Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: If you could have lunch with any living authors and/or book bloggers, who would you choose and why?

Meeting with authors is always an intriguing question, and slightly complicated when I try to be realistic about who I would really enjoy meeting over lunch, and who I would be terribly intimidated by.  I’d love to have lunch with Geraldine McCaughrean, who seems especially friendly and who I could talk with about Peter Pan and Kensington Gardens.  I’d love to meet Tamora Pierce, but I’m not sure if I wouldn’t be a bit terrified to actually have lunch–and I know I’d be terrified of Robin McKinley, who is amazing but also distinctly intimidating. Gail Carson Levine, on the other hand, seems very approachable and I’d love to chat with her–but I probably wouldn’t work up the nerve to ask what she really thought of the movie version of Ella Enchanted.

Technically Michael Crawford is an author by way of an autobiography, but I never wanted to meet him, just to hear him sing live (accomplished!)  I think I’d have a wonderful time with Gretchen Rubin, my happiness guru who I so often identify with.  I’d be pretty intimidated to meet with Brene Brown–but if ever there was an author I could just outright say, “sorry, I’m feeling really vulnerable right now” and expect her to understand–well, that’s the one.

As for book bloggers…of course I’d love to meet all you lovely people who read my blog and write your own, who welcome me into your online homes to promote my books and who leave such nice comments here.  I think we’d have a delightful lunch, and none of you seem too frightening! 😉

Who would you like to have lunch with, among favorite authors and bloggers?

 

Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: What is the most fun part/aspect of being a book blogger?

You know sometimes you read a book or watch a movie and you just have lots of FEELINGS about it?  And then you want to explore why, and discuss every aspect of why you loved it, or (sometimes even more) why you hated it, or why you almost loved it but somehow it just didn’t quite come together–and then it all circles around in your brain and you feel super passionate about it and you just want to share all this feeling and insight and analysis somewhere…

Or maybe that’s just me.  But having a somewhere to put all of that–yeah, that’s my favorite part of being a book blogger.  When I’m so angry with the end of Heartless, or I want to gush about the mad wonderfulness of the final Fairyland book, or I’m just so delighted to find a Star Wars reference in a fairy tale retelling…well, I do tell my friends “in real life,” but I like that I can type it up and put it out into the world too.

Other book bloggers, what’s your favorite part? 🙂

Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: What do you do with books you no longer want? Do you donate them? Do you take them to a half-price bookstore? Does a friend or family member benefit?

This doesn’t happen very often to me, because I only buy books I believe will “wear well,” as my good friend L. M. Montgomery once said.  The vast majority of the books I read come from the library, so the ones I buy I expect to keep for the long-term; I fully expect that a good percentage of my books will someday (in fifty or sixty years, you know) be sorted out by my heirs.

But sometimes books don’t have quite that staying power, and a book that I loved for a season no longer seems like one I want to give shelf space to.  And I guess it happens often enough because I do have a policy around it–all unwanted books are donated to the library.  I take so many out, it seems only fair to put some back in.

My favorite book cycle is when I buy a book at the library warehouse sale (because at a dollar each, sometimes I do buy those unread), read it and then donate it back to the library.

What do you do with no-longer-wanted books?  I don’t read digital books myself, but do you find the arrival of ebooks is affecting this question, or impacting how often you have books to discard?

Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: If you read a book you ended up hating, would you stay away from future books by that author, or would you give them a second chance?

This would probably depend on why I hated a book.  If it was something that seemed fundamental to the writer (bad writing, a tendency towards dysfunctional relationships…) I’d be more likely to stay away.  An author who writes stilted dialogue is likely to have that persist across books.  On the other hand, if the issue seems to be specific to that book (irritating main character, disappointing ending…) I’d be more likely to try again.

There are authors I love who have also written books that I hated–or at least, strongly disliked.  Cynthia Voigt’s A Solitary Blue is one of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever read, and yet I dropped her Jackaroo halfway through.  Catherynne Valente’s Fairyland series is THE best series I’ve found in the last ten (fifteen?) years, and yet I haven’t much liked anything else I’ve tried from her.  I love Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles, and was hideously disappointed by Heartless.  In all these cases, I read the book I liked first, which then led me on to the less satisfying ones–but they’re clear evidence that one bad book doesn’t make really good books impossible.

So perhaps that means I ought to give disappointing authors another chance.  But that has been known to burn me!  I’ve read three books by E. D. Baker, and all three had exactly the same problem (shallow characters with lack of emotional life).  I should have learned my lesson after The Frog Princess, but The Wide-Awake Princess and A Question of Magic had such intriguing premises!!  But never again.  And Meg Cabot has gone forever on my black list after the Abandon Trilogy (well, her books–she’s probably perfectly nice).

I guess how this really plays out is that if I disliked a book, I won’t be seeking out other books by the same author (unless they were previously amazing).  If I somehow encounter another book by them anyway, I’ll be wary but might be willing if there’s something about it that overcomes the bad indicators.

Do you revisit authors who have disappointed you?  Or are there just too many other books out there to gamble again?

Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: Do you re-arrange and move books around on the shelves or move books off of your bookshelves to another area after a certain amount of time or do you just leave them the way they are?

Some day, perhaps, I will have great wide expanses of bookshelf space, with plenty of room for all my books, with space to keep growing on through the rest of my life.  Then, perhaps, I will never need to rearrange my books.  For now, though, my books end up periodically rearranged in the endless quest to fit more in.  Probably every six months or so I do some reshuffling because new books have filled up spaces and I need a more efficient arrangement.

I don’t often fundamentally move my books.  Since I moved into my apartment I’ve had essentially the same general system.  A fiction section, a scifi/fantasy section, a children’s section, and a handful of shelves for specific authors.  But books are occasionally turned sideways or moved about within the larger framework.  I recently separated out my growing number of psychology books into their own grouping, and some books have migrated back and forth between the scifi/fantasy section and the children’s section, depending on relative space.

I also may have purchased a separate (small!) bookcase for L.M. Montgomery books since moving into this apartment…

Once in a while I come up with a better organizational scheme (as with the psychology ones) and move books accordingly, but mostly book movement is compelled by space constraints.  And when some day there’s just no possible configuration to fit everything in?  Well, I suppose I’ll have to move then!