Medieval Bookworm

With books and with plenty of other things, I often feel like I’m still a poor student. But as I’m nearing the finish of my first year of working (and marking it by attending my very first marketing event AND giving my first presentation on SEO with my boss), I’m very quickly realizing that I’m not, and that my money has power because I can decide what I do with it.

I’m in a relatively good position; my husband and I are both employed and we make enough money together to pay all of our bills, all the time, as well as eat and drive a car, and then we even manage to have some left over for both savings and leisure money. I know we’re not particularly rich, and a hefty bill still has the power to push us over the edge, but we’re both enjoying not having to stretch any pennies in any directions they don’t want to go and working on never having to do that again.

As evidence of our affluence, we’ve even managed to save up for a shiny new desktop computer, and I am now buying books on a regular basis. Rather than going for limiting the TBR or number of books purchased, I’ve just given myself a certain amount of money for books every month, so I’m relatively free to get whatever I want, even if it’s stupidly expensive.

This brings up, naturally, questions of just where to spend that money. How can I make it work hardest for the things I believe in? And this is where the biggest change has come in for me. I used to frequent charity shops and used bookstores all the time, hoping to acquire some wishlist books as well as those that just look interesting. I don’t do this any more, simply because if I’m buying books I want that money to go where it’s most valuable. I can go to the library for random finds, which I want to do to support them as well anyway. I donate to charities of my own free will, without depleting their book collections (and in fact bring them my discards).

For the most part, I buy new books, and I love feeling able to make that decision. It’s probably the one thing that has really signaled to me that I’m an adult now (that, and the fact that I can buy clothes from any section of the store I want, just because I like them – I never expected to enjoy that so much!) Books are my one hobby that costs money, so I take care to spend that money wisely. I do buy books online – I can buy more that way, and I want a LOT of books that my only local bricks and mortar bookstore, a puny W.H. Smith, doesn’t carry. There are no independents around that sell new books, so I’m limited in that respect, but I do try to buy from the actual bookstore especially now, even if the staff seems mainly employed to ask me if I want to buy chocolate with my books. To be fair, the local used bookstore isn’t any better – I’ve never seen the two employees even speak to a customer who isn’t actively buying something, but that isn’t really the point.

Anyway, the process by which I’m becoming a consumer, rather than someone who pinches every penny, has been quite fascinating to me. I love the privilege of deciding what I support and where I want my money to go. We never know what the future will bring, especially those of us who intend to return to academia at some point, so I’m going to enjoy making these decisions while I have the ability to do so – and I think considering where our money goes, especially on something we treasure as much as books, is a thought that everyone who is in a similar position should have.

In all honesty, I meant to write this post yesterday for #savelibraries day. Unfortunately, time got away from me, but I thought it was still important to write about how things are in this country, and why libraries are regarded as something that can easily be forgotten (in my opinion). I’ve written similar opinions on others’ blogs, but I thought it was time to finally put them on my own.

Libraries in the UK are being closed down now, part of many, many governmental ‘budget cuts’ that, to me, seem mostly designed to make life harder for poor people and easier for rich people. It’s the way it goes. But, as a reasonably well-off person these days, libraries are my main concern. Because I can afford to buy books, but I know others can’t. I know my parents couldn’t satisfy my insatiable need to read with buying (at least part of why I’ve read some of my childhood books 10+ times) and I’m pretty sure that today’s parents will struggle just as much. Literacy should be encouraged; as we watch our countries slide down in intelligence, as even schools start to go downhill, it seems basic literacy should be encouraged more than anything. I proofread others’ writing; I know just how bad at least some schools here are at teaching students how to write. I’m convinced that reading voraciously helps immensely with not only writing but a vast amount of skills that are simply necessary for modern day life.

So why are libraries failing and being cut as unnecessary? I have a few reasons to postulate:

1. Kids don’t read. Some do, yes, but their parents don’t read. Reading in our modern day lives has become a chore. The people I know in real life who do read don’t use the library. At all. But kids need guidance to learn what they like to read. While teachers should take this on, I firmly believe librarians can also play a huge part in this. My library here has programmes for kids to do just this. Without them, their resources are more limited. I see no programmes planned to replace those of closed libraries.

2. Libraries can actually cost money for borrowers. In my old library system, it cost 50p to reserve a new book. Everyone who paid their 50p could read the book before the rest of us. It also cost 50p or more to reserve a book in a different library in the system, and more than that to borrow a CD or DVD. I understand that they’re just trying to raise money, but surely charging for a borrowed book is not the way to encourage this. Especially with point number 3.

3. Charity shops are everywhere. And while their mission is to do good for various suffering people and animals across the country, it certainly doesn’t help libraries (or bookstores) that they sell books for 50p or £1. Some charity shops dare to charge £2.50-£4, but these are less popular than the former. If you can buy a book for the same amount of money it costs you to borrow it for 3 weeks, why bother with borrowing? Why risk it being overdue? If you buy it in a charity shop, you own it, and you can pat yourself on the back for donating money to good causes. I know I’ve done it, because it is a good thing, but it doesn’t help my main concern here.

