Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is:  Do you bring along books when you go on a vacation?

ALWAYS!  Going on vacation is the one time I regret not having an e-reader…but it only comes up once every year or two, so I just haul along books and make the best of it.  I love having something to read with me, and depending on the length of the vacation and the specific plans, I may bring five or six books!

I went to England twice for two-week vacations, and traveled alone.  I brought along several books and read through most of them.  I try to theme my reading to the place I’m going, if I can, so I brought several books set in London, and it really did add something.  It’s awesome to read Sherlock Holmes and visit Baker Street!

I always bring and read The Little White Bird, or Adventures in Kensington Gardens by J. M. Barrie when I go to London.  I stay at a hotel near the Gardens and try to go daily, and reading Barrie’s delightful book puts me so in the mood and adds to the Gardens’ charms.

I do try to make some concessions to practicality, and have been known to choose paperbacks over hardbacks, and small light books over big heavy ones while traveling.  But it’s always been well-worth it to me to bring along books on vacation.  I can’t imagine leaving home for any meaningful period of time without bringing something to read!

Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is:  What books got a lot of hype but were a disappointment for you?

There’s definitely been some books that were super popular that I really disliked…and I always feel a little weird criticizing them, to be honest!  It’s a little harder to say “this is a terribly written book” when the cover says “10 million copies sold” or whatever!  But there have still been some that seemed to work for a lot of people but not at all for me.

The first to come to mind was Wicked by Gregory Maguire, which had  “massive number of copies sold” on the cover.  And I…really disliked it.  I found the characters unappealing, the attempt to be shocking kind of bothersome, and the ending especially disappointing.  The musical, on the other hand, is a wonderful delight!

I was quite disappointed by Carrie Fisher’s The Princess Diarist.  I mean, Carrie Fisher’s memoir of being in Star Wars – that sounded amazing!  But it turned out to be more about her affair with Harrison Ford than it was about, well, Star Wars, and that was disappointing.  I still think she was awesome, but this was not the book for me.

I heard about Stephen King’s memoir/writing advice book, On Writing, from a lot of people, particularly other writers, before I finally picked it up.  I ended up skimming great pieces of it, because it was so much about his writing, which I haven’t read (not being a horror reader).  I suppose I should have taken the “memoir” part of the description more seriously.  If I was a King fan, I acknowledge that this probably would have gone better.

Three seems like enough books to criticize in one day. 🙂  Have you read a very popular book that you found disappointing?  I suspect it’s happened to us all…

Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is:  Do you visit indie and/or used bookstores? Also, have you ever worked in any?

Well, I’m not visiting stores right now because: pandemic, but in general I love a used bookstore.  I used to live in San Francisco, and one of my favorite places was Green Apple Bookstore.  I actually prefer used bookstores to stores selling new books – I like old books in general, and it feels more like a treasure hunt.  You never know when you’ll find some amazing old copy of something.  I also seem to find books I want to buy more often in used bookstores…maybe because I tend to be more interested in picking up old favorites than buying whatever is new and just-published.

I have never worked in a bookstore, though there have definitely been times in my life when I thought that would be a great job.  I don’t enjoy working retail, though, so I don’t know if the fact that it was retail books would actually outweigh the other disadvantages…  I’m currently part of an anthology about magic bookstores that will be out later this year, but that’s the closest experience I’ve had to working in bookstores, and it’s fictional!