I found this meme over at bookeywookey, although apparently it started at Kimbooktu. I couldn’t quite resist; you know me and books:

1. Hardcover or paperback, and why?

Paperback. I like my books to be easy to carry around with me, so I can read them anywhere. I prefer my cookbooks hardcover, however, because some varieties of hardcover lie open more easily than paperback.

2. If I were to own a book shop I would call it…

Errant Dreams, probably, because I so inextricably associate books with daydreaming.

3. My favorite quote from a book (mention the title) is…

Favorite? I wouldn’t dare try to put forth a favorite. As I’ve mentioned before, my memory is like Swiss cheese without the cheese, so if I said something was my favorite I’d be back here 10 times to correct myself. Instead, here’s the most recent quote that I really enjoyed from a book, which I included in a review I posted recently:

All the same, we’re sticking with the unlucky vulture. Whether he was a visionary or just a frozen ball of feathers tossed in the path of destiny, he still got there. Effort is admirable, but elevation is… well, it’s elevating.

‘Frozen ball of feathers tossed in the path of destiny.’ How could I resist? Thinking about it a little further though, I have to guess that if I were capable of remembering a favorite, it would almost certainly be something Neil Gaiman had written.

4. The author (alive or diseased) I would love to have lunch with would be ….

Diseased?! I really hope they meant deceased!

Anyway, I think I’d have to go with Anne Bishop. Assuming I could guarantee that I’d be in a sociable frame of mind, and not so nervous that I’d spend the entire time tongue-tied.

5. If I was going to a deserted island and could only bring one book, except from the SAS survival guide, it would be…

Not to mention it twice in two weeks, but… How it was with Dooms. I could read that over and over again. And over.

6. I would love someone to invent a bookish gadget that….

…could easily hold a book open while making it easy to turn a page with one hand, so I could prop a book just about anywhere (in one hand, on my lap, on an exercise bike or treadmill) and read without effort and without my book snapping closed on me.

7. The smell of an old book reminds me of….

The annual library book sale in Ithaca that I used to go to with my grandmother while she was alive. It took up multiple floors of a building, and the books were incredibly cheap. It was magical.

8. If I could be the lead character in a book (mention the title), it would be….

Well, as much as I love the Black Jewels trilogy, I wouldn’t want to be Jaenelle—I’m not up to living her life. Instead, I’d want to be Lirael from Garth Nix’s Abhorsen trilogy.

9. The most overestimated book of all times is….

I could never really answer this… books are too individual for such a sweeping statement. Something I hate is bound to really touch someone else.

10. I hate it when a book….

Assumes the readers are stupid. I VERY much prefer books that assume some intelligence on the part of the reader. They don’t over-explain, walk you through every tiny thing as though you couldn’t figure anything out for yourself, etc. My other major pet peeve is to come across a character that says, essentially, “yes, I do know that, but explain it to me again,” for no better reason than to impart information to the reader. That’s just plain sloppy.

Book Nerd

This week’s Booking Through Thursday:

Buy a Friend a Book Week is October 1-7 (as well as the first weeks of January, April, and July). During this week, you’re encouraged to buy a friend a book for no good reason. Not for their birthday, not because it’s a holiday, not to cheer them up–just because it’s a book.

What book would you choose to give to a friend and why?

Absolutely, positively, How It Was With Dooms, a photo-story about a family that adopted a cheetah cub. In fact, I’ve bought this book for multiple people already. Every single time I read it, it makes me cry. And the pictures are so awesome—touching, funny, astounding. Everyone should read it.

Well okay, not everyone. That was hyperbole. But still, most of the people I’m good friends with would love that book if they haven’t read it already.

In only semi-related news, yesterday’s book review was of EatingWell Serves Two.

Bildo tagged me, so, here ya go. This will take some thinking, because my memory is like swiss cheese… without the cheese.

