Booking through Thursday [Another pic from my daughter's recent hike in Utah.]

This week's question:

Quick! It’s an emergency! You just got an urgent call about a family emergency and had to rush to the airport with barely time to grab your wallet and your passport. But now, you’re stuck at the airport with nothing to read. What do you do?

And, no, you did NOT have time to grab your bookbag, or the book next to your bed. You were ... grocery shopping when you got the call and have nothing with you but your wallet and your passport (which you fortuitously brought with you in case they asked for ID in the ethnic food aisle). This is hypothetical, remember ...

First, I have to say, if you're flying Qantas, you don't need anything. The in-flight entertainment system, with TV and movies on demand, is just brilliant. Shameless patriotic plug!
But to answer this BTT, I'd buy three or four magazines on home decor, interiors, that sort of thing. Magazines with good-looking pictures and non-demanding text.
I just can't read books on planes, not even on the long flights to and from Australia, which can be up to 15 hours. I used to take books in my carry-on bag, but don't bother any more.
My kids gave me an iPod shuffle for my birthday last year — one of those neat ones with the clip — and I treated myself to some noise-cancelling headphones. So I plug in and drift off.
But I guess I wouldn't have that with me at the supermarket, would I? Or if I did, it wouldn't be charged ... and my headphones would be at home ...

PS (added later): I'd love to be able to knit on board. So soothing, so therapeutic. It's a shame my little bamboo dpns are seen as potential weapons. C'est la guerre. Sigh

Booking through Thursday

[Thought you'd all enjoy this pic, taken by my daughter Lily, of one of her college friends in Canyonlands National Park, south-east Utah, during spring break.]

This week it's all about seasons:

Do your reading habits change in the spring? Do you read gardening books? Even if you don't have a garden? More light fiction than during the winter? Less? Travel books? Light paperbacks you can stick in a knapsack? Or do you pretty much read the same kinds of things in the spring as you do the rest of the year?

I'm unaware of changing my reading habits in the spring, as, apart from my childhood in England, I always seem to have lived somewhere where there are really only two seasons: summer and not summer.
That's not to say there isn't evidence of spring here in San Diego, or that we didn't recognise spring in Western Australia. But when it's sunny all year, what's the fuss?
Here, in SD, there just isn't that sense of wonder after recovering from — and having survived — a winter immersed in snow, or even really icy-cold temperatures and weeks of rain.
Winter here is not so very different from summer, just a bit colder.
And in Western Australia, where spring comes towards the end of the year, in the crazy frenzy of the lead-up to Christmas, it causes mixed feelings in me: sure it's a wonderful warm growing season, but at the same time it's the precursor to the long hot summer, which is mostly something to be endured.
For me, the joy there is all about autumn, the longest time from the start of summer and the best possible weather.
So to get back to the point, no! I'm not reading anything different at all in spring!

Booking through Thursday
We're pondering this today:

I’ve always wondered what other people do when they come across a word/phrase that they’ve never heard before. I mean, do they jot it down on paper so they can look it up later, or do they stop reading to look it up on the dictionary/google it or do they just continue reading and forget about the word?

Have to be a bit priggish here and say that I don't often come across words or phrases I don't know. That is, apart from scientific, medical or other theoretical terminology — I'm usually a fiction reader, though, so this is a rare encounter.
But whenever I do hit the unknown, I'll look it up immediately, using the dictionary first, or my husband, and then maybe Mr Google.
That is, unless I'm reading in bed, when my husband is my first point of reference, especially for queries about history, poetry or the Black Death — and that way, he's often so intrigued that he'll willingly get out of bed to find the necessary reference book.

I must add, however, that I am easily enraged befuddled by the sort of communication usually attempted — in vain — by 'modern' young teachers with a tight grasp on educational theory and only a very slim grasp on English; or by a wannabe conceptual artist and indeed, his/her wannabe conceptual art critic; or by a pompous book reviewer; or by a government worker — but don't get me started on babble-speak ... please.

:: Added later: And what about words we read that we know the author (and editor and proofreaders) has got entirely wrong and obviously doesn't know?
I'm so sick of seeing 'enormity' used instead of 'enormousness', when 'enormity' has nothing to do with size ... and 'lay' instead of 'lie' ... bet you know a whole lot more!

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This week's fabulous topic, which has provided a whole morning's chat in our kitchen:

• When somebody mentions “literature,” what’s the first thing you think of? (Dickens? Tolstoy? Shakespeare?)
• Do you read “literature” (however you define it) for pleasure? Or is it something that you read only when you must?

