Meme

I saw this at Everyday Reads, and thought it looked fun:

Do you remember how you developed a love for reading?

I've read for as long as I can remember. I can clearly recall losing myself in books in elementary school. My teacher talked the school librarian into letting me into the "big kids" section while I was still in 1st or 2nd grade.

What are some books you read as a child?

Well, I read everything I could get my hands on. Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Trixie Belden, Cherry Ames, Five Little Peppers, fairy tales, the Boxcar Children. My sister and I would re-enact scenes from the books, and even come up with our own scenarios. I guess it was fanfiction, although we didn't know it at the time.

What is your favorite genre?

You guys know the answer to this - Science Fiction. Not fantasy (Harry Potter is the exception).

Do you have a favorite novel?

I re-read a lot of books. The Handmaid's Tale, the Chtorr series (David Gerrold), Pride and Prejudice, 1984, Jane Eyre.




Where and when do you usually read?

At work during lunch, in the evening while watching TV, and before bed. Anytime I know I'll be waiting. Lately I've been taking a book down to the courtroom to read between hearings.



Do you usually have more than one book you are reading at a time?

Yes. In fact I would say almost always.

Do you read nonfiction in a different way or place than you read fiction?

Only in that I might skip around with the chapters, if the book is set up in a way to make that possible.

Do you buy most of the books you read, or borrow them, or check them out of the library?

I buy most of them, or get them from Paperbackswap, or at the used bookstore. I do try to get them from the library first, but our library is very slow about getting some books, and their sci-fi selection is abysmal.

Do you keep most of the books you buy? If not, what do you do with them?

I keep the ones I like, and either swap them on Paperbackswap or sell them at the used bookstore. Some I pass on to friends.

If you have children, what are some of the favorite books you have shared with them? Were they some of the same ones you read as a child?

I don't have children, but my nephew has inherited our childhood book collection, and loves them as much as we did.

What are you reading now?

The Godmother - by Carrie Adams
On Writing - Stephen King


Do you keep a TBR (to be read) list?

No, but I have a pile - well, actually two piles right now - of books to read next.

What’s next?

I have one coming from Amazon - "Watching the English." And my sister has one that she'll be passing on to me, but the title escapes me right now. I have a towering pile to be read, but those are the likely next suspects.

What books would you like to reread?

I keep thinking I should pick up Dune again.


Who are your favorite authors?

Connis Willis, David Gerrold, Nancy Kress, Jane Austen.

BTT: Other Worlds

Are there any particular worlds in books where you’d like to live?

Or where you certainly would NOT want to live?

What about authors? If you were a character, who would you trust to write your life

I think I'd like to at least visit Harry Potter's world. Maybe Jane Austen's, but only if I got to be friends with Elizabeth Bennet or Emma Woodhouse. My real answer is Star Trek, but that didn't start out in books, so that's cheating a bit.

I certainly wouldn't want to live in 1984, or the Handmaid's Tale, or most any other dystopia. I like to read them, but I wouldn't want to stay there for long.

I would trust Connie Willis or Nancy Kress to write my life, though. It would be interesting, yet real.

21 SF/F books that would be better with "pants" in the title

Courtesy of SF Signal (some of the best ones are in the comments).

You know I can't resist an 80's music quiz

Weekly Geeks #10

I'm a day late on this, but I thought it would be fun to answer anyway. Last week's Weekly Geeks was about magazines. I LOVE magazines. I used to blow my whole allowance as a teenager on magazines: music, fashion, movies, and especially Starlog. I currently subscribe to a lot of magazines, but the ones I truly love and look forward too each issue are:
Entertainment Weekly (my sister and I split this, and have for years)
Wired (I especially love the "Artifact from the Future" on the back page each month)
Harper's
The Atlantic
The Progressive

My guilty pleasures are: Glamour, Allure, and a bunch of travel magazines
I also get Newsweek (my sister gets Time, and we swap each week), and the state bar association magazine, plus the ABA magazine.

My mom gets Real Simple and Good Housekeeping
My sister also gets Consumer Reports

We spend a lot of time trading magazines.

I love reading them while watching television, or eating lunch at work, or between hearings at work.