Four jobs I have had in my life (not including current job):

• Waitress (summer job in high school)
• Book shelver at an MIT library (student job)
• Lab assistant at a materials science lab (student job)
• Secretary at an MIT department (first the theoretical physics dept., then the clinical decision making group at the lab for computer science)

Four Movies I have watched over and over:

This is a tough one, because I don’t tend to watch movies over and over (not so much free time, and I like newness/variety). How about four movies I’d watch over and over if given the opportunity?

• “The 300″—I know it isn’t popular to say that any more since people have over-quoted it, but I still adore the fight scenes.
• “Pitch Black”—another unpopular answer I’m sure, but I love the creepy atmosphere in the movie.
• “Grosse Pointe Blanke”—okay, this is one I actually have watched over and over.
• “Serenity”—so what if it wasn’t perfect? I’d watch it over and over just to see River kick ass!

Four places I have lived:

Delaware; Vermont; Massachusetts; New Hampshire.

Four Shows I love to watch:

I have difficulty getting myself to sit down in front of the TV and actually watch anything, so I catch up on these things when I can.

Stargate SG-1; Battlestar Galactica (the new, natch); Heroes; CSI; Eureka.

Okay, that was more than four. Sue me.

Four Places I have been on vacation:

Canada; Holland (for my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary); Atlanta, Georgia (visiting then-future in-laws); Ithaca, New York (visiting relatives).

Four of my favorite foods:

Mint chocolate chip ice cream; extra-sharp cheddar cheese; bittersweet chocolate; fresh homemade bread.

Four favorite drinks:

Ice water; lemonade; hot chocolate; coffee.

Four places I would rather be right now:

Asleep (I hate insomnia); someplace cool and non-humid… eh, that’s about it.

Four People I Command to do This:

I’m too tired to think of someone. Instead, if you’d like to do this meme, go ahead and consider yourself auto-tagged.

From this week’s Booking Through Thursday:

Okay . . . picture this (really) worst-case scenario: It’s cold and raining, your boyfriend/girlfriend has just dumped you, you’ve just been fired, the pile of unpaid bills is sky-high, your beloved pet has recently died, and you think you’re coming down with a cold. All you want to do (other than hiding under the covers) is to curl up with a good book, something warm and comforting that will make you feel better.

What do you read?

(Any bets on how quickly somebody says the Bible or some other religious text? A good choice, to be sure, but to be honest, I was thinking more along the lines of fiction…. Unless I laid it on a little strong in the string of catastrophes? Maybe I should have just stuck to catching a cold on a rainy day….)

Given the whole string of catastrophes, I’d be far too inconsolable to read. But take a few out and I’d be headed straight for some sort of mindless adventure or thriller. To be honest I wouldn’t pick a favorite, specific book, because I wouldn’t want to ‘taint’ it with those kinds of associations. Instead I’d go for some sort of brain-candy book that I hadn’t read yet. An Indiana Jones-type treasure hunt, most likely.

Edited to add: The new book review for today is Hip-Hop Hares and Other Moments of Epic Silliness.

The Superfast Reader tagged me to do a book cover meme:

Go to the advanced book search on Amazon, type your first name into the Title field, and post the most interesting/amusing cover that shows up.

Since she used ’superfast’ as her search, I figured I could use ‘errant’ as mine. And lo, it turned up this fabulous cover:

I really think I couldn’t have asked for better!

Anyway, for some tagging. I’m going to tag Kailana, Stephanie, Booklogged, and Sherid.

I almost forgot about the Booking Through Thursday today!

There was a widely bruited-about statistic reported last week, stating that 1 in 4 Americans did not read a single book last year. Clearly, we don’t fall into that category, but . . . how many of our friends do? Do you have friends/family who read as much as you do? Or are you the only person you know who has a serious reading habit?

While I know people who don’t get to read as much as they’d like to, and who don’t read as much as I do, I’m not aware of knowing anyone who actually doesn’t read. I suppose it’s possible; I certainly don’t quiz all my friends on their reading habits, and I can think of one or two people who might or might not read. However, I think just by nature of my interests I tend to get along best with other folks who read. We have more in common to talk about if nothing else.

