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Hello Friday! Hello Follow Friday with book bloggers! Today let's meet Julie. You need to keep on reading to see those shelfies! :D
Follow JL's Bibliomania on BookLikes: http://jlsbibliomania.booklikes.com/
What are you reading right now? How do you like it?
I’m reading three things as I write these responses:
Heaven's Queen by Rachel Bach, which is the concluding volume of a lighthearted romp of a Space Opera featuring a girl and her big gun.
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, which is the story of how Marie- Laure, a blind French Girl, and Werner, a German Orphan, converge in the French town of San-Malo near the end of the 2nd World War. Slower moving, especially as an audiobook.
The Inner Life of Cats: The Science and Secrets of Our Mysterious Feline Companions by Thomas McNamee, which is the current selection for the Flat Book Society. OK so far, but recently I’ve been struggling with sustained attention to non-fiction.
However, I expect that by the time this is published, I will have finished Heaven’s Queen and moved on to another piece of fiction
When have you discovered you’re a book lover?
If this question is asking when did I (first) discover I was a book lover the answer is: When books were replacing my non-existent friends in Elementary and Middle School and I was devouring a book an afternoon.
Why reading is important to you?
Because I like how reading fills the spaces in my head. Because I crave the escape it offers.
Follow jlsbibliomania.booklikes.com
Which books are you most excited recommending to your followers?
I’m currently excited about The Hate U Give, which is getting a lot of buzz, and does a great job personalizing the questions behind the Black Lives Matter (Movie due to release in October)
I discovered Maggie Stiefvater relatively recently and loved The Raven Boys and the sequels as an audiobook.
I read them a long time ago and the details have faded, but I think Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay is essential reading.
I also love CJ Cherryh’s work.While a bit older, I particularly like how the Faded Sun Trilogy and Forty Thousand in Gehenna wrestle with the idea of being the “Other” and of becoming the bridge between human and alien.
In your bio you write: “Daughter of a Bookaholic. Wife of a Bibliovore. Mother of 2 Bibliophiles” Did your family had an influence on your reading passion, and how do you encourage your kids to keep on reading?
My parents really didn’t watch television much and were always reading, particularly my Dad who always has a book or 3 going, typically Space Opera or military SF. My parents definitely had an influence on my reading passion by always having books around, and nurtured my love of SF by handing me Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonsong when I was in Jr. High and complaining that I was bored and out of things to read.
This is going to sound trite (or like stock advice), but when my kids were little my husband and I read to our sons, always had a rotating stock of library books around that were age and reading-level appropriate geared towards their passion of the moment, and modeled reading because we often had a book of our own with us. We were lucky. My older son dove into Richard Scarry partway through kindergarten, my younger son got lost in the Warriors series in 3rd grade and we really haven’t had to do much to encouraging since.
Do you read one book or several at a time?
As you can see by the answer to question 1, I typically read several books at a time.
- 1 fiction in print or ebook,
- 1 audiobook for the car,
- and sometimes a non-fiction.
But the print book and the audiobook have to be different genres for me to keep track, which is fine because I like to mix things up.
Do you review all books you read? How does your review process look like?
I don’t review everything I read. I write when I have something to say and when time permits (and as you can see by the fewer and shorter reviews recently, time has recently been in short supply so I haven’t been as active).
I’m more of a book diarist than a book reviewer. I started tracking on Goodreads and blogging about books to help myself remember what I’ve read. I consider what I write to be book reactions rather than truly reviews, which is why many of my entries are a short paragraph or less, and I almost never include a synopsis of the plot. I try not to look at too many reviews before I read a book, but often look at the book page here and at other book-review sites after I finish. I typically dash off a draft over the weekend, ask my husband to copy edit it, then post the following day.
Your Shelf presents many audiobooks. Do you experience the book differently while listening to it instead of reading?
I do experience stories differently when I listen to them. Listening to an audiobook forces you to move at the narrator’s pace, which means that you can’t read too fast and miss details. Sometimes that’s an advantage, and sometimes that leads to tedium.
I’m also not one who easily builds a concrete picture of what the characters look like, or imagines what they sound like. The audiobook narrator often fills in that gap for me, especially the recent productions that turn books almost into audio plays by using multiple readers.
The experience of reading an audiobook is also different for me because I mostly listen to them in the car, while I’m driving. A story is different when experienced in 15-30 minute chunks, and with distractions.
A library or a bookstore?
Definitely a library!
While my husband and I spent many pleasant hours in used book stores as a teen and young adult (hence the collection in the basement), we almost entirely stopped buying books as part of the financial adjustment after buying our first house. We are lucky to live in an area with good libraries and I get more than 90% of what I read from the local county library consortium.
Your favorite genres are fantasy and sci-fi. Why are they so special?
SF and fantasy were initially appealing to me because of the escapism. If you’re not happy in mundane reality, SF and fantasy provide ample opportunities to imagine being a heroine elsewhere.
Now I find that SF and fantasy are special in the way that they pose questions about what makes us human.
What are your three favorite book covers?
I'll admit that I hate the share 3 book-covers question since doing most of my book “shopping” in the online library catalog, the cover isn't really something I pay much attention to. However, there’s a strong tradition of SF-related artwork. So instead of book covers I’d like to share 3 of the signed, numbered SF-related prints that I’ve bought at conventions over the years.
Menolly by Robin Wood, originally included in The People of Pern http://www.robinwood.com/Catalog/Prints/PrintPages/Menolly.html
The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Virginia Poyser. Victoria is currently working under her married name of Virginia Lisi and no longer focusing on SF-related art. I couldn’t find a good copy of this picture online, but her website is https://victoria-lisi.pixels.com/
A Stitch in Time by David Cherry (brother of CJ Cherryh)
https://davidcherryart.com/prints/a-stitch-in-time/ I don’t believe this piece is connected to a specific book, but it appealed to me as someone who occasionally stitches.
A paper book or an e-book?
When I’m home, I’m a traditionalist and prefer paper. When I’m travelling, or when the library only has the ebook, I’ll happily reach for the e-reader for novels. I dislike non-fiction and graphic novels as e-books.
Three titles for a holiday break?
Did I say that I hate giving recommendations?
Fortune's Pawn by Rachel Bach and the sequels (though it looks like others who tried it here on BL haven’t liked it much)
When Dimple Met Rishi – light realistic fiction YA – definitely recommend the audiobook.
The Rook by Daniel O'Malley. Suggested in honor of the Summer of Spies.
Favorite quote?
My absolutely favorite quote is
Life is uncertain, eat dessert first.
(Often misremembered as – Life is short, Eat dessert first)
And when I was in college I spent several years doing just that.
Despite coming late to canine ownership, my favorite bookish quote is
Outside of a book, a dog is man’s best friend
Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read
Shelfie time! Please share your home library photos :)
The first two pictures are of the two bookcases in the living-room, which contain cookbooks, religion reference works and library books. Life has been so much easier, with many fewer desperate searches for the overdue or missing books since we cleared off shelves a shelf for me and a shelf for my sons to keep our library book in the right hand case.
The last picture is of a few of the 13 bookcases in the basement library. We’re in the middle of re-sorting/re-shelving/trimming the collection as we recently decided to store all fiction alphabetically by author and to stop trying to sort by genre. And while the basement is mostly fiction, there are 2 ceiling high cases full of my husband’s history references.
Thank you!
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