Booking Through Thursday – Learning to Read

Thursday 1 April, 2010 By 7 Comments

Do you remember learning to read? What’s your earliest reading memory?

Sadly I do not recall learning to read I just recall doing it as easily as one draws breath. I know I was reading quite well by the time I was three. My earliest memory, or the one that stands out the clearest was being taken to the Public Library when I was not yet in school. I recall enjoying being in the library and wishing I had a library card. So while I do not retain the memory of first learning to read, some of my fondest moments as a child where at libraries.

Anyone can play along each Thursday with Booking Through Thursday.

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Booking Through Thursday – Break?

Thursday 25 March, 2010 By 16 Comments

Do you take breaks while reading a book? Or read it straight through? (And, by breaks, I don’t mean sleeping, eating and going to work; I mean putting it aside for a time while you read something else.)

Not once in my four decades of reading, not even during my college lit/Russian lit years. Usually I cannot put a book down. I do not think I have the skill required to juggle more than one plot line, I have neither tried to nor do I plan to give it a go. I like to complete a book, digest it, and review the book before moving on to the next novel waiting to be read.

Anyone can play along each Thursday with Booking Through Thursday.

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Booking Through Thursday – Prose

Thursday 18 March, 2010 By 8 Comments

Which do you prefer? Lurid, fruity prose, awash in imagery and sensuous textures and colors? Or straight-forward, clean, simple prose?

Actually both. Some novels are better written and read in one form than the other. It depends on the message the writer is trying to convey to the reader. I am one who, if asked to choose, prefers well written novels with long prose. I am not certain what exactly “fruity prose” would encompass as I imagine everyone will have differing opinions of this terminology. I do enjoy words, and when an author, through prose can make me feel with all my senses as though I am in the novel, for me that is bliss. What are your thoughts on the topic?

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Booking Through Thursday – Illustrious

Thursday 11 March, 2010 By 7 Comments

How do you feel about illustrations in your books? Graphs? Photos? Sketches?

If the book requires them, such as a sociology, fitness, or health book I am all for them. Mainly I read historical fiction, memoirs, mysteries, and fiction. None of which require anything other than text.

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Booking Through Thursday – Grammar

Thursday 4 March, 2010 By 17 Comments

In honor of National Grammar Day … it IS “March Fourth” after all … do you have any grammar books? Punctuation? Writing guidelines? Style books?
More importantly, have you read them? How do you feel about grammar in general? Important? Vital? Unnecessary? Fussy?

Let me preface my answer by saying I am answering this question before coffee and while getting ready for a funeral. I agree readers, it is an odd time, but the only time I had. Yes I have grammar books, all from my college and post-college days. To save all of you the time it would take for subtraction, I was in college in the late 1980s. I honestly do not recall what the two main grammar books I have are at the moment. I have noticed with the increasing years of computer use, my grammar has declined, or maybe it is age, both? Back to my grammar books, both are rather large tomes and based on my writing as of late, I need to unearth them and use them, because yes, I find grammar to not only be important but vital in this new age of texting, IMing, Twitter, and all other shortcuts to communication. I would go into my fear that soon children will no longer know how to write, but fortunately dear readers, I am out of time. I do so look forward to reading how others answered this question when I return.

Edited to add: I speak several languages and while learning all of them, the focus on grammar was very strong. I notice my teens, each who speak at least one other language a piece, learn more grammar in their foreign language classes than their English classes. This makes me quite sad.

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Booking Through Thursday-Why I Read

Thursday 25 February, 2010 By 22 Comments

Today’s questioned was suggested by Janet:

I’ve seen this quotation in several places lately. It’s from Sven Birkerts’ ‘The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age’:
“To read, when one does so of one’s own free will, is to make a volitional statement, to cast a vote; it is to posit an elsewhere and set off toward it. And like any traveling, reading is at once a movement and a comment of sorts about the place one has left. To open a book voluntarily is at some level to remark the insufficiency either of one’s life or one’s orientation toward it.”
To what extent does this describe you?

I do so love to read. I am truly an unapologetic bibliophile. I do not believe the extent of my love of reading rests solely on the “insufficiency” of my life nor do I feel it is a reflection of my “insufficiency” to my orientation in life. I read because I yearn for knowledge. I crave the beautiful prose and the places I can be drawn into that I would not otherwise have been able to travel, especially in my beloved historical fiction novels. I am drawn to books, as a sensory reader, I crave the feel of the pages, the smell of the books, the words o the crisp pages, for me the entire experience is pure bliss.

Anyone can play along each Thursday with Booking Through Thursday.

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Booking Through Thursday – Olympic Reading

Thursday 18 February, 2010 By 13 Comments

You may have noticed–the Winter Olympics are going on. Is that affecting your reading time? Have you read any Olympics-themed books? What do you think about the Olympics in general? Here’s your chance to discuss!

I have noticed the Olympics are on telly and no, it has not affected my reading. A series of personal issues have affected my reading far more as of late and I am trying to play catch-up. I have not in recent memory read any Olympic themed books. I do so enjoy some aspects of the winter Olympics and others I can do without, as with most things in life.

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Booking Through Thursday – Encouraging Reading

Thursday 11 February, 2010 By 14 Comments

Today’s questioned was suggested by Barbara H:

How can you encourage a non-reading child to read? What about a teen-ager? Would you require books to be read in the hopes that they would enjoy them once they got into them, or offer incentives, or just suggest interesting books? If you do offer incentives and suggestions and that doesn’t work, would you then require a certain amount of reading? At what point do you just accept that your child is a non-reader?
In the book Gifted Hands by brilliant surgeon Ben Carson, one of the things that turned his life around was his mother’s requirement that he and his brother read books and write book reports for her. That approach worked with him, but I have been afraid to try it. My children don’t need to “turn their lives around,” but they would gain so much from reading and I think they would enjoy it so much if they would just stop telling themselves, “I just don’t like to read.”

I began reading to my boys when they were babies. They loved being read to and each learned to read very early. I was rather fortunate. They have a love for bookstores as well as libraries and all three request books for gifts. How would I encourage a non-reader? Lead by example, take the child to bookstores to look at books, magazines, newspapers, and comic books. Offer to take turns reading out loud to one another, share in the love of reading by finding books that are age appropriate on topics the child enjoys. I personally would not require book reports, while it worked well for Dr. Carson, I have seen many children turned off from reading because they viewed it as “work” rather than pleasure.

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Booking Through Thursday-Genre?

Thursday 4 February, 2010 By 18 Comments

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?

Oh how I wish we had snow! If we had snow I would be outside in it, I do love heavy snowstorms, but since I am not, I like to curl up with a good book, usually a long tome with a complex plot. So what genre am I in the mood for? It truly depends on my mood. Sometimes I want the classics, other times I prefer historical fiction, and some days I am drawn to suspense or a delightful cozy mystery. Today I am in the mood for a good suspense thriller.

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Booking Through Thursday – Complicated

Thursday 28 January, 2010 By 15 Comments

So, today’s question is in two parts.
1. Do YOU like books with complicated plots and unexpected endings?
2. What book with a surprise ending is your favorite? Or your least favorite?

1. I am a huge fan of complicated books, the more complex the better.

2. My least favourite type is book is one where I can, with a fair degree of accuracy, determine the ending as well as the means to the end, before I am a quarter of the way through the novel.

Anyone can play along each Thursday with Booking Through Thursday.

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