4. Books in the UK are pretty cheap in general. Most paperbacks I buy new online are £5 or less, with free shipping. I buy the occasional hardcover for around £10. If I had a bricks-and-mortar shop to support locally, they’d still only cost about £8. I can go to Tesco, my local supermarket, right now and get two books for that price. It’s not the same difference in the US, where most paperbacks are now trade paperbacks and cost $10-15. That’s a bigger savings than £5. I can afford to buy more books new, so I do. I still use the library, but I buy the books they don’t have, since there is no request system in place for the purchase of new books.

There is simply less surface cause for British people to need the library – not if they don’t read particularly often – because books aren’t that expensive and quite often library charges cancel out the benefits of borrowing a book for nothing. But that doesn’t mean libraries should be closed. They’re essential to communities, offering services for both children and adults that won’t be replaced. I was thrilled to see a library in Doncaster featured on the BBC yesterday due to all the people that were protesting by checking out books. But it’s important to remember not to support your library on just one day. Support them regularly, and we can teach the government that they are something we genuinely need, that can’t just be ‘cut’.

ETA: Nymeth wrote an incredible post elaborating in much clearer detail on why libraries are important.

One of my goals for the New Year was to start reviewing right after finishing a book, so that I didn’t gain a review backlog, and not allow myself to read another book until the review was finished. Unfortunately, I’ve already failed miserably! My reading in 2011 has been off to a roaring start, but that means I have five reviews (yes, FIVE) already waiting to be written. I’ve decided to amend my goal and instead do all the reviews on the weekend after I’ve read them, when I normally have more time and feel a bit more like writing. This does mean I have five reviews to write today, but I can manage if I get my head in the right place.

In other bookish news, my TBR has similarly skyrocketed this week. In part, this is because I had some money for Christmas, and decided there was no better way to spend it than buying new books. I’ve already welcomed two of these purchases into my house and I’m anticipating more over the next week. It’s bad for my shelves, but I do like to support the publishing industry by buying new, and after accumulating a year-long wishlist of books slightly more expensive than I could buy during the year, it’s nice to just purchase them and have them for my very own.

Plus, I’ve realized how little I’m actually paying attention to my Kindle and under-utilizing it. I know I can read classics on it for free, but I’d never really ventured beyond Amazon, getting stymied whenever there was a charge. But while I was perusing blogs yesterday, I stumbled across this post on Eva’s blog, and with her new Nook she’s downloaded lots of classics that I too would love to read. I must admit I’ve now gone a little crazy with public domain books, but I think this should mean I’ll feature more classics in time, as I get them read.

Speaking of ebooks, I wanted to let you all know about a free e-novella from HarperCollins. David Vann, author of the upcoming Caribou Island, has released his novella Sukkwan Island for free. It previously appeared in his collection, Legend of a Suicide, and won the Prix Medicis award for best foreign novel in France. Definitely worth a download. It’s available on Amazon, the Sony ebook store, and for the Kobo ereader, and I’m told will shortly appear for the Nook as well.

Finally, in terms of reading today, I’ve begun to read A Tale of Two Cities for the read-a-long hosted by Jen at Devourer of Books and Nicole at Linus’s Blanket over on What’s Old Is New. I’ve wanted to re-read this for years, and doing so with the actual publication schedule seems both fun and doable. I’ve finished the first installment and it took less than half an hour, so my initial impressions were correct. I can’t wait to get a bit deeper in and see if I enjoy it as much as I did in high school. I also managed to read one of those way-too-old ARCs, Something Missing, between today and yesterday, which was surprisingly delightful and shouldn’t have sat in my review pile for so long. Yesterday I completely devoured The Raising by Laura Kasischke in one sitting, and only wish I didn’t have to hold my review until March! It was excellent and I’m not sure how I’ll keep the gushing out of my review – I was totally consumed by the book and put off everything I’d planned for the day just to keep reading.

This week, I think I’ll be spending some time in the realm of non-fiction, with Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson and Packing for Mars by Mary Roach. I’m very excited about both of these and plan to savor them over the course of today and the next few days.

What do you have planned for this Sunday? Any great books on your horizon?

There are only one and a half months left in my Year of Reading Deliberately and I find myself with quite a few books left that I haven’t read.  Not overall unreads – but books that I went into 2010 certain that I wanted to read this year, or which I acquired very early on in the year and haven’t actually gotten to yet.  The worst part?  None of them are even in my immediate TBR stack, which is making it look increasingly unlikely that I’ll get to them.  Clearly, if I want to read them, I’ll have to make them a priority over the next month and a half.

I didn’t really have a list when I originally set out on my goals – I just had broad priorities.  One I’ve definitely achieved – I’ve read more non-fiction.  In fact, it feels like I’m reading loads of it, and I love that!  I’ve also managed to get my reading plan going with 1/3 library books, 1/3 review copies, and 1/3 own books.  So overall, I’m not doing too badly, but there are still a few books on my shelf staring at me, telling me that I was supposed to read them months ago!  Here are just a few of them:

1. Warbreaker, Brandon Sanderson – I’ve had this book since it came out, and purchased it in hardcover no less.  I love Brandon Sanderson and I actually was convinced I’d read it right away.  Yet here we are, with the book out in paperback, and no less than three new books out from Sanderson (including his WoT books), and I still haven’t read it.  If anything, this book seriously proves that I’m turning down long books, because I still really want to read it.  This is going on the immediate TBR.

2. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon – I got this one for my birthday right at the beginning of the year and was so excited – I finally had a copy, I could finally read it!  Once again, didn’t happen, despite the fact that it’s now been recommended by far more people than it had been when I originally bought it, and I’ve really wanted to read something by Chabon.  And it’s another long book.  I’m prioritizing this, too, by pulling it off the shelf and putting it in the stack.

3. Generation A, Douglas Coupland – I didn’t actively seek this book out, I won it, but after that it received boatloads of praise in every review I found.  I even mentioned on Twitter that I wanted to read it soon.  And still I haven’t – even though I’ve owned it for just under a year.

4. King’s Shield, Sherwood Smith – I persuaded myself to read the second in this series over a year ago, and finally found myself so wrapped up in it that I bought this one, number 3 – and number 4 in hardcover! – convinced I wanted to know what happened next so badly that I’d read it ASAP.  Did I?  No, of course not; as you might expect, this is another long book that I’d probably love.

5. The Tea Rose, Jennifer Donnelly – Even loving A Northern Light and heaps of praise didn’t convince me that I wanted to pick up this massive chunkster.  But it’s another book I’m sure I’ll adore, once I pick it up.  I’m so sure that I even have the sequel!  Sensing a pattern yet?

Anyway, just because I’ve left those unread doesn’t mean I’m not getting to books that have been waiting equally as long.  I’m in the midst of A Company of Liars by Karen Maitland, a book that has been on my shelves for two years, and I’ll be reading The Book Thief soon, a SantaThing gift from two years ago. It just seems that there isn’t enough time to read all the books that I’d aimed to read.  I get interrupted by the vast amount of new books available to me, and it’s certainly gotten worse since I picked up the Kindle.  I’ve been downloading books from Netgalley like there’s no tomorrow, and then reading them instead of my physical TBR pile.  I have loved all but one of those, but that doesn’t mean I won’t love the books I have, too.  To top it all off, I just purchased no less than 11 new books, my last “hurrah” before a buying ban that should last me until Christmas.

But these five are coming out of hiding.  I’m putting them in a spot where I can’t miss them and making it a goal to read them before 2010 is up.

What books were you certain that you were going to get to this year?  Have you read them yet?

It seems like that’s all I do these days!  Obviously, I didn’t blog while I was in Paris last weekend, and shortly after we returned I (and my husband) promptly got sick with a cold.  All I did this week and go to work, get home and try not to fall asleep immediately!  I’m just starting to feel better now, though, so I’m hoping to catch up on all the blogging I’ve missed over the last week and a half while I was gone.  Halloween isn’t going to be celebrated around here; I know it’s not a very popular attitude but it’s actually my least favorite holiday!  My only observation has been the spooky books I read for the RIP challenge, which I still haven’t wrapped up.

I meant to write a quick recap of our Paris trip – at least the literary bits of it – before now, but better late than never, right?  I’d read about so much of what we saw, and it added an extra layer onto everything which was fantastic.  It was especially awe-inspiring to be in Versailles, having read numerous books, fiction and non, about Marie Antoinette in particular.  Here’s the bedroom which was last hers:

Unfortunately I couldn’t get the bottom because there were simply so many people there.  At times we felt like cattle being herded through the palace – I can’t imagine how busy it must be in the summer if it was this bad at the end of October!  They also had contemporary Japanese art scattered around that, to be honest, I wasn’t sure worked in that context.  The whole place really made me interested in reading more about the others who lived there, though.  I’ve learned about Louis XIV in school, but was never particularly inspired to read further about him – seeing evidence of his work, and that of his descendents, has definitely brought about a change in attitude.

Seeing history from a French perspective was so fascinating and I’m reminded of how limited I am by the fact that I only speak English fluently enough to read in it.  Many times victories for the English, of course, were defeats for the French; almost everything I’ve read has been from an English perspective, or an American writing on an English perspective, and I can’t wait to try and seek out some French authors who’ve managed to get their work translated into English.  I want to learn French (I have for a while now) but while I’m learning SEO I don’t think I can handle both.  That might be a goal to start in 2011.

The other literary highlight to the trip was seeing one of Michelangelo’s statues in person for the very first time.  I’ve really wanted to since I read The Agony and the Ecstasy last year, and at the Louvre I got my chance.  Here’s a picture again if you missed Wednesday’s post:

The two Slave statues really did stand out from the others; the muscle definition and level of reality was truly a step above. I wasn’t sure my inexperienced eye would be able to catch that, but even in the dimmed light it was remarkable.

This week is going to be all about catching up.  I have a few reviews to get done and a lot of blogs to comment on.  So I’ll end here, and hope you all have a wonderful Halloween and a great start to November.