Speaking of which, someone noted on one of my reviews the other day that I had read the book really quickly after my previous review. I can read a book in anywhere from 2 weeks to 12 hours. This figure depends on several things: how busy I am with other matters; how restless I am (ADD & PTSD both contribute to bouts of extreme restlessness); how interesting or boring the book is; and whether I’m in a “reading mood.” I’ve finished big, thick hardbacks by starting in the morning and finishing in the evening, but sometimes I’m lucky if I get through a few pages in a day. Just yesterday evening I read the first 200 pages of Connelly’s A Darkness More than Night, probably in the space of about 4 hours.

Eeek. I got tagged. So, here are the standard rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. List eight (8) random facts about yourself.
3. Tag eight people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving them a comment on their blogs.

Now for the eight facts. Uhh, this’ll take some thinking, I think. I keep having to suppress the urge to slip in facts that are related to my life but not really about me.

1. I’ve been playing tabletop roleplaying games for about 20 years. One time when my aunt asked what book I was reading and I replied that it was a book for a roleplaying game she cut me off and turned away (apparently this was not a ‘worthy’ pursuit). Regardless, it’s one of the most fun and imagination-expanding hobbies ever, and is one of the ways in which we spend time with some of our best friends!

2. When I was 31 a doctor’s office receptionist asked if I needed an adult to sign for me. She thought I might be under 18.

3. I’m very short; I’m not even an inch over 5 feet tall. Somehow this tends to surprise people who know me from online; I remember someone in Warcraft when I was playing a troll warrior saying he was sure I was some sort of tall Amazon.

4. I attended both MIT and Harvard. Before you find this impressive, realize that I dropped out of MIT after less than two years, and left the Boston area before I could finish my psych degree at Harvard. Taking night classes at Harvard was awesome though because the profs knew we were there because we wanted to be, unlike many of their daytime students, so they enjoyed teaching us and this enthusiasm made their classes more fun. They also gave us less homework because they knew we had jobs.

5. I am an extreme introvert in real life—although less so than I used to be.

6. I have five (5) diagnosed mental disorders—some biological and genetic in origin, some experience-based, ranging from bipolar disorder and ADD to PTSD. Despite this I get on pretty damn well, partly because of the miracle of modern medicine, partly because of the support of wonderful family and friends, and partly because of sheer stubbornness.

7. Every single day of the last more-than-10-years I’ve considered how lucky I am to have my now-husband. Like many women I long had the tendency to date people who were like my father, even if they didn’t seem like it on the surface, and I was extremely lucky to finally break free of that and find someone amazing, kind, thoughtful and helpful, with more integrity in his little finger than anyone else I can think of. I don’t talk about him much here because I think it should largely be up to him to decide how much gets said about him online, but suffice it to say that he’s awesome. Ladies, you can be jealous: he does the dishes and vacuums!

8. Let’s be honest: our cats rule the household, particularly Selene, whom we refer to as our “tyrant queen.” We have a morning ritual: while I’m eating breakfast she’ll sit on my right knee. When I’m done eating I’ll gently put my fingertips on her sides. If she doesn’t jump down at that (which she almost never does), then I pick her up and hold her on my shoulder for our morning cuddle. If I’m in a hurry and forget to do this she gets testy.

And yes, that title of “tyrant queen” is despite the fact that she’s an adorable little ball of fuzz that weighs barely more than 7 lbs:

Okay, now for the tagging. If any of you don’t want to meme, just pretend I didn’t tag you. Scott, Melmoth (because who could be more hilarious?!), Bildo, Cynthia, Cereal Girl, Chessack, Aaron, and female-gamer. I’ll drop you all the requisite note after breakfast.

