Battle of the Books

~ garrettpinder ~ 2 Comments

People may think my book choosing methods are strange, but honestly, I just find it amusing. Considering my lack of interest in sports, a book bracket may be as close as I get to some type of Fantasy League. Here’s the breakdown:

I chose two books from eight different categories, yielding sixteen titles total. (Well, six. I doubled up on two categories.)

  • Stephen King Classics: Cujo vs Misery
  • Travel: A Year in Provence vs PTown
  • LGBT fiction: Will Grayson, Will Grayson vs The Brothers Bishop / In The Line of Beauty vs Hero
  • YA series (having 3 or more titles): Insurgent vs Rebel Heart / Beautiful Darkness vs Reached
  • Kindle Books (fiction): Ten vs Better Nate Than Ever
  • Fiction: Little Children vs Dogs of Babel

Once selected, I set the titles against one another in their respective categories and flipped some coins and followed the paths of the bracket tree. The resulting list will govern the order of the books I will read over the course of the next year. With my recent acceleration in reading (like reading 35 books in 14 weeks for class) I imagine this will be a breeze. I may push a title to the front of the list as an audiobook becomes available through OverDrive or my library.

  1. Reached
  2. Insurgent
  3. Cujo
  4. Dogs of Babel
  5. Hero
  6. Ten
  7. The Brothers Bishop
  8. A Year in Provence
  9. Rebel Heart
  10. Beautiful Darkness
  11. Will Grayson, Will Grayson
  12. In The Line of Beauty
  13. Misery
  14. Better Nate Than Ever
  15. PTown
  16. Little Children
Battle of the Books
Battle of the Books

Here we go!

Waiting for Spring

~ garrettpinder ~ 1 Comment

For the class I’m taking this semester, I’m required to read some 35 books. Thanks to the library, Overdrive, and Audible, I’ve finished most of them in record time. In between my borrows and holds, I’ve snuck in a few titles from my own list, slowly marking them off too, but I feel as though I’ve hardly made a dent. In fact, after crossing off almost a dozen titles, I uncovered several books that I had yet to catalog, and all my feelings of accomplishment deflated. Then I realized just how many titles from my class I’ve completed. Of the 35, I’ve finished 26 completely with two more titles in progress. Though I can’t claim ownership over most of these titles, I also can’t help but feel as though they should be accounted for in some way. Once the class wraps and the semester is over, I plan on going through many of the titles… ones I liked and ones I didn’t particularly care for. After reading so many, I have lots to say! Thanks to this class, I have a much better sense of what really constitutes a young adult book… And it’s more than just strong-female-characters-in-a-post-apocalyptic-dystopian-world-trilogy.

As for my own personal collection… I continue to plod along. I feel discouraged at times when I look at the three bookshelves bulging with books. I’m very tempted to go through and weed titles out — shocking! — but I’m also having a difficult time choosing which I would part with… at least in any substantial quantities. I could probably come up with a dozen or so, but that number seems so inconsequential.  Each time to try to subtract a title, I justify keeping it, now for the sake of my librarian degree. “Oh, I may need that title for a reference in class one day!” Spring at the latest. That’s when the weeding will happen. If not before… It depends on how awful the winter is.

 

In other news… I received Veronica Roth’s Allegiant a day before the release date! This never happens to me — getting a pre-ordered item before it hits the streets. I always hear about it happening with books and video games, and I’m always jealous…Except I can’t quite enjoy it this time because I haven’t yet read Insurgent! Ugh!  At least I won’t have to interrupt the flow once I start reading them.  Now that I mention it, perhaps I should have another Gauntlet… Look forward to a throw-down in the next entry!

“Why are all the bunnies bleeding?”

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I was about 10 years old the first time I was allowed to roam around a book store on my own. I was on a day trip with my grandfather to Miami. He had a doctors appointment and, rather than keeping me cooped up in a boring doctor’s office, pulled up alongside a Barnes & Noble and said,

“Here’s a twenty. I’ll be back in a few hours. Do you think you can manage okay?”