The very word, literature, conjures up an instant image of words on a page. Any words, any page; not just the classics, or venerable volumes gathering dust. It's anything written, from Harlequin romances to lofty esoterica; fiction and fact.
And there's bad literature and good literature — otherwise, what is the point of literary criticism?
I noticed in Australia that one of the chain bookstores has a section classified as 'literary fiction', separate from its 'popular fiction', a weirdly judgmental form of categorisation. And who decides what works go in what section?
Similarly judgmental is the primary definition of literature in our Australian national dictionary (the Macquarie, which I neither like nor admire): 1. writings in which expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristic or essential features, as poetry, romance, history, biography, essays, etc.; belles-lettres.
I disagree. Literature, to me, is as universal and inclusive as the word 'movies'. There are classics, blockbusters, overnight sensations, absolute dross and all manner of stuff that falls in between.
Some of it is fabulous and will forever shine light on the world. A lot of it has a less permanent glow. Some of it is dark, base matter that is best left in the dirt, though it may glitter a bit if you work at it.
But it's all literature.

Booking through Thursday
This week's question:

While acknowledging that we can’t judge books by their covers, how much does the design of a book affect your reading enjoyment? Hardcover vs. softcover? Trade paperback v mass-market paperback? Font? Illustrations? Etc.?

It doesn't really worry me. So long as it doesn't have a tightly-glued spine or pages with narrow margins and tiny type, I can't say the design of a book affects my choice, or my enjoyment of it, very much at all.
Which is not to say that I don't relish a well-designed book, with a gorgeous font (Bodoni, or Bembo, or any of the Garamond family) on luscious stock, perhaps with deckle edges and a heavy, textured paper dust jacket. Yum-oh!
Frankly, my enjoyment is affected much more by bad editing, and mistakes in grammar or spelling. Heebie-jeebies!
My sister-in-law told me once of someone she knew (in publishing, I think) who flatly refused to buy any book that had embossed type on its cover. He'd shut his eyes and run his fingers over the cover and if there was any hint of raised type, he'd reject it. There's a good Aussie word for that and it begins with w.
In fact, there are several words for that ...

Booking through Thursday
This week's question:

You’ve just reached the end of a book . . .
what do you do now? Savor and muse over the book? Dive right into the next one?
Go take the dog for a walk, the kids to the park, before even thinking about the
next book you’re going to read? What?

Hmmm. I'm a definite diver.
These days, I have a to-be-read pile, and since I've discovered Australian second-hand bookshops in a big way (still way more expensive than amazon etc, but with lots of UK titles as well), I've got a lot waiting for me. So, by the time I get to the end of a book, no matter how good it is, I've already started working out what I'll move on to next. And then it's done in an instant.
I also find that while I'm reading one book, I can still mull over something I read recently, so there's no need for any hiatus. Just a big breath and dive right in.

Booking through Thursday
This week's question:

You should have seen this one coming … Who is your favorite male lead character? And why?

Well, there are any number of male equivalents of the sort of female character I like (smart, gsoh, ddf, fta, ld/nd, n/s, w/own teeth and hair*).
Nominees could include Mr Darcy, Gandalph, and the guy who gets the girl in A Suitable Boy. But there is one who stands tall, head and shoulders above the rest: Atticus Finch.
He's a thoroughly good man, fits all the above criteria, seems ever-so-slightly vulnerable for all his strength and character, and looks like Gregory Peck.


* In personal ad shorthand: smart; good sense of humour; drug and disease free; likes fun, travel and adventure; light drinker/non drinker; non smoker; with own teeth and hair.

Booking through Thursday

Who is your favorite female lead character? And why? (And yes, of course, you can name more than one . . . I always have trouble narrowing down these things to one name, why should I force you to?)

I don't know of a female character whom I could name as my perennial favourite ... there's always Elizabeth Bennett, I guess, and lots of people will think of her first. And I imagine the 'spirited' one from Little Women - Jo? - will get a few votes as well.
I get right into books I enjoy, and fall for many of the characters straight away. But it will all be over in a flash as I move on to the next book. It's hard to pick the most outstanding. So many books, so many great people to meet!
For example, while I was recently reading Barbara Pym's Excellent Women, set in post-war Britain, I thought her lead (Mildred? Winifred? I don't have the book with me right now) was a great character: strong and principled, with warmth and great wit, plus a healthy dollop of cynicism and a self-deprecating sense of humour.
Just like the character of Marie Sharpe in Virginia Ironside's No, I Don't Want to Join a Book Club, which I read just a few days ago.
I suppose my answer is that I like a certain type of female lead more than any one particular fictional female.