When I see that a blogger whose work I’ve read has posted a piece of fiction for others to look at, more often than not I skip it. I do this for two, intertwined reasons:

1. I’m a book reviewer and published author.
2. I can’t hide my feelings—if I don’t like something, I can’t say otherwise.

I know that these people aren’t looking for the kind of criticism I regularly give to books. I can’t just turn off the parts of my brain that note all the painfully trite material and the cardboard characters. So, in the interests of not hurting their feelings, I just pretend I didn’t notice those blog posts.

The irony of it is, most of these folks say (and do honestly believe) that they want criticism. Unfortunately, what they don’t realize is that not all criticism is the same. When they’re just starting out they need a sort of broad-level critique of such elements as character and plot (without delving into the nit-picky details of word choice and such), tempered with a good dose of encouragement.

They aren’t likely to get that by posting on a blog. Most of the folks who read what they wrote are going to have an easier time noting mis-spellings and awkward word choices than the base-level issues they should be working on first. Also, because of a whole combination of factors (the natural defensive reaction to criticism; the fact that the blogger probably has no real idea how in-depth good criticism can be; the natural desire of others in the blogger’s circle of friends to bolster him with encouragement), anyone who does try to be helpful with honest criticism will probably be shouted down or driven away.

People who want to work on their writing are far better off either joining a workshop group with folks of a similar level of ability, or taking creative writing classes from a decent teacher. Most of them need to work gradually up to a thorough level of criticism, not jump straight into the deep end of the pool, and it would be mean of me to give them the full brunt of something they’re not ready for.

Anyway, I kind of got off-track here. To reiterate, because of all these things, I largely skip over any postings of fiction on most blogs I read. If I can honestly say that I haven’t read a piece yet then I don’t have to worry about hurting someone’s feelings. Thus it was with mild trepidation that I read Skin to Skin [read my review], by a blogger whose snarky reviews I love: Dionne Galace. Not as much trepidation as usual, mind you, because this was published by an actual e-book publisher and I have a fair amount of faith in her ability at this point. But still. I knew that if I read it and hated it, I wouldn’t be able to say otherwise.

So, it’s a good thing that I liked it! I found the beginning to be a bit awkward, but for a debut piece by a fresh author, that’s hardly a sin. After all, I’ve reviewed full-length novels lately that as far as I’m concerned never should have been published in the state they were in.

Therefore, if you like romance/erotica, I definitely suggest that you check out her novella. It’s an inexpensive download, and it’s a helluva fun read!

I don’t tell my characters what to do.
I just take dictation!

A flood of review books came home to roost this weekend (how’s that for mixing my metaphors?) and I thought that meant it was time for an update. So, here’s the current list of upcoming book reviews:

• “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Starting a Home-Based Business,” Barbara Weltman
• “Whole Grain Breads,” Peter Reinhart
• “What Shat That?” Matt Pagett (don’t ask!)
• “Crystal Rain,” Tobias S. Buckell
• “Ragamuffin,” Tobias S. Buckell
• “I Married a Pirate,” Samantha David
• “The Painted Messiah,” Craig Smith
• “Thirteen,” Sebastian Beaumont
• “The Gift of Rain,” Tan Twan Eng
• “Skin to Skin,” Dionne Galace
• “Bestiary,” Robert Masello
• “A Darkness More Than Night,” Michael Connelly
• “Split,” Tara Moss

(updated 8/23)

Yes, 12 books and a short, only three of which are library books and one of which is an ebook I purchased. Ye gods I’m insane.

This is gonna be fun!

This morning I posted my review of Dr. Jeffrey Anderson’s Second Genesis. This was not a book that I enjoyed, and it’s very memorable for being only the fourth item I’ve reviewed—out of more than 500—to which I’ve applied a rating of one out of five.

