Category Archives: Buying Books

Craving A Book…The Real Kind

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I am taking a break from A Song of Ice and Fire and dove back into the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. Just finished An Incomplete Revenge. Excellent…a solid, well told mystery with well developed characters and a bit of history and psychology woven throughout. I bought a two-book bundle from Amazon so I have the next one, Among the Mad, ready to go when I need a gardening break today.

Or…I might read something else. The last five books I’ve read have been on the Kindle. I mostly read them on my iPad but I am finding that increasingly distracting. I’ll read a chapter and then check Facebook or Twitter or try to beat that last level on My Kingdom for a Princess. At night, I read from the real Kindle, and I do like the way it syncs between devices. But I think I am mostly craving a real book, one with pages that feeds the tactile senses. One that doesn’t have other content loaded on it, calling to me.

I practiced bookstore tourism this week, stopping at Blue Whale Books in Charlottesville to browse and buy a few books. I fed my nature and books collections and was charmed by the discovery of Sixpence House: Lost In a Town of Books by Paul Collins. It describes Collins’ move to Hay-on-Wye, the bookstore town in Wales. I made the pilgrimage to Hay when I was in Wales and have often imagined what it would be like to live in a place where you could slip into a bookstore every day just to browse.  Maybe I’ll dig into what the Boston Globe called “the bookworm’s answer to A Year in Provence.” (I know I have read that book but it must have been pre-Library Thing as it’s not in my reading list.)

On a side note: one of my favorite children’s authors died yesterday. I must have read From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler 25 times when I was a kid in a small country village imagining life in New York City. I reread it when I started teaching middle school and was delighted all over again. E.L. Konigsburg had a wonderful sense of mystery, magic and wonder.

Finally, I Finished a Book!

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Since my post on April 6, I haven’t been able to really concentrate on a book.  I read Charlotte Figg Takes Over Paradise, which turned out to be Christian fiction, a genre I have not read before.   It was fine…not so preachy but more about trusting God and being in community. Feisty, quirky characters, each with a secret.

Then, I stalled out.  Some of it certainly has to do with the it being Spring…there is a TON of gardening to do.  I am tackling a huge flower garden space and trying to help my husband with the vegetable farming as well.  I did listen to The Camel Club, the first book in Baldacci’s series.  I also listened to Messenger of Truth on my recent trip to Baltimore.

Balitmore Book Shopping on 365 ProjectI visited The Book Escape, the book store on Federal Hill that I visited last year.  This year, I snapped a picture.  And found some interesting books, too:

  • Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
  • Lyra’s Oxford, Philip Pullman
  • Building a Bridge to the 18th Century, Neil Postman
  • The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
  • Innocent Traitor, Alison Weir
It’s a great place to browse with treasures on every shelf.  And it’s that experience–browsing a bookstore–that digital editions cannot replace.  Scanning the shelves, taking in titles and authors, reaching up for a volume, skimming the book jacket, flipping through the pages.  Thinking about authors and series and then seeking them out.  No search function here and that’s a good thing since the pursuit may provide an interesting diversion.  The goal of bookstore browsing is not always to find the exact book but instead to find a book.  I had no intention of buying any of these books; instead, I found them, intrigued by titles or author names.  I’ve got rural writing on my mind and have been dabbling in Ivan Doig and Wendell Berry.  So, Stegner seemed a natural choice. And a serious one, compared to my more recent reading.
So, after nearly a month of just dabbling in books but not getting into anything, I picked up Baldacci’s Stone Cold last night and finished it about an hour ago.  My first full book in some time…and it didn’t last long enough to really answer the what next question?  It was a quick reading fix but still leaves me wondering where I want to head with my reading.  I have several of Ivan Doig’s books in both analog and digital format, ditto for Berry.  They would be a good fit with our current agricultural undertaking.
Or I could take the easy road and finish off the Camel Club series…

What to Read Next?

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Suddenly, there are books everywhere…audio books, free digital books, books from the book fair. And I just can’t decide what to read next.