Booking through Thursday
This week's question:

All other things (like price and storage space) being equal, given a choice in a perfect world, would you rather have paperbacks in your library? Or hardcovers? And why?

Hardbacks are so much more expensive and cumbersome ... so perhaps I lean more towards paperbacks. They're lighter, cheaper, usually smaller (so they don't need extra headspace on shelves), and soften up as you read deeper into them, so they become more comfortable.
I'd rather go to bed with a paperback.
I can get a bit anal about any hardcovers I own, making sure their dustcovers remain neat and tidy, and that they are stored correctly.
Paperbacks are far less formal, more like old friends than old relatives!

Booking through Thursday
This week's question:

Have you ever fallen out of love with a favorite author? Was the last book you read by the author so bad, you broke up with them and haven’t read their work since? Could they ever lure you back?

I've been thinking hard about this one, and the only books that spring to mind are the sort of series like Lee Child's and his ilk. Oh - and Carl Hiaasen. They can be funny, and fast and entertaining reads, until you crack the formula, and then ... yawn.
I can almost forgive Hiaasen, as he's at least on a mission to draw attention to the over-development and unscrupulous exploitation of his beloved Florida. But after four or five, I simply cannot be bothered any more.
I have broken up with other writers only temporarily. I'll give them a little breathing space, and I'll see other people, but I'll return to them eventually.
Such as Minette Walters. I did get a little bit tired of her books after a while, though not so tired that I wouldn't read her again. She does great characters.
Same with Ian Rankin - only because his books are so gritty and occasionally bleak that you have to be of a robust disposition to read a lot of them one after the other. But I so admire his writing, and always know that whatever I pick up of his, I'll finish.

Booking through Thursday
This week's question:

Sometimes I find eccentric characters quirky and fun, other times I find them too unbelievable and annoying. What are some of the more outrageous characters you’ve read, and how do you feel about them?

I'm usually drawn to weird and eccentric characters in life — they're often much more fun than the bland and boring! — so I'm usually quite happy reading about them.
And, it can be fun, sometimes, to exist vicariously though characters who show more intellect, daring, nerve, talent and just all-round general gorgeousness than we may do ourselves: that's fiction for you!
What makes eccentric characters irritating is when they are badly drawn and totally unconvincing, and when you can't believe in them.
I have to whinge, therefore, about the utterly, utterly ridiculous character of Claire in Diana Gabaldon's hit, Outlander. She's a nineteen-forties military nurse (and unbelievably sexually liberated) who is suddenly whisked back in time to the 1740s; she's married (in her own time) but still falls in love with a brutish eighteenth-century lout; marries him as well; lets him beat the living daylights out of her and then says, meekly, 'Well, I supposed I deserved it really!' At that point, that book hit the bedroom wall. It's actually one I am ashamed to say I even started.
More recently, I was outraged by the character of Ali in Yasmin Crowther's Saffron Kitchen. He's a simple peasant boy living in an Iranian village way beyond the black stump in the 1960s and '70s, and yet he teaches himself English by listening to the radio with a dictionary — presumably Farsi-English — on his lap. And, to cap it off, he spouts Matthew Arnold!

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What’s your favorite book that nobody else has heard of? You know, not Little Women or Huckleberry Finn, not the latest best-seller . . . whether they’ve read them or not, everybody “knows” those books. I’m talking about the best book that, when you tell people that you love it, they go, “Huh? Never heard of it?”

:: Since 1966-67, when we read Flora Thompson's Lark Rise to Candleford in English class at school, I've always thought that no-one but my fellow students had ever heard of it. Shows how much I know: the TV series is now screening on English telly. I so loved this book, even after wading through it in school, and I've always owned a copy.

:: I'm always surprised when I get a strange querying look in response to mention of the short stories of Saki, the pen name of H.H. Munro. A boyfriend introduced me to Saki in the 1970s, and he's been in my collection ever since. These are brilliant, witty and often acerbic pieces, many of them satirising Edwardian life. They're full of eccentricities, bizarre happenings and weird characters — I just love them. Munro died aged 45 in 1916.