It’s interesting that authors and fans seem to think that reviewers take great pleasure in cutting down other people’s work, when in fact I’ve found the opposite to largely be true. I’ve seen many people be soft in their ratings because they’re afraid to hurt the author’s feelings or they’re afraid someone will get angry at them for not liking the work; it’s easier to be liked for being a nice person, after all. I think hard before I give something a low rating, certainly, and I always feel a mild sense of dread when I post such a review—I know someone is going to give me hell for it, whether it’s the author or a fan, friend or relative. I often catch hell just for giving something a less-than-perfect review, after all, particularly if it’s a popular book.

This attitude mystifies me. It presupposes that there is such a thing as a ‘perfect’ book or writer, with which one cannot find fault; since I believe that the skill of writing is something that a writer is always developing or perfecting, I cannot agree with this. If this were true, there would be almost no need for editors in the book business, as publishing houses could simply take perfect manuscripts from these perfect writers and publish them as-is.

This attitude also presupposes that there is a set definition or set of standards by which we could identify the perfect book. As people seem so much more willing to accept when it comes to the visual arts, artistic works are something we judge and interpret through our own internal viewpoints. No two people will see the same painting or the same book in the exact same way. We all have different tastes; for instance, I have no interest in Westerns, and I know plenty of people who don’t want to read horror while I love a good fright. I’d likely find a supposedly good Western to be boring, and someone else might find my idea of a good horror novel to be pointless or offensive. This should make it obvious from the get-go that there’s no perfect book, no one set of standards by which to judge books, and no one viewpoint about a book which will be ‘correct’.

I read some commentary over at the book/daddy blog on a book by Gail Poole, and the subject was, rather than ‘objective’ reviews, fair reviews. This is an argument I’ve had with people before, always those same people who are berating me for finding some fault with a book they love. These people argue that it’s entirely possible to write a completely objective book review—one that leaves out entirely any biases or feelings on the part of the reader.

I wholeheartedly disagree. I believe it’s entirely possible to write a fair review, but not an objective one. We are, after all, human beings. We can no more turn off our emotional reactions to a piece of art than we can throw a switch and stop loving or hating a person. Nor can we prevent those reactions from coloring how we see and judge that work. However, we can certainly be open and honest about our biases, and provide enough information when writing a review that even those who don’t see things the way we do are capable of gleaning useful information from our reviews.

To me, there is little better compliment with respect to my reviewing than to have someone tell me they can tell by my effusive review of something that I loved that they wouldn’t enjoy it, or to see someone purchase an item based on my having panned it. Both scenarios tell me that I’m doing my job—that I’m providing enough information in my review to help someone else make her own choice based on her own preferences.

I started reviewing on a whim in 1998, and oddly, it wasn’t until recently that I realized with a start that all my other writing endeavors and publications simply aren’t what I want to pursue; reviewing is where my passion lies. This was a somewhat difficult realization, as many writers sneer at reviewers as being somehow less than “real” writers. I’ve been told wonderful things about those pieces of fiction I’ve had published, and that feels great, but it doesn’t hold my interest the way reviewing does.

The one thing that’s very important to me, however, if I’m to do so much reviewing, is that I always be honest in my opinions. I won’t slam a book just because others think it’s cruddy. Likewise, I won’t praise a book just because people rake me over the coals for not liking it (my favorite is the person who told me I must have lost my lover to an SF author—apparently disliking one book makes me jealous and spiteful). I tell people not to send us review copies unless they’re willing to risk that the review won’t be positive, and I mean it. To be honest, I find it very uncomfortable letting someone know I’ve posted the review of their book when it’s a less-than-complimentary review, because I know what it’s like to get both good and bad reviews of your work and how difficult that can be. But I can’t let that stop me from saying what I think, or how could anyone trust the reviews I write? If reviewers can’t be honest then they might as well not review at all—their words would be little different from the publishers’ own press releases.

Anyway, that’s my rant for today, brought on by the (luckily!) unusual event of giving a book such a low rating.

Oh, I almost forgot. The real irony of getting berated for those low ratings? I’ve also been accused of being a softy for giving out so few of them. *sigh*

Books are a girl’s best friend