A Look Back... And a Look Ahead

Every year, I like to reflect back on my reading year and start planning - just a little - for the year ahead.

In 2012, I read 109 books. Since I started keeping track of my reading, this is the smallest number I've had, but it's also the first year that I have worked a full-time job. I also spent much of the beginning of the year reading nonfiction for a state award, which cut drastically into my reading time from January through May. So all in all, I'm pleased with the number.

My favorite new-to-me books of the year are (in order read):

• Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (read twice)
• The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt
• Defending Jacob by William Landay
• Wonder by R.J. Palacio
• Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
• Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
• Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
• The Chosen by Chaim Potok
• Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks
• Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman
• More Baths Less Talking by Nick Hornby
• Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
• The End of Your Life Book Club by William Schwalbe (review forthcoming)

The above list includes three nonfiction books and four children's/YA titles. I read two of them for my library book club.

Here are a few "just because" awards:

Added the most to my TBR list - Among Others by Jo Walton
Pure geeky fun - Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
My favorite authors still surprise me - Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones
Must recommend to everyone, now - The End of Your Life Book Club by William Schwalbe

Finally, as promised, a look ahead. I don't like to plan out too much of my reading ahead of time, but I have two goals for the coming year:

• Read more of my own books
• Read at least 6 new-to-me Shakespeare plays
• Read either War and Peace or Middlemarch

Let's see how I do in 2013!

A Passion for Books

edited by Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan
New York : Times Books, c1999.

The subtitle summarizes this collection better than I can: "A book lover's treasury of stories, essays, humor, lore, and lists on collecting, reading, borrowing, lending, caring for, and appreciating books." The only things in this collection left out in the subtitle are comics and quotes on books and reading.

Do you love to read? Do you love books just for the feel of them, for their presence in your home? Then this sort of collection, a book about books, is likely the type of read you'd be drawn to whether I had anything good to say about it or not. Fortunately, I found it to be a lot of fun dipping into this collection, whether reading for a prolonged period of time or trying to fit an essay into my lunch break.

I especially enjoyed "Lending Books" by Anatole Broyard, "Pillow Books" by Clifton Fadiman," "Invasion of the Book Envelopes" by John Updike, and "Why Does Nobody Collect Me?" by Robert Benchley. On the whole, the essays on collecting interested me less than others - but then, I'd be surprised if such a collection met my individual reading tastes precisely. This is the sort of book I would enjoy owning so I could simply read a selection of my choosing whenever I wanted and leave the rest behind. (Oh, let's be honest, what I'd really love to is to have a hundred such books and select my own favorites for compilation!) Recommended to all who would immediately identify themselves as Readers, and even more so to collectors.

Happy New Year!

I'm currently on vacation, but I'm hoping to post a "best of" 2011. Stay tuned! While you wait, here's a question to ponder:

Have you made any reading resolutions this year?

Mine is to read more books off my own bookshelves. This is tough for me, because I work in a library every day and see new books and interesting books come through often. And it's sooo easy to put a request on a book when I'm on the reference desk anyways...

Ahem. In all seriousness, my goal this year is to read one book from my own shelves to every library book I read. Yes, a 1:1 ratio. We'll see how long I can stick to that, but mainly my goal is to start reading through the 100+ unread books I've accumulated over the years. Perhaps as I read through I can make more room for favorites on the shelves! Wish me luck!

A Bit of Christmas Reading

Do you read any books specifically for the holiday season?

If so, do you have favorites you return to, or do you have favorite rereads you return to?

I thought I'd share a bit about my holiday reading. I celebrate Christmas, and enjoy reading a book or two in the month of December specifically about the Christmas season.

Every year - at least for the past five, and perhaps longer - I have read and reread Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It's become a sentimental favorite. There was one year that, besides reading it, I also watched just about every movie version I could get my hands on (including Muppet Christmas Carol and An American Christmas Carol).

But I also like to read something new. This year, I read The Father Christmas Letters by J.R.R. Tolkien. This is a really cute collection I enjoyed paging through. I could have read it in one sitting, but I spread it out a bit over two days. The stories of Father Christmas and the hapless Polar Bear are often funny, complete with reproductions of Tolkien's illustrations. While I probably wouldn't read it from beginning to end for myself, it would make a fun family read-aloud around Christmastime.

So now that I've answered the questions I've put to myself, here's a final one for you:

What have you or will you read for the holiday season?