:: I'm going to take this opportunity to mention Rhubarb, by Craig Silvey — an absolute jewel of a book that hardy anyone outside of Western Australia will have ever heard of. It's a big-hearted story — a love story, in fact — about a traumatised blind girl, her seeing-eye dog, and an agoraphobic cello player.
Had this book been written anywhere else but in Perth, or set so firmly in Fremantle, Perth's port city on the Indian Ocean, it would have been a worldwide hit. I'm cheered to see amazon.com lists it — can I persuade some of you to try it?

Booking through Thursday
This week's question:

How much do reviews (good and bad) affect your choice of reading? If you see a bad review of a book you wanted to read, do you still read it? If you see a good review of a book you’re sure you won’t like, do you change your mind and give the book a try?

Reviews do have some effect on my reading choices, but I don't rely on them alone.
Nor do I read them religiously — there wouldn't be enough time to read the books if I did. My main sources are the LA Times and the NY Times online (amazing, just amazing), and the NY Review of Books which is delivered and sits in a pile by my bed for slow dipping and holiday reading.
I'll occasionally look at some of the readers' comments on amazon.com — that can be a lot of fun, once you wade through all the reviews that are nine-tenths synopses and one-tenth 'it was a very good book ...'.
A review is no guarantee of a book's chemistry with me, but it's a good starting point.
I buy a lot of books according to my own criteria, and some according to recommendations that may or may not include reviews.
Once I've read a review of a book I'm interested in — good or bad — I'll probably try to gauge any buzz about it among my friends whose tastes I trust. Nowadays, that includes the book blogs I read. Then I'll mull over it in the bookshop, if it's there.
Usually, I'll trust my own instincts about authors I respect. For example, On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan's latest, is getting mixed reviews that tend towards the negative, but I'll probably buy it anyway. I like him.
I'm not the sort of reader who buys the latest releases. I often come to books several years after most people have read them. Occasionally, if I remember there being a fuss about any particular title I've read, I'll search out the old reviews to see if my opinions and the reviewers' correspond.

Booking through Thursday
This week's question:

1. How did you come across your favorite author(s)? Recommended by a friend? Stumbled across at a bookstore? A book given to you as a gift?
2. Was it love at first sight? Or did the love affair evolve over a long acquaintance?

My favourite authors have either been recommended and introduced to me by friends (Barbara Kingsolver, the Mitfords, Agatha Christie, Jane Austen, Ian Rankin, Margery Allingham, etc etc) or have become so by happy accident (Ian McEwan, Maggie O'Farrell, Dorothy L. Sayers, Kazuo Ishiguro, Minette Walters, Jhumpa Lahiri, Anita Brookner, etc etc).
Once I like them, I'll try anything they've written.
But as life's too short to spend reading time on stuff I can't stand, authors I don't enjoy rarely get the chance to worm their way into my affections.
Yes, I know: it's a major failing on my part. But stiff. I don't smoke, drink or fool around, so I'm allowed some peccadillos.

I will try out all recommendations by certain of my friends, though the resulting chemistry is occasionally unfavourable (Alexander McCall Smith, for example, John Banville, Cormac McCarthy et al).
And it's the same when I recommend books to others: they won't always gel.

So serendipity is a major force when I'm choosing reading matter.
My husband, who reads non-fiction (history and politics) and chooses many of his books only after meticulous research, reading reviews, and picking his way through recommendations, often says he can't believe how I can walk into a bookstore, choose a book seemingly on a whim, and then love it from cover to cover.
It's not always entirely whim, of course. I'll have a mental list (and these days, a hard copy of that list) of authors my friends and favourite bloggers are talking about, and I know where to roam as far as genre, subject matter, period and writing styles go.
And then, occasionally, a book sitting innocently on a bookstore shelf, not even among the new releases or bestsellers, will just strike a chord with me and I'll take a chance on it, driven by the blurb and a quick flick inside, and even, perhaps the cover. Now there's an admission!

Booking through Thursday
Happy Christmas to all the BTT mob!
This week's question:

1. What fiction book (or books) would you nominate to be the best new book published in 2007?
   (Older books that you read for the first time in 2007 don’t count.)
2. What non-fiction book (or books) would you nominate to be the best new book published in 2007?
   (Older books that you read for the first time in 2007 don’t count.)
3. And, do “best of” lists influence your reading?

Oh dear — another week when I have very little to say in answer to the question. Apart from the Harry, and Alan Bennett's 'An Uncommon Reader', I don't seem to have read anything that was published this year. Several slightly older books, but nothing really brand-spanking new.