After getting two teeth pulled Wednesday morning, I spent the rest of the day reading and managed to read Deep Dish by Mary Kay Andrews from start to finish. It was fun, if a little predictable, and reminded me a bit of Carl Hiassen without the really wickedly rude stuff. Southern chick lit would be the category, I suppose.  She has several other books and I’m putting them on the beach reading list.

I also finished up The Pale Horseman, the second in Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon series. I am enjoying this adventure series full of manly men, desperate battles, and glorious achievements. I bought the fifth one and can’t decide if I want to buy three and four or just wait until I can get them from the library. They don’t appear to be in any of the library databases of ebooks.

Belle Ruin by Martha Grimes featured Emma Graham, and the young narrator provides a lively view of the Hotel Paradise, its inhabitants as well as the local folk in the nearby towns. The ending came about somewhat abruptly, leaving lots of questions.  I’ve read the other books in the series and enjoyed them. This one had all the charm of those but lacked a bit of a story line.

The big surprise of the past few weeks has been how much I liked David Baldacci’s The Collectors.  I listened to it during a weekend road trip and was riveted to the story and the characters.  I went ahead and used Audible credits to buy the first book in the series, The Camel Club.  And I have three and four in the pile from the book fair.  I also bought the fourth book in the Maisie Dobbs series, Messenger of Truth, and Sacre Bleu: A Comedy d’Art by Christopher Moore.  The latter was recommended and it sounded good.  I’ve been feeling a little boxed in by the different series I’ve been reading and this one looks like a good romp as Toulouse-Lautrec and a Paris baker try to determine the real cause of Van Gogh’s death.  Audio books offer the possibility of doing two things at one time–gardening or sewing and reading. This time of year, I feel like I need to multitask even when it comes to the hobbies.

I’ve also been spending the fast few weeks collecting books, especially on the Kindle.  Between a conference, Kindle Daily Deals, and free Kindle book emails, my TBR list got a lot longer.  Here’s a bulleted list of the new stuff on the Kindle:

Quite a list and most cost nothing or at the most 99 cents!
So, what to read? Something old? Something new? Last night, I tried to dig into Ellis’s biography of Jefferson.  It’s been on the Nook for some time now but I’ve only just made it through the introduction.  There’s Proust, a Harper bio of Mary Boleyn, William Least Heat Moon and Wendell Berry, and so much more.

 

 

 

 

 

Friday Finds At A Favorite Book Store

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I headed across the state to Harrisonburg for a workshop and left early enough to have time to stop into the Green Valley Book Fair. Off the beaten path, this warehouse is a book lover’s dream…sprawling shelves and tables with a wide variety of books.  It is only open for several weeks at a time and you can find deals everywhere.  I limit myself to one basket of books and walked away with a nice stack.

The two by David Baldacci–Stone Cold and Divine Justice–would not normally have interested me, but I started listening to The Collectors as I drove and was happy to discover this is a series.  Two more–The Best of Virginia Farms and Self-Sufficiency–will be added to the farming shelf.  I really don’t need another book that tells me how to do everything as Self-Sufficiency promises, but I opened it right to an easy recipe for strawberry jam and with strawberries coming in very soon, it just seemed destiny.  I added Bernard Cornwell’s The Burning Land, the 5th books in the Alfred the Great series, which means I still have 3 to go before I can read it.  (The Pale Horseman is waiting on my Nook once I finish this post.)  And, finally, a new edition of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans, will join the southern writing shelf.

100_0001I LOVE this part of Virginia. The landscape reminds me so much of Lancaster County in Pennsylvania, where I grew up.  The hills roll a bit more but the dairy farms with their silos and neat farmsteads are similar. When I left the bookstore, I chose the third route suggestion on my map app as it took me over the dirt roads rather than putting me back on Route 81.  I was rewarded with gorgeous views of farms and cloud-filled skies.

The Maeve Binchy Binge is Over

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Just finished Quentins, fourth in a series of novels by Maeve Binchy set in Dublin.  I liked the way the threads of the three previous novels came together around the story of the restaurant although I found the main character incredibly frustrating. There were times when I just wanted to shake her.