“How long did you say I was going to be here?” I asked. After giving me a steady look for a moment, he chuckled to himself and handed me another twenty. I turned around and looked up at the towering two-floor bookstore. One would have thought I was in a toy store by the way I was acting. A bundle of excitable and nervous energy, I jittered about and whispered exclamations to myself.  But where to begin? With all that was presented to me, it was almost impossible to know where to start. Quickly, I ran through titles in my head. I remembered Watership Down, a book that one of my best friends at the time was reading, and dashed off to find it. Even today, when I go to a bookstore or a library, I always find an author or title that I know and use it as a touchstone. I browse at the peripherals and continue in an outwardly expanding search pattern as a way of discovering new books.

watership down richard adams

With Watership Down now firmly in my grasp, I march to the check out counter and make my purchase. I then realize I had just under four hours left to wait for my grandfather. Rather than sit down to start to read, I then tried to think of other books. My mind landed on a series of books that my mother read called Merlin’s Legacy. I found the series and decided to purchase a few for my mother – besides, I had the money for it! Now, looking back, I do think it a bit strange for a pre-teen to purchase multiple Harlequin  Fantasy Romance novels… But I digress. Long story short (too late): The point is I bought Watership Down. Now, over 15 years later, and after three incomplete attempts, I have finally finished the epic rabbit tale. Was it worth the wait? I will say that I do appreciate what Adams wrote, but perhaps more so because Watership down has become somewhat of a literary reference in other works I’ve encountered. Whether it’s Stephen King’s Dark Tower Saga (with references to Adams other bear tale, Shardik) or picking up on little Easter eggs in Lost (Ha! Because they’re bunnies!… See what I did there?), I can feel like I have crossed a milestone that was long overdue. Sort of like going back in a video game to make sure you collect everything from a certain level. I will say that after all these years, I suppose I expected some kind of epiphany from completing the novel. Thanks to all the years of the book sitting on my shelf, staring me down. Now all the discussions with high school friends and their favorite books are simply a distant memory. Perhaps I should consider this book a ghost that has been haunting me for a decade and a half, but that casts such a negative light on it.

I did enjoy Watership Down, but I find myself wondering what else there is to comment on. Though the rabbit folklore was interesting, I sometimes wondered what the purpose was… the parallels were loosely suggested between the crafty rabbit El-Ahrairah and the noble leader Hazel… But I did find myself saying, “Okay…. so what?” Maybe my age is making me more skeptical. I could just accept this as a wonderful story about rabbits… or perhaps I should try watching the cartoon next. I heard that scarred resonated with so many.

Rules of the Domain

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As I approach another anniversary with this blog, I decided to go through and do a bit of housekeeping, both on the site and at home. After packing up my life and moving to a new apartment, many of my books have been scattered throughout my living space without any sense of order or proper placement. Though there may be a box or two of books still taped up, I was able to organize all that had been unpacked.

The end of summer marks the end of sunny vacations and hot, sticky days, but as autumn draws closer, my mourning is cut short. The fall ushers in a new school year. A time when the air is filled with potential. High expectations and a recharged sense of accomplishment. My summer has been far from uneventful — I believe I have read more books this summer than I have in the past several years. The selection was not the most traditional beach reads, but working my way through The Sickness has kept me steadily motivated.

Now that a new semester approaches, I am faced with a staggering mountain of books to read. (I should have known… it’s a young adult literature class!) Thirty-five books in total, to be read over a fourteen week period. “Oh, for sure I already own a good chunk of this reading list,” I thought. But after looking over the selection, I only recognized three titles: The Perks of Being a Wallflower, A Child Called “It”, and Flowers in the Attic. Less than 10% of this list were books I had heard of. I took pause. After a few calculations I looked down at my paper in disbelief.

Total Pages: 11,080

That staggering number has me freaked out. That’s an average of 121 pages every day — I’m lucky if I can read 12 pages a day! I took a moment to consider a few points: I’m starting the reading list early. I do not have to purchase any books. I have at least an hour of listening time for audio books every workday.

“Okay,” I said polishing my glasses, “Let’s do this!”

The last item of business to attend to was my domain. Not my living space, but my web domain. WordPress has been offering that I “Go Premium” ever since I started this blog, and underestimating my early commitment, I put off purchasing the dot-com for my site. Today I decided to make the purchase, solidifying my little blog in the Internet world, only to be sadly disappointed. “Go Premium today – make http://www.booksick.me yours” said WordPress. Wait, “dot-me”? What happened to dot-com? I quickly typed into the navigation bar, hoping my fear isn’t true… but unfortunately, it seems as though someone else has purchased the dot-com domain for booksick. It seems to be some type of search aggregator, but to be honest, I didn’t spend much time on the site, refusing to give the other pages more hits.