Re-reading With Audiobooks

One of my favorite choices for audiobooks to read on my commute are rereads of books I've enjoyed. Since I know the story, if I miss something because I'm driving or thinking or woolgathering, it's not a big deal. Also, I can really tune into what a narrator brings to the story because I don't have to focus as much on the plot.

All this is leading up to say that I've really enjoyed listening/re-reading the Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny, read by Ralph Cosham. The latest I've completed is A Rule Against Murder, which I originally read last year.

A narrator, I think, can really make or break the audiobook. They may have a different interpretation of the characters and their voices, or what word to emphasize. Ralph Cosham, in my opinion, does a truly excellent job. Most of the voices are spot on; only one, Gabri's, is really dissonant with my imagination. Some of the funny moments are even funnier because of Cosham's reading. His narration truly adds to my experience "reading" the books.

Can I recommend a book twice? I will in this case, once for the books and again for the audiobooks. I'm trying to spread them out, but I'm sure over the next few months I'll be revisiting A Brutal Telling in the same way.

Reading Expectations

Have you ever had the experience when someone else's ideas of your reading taste differed from your own? I've been thinking lately about these expectations we have - of ours or others' reading, and how that frames how we think of them as readers, or not.

I had two experiences recently that brought this to mind. The first was when I told someone I was reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. She loves the book, so I expected enthusiasm, but her response was, "Well...it's different from what you normally read." (Now, having read both Crime and Punishment and Twilight and quite a few books in between, I was a little surprised.) "What do I normally read?" I asked her. The answer: middle school fantasy. Which is true, to a point. It's a favorite genre of mine, and I read a lot of it. Plus, in many of my interactions in the children's room where we both work, I've recommended a lot of fantasy titles to patrons looking for ideas, because I am the librarian that reads that genre.

The second experience was at my other job, where my supervisor made a comment that I read poetry. I thought to myself, "Sure, during National Poetry Month, but not regularly." This time, I didn't bother to argue since at that very moment I had a collection of John Donne's poetry in my hand to check out. I figured that argument would sound a little weird: "Yes, but generally only once a year. This book? No, it's nothing, not a large Norton Critical Edition of a famous poet's work."

But neither of those interactions really capture what I read. I think it both cases, people have seen a part of what I'm interested in and made more general assumptions of what I like and what I read.

I wonder if we do that to our patrons, to our children. How often has a parent come in looking for a book to read for their kid who "Doesn't read" or "Only likes..." and talking to the child himself (or herself) brings up a totally different picture? I've had many an interaction with a patron who wanted recommendations for their child, and what they really wanted wasn't what the child wanted to read, but what the parent wanted them to read. Making both patrons - parent and child - happy is a balancing act that I admit I haven't fully mastered yet. Because I think the main issue - the expectations parents have of a child's reading - need to be treated carefully. I've thanked my mother several times lately for never telling me "That book is too easy for you" or "You've read that series five times now, let's look for something else." Rereading is a joy in itself. Reading books that are "too easy" boost confidence and still help children become stronger readers. But how do I communicate this in such a way that I'm coming alongside a parent trying to encourage their child to read, instead of placing myself at odds with them?

I still reread. I read children's, young adult, and adult books. I read classics and I read fantasy. I read broadly enough that I can be "mistaken" for both a fantasy and a poetry reader (and, granted, neither of them are fully off-base). Most of all, I'm thankful that I was given the freedom to explore books without expectations.

The Reading Promise

by Alice Ozma
New York : Grand Central Publishing, 2011.

When Alice was young, her father read to her every day. One day - they can't agree on exactly when - they challenged each other to read for 100 straight days. They went on to create a daily ritual that they referred to as "The Streak," reading for far more than the initial 100 days they had originally planned.

I had expected this memoir of reading to be more about "the books we shared," as part of the subtitle indicates. To be fair, Alice does include mentions of books read and how they related (or didn't) to her life. But there are also stories like the time she gave her beta fish a funeral and "The Boy-Haters Club of America" super-secret meetings. But at its heart, this is the story of the relationship she shares with her father as a result of the special times they spent together. Reading connected and connects father and daughter, a bond that shows in every vignette and every chapter.

Process and Discovery

Lately I've been reading The Rest is Noise by Alan Ross. I haven't been keeping up with my normal average of reading 2-3 books a week. No, I've been reading this one since February 26th.

Why am I taking so long?

The answer is twofold: the process of reading, and what I've discovered as I go along.

