Jesus simply taking
life and rest, and joy and peace.

4. I’m so glad I learned to trust thee,
precious Jesus, Savior, friend;
and I know that thou art with me,
wilt be with me to the end.

Peggy Nickles of Hymn Blessings sent me her list of favorite 10 hymns when I was taking votes back in May, and she told me about her new business. ‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus was on Peggy’s list, a combined list of her favorites and her customers’ most requested hymns. Here’s the short version of how she came to create Hymn Blessings:

“My collection of old hymn books, the ones in really bad shape with pages loose from their bindings, the ones that were battered, discarded, and rescued by me, were the inspiration for the first Hymn Blessing.

A loose page fell to the floor. I picked it up and found it to be one of my father’s favorite hymns Great Is Thy Faithfulness. I had an idea! I mounted the hymn on a very fine ivory linen card stock and painted my father’s favorite yellow roses around its borders. I slipped it into a warm, brown, wood frame, and later realized I had created the first Hymn Blessing.”

Submit your story about a favorite hymn before September 30, to be entered into a drawing to win your own Hymn Blessing.

BBAW: My Favorite Book Blogs

Sep14

There are an awful lot of book blog and book bloggers out there, folks. I’m enjoying discovering new ones by means of Book Blogger Appreciation Week. However, the song we used to sing in Brownies said, “Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver and the other’s gold.”

The following are some of my favorites that were, for some odd reason, NOT shortlisted for a Book Blogger Appreciation Week Award:

Brandywine Books: Phil and Lars are the best at finding interesting book news and recommending good books and just generally writing good stuff.

Mental Multivitamin. Madame M-MV has been a favorite ever since I discovered her blog, not long after I started this one. She’s insightful, opinionated, intelligent, and agrees with me just enough of the time, but not too much. Iron sharpening iron. Oh, and M-MV is my tutor in Bardolatry.

Camille’s blog Book Moot makes me remember why I became a school librarian many, many years ago, and why I miss the job sometimes. Her love of children’s books is contagious.

Mindy Withrow is an author and a great reviewer. She’s the one who told me about Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski, one of my favorite reads this year so far.

Brenda hosts Sunday Afternoon Tea at Coffee, Tea, Books and Me each Sunday, and during the week she’s always a source of calm, frugality, and good book recommendations.

Mitali’s Fire Escape is the best author blog I know. YA and children’s author Mitali Perkins blogs about life and books between cultures, and she asks thought-provoking questions and hosts the discussions that ensue.

There are more, but these are the ones I keep coming back to read —old friends even though we’ve never met in person.

Hymn #35: The Love of God

Sep13

Lyrics: Frederick Lehman, 1917.

Music: Frederick Lehman, arranged by his daughter, Claudia Mays.

Theme: As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. John 15:9.

Frederick Lehman: “The profound depths of the lines moved us to preserve the words for future generations. Not until we had come to California did this urge find fulfillment, and that at a time when circumstances forced us to hard manual labor. One day, during the short intervals of inattention to our work, we picked up a scrap of paper and added the first two stanzas and chorus to the existing third verse lines.”

Brother Maynard calls this hymn “The Greatest Hymn Ever Written” and recounts the entire story of its genesis, a story that includes an Orthodox Jewish rabbi and poet, an anonymous inmate in an insane asylum, and Mr. Lehman, a Nazarne pastor and hymnwriter.

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell.
It goes beyond the highest star
And reaches to the lowest hell.
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled
And pardoned from his sin.

O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure
The saints’ and angels’ song.

When hoary time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall;
When men who here refuse to pray,
On rocks and hills and mountains call;
God’s love, so sure, shall still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
The saints’ and angels’ song.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

I remember this hymn from earliest childhood because my mother used to hum and sing it frequently, and she still does. In fact, I heard her singing “It shall forevermore endure, the saints’ and angels’ song” just a couple of weeks ago in my car.

Sunday Salon: What a Week!

Sep13

The Sunday Salon.comTomorrow starts Book Blogger Appreciation Week, and I’m stoked. I’ve already enjoyed discovering lots of new-to-me book blogs as I explored the blogs nominated for awards. And I also, of course, gleaned lots of titles for my TBR list:

Short Girls by Bich Minh Ngyuen. Recommended by My Friend Amy.

Hands of My Father by Myron Uhlberg. Recommended at Nonfiction Book Reviews.

The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry. Recommended by Trish at Hey Lady, Whatcha’ Readin’?

Fire by Kristin Cashore. Recommended by Jen Robinson (and lots of others).

Rachel Ray by Anthony Trollope. Recommended by Carol at MagistraMater.

The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness. Recommended, together, by Becky at Becky’s Book Reviews.

It’s going to be a busy week here at Semicolon. The Top 100 Hymns are back. I have an interview to post for Book Blogger Appreciation Week on Tuesday. I have several books to review. And I need to write something to spur me, and you, on to good works in the area of homeschooling. Please join in, leave a comment to tell me what you’re reading and enjoying.