Checking in

No, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth. I've been enjoying my little break from blogging. I've been reading, catching up on TV, and watching Doctor Who. (Seriously, I think I need an intervention.) We've had lovely, spectacular thunderstorms every night for the past few nights, so the weather is actually bearable. And the three day weekend didn't hurt, either! How was your 4th?

Blog 180

Remember Blog 365? Well, I made it through 6 months, and today I'm throwing in the towel. I'm sure you've noticed the filler: quizzes, one-liners. So I'm abandoning the post-every-darn-day directive, and will now only post when I have something to say. I do hope that will be often! So, my faithful few readers, thanks for sticking with me through the experiment. I hope to be much more entertaining in the future!

Currently reading: Worldwired - Elizabeth Bear, and as many sci-fi magazines as I can get my hands on.
Currently watching: As much Doctor Who as possible
Currently listening to - Alanis Morrisette - Flavours of Entanglement

Readathon

I did not participate in the 24-hour readathon, but congrats to those who did:
pages turned
dewey
3M (also the hostess!)
and all the others I don't know! Get some sleep!

I always come out as INTJ

INTJ - "Mastermind". Introverted intellectual with a preference for finding certainty. A builder of systems and the applier of theoretical models. 2.1% of total population.

Free Jung Personality Test (similar to Myers-Briggs/MBTI)

Friday's Feast 195

Friday's Feast time again:

Appetizer

What is the weather like today where you live?

Hot and sunny, although there is a chance of a thunderstorm this afternoon. We had one yesterday, which made this morning nice and cool.

Soup

On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest, how career-minded are you?

8? I'm still trying to figure out what I want my legal career to look like, so I'm pretty focused right now.

Salad

What type of window coverings do you have in your home? Blinds, curtains, shutters, etc.?

Curtains in my room and the living room, blinds everywhere else.

Main Course

Name something that instantly cheers you up.

My nephew!

Dessert

How many times do you hit the snooze button on a typical morning?

Two or three times. It's a terrible habit - I should just set the alarm later, but I'm always optimistic I'll actually get up early for a change. Plus I like just lying in bed, thinking of what the day might bring.

BTT: Definition

Booking Through Thursday comes through to help my writer's block:

What, in your opinion, is the definition of a “reader.” A person who indiscriminately reads everything in sight? A person who reads BOOKS? A person who reads, period, no matter what it is? … Or, more specific? Like the specific person who’s reading something you wrote?

Well, even those of us who read "anything" do discriminate somewhat. I don't like westerns or mysteries, but will make an occaisional exception based on a friend's recommendation. I do think the definition is broad enough to include lots of things: websites, comic books, manga, etc. Of course, when an authors says "Faithful reader" in the text, they mean you - the person reading it. So in that sense it can be specific. But I think of it as broader - any text counts.

Unmotivated

I don't know what it is about this week, but I just can't get motivated to do anything! I guess I can blame it on the heat. It looks like the rainy season/monsoon will start this week, though, so that should help. It'll be hot and muggy, but at least it might rain a bit to cool things off. I look at my TBR pile and don't feel like starting anything, or finishing anything I've started. I'd rather play around on the internet or watch TV or sleep or eat ice cream or fruit or anything else, I guess. I know it's just a phase, and it will pass soon enough. Maybe I'm trying too hard, making reading a chore instead of an escape.

I didn't know the cartoon ones...

Created by OnePlusYou

Monday Monday

Today was a long, hectic day, so I'm going to unwind by watching the last two episodes of the first season of Doctor Who. And then wait not-so-patiently for the first discs of Season 2 to arrive from Netflix!

Doctor Who

My latest TV obsession is Doctor Who - the new incarnation. I've been watching the latest season, mostly because it was on right before Battlestar Galactica, and now am obsessed with catching up. So you can imagine my delight at finding the first season on Netflix's "Watch it now." I watched four episodes yesterday, and that is again my plan for this afternoon. It's 107 outside, so a day inside watching TV on my laptop and sipping lemonade sounds pretty darn good! Enjoy your day!

Low Maintenance

What the House Test Says About You

You are happy with who you are, and you don't have an inflated sense of self importance. You do your own thing quietly. You don't take up a lot of space. You aren't against being community oriented, but it's not really your thing. You tend to prefer to focus on your family and not the neighborhood around you. You are a calm, contemplative, and smart person. You take ideas very seriously. You look good in a low maintenance sort of way. You do the minimum required to be attractive. You are moved by romance and love. You are optimistic about people, and you love hearing about happy endings.