The three previous books were Scarlet Feather, Evening Class, and Tara Road.  The first two were my favorites: they all had some quirky characters woven into the story that kept me interested.  Tara Road was a little predictable but a good story of women learning independence.  None of them were great literature and I don’t feel the need to read any more Binchy.  But they were a nice diversion and I loved the Dublin setting.

I’ve moved on to Martha Grimes.  Belle Ruin is the third in her series about 12-year-old Ellen Graham. I read the other two a long time ago so I’m a little hazy on the story but it doesn’t really matter. Ellen’s narration is insightful and delightful at the same time as she describes the cast of characters in and around the Hotel Paradise.  Her curiosity seems insatiable.

My last road trip gave me time to listen to The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield.  I was riveted by this heart breaking story full of history, family secrets and an old book store.

The good news is that the only one of these books that I bought was Belle Ruin and it was part of a $2 bag from the library so it hardly counts, right?

Breaking the Book Buying Habit

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So far, I have stuck with my resolution not to buy books.  The local library is tiny but has a great fiction selection.  I could have easily walked away with three or four when I visited earlier this week.  I limited myself to just two: The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff, a tale of Mormons and polygamy set in the time of Brigham Young, and A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear, which is part of her Maisie Dobbs mystery series.  It was the latter that caused the most temptation I’ve faced so far.

I have read the first two books in the series–Maisie Dobbs and Birds of a Feather.  But this one is the eighth book in the series and as I read the cover blurb, I realized I wanted to continue to read them in order since besides being great mysteries, they tell the story of Maisie’s life.  All the books are available on the Kindle; there is even a bundled set of the 3rd and 4th books for a mere $15.  And Kindle books don’t take up any shelf space at all.  But a resolution is a resolution so I headed to the library website and put in my request to have it brought from another branch.  Now, I wait patiently to get the email indicating it has arrived. In the mean time, I am immersed in I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb, which came form my own collection.

I also kept my resolution at the library itself which is selling a bag of books for just $2!  Truth be told, there wasn’t much of interest on the carts but that hasn’t ever stopped me before.

NB: I made it through a visit to Books A Million where I drank a latte, surfed the web and only browsed.  But they gave me a $5 coupon for online and I ended up with the second volume of Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Chronicles, The Pale Horseman. The first book in the series–The Last Kingdom–is already on the shelf and the sixth volume–The Death of Kings–just came out.  LOTS more reading to look forward.

A Year of Books If Not Reading

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According to Library Thing, I read 33 books this year. It’s definitely a low for me. I usually get closer to 50 and last year got close to 75 as part of a challenge. It’s a testament to two things: moving to the farm and getting stuck with a couple books.

While the move to the farm has been great for the books–they are breathing freely on the open shelves for the first time in at least a decade–it did not leave a lot of time for reading. I try to get a few pages in each night but am so tired, I usually fall asleep after a few paragraphs. I have found a few afternoons to curl up in the window seat as the sun sets across the front yard with the same result, dozing off in the rays that slip through the magnolia leaves and reflect on the silver roof.

As I look at the shortened list, I see that I got really bogged down in American history, maybe as a result of the move to an antebellum home. Biographies of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington go along with commentaries about both the American Revolution and the Civil War. It took me all summer to plow through McPherson’s one volume history of the latter, not learning that much more but somehow wanting to connect with the past.

I have been reading fiction as a backlash to all that history. I’m halfway through my second Franzen for the year and finding The Corrections a little less accessible than Freedom. I read two by Pat Conroy and enjoyed them although I often found them ponderous and over written even as I bathed in the lushness of the language. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union: A Novel was the best “found” book as well as the quirkiest. And then there were just fun books: Georgia Bottoms, which my mother has passed around to all her friends who have loved reading a “dirty” book, Must Love Dogs, A Red Herring Without Mustard.

I have the audio of the next Flavia deLuce just waiting for my road trip tomorrow. I’ll bet the rental (my husband was hit by a deer) has a connection for my iPod.

What’s on the reading horizon for 2012? Another attempt at not buying books. I have shelves of unread books that called to me at some point: Edwin Way Teale on the seasons, Wendell Berry on living an authentic life, and lots and lots of fiction. There are 43 books on the To Read list in Library Thing so maybe that’s a good starting point. A good friend recommended Gilead so perhaps I shall start with that once I endure Franzen’s angst and dysfunction. It can be wickedly funny and tragic all at the same time.