Hang on; it’s going to be good!

BBAW: Best Series or Feature

Sep12

Voting is now open at the Book Blogger Appreciation Week Awards.

451 Fridays at As Usual, I Need More Bookshelves 451 Fridays is based on the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Each Friday Elizabeth asks a blogger or an author, “What 5 books do you believe are important enough to be saved, and why?” and then, “What book would you become?”

Author Recipes at Maw Books Blog Natasha: “I ask every single author that I interview . . . to share a recipe with us, particularly if it’s talked about in the book. I later make the recipe and blog about it.” Here are a couple from two of my favorite authors: Whoopie Pies from Cynthia Lord, author of Rules and Zucchini Soup from Shannon Hale.

Scene of the Blog at Kittling: Books Cathy’s feature called Scene of the Blog which show us pictures of where those bloggers we know and love actually blog.

Spotlight on Bookstores at She Is Too Fond of Books Dawn visits bookstores, my favorite places, in her Spotlight on Bookstores. Her guest writers also visit bookstores, and since I see that she hasn’t made it to Houston or had a guest post form Houston, I’ll have to volunteer.

What a Girl Wants at Chasing Ray Collen’s series is a bit more serious as she explores YA books for girls: “‘ll be posting a single question and then their answers as we talk about what a girl wants – and what she gets – when it comes to reading.”

All good, again, but I’ll vote for 451 Fridays at As Usual, I Need More Bookshelves.

BBAW: Best New Blog

Sep12

Voting is now open at the Book Blogger Appreciation Week Awards.

Beth Fish Reads Beth Fish is “a book lover and freelance book professional blogging incognito.” Her blog dates back to August 2008. Here’s a list of her reviews so far. BF has posted links at the Saturday Review, and I’ve enjoyed her reviews.

Books and Bards Nicole says of her blog, “This is a watering hole where readers and writers can share their love of stories, words, and the music of language. I feature reviews, bookish news, writer resources, author interviews, and literary discussions.” Nicole began her blog in June of this year with this post that I wish I’d written —except I’m not writing novel and verbal acrobatics are something I only aspire to do.

Galleysmith is the blog home of Michelle who started out blogging by going on the road: she sponsors The Literary Road Trip Project, a project I’ve joined but have yet to contribute towards. (I do have a Texas Project in mind that I think will mesh well with the Literary Road Trip.) Michelle’s blog began in May 2009 with a review of Nora Roberts’ Vision in White.

Scifiguy.ca I already took a look at SciFiGuy out of Canada and gave my vote to his blog for Best Speculative Fiction Blog. As I said SciFiGuy, aka Doug, runs a good blog

Steph Su Reads
Steph Su Read mostly YA, and she has a good handle on the genre, see this pst on Race and Ethnicity in YA. Steph also has a regular feature called Waiting on Wednesday in which she tells us all about the books she’s waiting for the publishers to release so that she can read them. Don’t we all have some of those?

All five of these New Blogs are great, and I wish them all the best with their continued blogging endeavors. However, my vote goes to GalleysmithGalleysmith, a blog that I’m also going to add to my feedreader, as soon as I figure out to do that on my new computer. (I used to have a thingie I could click on that said “Add to Bloglines”, but I don’t remember where I got it.)

BBAW: Best Blog Post

Sep12

Voting is now open at the Book Blogger Appreciation Week Awards.

This Blogging Thing Reminds Me of High School (Hey Lady, Whatcha’ Readin’?) : “I can only compare myself to me. Is my writing getting better? Are my insights into books getting more thoughtful? Is the traffic to my blog, which is tangible, growing each month?”

On Fantasy and Why I Read It (Things Mean a Lot): “I’ve been told that fantasy is meaningless because it’s not about real people or real situations. And I ask, what else could it possibly be about? No, Middle-Earth, Narnia, Prydain, Earthsea and Discworld do not exist, but is anything that happens there really unheard of? What are their inhabitants doing, if not dealing with very human situations and dilemmas? “

Write the Words of My Heart (My Friend Amy): “. . . the words, the metaphors, the symbols, and the examples that resonated with me…like someone had come along and plucked the words out of my heart that I couldn’t put together myself and wrote a book that reflected my thoughts right back at me.”

The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker (Maw Books Blog): “It’s very rare for my husband and I to read the same book but he finished reading The Little Giant of Aberdeen County before I even started. He was thoroughly engrossed with this book and quickly finished it.” Then, Natasha proceeds to transcribe a hilariously typical husband/wife exchange about the book.

I really liked Natasha’s review best. The the book discussion she and her husband have is so perfect. They really do have some insight into the book, but the conversation is punctuated with “we’re not getting very deep” and “this is boring” and “Wait! Don’t put that in there!” Husbands and wives should read together more often; the marriage that reads together . . . doesn’t get boring?