Best-of lists don't have much of an impact. I am frequently amazed at some of the dross included; but then they're usually all about sales.
I prefer to peruse titles recommended in the reading blogs I enjoy, and they invariably lead on to other things.

* I didn't answer last week's question, about online cataloguing, as I have only a few books here in the US; my collection (or what's left of it, after I culled it to move out of our house) is in storage in Australia. I am bereft!
* And I didn't answer the week before, about favourite books that are out of print, as I really don't have any I can think of.

Booking through Thursday

This week's question:

Do you get on a roll when you read, so that one book leads to the next, which leads to the next, and so on and so on? I don’t so much mean something like reading a series from beginning to end, but, say, a string of books that all take place in Paris. Or that have anthropologists as the main character. Or were written in the same year. Something like that… Something that strings them together in your head, and yet, otherwise could be different genres, different authors…

I have done that, especially when I find an author whose work I really like. Barbara Kingsolver, Ian McEwan, Maggie O'Farrell, Jhumpa Lahiri, Carol Shields are some recent series I remember. I had to spread out the Ian Rankins — sometimes they were so gritty and bleak that after three or four I yearned for a little light in between.

I turned my good friend Susan in Melbourne on to Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey novels many years ago, and she in turn introduced me to Margery Allingham's Albert Campion. We both read them all, straight through. Years earlier it had been Agatha Christie, and the Cadfael Chronicles by Ellis Peters. Those authors tended to be prolific, and consistent, and once I enjoyed one, I was hungry for the rest — and oh! what joy to discover there were lots of them!

I've also enjoyed one non-author series: the Jhumpa Lahiri* books led me to read anything dealing with the Indian migrant experience in the US and the UK, and I read many wonderful novels on that theme, which remains a favourite. And in turn, that has led to choosing novels dealing with any kind of migration/re-location ... it's been great.

*Is JL's 'The Namesake' a good movie? I'm so scared it won't be ...

Booking through Thursday

This meme takes a different tack this week, linking to this blog post, whose author, Joanna, and co-contributor Brad are asking about “connecting words,” and they don’t mean conjunctions like “and” or “but.” No, what they’re looking for are unique, or treasured words that we’ve found out and about in our daily travels, words that might not be common usage, or often heard, but which struck a chord for some reason.

Being Australians in the US, almost everything we say seems to make people laugh, or scratch their heads. Our vernacular uses a lot of irony, is broad and nuanced, and hard to explain to non-Australians. We use colourful expressions that need translating occasionally, such as 'beaut', 'chuck a yewie (make a U-turn)', and 'it's my shout, mate (it's my turn to buy you a drink, buddy)'. And we get into trouble occasionally with words like 'pissed', which here means cross and in Australia means drunk; and 'root', which is something Americans do for their teams and in Australia is having sex (not very nicely).

One of the best Australian words, and one which is so useful and charged with meaning back home, is dag/daggy. Nerds in stretch pants and cardigans are daggy. Daggy means naff, unfashionable, unstylish. The literal definition of a dag is a matted piece of wool, usually flyblown and dirty, that hangs off a sheep's rear end.

:: At a weekly suburban paper I used to work for, we had a vocabulary of our own on production day. For example, if a story was a fraction short (or long) for its allotted space, it was 'a poofteenth out'; and a really strong headline was 'a grunter', or 'an overhead dick-dick'.

:: My family is originally from Norfolk, in the UK, and my grandmother, who was born in 1896, had some wonderful old expressions, which we still use at home. If the weather looked stormy, she would look at the sky and say, dramatically, 'It's dark over Will's mother's'.
If, as a child, I was curious and asked 'What's that?' or something of that nature, the answer would always be 'K-O-Y-H raspberries, and you're the first.' We still don't know what she meant!

:: Added later: My mother, who was from Southampton, would look at a stormy sky and say 'It's as black as Nooka's knocker.' Which may be some reference to the door of hell — we don't know.

:: PS: I'm adding this the next morning, as I forgot to mention how amused we were when we realised that many of the Americans here in Southern California had never heard of a fortnight, and couldn't even begin to guess its meaning. Such a common English word that we use without thinking.
:: I also use the exclamation 'struth!' a lot, which even makes Australians laugh. It is an old Australian expression that you don't hear much, except around me! I use it because it's also an old English expression — 'a contraction of God's truth' — and my Norfolk grandmother said it often. I think it was the strongest word in her vocabulary.
Another of her favourite expressions, of surprise, was 'Well, stone the crows and chase the cows!'
I miss her and her colourful turn of phrase.
I swear a lot, and my grandmother would be horrified. It also shocks Americans, I was very surprised to discover, so I quickly learned to tone it down, hence the usefulness of a well-placed struth!