After a bit more research, the knife of remorse only dug deeper. The domain was purchased 31 August 2013 09:24:00. Just two days ago. The expiration is 31 August 2014 09:24:00 — and you can bet I have set my calendar. I’m staring down that date, now charged with even more purpose than before. It will be mine.

*  *  *  *

Currently, I’ve finished the two books chosen for Week 1, and I am working on a book from Week 2. I also found a book from Week 4 on OverDrive that I’ve been listening to while I wait for my holds at the library. Though my school books will not be listed within the master list, I will be sure to address them in each entry.

Audiobibliophile

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Since obtaining my library card just over two weeks ago, I have “read” three books and I find myself ravenously scouring Overdrive to find more and more. Never had I considered audiobooks as valuable as I do now.

Previously, I had looked at audiobooks and scoffed, mainly at the price. Why purchase 6 – 8 discs of audio for upwards of $30 or $40 when I could purchase the physical copy of the same book for less than $15 (in most cases)?  I simply regarded the products as premium editions that I chose not to afford. With my history of reading books no more than once, I knew I would get more for my money by simply buying more physical books than audio books. 

After my move, I now have a 30 minute drive to and from work, giving me an hour of prime listening time — what a fool I’ve been! Now I look forward to driving so I can get through as many chapters tracks as I can. Audiobooks have certainly changed the way I read, and I’m taking this knowledge and using it as a strong medicine to help knock out much of this booksickness. 

I’ve listened to audiobooks in the past and remember experiencing a very similar feeling. Shelf-reading during my college years working in the library is how I was able to get through most of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, as well as The Stand… But at that time, I checked out audiobooks, ripped the MP3 tracks to my computer, and then returned the discs the following day. I still don’t quite understand what my rush was. Perhaps a sense that I still needed to HAVE something in my possession, similar to collecting my books, is what drove me to saving the audiobooks to my computer. In any case, though I may be one of the last out of the tunnel, I have seen the light. I hear the heavenly chorus of narrators and their words, like hymns, take me to my own realm of euphoria.

~

I still stand by what I’ve always advocated in the past, and I make a point to bring up to booksellers and librarians alike: publishers should produce an edition of the printed book that also contains its audiobook and ebook counterparts. Perhaps as codes to be redeemed through apps such as iTunes or Overdrive. In any case, I think that prospect would go over quite well. 

Since I’ve been trucking through these titles rather quickly, please pardon the slightly out of date Book List page. I’ve placed holds on the audiobook versions of the books I am currently reading… at least the ones I could find. This Sickness may shrink drastically if I keep up this dosage! 

The Worst Librarian

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No, this entry is not about a negative customer experience in a library. This entry is about how my metaphorical library card should be revoked. Why?

I have never owned a library card. 

Yes, though I’m in graduate school for library science, I have never borrowed books from a library — outside of school that is.

Through the early years at school, we were never given a card, number, or any kind of way to identify us other than our name. At university, my student I.D. was used in substitution.

So, as you can guess, I’ve never checked out a book from a public library. I know. Blasphemy. My librarian peers are pulling their hair out.

I suppose my love of books, or rather, purchasing books, has been the main reason for the delay. Okay, let’s be real: excuse, not reason. 

When I first got into my new (used) car, I found a gold card… a library card belonging to a boy named Noah. I say boy because there were little-kid stickers on it. A cartoon elephant, actually. I saved the card and I’m not sure why. Maybe because I never had one of my own… maybe because it belonged to a child and I held on for safe-keeping… maybe it was the part of me that always wanted to be a librarian. Whatever the reason, it has held some significance in my life.

In an effort to further subdue my Sickness, I think it’s time to get a library card– a real one. Then my peers can let their hair grow back in, and I can be welcomed in to my academic circle as a REAL card-carrying member.

Like Butter

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Ever feel like you’ve been spread too thin? Sort of like your mind is involved with so many things, your mind is constantly darting back and forth? That’s me!

I’m in the middle of several books at the moment, including Carrie, three graphic novels, and as of last night, Codename Verity by Elizabeth Wein. (With my impending YA Lit class this fall,and some peer encouragement, I’m getting into the swing of things by joining a YA book club.) 