First, the process. The subtitle of the book is "Listening to the 20th Century," and the focus of the book has been about 20th century classical music. I know little about classical music, and even less about more recent classical music. Names like Beethoven, Bach and Mozart were much for familiar to me before picking up this book than names like Strauss, Mahler, and Messaien. So I challenged myself to listen to the ten recommended recordings from an appendix as I went through the book. Every time I came across the description of one of these recordings, I would stop and listen to it. Besides often not bringing the book along if I thought that I would reach a stopping point when I still had plenty of time to read, I often stopped to listen to hour-long symphonies or 2-hour long operas. I have to say, it's really made the reading experience richer. I would have enjoyed the history that permeates the story of classical music in Germany, France, and the United States, for example, without having listened to the CD. But I've also started to hear what dissonance sounds like, to realize how depressing operas apparently are (does anyone know of a happy one? I'd love to hear it), and started to gain an appreciation for composers I'd never listened to before.

Which leads to the second part: discovery. I have only about 50 pages left now, and I know that my "reading" of The Rest is Noise will continue beyond its pages. As a direct result of reading the book and listening to the recommended CDs, I've already started to discover beyond the book's pages. One of the recordings I listened to was "Appalachian Spring." I really enjoyed the music, and was intrigued enough by the page-long synopsis in the book to look into the 1958 videorecording of the ballet. The particular DVD I was able to get from the library was actually about Martha Graham, the choreographer of the ballet for whom Aaron Copland had written "Appalachian Spring." I'm almost ashamed to say it, but... I'd never heard of her before. So not only did I watch the 1958 recording, I also watched some of the extras, including a PBS broadcast about Martha Graham and a comparison of the 1958 with the 1944 choreography. This was fascinating stuff!

And this is just one example. I'm going to keep the list of the "20 more recommended recordings" from the appendix to eventually listen through. I've made a note of a handful of composers, such as Mahler and Stravinsky, whose music I enjoyed enough to want to listen to more. I want to know more about classical music before the 20th century. I want to learn more about music theory in general. I want to read Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks, a book that I've owned for awhile and never read.

Because with reading, one thing leads to another. This is just one of the many reasons I will never run out of reading material...because I'll never run out of things I want to learn!

2010 in Retrospect

In 2010, I read 135 books, including audiobooks and chapter books for children, teens, and adults. This is less than last year (156), but I was also working significantly more hours for the second half of the year, so all in all I'm pleased with that number.

I also kept track of picture book reading, which totaled 61.

Here are some of my memorable reads for the year, with links to my reviews (month finished in parentheses):

Fiction

• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Feb)
• Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (Mar)
• Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonsen (Apr)
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Aug)
• Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny (Sep - this entire series was a standout for me, but this was the of the best)
• Savvy by Ingrid Law (Oct)
• Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (Oct)
• Persuasion by Jane Austen (Nov)

Nonfiction

• The Lexicographer's Dilemma by Jack Lynch (Apr)
• At Large and At Small by Anne Fadiman (Jun)
• The Essays of E.B. White by E.B. White (Aug)
• The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel (Sep)

Poetry

• Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey (Apr)

I feel like I should at least mention that this is my only poetry book of the year, but even so it would still make my memorable reads list. Clearly I should be reading more poetry, but in all honesty picking a book of poetry and reading it intimidates me more than Shakespeare's plays.

Because I Want To Awards:
Most memorable but not best loved - Montana 1948 by Larry Watson (Aug)
Left me panting for the next one - Incarceron by Catherine Fisher (May)
Most surpassed my expectations - Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (Oct)
Most fun to recommend - Soulless by Gail Carriger (Mar)

Musings

I half expected most of my memorable reads to be early in the year, and be sort of the early great reads that I used as a measuring stick for the rest, but the numbers do not bear that out at all. April and October are tied for most-memorable-reads-in-a-month, with three a piece. Interestingly, January, July, and December reads did not make the cut. I'm not surprised by January: I only finished four books that month. The others are a bit of a mystery to me.

Here's to even more great reading in 2011! I'll be trying to keep clearer stats this year to determine how many children's, teen, and adults books I'm reading as well as the total, and posting monthly sum-ups as well.

Expectations vs. Reality

Raising Bookworms: Getting Kids Reading for Pleasure and Empowerment
by Emma Walton Hamilton
Sag Harbor, NY: Beach Tree Books, 2009.

My Children's Literature teacher taught me to review a book for what it is rather than what I want it to be. I'm trying to separate my expectations of what I wanted Raising Bookworms to be from my reactions to what it is, but it's really hard to distance myself from the experience of reading a book in order to look at it more analytically than emotionally, especially when the subject matter is one near and dear to my heart: getting kids to read. I should be up front about what I expected. I was hoping for a list of resources and suggestions that either might be handy in recommending books to children and teens in my capacity as reference librarian or that I could use to subtly encourage my younger sister to read.