Booking through Thursday

This week's question: how many of us write notes in our books? Are you a Footprint Leaver or a Preservationist?
Definitely a preservationist. Through and through.
Though I do confess to having been so heartily pissed off about one slackly edited book that I started marking all the errors with a view to sending it back to the publisher and asking for a job (which I think I mentioned when the Thursday question was about attitudes to mistakes in books).
I will never, ever write anything in a book. I don't leave comments, corrections or marks in the margins.
I'll put my name on the fly-leaf if I'm lending a book to someone, but that's it.
That is not to say that I have not sinned.
At school, and at uni, we all used to write over the texts we were studying, imagining that one day we'd go through and rub out all our little translations and underlinings and notes.
It made us feel scholarly, I think, and part of a tradition - particularly at high school when we used school text books that had been through several hands and still bore their previous owners' arcane and faded commentaries.
I still have my old abused copies of uni texts with hideous pencil scrawls all through them. Ugh.
Thankfully, it was a habit peculiar to studying. My very own bought-by-choice books are sacrosanct.
Today (particularly since the invention of sticky Post-it notes), such treatment seems like vandalism.
I don't even like to break my paperback books' spines.

Booking through Thursday

Today's question:

Would you say that you read about the same amount now as when you were younger? More? Less? Why?

I read heaps more now, by choice, than when I was younger. And I owe it all to D.H. Lawrence and Australia.
As a kid in England in the early 1960s, I had a teacher who forbade us to read Enid Blyton, not because of the gollywog wars or Noddy's closet homosexuality, but because he said she was formulaic and snobby. Anyway, I did as I was told, and have very fond memories of The Borrowers, and Frances Hodgson-Burnett's two wonderful tales, The Secret Garden and The Little Princess, all of which I read with my mum.
High school had an incredible workload, and one or two hours' homework every night was normal. My first high school books, in Upper IIIE, were John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (what?!) and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Heavy stuff for a ten-year-old, but a grand start, in hindsight.
From then on, we picked up speed and galloped through lots and lots of required reading. I can't remember all of it, but there was the usual line-up: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Bunyan, Milton et al. Then there were French plays and novels, read and discussed in French, and Virgil's Aeneid and Caesar's Invasion of Britain in Latin.
I remember my friends reading plenty, but for me, there simply wasn't enough time for recreational reading. Plus all these books belonged to the school, so you never got to live with them for very long.
Epiphany came in Australia, in 1970, when my parents were shocked to discover they had to buy all our school textbooks and stationery when we enrolled at the local high school. So I came home with a fabulous pile of books and just started reading: Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence. This was 4th year high school and the theme of all the Eng.Lit. reading was childhood. So there were wonderful novels like Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, The Man Who Loved Children, Catcher in the Rye and The Go-between, and a heap of poems and short stories.
And there was a reprieve in French. In England we'd been studying Camus and Descartes; in Australia we read Asterix comics and Le Petit Prince. Piece of cake.
I had much more reading time, now, and Lawrence, I thought, was the most wonderful, wonderful, insightful, sensitive, best author in the whole world.
I've had my head in a book ever since.

November 1 - Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).

Booking through Thursday
This week's question is:

What with yesterday being Halloween, and all . . . do you read horror? Stories of things that go bump in the night and keep you from sleeping?

Horror is not one of my favourite genres because I'm too much of a wimp! That being said, I have read some wonderful scary stuff.
One of the best/worst was Magic, by William Goldman, the chilling story of a ventriloquist's dummy that ... I won't say any more because of you like horror and you haven't read this - you must! Just the mention of 'ventriloquist's dummy' sends a shiver up my spine after reading this.
I also thought The Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris, was a fantastic thriller - fascinating but frightening. It's really worth a read even if you've seen the excellent movie.
I once watched a TV drama, The Woman in Black, which was, quite frankly, so utterly, completely terrifying that just thinking of it still gives me the heeby-jeebies if I'm at home alone at night. I mention this because I've been told that the book, by Susan Hill, is even more of a scare than its TV adaptation. So if you're up for it, give it a go!