Have I ever mentioned I have the same problem with video games? I’ve got well over a few dozen games across multiple systems, and my desire to play them is just as strong as wanting to read. I end up bouncing from one to another, and while I’m usually able to keep the stories straight, I feel like I never dedicate the appropriate amount of attention to any of them.

I say “appropriate” rather than “deserved,” because I’ll be damned if books and games start making me feel guilty!

As for unpacking and reformulating my library, there’s no rhyme or reason! They’re all over the place. Once things are in a more organized state, I’ll update with new photos.

A Heavy Load

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In less than a week, the Sickness will spread.

Actually, I’m just moving to a new apartment… But geographically, my books will be in more places! As much as I love my books, I have to admit, packing up boxes upon boxes of books and textbooks and cookbooks and video game guides and… (well, you get the idea)… Really calls my dedication, love, and muscles, into question.

In times like these, I’m forced to value the convenience of digital books. Though, my poor Kindle has been power-drained and sitting on a table… But it holds a good number of titles that could probably get me through the next few months easily.

Once I nestle into the comfort of my new home I anticipate a surge of organization and a renewed sense of vigor for reading. That also may be the result of the beginning of my summer break from graduate school — I’m not taking a class this summer! — so I can read anything I want! Pleasure reading again!

This move also means I can take inventory of everything that I have and republish my book list, which, admittedly, has gotten a bit out of hand… So stay tuned!

It’s Time I Knew Her Name

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Hush, Faithful Reader,

Let’s diverge from this young adult trend, as ugly as that may seem. I’m hungry for the games of a more mature  friend. I’ve reached an opening in this maze and found my match, the legend: Stephen King.

How many YA books did I just reference? 😉

But I said her name. Stephen King’s beginning… Carrie. (Another that is seeing a new theatrical release, this upcoming October.)

Someone recently expressed their excitement about the new adaptation of Carrie and it got me thinking about King’s work. Then I realized that I owned the book and, like so many others, I haven’t read yet. Crazy, right?! It’s time to change that.

I’ve seen the 1976 movie as well as the sequel. *sigh* Stephen King’s books just do not translate very well into films. Unless Frank Darabont is directing, that is. Those seem to do well. That said: I am looking forward to this iteration of Carrie.

Gosh, I don’t mean to keep talking about films, but it seems as though that theme has proven to be rather influential/relevant lately. I promise not EVERY book I read and write about will have a movie tie-in. I swear!

Since the film doesn’t premiere until October, I’ve got more than enough time to work through the text. It’s not a particularly long book… around 300 pages… so I’m positive that it will be a quick read.

As a side note: I’m in the process of packing and moving! This also means reorganizing my collection. Exciting, and also busy! Especially with final class projects etc. Stay tuned!

Running on a Hamster Wheel

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After picking a book up and being really excited about reading it– IT’S THE BOY VERSION OF HUNGER GAMES!!– I wasn’t completely impressed with The Maze Runner by James Dashner.

Maze Runner

I really struggled getting into this book. As I mentioned, I was looking forward to reading this book because there has been quite a bit of hype surrounding it. Along with so many other popular young adult series, this has also scored a movie deal. (Go figure.) Needless to say, I had high expectations. Some were met, some left my wheels spinning.  (Ha! – running…hamster wheel… spinning… see what I did there?)

We’ve got a teenage boy with amnesia that pops up in a world with bunch of other boys that have amnesia too. I think the author was trying to be clever in the reader’s connection with the protagonist — learning new information as they learned — but instead I found it downright frustrating. I felt as though a lot was deliberately being withheld such as “why do we do this?” or “what is that?” So many characters brushed off the protagonist, and therefore, the reader, which made me feel like the book was telling me “STOP READING ME! LEAVE ME ALONE!”

(Un)Fortunately, I was stuck with it through about 10 hours of plane rides over the last week and decided to plow my way through, breaking this wild horse of a book and beating it into submission. Rather than giving away any real plot points, mostly because I really want other readers to suffer like I did, I’ll just say that by the end of the book, I am intrigued.

Let’s see where the rest of this series goes. For now, I’ll catch my breath from my sprint through this book, stretch for a spell, and perhaps pick up another book with a more moderate pace.