I was scared and had gooseflesh, and my stomach clenched, and the hair on my arms stood on end, and I tucked my feet beneath me so the boogieman under the bed couldn’t grab them, and when Nancy was in the tunnel I could hardly bear to turn the page for fear of what might happen next, and yet I couldn’t help turning the page to see what happened next. Oh, it was wonderful!

— Mystery author Nancy Pickard on reading the original Nancy Drew.

I haven’t read any Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys, but with an original movie coming up, I’m thinking about buying a set of the first six stories for my girls.

Wouldn’t there be a market for a national literary supplement, something to go in USA Today maybe? Perhaps the NYTBR holds that place, and yet it is as disgraced its partner paper, is it not?

Grad student Kristen Keckler remembers seeking out book reviews in the Sunday paper, clipping them, and taking a folder of them to the bookstore to help her buy interesting or winning books. “While Amazon suggests books it ‘thinks’ I’ll like,” she says, “newspaper book reviews introduce me to books off my radar, books I wouldn’t encounter otherwise. Print book reviews also offer the authority, depth, and substance that online reviews often lack.”

I feel for her, honestly, and I do wonder about a national book review, The USABR, if you will; but regardless, I can readily imagine a country without newspapers.

World Mag Blog asks what are the most influential books from the last 25 years? According to USA Today, Harry Potter #1 is number one on that list.

Employees at Waterstone’s, Britain’s largest bookstore chain, prefer male authors to female in a recent survey. “The company asked its 5,000 employees to name their favourite five books written since 1982, when Waterstone’s opened its first store. The resulting list of the top 100 favourites is dominated by male authors,” reports the UK Telegraph.

A store spokesman said, while women don’t care about an author’s gender, “Subconsciously, I think men stick to male writers. They think that what women write doesn’t appeal to them.” (via Books, Inq.)

Is reading overrated? I mean, do you have to read every page from cover to cover? There’s Frenchman who says don’t worry about reading a book for talking or even teaching about it. He may be full of hot air, but Lennard J. Davis says he may have a point or two:

Let’s remember that even one of the greatest readers of literature, Samuel Johnson, admitted that “Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and puts down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.” In fact, Johnson seemed to have made quite a career of not reading. He once lamented to his friend Mrs. Thrale, “Alas, Madam! How few books are there of which one can ever possibly arrive at the last page.” And reacting to advice that once started, a book should be read all the way through, he opined, “A book may be good for nothing; or there may be only one thing in it worth knowing; are we to read it all through?”

I agree with the last comment and wish I could practice it better.

Is reading overrated? I mean, do you have to read every page from cover to cover? There’s Frenchman who says don’t worry about reading a book for talking or even teaching about it. He may be full of hot air, but Lennard J. Davis says he may have a point or two:

Let’s remember that even one of the greatest readers of literature, Samuel Johnson, admitted that “Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and puts down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.” In fact, Johnson seemed to have made quite a career of not reading. He once lamented to his friend Mrs. Thrale, “Alas, Madam! How few books are there of which one can ever possibly arrive at the last page.” And reacting to advice that once started, a book should be read all the way through, he opined, “A book may be good for nothing; or there may be only one thing in it worth knowing; are we to read it all through?”

I agree with the last comment and wish I could practice it better.

A new survey out of Britain says the average person may buy several books in a year, but read only half of them. I’m sure I would fill out the low end of the average, though I’m also low on the number of books I buy too. Don’t hate me. I do intend to read them all somehow.

Coincidentally, Sandra of Book World quotes from Virginia Woolf today: “The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions. … After all, what laws can be laid down about books?”

What laws can be laid down? Do you have to read a book completely to consider it read? It applies more to non-fiction, but should a reader not feel free to dip into a book to pull out a tasty apple, leaving the rest of it unread at least for the moment?

Valentine’s Day is tomorrow, and no doubt you have worked up warm and squishy feelings over the people or food products you most love. I think you need some balance. Talk to me about those books you wish you hadn’t read or those that were so bad you couldn’t finish them.
The discussion has already started. Sherry doesn’t give us the name of the “bodice-ripper” she couldn’t get through, though she may not remember it. Mark points out several titles which despite the strong writing may be difficult for many readers to finish. One book I reviewed favorably last year drew harsh criticism from my sister and a few others for stilted dialogue and otherwise boring writing.
I still don’t think I read many books for good reasons. I slog through many books in order to review them later. I also read slowly, so when I say “many books” it’s probably just a few compared to you. I probably should read careless for a year, giving a book 50 pages to interest me and feeling no guilt for dropping it.
But what about you? Can you name any books you disliked?

Valentine’s Day is tomorrow, and no doubt you have worked up warm and squishy feelings over the people or food products you most love. I think you need some balance. Talk to me about those books you wish you hadn’t read or those that were so bad you couldn’t finish them.

The discussion has already started. Sherry doesn’t give us the name of the “bodice-ripper” she couldn’t get through, though she may not remember it. Mark points out several titles which despite the strong writing may be difficult for many readers to finish. One book I reviewed favorably last year drew harsh criticism from my sister and a few others for stilted dialogue and otherwise boring writing.

I still don’t think I read many books for good reasons. I slog through many books in order to review them later. I also read slowly, so when I say “many books” it’s probably just a few compared to you. I probably should read careless for a year, giving a book 50 pages to interest me and feeling no guilt for dropping it.

But what about you? Can you name any books you disliked?

Today’s post isn’t about Norway exactly. It’s about Norway and other places too.

I’ve traveled overseas several times, and I’ve always gone to Norway. Other countries I’ve visited have either been on the way or on the way back from Norway.

It’s not that there’s no other country I’d like to see. It’s just that my traveling money is limited (often nonexistent), and I have to prioritize.

But I must admit the list of countries I really want to see is fairly short.

Denmark, because it’s another ancestral country, and I haven’t been there yet.

The British Isles, because of all the books and movies and literature.

Israel, because of the Bible.

And… hmm. I wouldn’t turn down a free trip to a few other countries, but I won’t feel cheated at the end of my life if the list above covers my life’s tourism.

I’ve often wondered about my complete lack of interest in the exotic. I hear people saying, “Oh, I want to visit China and Indonesia and Brazil and all those far-off, unfamiliar places.”

And I don’t see it. Why, I wonder, am I only interested in my own culture and heritage, and nobody else’s?

The obvious answer, in our time, is that I must be a racist, but I think there’s more to it.

My interest in travel, I’ve realized, is almost entirely connected to my reading. I want to see the places where the stories happened. That’s why I couldn’t appreciate my one canoe trip to the North Woods with my brothers. There wasn’t any beloved story associated with it. (Also paddling and portaging is a lot of work,)

Visiting the American West, on the other hand, is something I want to do. Lots of stories there, historic and fictional.

My interest in seeing a place is directly proportional to the stories I’ve read that come from there. That’s why I’d like to see England, but France and Germany leave me cold (I know The Three Musketeers is French, but, as C. S. Lewis pointed out, it’s not a story in which the landscape plays much of a role).

I’m not saying this is the right way to look at travel, or that my approach is better in any way than yours.

I’m just saying that’s how it is with me.

And what am I blogging for, except to explain myself in exasperating detail?