Instant Yeast & Other Wonders…A Second Try

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In my 20s, when I dabbled in vegetarianism, Diet for a Small Planet was something of the holy book. In those days,  I baked most of the bread I ate with Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book guiding the way .  Then real life intervened with work and higher education and other interests, and I drifted in to the world of industrial eating: plenty of meat, white sugar, and processed flour.

Now, a whole series of books has led me back to those early days of real food, and I’m finding that the farm environment only makes it seem more sensible. Not to mention a not-so-much-older friend whose failed stress test led to a strict vegan diet and just a general desire to feel better and lose some weight.   I suppose it started with Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma coupled with Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.  They were stark reminders of just how far away I personally had moved away from my own convictions when it came to what I put in my mouth.  And the baking impulse can be traced to browsing the King Arthur Flour’s whole grains baking book, fondly remembering the wonders of bread baking and the enticing smell and nutty taste of whole wheat bread.

The most recent book came from the Green Valley Book Fair in Harrisonburg, Virginia.  I wandered through the wooden tables and made it across the walkway to foods and crafts.  And there was Mark Bittman’s The Food Matters Cook Book.  I was taken immediately by his pragmatic tone…he still eats meat but is trying to be less meatatarian.  He has adopted a different relationship to meat and that has made the difference.  His wonderful recipes celebrate all the foods that often take a back seat to the protein and in the section on baking, I found his amazingly simple whole wheat bread recipe that called for something my friend of the King Arthur book had also mentioned: instant yeast.

What a concept.  How many bricks have I baked when the yeast failed to rise?  Even a short flirtation with a bread machine did not make things any more consistent unless I used a mix.  I found sour dough bread to be fool proof but after months of eating it, my husband begged for something else and that really was the end of my bread baking days.

But now I’m back, with two loaves of bread under my belt just this week.  I baked them with the instant yeast, and both of them–one made with white and one made with whole wheat–turned out perfectly.  I can’t wait to get into the kitchen and try something else: maybe some whole wheat hamburger buns.

I’m also experimenting with a healthy muffin recipe as a vehicle for all the strawberries, blueberries and raspberries in the freezer.  My friend on the strict diet ate three of the most recent attempt that included oats, whole wheat, apple sauce and agave nectar instead of the white stuff (flour, sugar) and vegetable oil.  They could have been a bit moister but other than that were quite good with nice flavor and texture.  I sent the rest of the batch home with them and made whole wheat scone with raisins for us to eat this weekend.

And so, the bakery at Bottle Tree Farm is born.

Aah…Autumn

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scarecrowsMy favorite season.  Cool crisp days and long shadows that come earlier each evening.  They’ve started harvesting the corn in the field next door, the huge alien creature chewing through the stalks.  There’s pot roast for dinner, and I spent an hour this afternoon making the scarecrows in the picture.  Aren’t they a hoot!  I was in charge of the scarecrow making stand at the Cornwall Manor Fall Festival and learned how to make them with stuffed pantyhose and old clothes.  We made all boys; the girl with her braids, scarf and apron was my idea.  We didn’t have to buy anything except the bales of straw.  The chickens had fun playing in the leftover bale.

The fall festival is always an excuse for a book binge. They sold shopping bags of books for $6.  I felt virtuous limiting myself to two bags but I’m pretty good at packing a bag.  I bought mostly fiction. Did I really buy 30 books? I’ve been craving good stories lately.  A friend recommended the Maisie Dobbs mysteries by Jacqueline Winspear, and I really enjoyed the first one.  Now, I’m pretty far into Beach Music by Pat Conroy and enjoying it much more than the last one I read.

I tucked the books from the festival into the baskets of the window seat I found at a discount store.  I repurposed a futon chair seat to make a comfy spot to read this winter.  The late afternoon sun comes in and you have a beautiful view of the magnolia tree.  The upstairs is more inviting now since it continues to be warmer than the first floor.