The suggestions in the book, however, are of much more use to parents. Hamilton's main premise is that we should connect reading with joy, and many of her techniques such as reading aloud, creating a book nook, keeping books in every room, and modeling a love of reading yourself, hearken back to this main theme. Each chapter focuses on one age group - baby and toddler, preschool, elementary school, and middle school. She warns in the introduction that a lot of the techniques carry over into other age groups, so reading from cover to cover can be repetitive. Most of her suggestions are common sense; perhaps because I took so many courses in children's services, I didn't find a lot that I had not already known. Despite the introduction, I found myself quickly getting annoyed with the repetitive structure of the book and the frequent use of italics. At the end of each chapter, she includes a list of some of her "Family Favorites" as suggestions. I did enjoy the chapter of various resources - recommended books, awards, and websites - which again, was more along the lines of what I had expected from this read.

I was often bored or frustrated in the reading of the book, basically because it was not the book I wanted nor do I find it extremely useful right now, with no children and no real capability of putting her suggestions into practice either at home or at work. But what I did find was a handy resource to suggest to parents who want to interest their kids in reading from a young age and don't know where to start. The repetitive nature of her suggestions would probably be less obvious if you were to hone in on the applicable chapters for your children's ages. While the italics are still annoying (probably an editorial choice, but I felt like I was being talked down to) and the book suggestions put series titles out of order, it's generally a good resource and starting point for parents who want to positively reinforce reading in their homes.

For a completely different take on this book, check out this review from Reader's Advisor Online, which is also the blog that brought it to my attention in the first place.

Childhood Favorites Through Adult Eyes

It's always a little nerve-wracking to decide to reread childhood favorites. Will I still like the book this time? Will I shake my head at my younger self for enjoying such trash? Will it measure up to my memory? But I still revisit them from time to time, because there's always the chance that I'll still love the story and have a grown-up appreciation for details of plot, characterization, or theme that I missed the first time around.

I've been thinking of this tension lately because I recently finished The Adventures of Tom Sawyer for the second time. The first time I read it, I was probably in 5th or 6th grade. The book made enough of an impression on me that I still remember the joy I felt as a reader figuring out that Tom was tricking his friends into whitewashing the fence for him - and the narrator didn't even have to tell me! I remembered other details of the plot, too, though I was a little fuzzy on the exact order of events.

My adult eyes saw a different story from what I remembered. Yes, it was still funny and enjoyable, though more episodic than the cohesive story my memory conjured. Most notably, I realized how incredibly racist the characters were. I mean, even as a child I knew better than to use the n-word, but a lot of the statements regarding African Americans and American Indians really shocked me as an adult. I still enjoyed the adventure, especially the shenanigans that Tom and Huck get into, and I was able to laugh more at their superstitions.

Did it stand the test of time? It's hard to say. I can't say Tom Sawyer disappointed me, but reading it now I definitely have a more complex relationship with the story now as a result of my reread.

What are some childhood favorites that have had a different impact on you as an adult?

What I'm Reading Now

I'm always intrigued by a glimpse at someone's immediate "read" list. It's a sort of slice of life that lets me see a snapshot of someone's interests at the moment. So I thought I'd share my own current reads and (hopefully) soon-to-be-reads:

The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 1 edited by Philip Gourevitch
The book I started most recently. A bit unfairly, I started thinking "I've barely read any of these authors, so maybe I will want to abandon it soon and I'll get some of these library books home." But no, even the author of a book I dislike was extremely interesting in his interview. I've been so enjoying the collection that I've spaced it out and have only read about one or two interviews a day. So much for decreasing the library pile.

Made in America by Bill Bryson
The subtitle succinctly sums it up: "An Informal History of the English Language in the United States." I love books about language and I love Bill Bryson's humorous writing style, so this one is right up my alley.

13 Things That Don't Make Sense by Michael Brooks has been the audiobook on my MP3 player for the past few days. It's enjoyable and fairly light science in comparison to some of the books I've read this year (Brief History of Time, I'm looking at you).

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
I've been meaning to read this ever since I read and loved The Moonstone as a college student. I finally decided it was time, as well as being an appropriate October read. Strangely, it's the only fiction I'm reading at the moment.

A few more books are on my nightstand calling out to me, hoping not to get returned to the library before I read them, but I'll have to finish at least two of these first.