Booking Through Thursday: Pet Peeves

This week BBT asks:What are your literary “pet peeves”?

Ha, ha ha! I have so many of them. But I am only going to talk about the one that bothers me the most: Mass Market Movie Tie In Covers. I don't want to see a movie star on my book cover. I don't want to see some actress all made up with a bad dye job staring back at me. I don't want to see a scruffy hunk. I just want to read the book. And chances are if I haven't read it I won't purchase the paperback with the awful cover. I will go to the library and checkout the old version. I am strange that way.

(This photo in no way represents what I am talking about. I just wanted to show off this cute picture of my baby.)

Booking Through Thursday: The Girl With The Incredibly Short Attention Span

This week BBT asks: What book took you the longest to read, and do you feel it was the content or just the length that made it so?

For me it would be "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo." It took me 2 months to finish it. Not because I didn't like it, but lets be honest, until you meet Lisbeth Salander is it really worth the read? It took me forever to get through the first couple of chapters. I would put it down, pick up something more fun to read and then go back to it. But once Lisbeth was introduced, I was hooked.

Booking Through Thursday: Recommendations

This week BTT asks: If someone asked you for a book recommendation, what is the FIRST book you’d think to recommend (without extra thought)?

This is so easy for me. "I am the Messenger" by Markus Zusak. It is my favorite book.

It's about a young cab driver in Austrailia who, after stopping a bank robbery, begins to receive playing cards in the mail with riddles. The riddles are actually instructions and he is supposed to use those instructions to help strangers.

It is gritty and compelling and if a book could change your life, I would say this one did mine. I love it. I own multiple copies so that I have extras to give people. I know, I borderline on obsession. But I read this book during a time when I needed it and it stuck with me. That's what good books are supposed to do.

We're Booking Through Thursday

Photo by Tricia Dillard

This is the first time I have participated in Booking Through Thursday. Why haven't I done this before???

I love reading. It is my favorite past time. I loved books as a kid but lost my spark for reading only to pick it up again after college. It came back to me in a time in my life when I needed control. That is what books give us, control.

We get the chance to escape for a few minutes and when we are done with the adventure, we close the pages, turn off the Kindle or put the iPad to sleep. That's my point, there are so many options for reading now.

My favorite, and most frugal, is the library. How many free things are left in this world? The library remains one of them. My baby and I have been making weekly trips to the library since he was 6 weeks old. It's important to me that he value books as much as I do.

“Peeing is like a good book in that it is very, very hard to stop once you start." - John Green, Paper Towns. 

Okay, now onto BTT:

Are there any fictional characters whom you have emulated (or tried to)? Who and why? I have to say no. Not outright anyway. I may quote them or use them for inspiration, but I don't think I have ever tried to emulate a fictional character. But if I was going to borrow some characteristics I would want to be more like Liesel in "The Book Thief." She is so brave and I am not.

What literary character do you feel is most like you personality-wise (explain)? Laurel in "The Girl Who Stopped Swimming." At the beginning her voice is muted by all the other characters. But by the end she has found her strength. I can't really say I have ever been muted, but I have come into my self in the last three years.

What about you? Do you have a character whose character you admire?