Ok, so if you have met us then you already know this, but, if you haven’t, you may not have figured it out yet:
We -being me and my family- are book snobs.
There is no rhyme or reason to this blog. It is simply a collection of some of my thoughts on books. If you are a Book -Lover, -Snob, -Geek, -Nerd or whatever you want to call yourself, then you will probably know exactly what I’m talking about.
When we lived in Canada we had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves through both the living room and dining room. All of those shelves were full, and we had a couple other shelves throughout the house.
Everyone has there own pet peeves and ideas about their books. Here are some of mine.
I recently saw this:
And I definitely understand where this is coming from, but for me its a little different. For me it’s more like this:
Books are most prized possessions.
Here are the Que What Now? Three Laws of Books:
Only ever let your best friends borrow your books. The people you let borrow your books have to understand your book rules. They have to know to use a bookmark, they have to know to be nice to it, they have to give it back to you and they have to enjoy it.
I try not to spoil a good book for my friends, they deserve to read it for themselves. But sometimes book lovers do this thing where we ask you where you are in the book and then start talking to you about it and accidentally spoil something. We mean well, we just get really excited.
Sometimes, when reading, you get this feeling of pure happiness. Like when you get to sit and read on the couch all afternoon, or when you get to stay up late into the night because you’ll read “just one more chapter” which turns into finishing the book. One of the best feelings though is when you finished a book last night and you have resisted reading anything all day just so that you can sit in bed with your reading lamp on and start a new book.
I only want to read books that I will enjoy; therefore, there is a process to buying a new book. I will usually scan covers. If I can’t see the covers then I scan titles. Once a book catches my eye, I read the back cover (or inside sleeve, wherever the synopsis is). Then I flip to a random page and read some of it and carry it around with me while I look at other books. If at any point in this process it stops holding my interest, I put it down and start again. Through this process I see if it’s eye-catching, has a good plot, has a good writing style and stays interesting.
Me and Ezra both basically skipped past reading teen books. We used to read kids books and tween books and then more or less skipped straight to adult books. Why? Because we like books with good plots. You wouldn’t think that this would be such a hard thing to find. When Ezra and I look at a shelf of teen books, we see, “zombies, vampires, werewolves, bad romance, apocalypse, zombie apocalypse, zombies + vampires, vampires + werewolves, bad zombie romance, bad vampire romance, bad werewolf romance, bad vampire + werewolf romance, zombie apocalypse and bad zombie apocalypse romance.” And statistically speaking, one of these really should have a plot, but, in my considerable book-reading experience, none of them do. So we skipped them altogether and are now reading good books over in the adult section.
I read somewhere that if you don’t cry during books or movies, it’s because you don’t really love the characters. I simply do not agree. I don’t think the problem is the reader’s inability to love the characters, but rather the author’s inability to portray the emotions strongly enough.
One of the signs that you have read a well-written book is when you finish the book, stop, think for a minute, get confused and read the last chapter again. These are the books that you can read over and over again and get more out of it every time.
Thank you for managing to get through all my rambling about books. Please feel free to tell us your thoughts on books, I like hearing other peoples pet peeves.
Hannah
