bookish thoughts

Keeping up with more than one blog is not easy. I sort of wish I had kept to one and just made multiple sections, etc. Perhaps that will happen in the future, though it's not likely. I have to organize and categorize things. It's the librarian in me.

Seriously, all the books in my house are (loosely) catalogued in Dewey Decimal. I spent about a month last autumn doing that, much to my husband's dismay. Half the books are his, though, so he shouldn't complain. And now it's super easy for me to find a book! (Doesn't mean we have enough bookshelves, of course....) I did have my own system beforehand, but Dewey makes everything simpler. It's too bad Dewey can't really be used with kitchen cabinets.

I'm almost halfway through the Artemis Fowl series, which is excellent. I have the third book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, but I kind of want to finish Artemis Fowl first. But this snow is making me want to curl up with a big ol' classic tome. Like War and Peace or something Russian. The problem with that is the books already mentioned are library books. Oy vey.

I haven't read a classic in a couple of months, and it's starting to wear on me. Classics are my comfort novels, kind of like PG Tips with a jigger of whiskey is my comfort drink, and any version of Alice in Wonderland is my comfort film. (Or old black and white films. LOVE.)

Do you have a comfort novel?

Anyway. It's tempting to put down Artemis Fowl and pick up War and Peace. It really is. But I did make a promise to my youngest sister that I would finish Eoin Colfer's series. I don't really know what the point of this post is. Just a reader's ramblings, I suppose.

Also, do you like my new background?

my first love was a novel

Though of course I can't remember which one.
Perhaps I could say it was Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery, because that's the first book I recall reading that I would consider a novel.
I was nine years old, and Mom had been trying to get me to read the Anne books. Just the first one, she coaxed. I refused, because it seemed to me in my headstrong brain that any book my mother recommended wasn't something I would enjoy. Eventually, I ran out of books to read, so I secretly started reading Anne of Green Gables. So secretly in fact, that I was hiding the book in the kitchen cabinet by the phone. Not even kidding. I also don't know why, fifteen years later, I can remember this with such clarity. Actually, maybe I do. It was my entry into the world of classic novels and absolutely beautiful worlds. Plus, Anne Shirley is definitely the first character I came across that made me want to be a redhead.

I never did finish the Anne series; I reread the first three a few times, though. I've read other books by L.M. Montgomery, too. Such an idyllic world, there on Prince Edward Island. I have a feeling it's also Anne Shirley's fault that I'm in love with the Victorian and Edwardian eras. (And the Betsy-Tacy series.)

So, my first love was a novel. (Incidentally, age nine was also when I had my first real crush on a boy...which lasted until we were fifteen.) Since then, there have been many other novels I fell in love with. On this Valentine's Day, let me share with you a list of novels that I love and are, incidentally, kind of about love. And not just the romantic kind. Friendship love is just as important!

• Persuasion, Jane Austen (and her other novels, but this one is the sweetest, I think.)
• Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
• Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte (this is one of my favorite novels of all time.)
• Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh (NOT a woman. this book is a great story about intense friendship and love and how they can entangle themselves in ways that aren't good.)
• Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
• To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee (more about friendship and acceptance.)
• Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell (just a powerful tome all around.)
• A Girl of the Limberlost, Gene Stratton-Porter (more about familial love, and heart-wrenching, too.)
• I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith (I liken this a bit to Brideshead Revisited in theme.)

There you have a short list. I will add one honorable mention, because it's one of my favorite novels ever and should have "classic" status: The Scottish Chiefs, by Jane Porter. Published in 1809, this is a highly Romanticized version of the Scottish fight for freedom with William Wallace and Robert Bruce (who I might be related to!), but oh, so excellent. I made it an honorable mention because the love story between Wallace and his wife is so incredible, Biblical, and pure.

So, what are you favorite novels (classic or modern) about love? And why?

[summer reading list 2012]

Greetings, fellow book lovers!
I am taking a break from my regularly scheduled programming to give you my projected summer reading list for Summer 2012.
I say projected because as every reader knows, it's entirely too easy to be distracted from a book...by another book.
Anyway, I have dubbed this my Summer of Classics (and other books I own).
Why?
Because now that I have been out of school for a year, I am going to truly put my Bachelor's Degree in English to good use!
And because I have a myriad of book on my Kindle that are just begging to be read.
And because the top two shelves of my living room bookshelf are full of some incredibly beautiful books (some vintage and/or first editions) that have been calling my name for a long time now.

Of course, this is going to be difficult for me.
Not because I don't want to read the classics and other old books.
But because this basically prohibits me from making trips to the library for books.
I'll still allow myself to check out movies.
But not books.
An entire summer not checking out library books?
After working at a library for the past four (five?) summers...this will be challenging.
But I own so many good books.
That's why I am making myself do this. 

Before I begin reading all my old books, however, I have two newer books to read and review.
I have been waiting to read these for awhile now.
One is The Fault in Our Stars; the other Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
And then I shall continue to read Vanity Fair, which I started in...January.... (To be fair, it's on my Kindle, and when I went to the library, I completely forgot I was reading it. Oops. Such an excellent story, though!)

So, without further ado, I present my projected reading list for summer 2012.
(I'm not going to number this list because I'm sure I won't read them in the order I list them.)

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Summer of Classics (and other books I own) 2012

• Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray
• The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (This is a re-read; may wait till closer to December.)
• House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
• Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
• Anthony Adverse, by Hervey Allen
• Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
• From the Earth to the Moon, by Jules Verne
• Now or Never or, The Adventures of Bobby Bright, by Oliver Optic
• Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
• The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins
• Tess of the d'Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy
• Quo Vadis: a narrative of the time of Nero, by Henryk Sienkiewicz
• Ulysses, by James Joyce (Okay, this is more wishful thinking, because I have tried reading this before and just couldn't get into it....but I am so willing to try again!)
• The Thirty-Nine Steps, by John Buchan
• Utopia, by Thomas More
• History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, by Henry Fielding
• Cranford, by Elizabeth Gaskell
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Bronte
• Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
• The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe

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There you have it.
Perhaps a rather long list, since most of the above are very long books.
But just because I don't make it through my planned reads doesn't mean I can't read them later!
And I'm sure I will end up reading a few newer books somewhere during the summer.
It's just what I do.
Not to mention I still have that nonfiction book (The German Genius) I keep forgetting about.

If anyone has any suggestions to add to my reading list, please comment!