The House Test

Friday's Feast 194

From Friday's Feast:

Appetizer

If you could live on another continent for 1 year, which one would you choose?

Australia - it would be different enough to be a bit exotic, yet everyone speaks English.

Soup

Which browser do you use to surf the Internet?
Firefox at home. IT has us locked into IE at work, though - and not even the new version!

Salad

On a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being highest), how much do you know about the history of your country?

I guess 8? History was always one of my favorite subjects.


Main Course

Finish this sentence: Love is…

Any ending I could come up with is hopelessly cheesy.

Dessert

Have you ever been in or near a tornado?

No - we occasionally get a "funnel cloud" during our summer thunderstorms, but never anything real. And we don't have basements here, so I don't know what we would do if we did have a freak tornado.

BTT: Flavor

Booking Through Thursday time again:

Think about your favorite authors, your favorite books . . . what is it about them that makes you love them above all the other authors you’ve read? The stories? The characters? The way they appear to relish the taste of words on the tongue? The way they’re unafraid to show the nitty-gritty of life? How they sweep you off to a new, distant place? What is it about those books and authors that makes them resonate with you in ways that other, perfectly good books and authors do not?

I have a lot of "favorite" authors, but I'll choose one for this purpose: David Gerrold, author of (among other things) The War Against the Chtorr series. I love that he creates real, flawed characters. Yes, sometimes they are just mouthpieces for some philosophy, but generally they are real people, with their own motivations and problems, just trying to survive. I love that he created a future earth, under attack from *somewhere* - and how he describes how the ecosystem changes, bit by bit. I love that he's also funny - real humor, but also puns and limericks and jokes. I love that he created a world that I still go back to to re-read, and still wait in hope for the next book (he's been promising it to us for ten years or so).

Training

All of the judges are out this week for the judicial conference, so the courts offer training to all of us during this time. We are required to do 16 hours per year, so it's pretty easy to get done over these three days. I took four classes yesterday, which seemed like a really long day. Today I only had one, and with the training I've done earlier in the year, I'm now finished! Thankfully none of these were the "break into small groups" type, which I hate hate hate. The best one yesterday was one on birth order, and how that can affect your personality. At one point, my friend (a fellow first-born) turned to me and said "Tell her to stop talking about me!" Some of the descriptions were spot on. One that particularly stood out was that us firstborns like to sit at the "grown-up" table, even if there is a "kid's" table. The only way to get us to sit willingly at the kid's table is to put us in charge. That is so true. I hated the kid's table - all of the interesting conversation was with the adults! But if you let me boss around the other little kids, then I was happier.

ARC challenge

I saw this over at Musings of a Bookish Kitty, took a look at my ARC pile, and decided this was the motivation I needed to actually get some of them reviewed. The rules:

The challenge will run from June 21, 2008-September 21, 2008.

The rules:

1. Make a list of all of the ARC’s that you currently have and/or are on their way to you.

2. If you have:

* 1-3 ARC’s then pick at least one to read and review for this challenge.
* 4-6 ARC’s then pick at least two to read and review for this challenge.
* 7-9 ARC’s then pick at least three to read and review for this challenge.
* 10 or more ARC’s then pick at least 4 to read and review for this challenge.

3. Crossovers with other challenges are allowed.

4. List the books that you plan to read for this challenge (you can change it at any time, as long as the books you change are also ARC's). You can read the books on your list in any order.

5. Read the books and review them on your blog. If you don’t have a blog, you can post your review on sites like Amazon. Leave a comment on the post about the challenge with a link to each of your reviews.

My ARC list:

Strangers in Death - J.D. Robb
Enlightenment for Idiots - Anne Cushman
A Prisoner of Birth - Jeffrey Archer
Ask Again Later - Jill A. Davis
Marie Therese: Child of Terror (The Fate of Marie Antoinette's Daughter) - Susan Nagel
Mercy Street - Mariah Stewart
The First Thirty Days - Ariane De Bonvoisin
Loose Girl - Kerry Cohen


I have bolded the two I plan to read first; I'll decide on the third later. I'm actually hoping to get through all of them, but we'll see how that goes.

To join the challenge, go here.