I went exploring today, heading east on 460 to visit the Windsor Food Lion, some 30 miles away*.   A nice store and, low and behold, they had a discount book bin!  I took advantage of the 3 for $10 deal to pick up 3 well known writers: Nick Hornby (Slam), Saving Fish From Drowning (Amy Tan), and One Fifth Avenue (Candace Bushnell).  The Bushnell book is marked First Edition but a quick Google search shows that it isn’t worth much more than I paid for it.  I do feel a bit bad paying so little for books but at least I’m giving them a good home and a chance of being read.  Doesn’t that count for something?

I’m sorry to say that my dreams of owning a bookstore are fading.  We watched Paperback Dreams, a film about two independent bookstores and their struggles to make a living.   Plus, I don’t think I have the commitment to run a retail operation.  So, I’m going to check out setting up an online bookstore since I’ve definitely got inventory.  I suppose I could rent space at flea markets but it’s just not the same.

*This is the closest big name grocery store.  There’s another one about 30 miles west on 460.  There’s always the burg but it is crowded and getting there includes waiting on the ferry so it takes an hour each way. Getting access to a wide variety of food has been the biggest challenge for us.  We have some small stores with many people relying on Dollar General for their food. I was craving a chain grocery store.

2011 Reading Review

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I claimed early in the year that I was taking a break from the competitive reading and photography that was part of 2010.  Instead, I was going slow.  I didn’t even keep up with posting an already taken picture every day.  The year just got away from me somehow and buying a house and moving ate up time and energy even when you weren’t aware of it.  Frankly, we’ve been working like heck since March!  There’s a lot to show for it but every so often, we just get tired.  That’s me tonight.  It is getting dark, Bob is tending a brush fire, and I am ready to curl up with a book although I know it means I will be asleep in about 15 minutes.

I finally managed to find time to update my LibraryThing reading list for the year, and I was a little disappointed to discover that I’ve only read 19 books in 2011, well 20 if you count the Arthur Conan Doyle romance I was reading as the year began.  I might get to 40 at this rate.  I haven’t bought that many books this year either–with the exception of the binge at The Book Escape in Baltimore in April and that was therapy book buying because I had a terrible headache and the minute he handed me the bags, it went away, really, true story–but I need to make a bigger dent in the books I own.  Three of the books I’ve read came from that binge.

I remember being too restless to read in the spring, picking up and putting down books.  I never finished Mailer’s Oswald, it was intimate and sad and yet almost too much so.  I found myself wanting to just get on with it, put off sometimes by the minutiae. (Hmmm, that is my complaint about McPherson right now…maybe I am beginning to demand more economy from authors as I realize I probably won’t ever finish reading the books I currently own plus there’s a pretty good chance I’m going to buy a few more in the next couple decades). I abandoned Mailer for the Benjamin Franklin biography which seemed to move along nicely, sensible yet rich, using details to enhance rather than pummel, something like the man himself.  After that the pace picked up, and I am trying to find time to read every day.

Plus, I hope I get credit for reading thoughtful, lengthy volumes like McPherson’s single-volume Civil War history that I am working on right now.   My list for this year only has a couple guilty pleasures like Georgia Bottoms, about a woman surviving in a small town.  A wickedly funny, just almost unbelievable story. I loaned it to my mother who declared it dirty and then promptly lent it to all her friends.  I don’t count the Anne Perry mystery as fluff since its characters include real English royalty and her work can almost be considered historical fiction.

I did add a book to my library this week: a history of the Battle of Chickamauga by Glenn Tucker that was displayed at the local junk store across the highway from the farm.  I stop in now and then to see what they’ve got.  Besides the book, I found an oversized mug and saucer by Staffordshire with The Farmers Arms poem printed on both cup and saucer.  It seemed appropriate.  And it may even be worth more than I paid…Antiques Roadshow here I come! They gave me the $3 box for free. Good thing since it turned out that the hinge was broken.  But I like the place: a nice jumble of old and not so new, kind of organized but also not so much with the stuff that doesn’t sell getting pushed to the back as they fill up the front and spill over into the parking lot in front.

And now it’s back to McPherson…we’ve made it past Fort Sumter but not to Manassas….it’s going to be a long war.