Category: Memes

Booking through Thursday: Gotta catch ’em all

Booking through Thursday this week:

You may or may not have seen my post at Punctuality Rules Tuesday, about a book I recently bought that had the actual TITLE misspelled on the spine of the book. A glaring typographical error that really (really!) should have been caught. So, using that as a springboard, today’s question: What’s the worst typographical error you’ve ever found in (or on) a book?

As a writer, I really, really sympathize. Since I have this (freakish) thing for pronouns, I generally catch those errors. The ‘h’ left off the she and dialogue being attributed to the wrong character. That happens once in a while.

But the worst (or funniest, depending on how you look at it) was one of my own. It was for installation guide. The phrase I meant to write was something along the lines of: It does not …

What did I type instead?

It’s doe snot …

Not one of the features in our software offerings, I’m afraid. So here I sit, not throwing any stones today.

What, you haven’t read that?

All the cool kids (Jen, Marianne) are doing this book meme.

106 Books You’ve Never Read and Probably Should:

The basic premise is that it takes the top 106 unread books from Library Thing, and you mark whether you’ve read them or not (and various other offshoots on that… see below).

The instructions are:

Bold what you have read
Italicize those you didn’t finish
Strikethrough the ones you hated
*asterisks next to those you’ve read more than once
+ cross in front of the books that are on your bookshelf
Underline books that are on your “to read” list.

*+Anna Karenina

+Crime and Punishment (I’m a very bad Russian major; I couldn’t make it to the end.)

+Catch-22

+One Hundred Years of Solitude

+Wuthering Heights

+The Silmarillion (Honestly, did anyone read this all the way through?)

Life of Pi: a novel

The Name of the Rose

Don Quixote

Moby Dick

Ulysses

Madame Bovary

The Odyssey

*+Pride and Prejudice

*+Jane Eyre

A Tale of Two Cities

+The Brothers Karamazov

Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies

+War and Peace

Vanity Fair

+The Time Traveler’s Wife

The Iliad

+Emma

+The Blind Assassin

The Kite Runner

Mrs. Dalloway

Great Expectations

American Gods

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Atlas Shrugged

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Memoirs of a Geisha

Middlesex

Quicksilver

Wicked: The Life and Times of The Wicked Witch of the West

The Canterbury Tales

The Historian

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Love in the Time of Cholera

Brave New World

The Fountainhead

Foucault’s Pendulum

Middlemarch

+Frankenstein

The Count of Monte Cristo

Dracula

A Clockwork Orange

Anansi Boys

The Once and Future King

The Grapes of Wrath

The Poisonwood Bible

+1984

Angels & Demons

The Inferno

The Satanic Verses

Sense and Sensibility

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Mansfield Park

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

To the Lighthouse

Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Oliver Twist

Gulliver’s Travels

Les Misérables

The Corrections

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Night-Time

Dune

The Prince

The Sound and the Fury

Angela’s Ashes

The God of Small Things

A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present

Cryptonomicon

Neverwhere

+A Confederacy of Dunces

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Dubliners

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Beloved

Slaughterhouse-five

The Scarlet Letter

Eats, Shoots & Leaves (Ha, I’m the only writer who hasn’t read this.)

The Mists of Avalon

Oryx and Crake: a novel (I gotta be in the right kind of mood for Margaret Atwood)

Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed

Cloud Atlas

The Confusion

Lolita

Persuasion

Northanger Abbey

The Catcher in the Rye

+On the Road

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Freakonomics

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The Aeneid

Watership Down

Gravity’s Rainbow

*+The Hobbit

*In Cold Blood

White Teeth

Treasure Island

David Copperfield

The Three Musketeers

So, I guess we can all feel bad about this together. I mean, these are the books most tagged as unread on LibraryThing. No one else has read them either.

The 12 question writing meme

Found this one over at Marianne’s.

What’s Your Writing Style?

  1. Are you a “pantser” or a “plotter?”

    I don’t like this question because it sounds like if you even do a hint of pre-work, you’re all about plot and not characterization. Most of my pre-work is characterization. I know most people would call me a plotter. For me, it’s more like thinking on paper.
  2. Detailed character sketches or “their character will be revealed to me as a I write”?

    Not sketches, but memoirs. First person in the character’s voice. I have a series of questions, but if the topic is “cars” and the character starts babbling about politics in Sweden, I go with it. I figure that means something.
    The more I write, I find this is the one single exercise that really matters.
  3. Do you know your characters’ goals, motivations, and conflicts before you start writing or is that something else you discover only after you start writing?
    I do look at all of this (see above), but nothing’s set at this point. Sometimes, I’ve only scratched the surface of what the character and story are really about and it takes a few more drafts to get it where it should be.
  4. Books on plotting – useful or harmful?
    Like anything else, in the wrong hands, they can be dangerous. Seriously, I’ve found that craft books are a lot like any other kind of book. Some people will relate to a certain writer and some will not.
  5. Are you a procrastinator or does the itch to write keep at you until you sit down and work?
    I can circle work for days (just ask Darcy). I look at it, it looks at me, and we both go, “Meh.” I used to freak when I hit a slump (okay, still do). Like somehow if I don’t write for a week, I’ll forget everything I’ve ever learned about writing up to this point and will have to start all over again.
    Neurotic, who me? Not at all. I’m getting better at seeing that I simply need time to think.
  6. Do you write in short bursts of creative energy, or can you sit down and write for hours at a time?

    Yes.
  7. Are you a morning or afternoon writer?

    I’m a morning person, but I probably write more in the afternoon. Go figure.

  8. Do you write with music/the noise of children/in a cafe or other public setting, or do you need complete silence to concentrate?

    Yes.

    See my previous post on Chuck E. Cheese. I don’t like writing with music coming from my computer speakers, but if there’s background music (say, at Miss B’s ballet class), I can deal.

    Sometimes I think we writers baby ourselves too much. When you look at what some writers did/do under repressive regimes to write and compare it to the “omigod, I can’t write unless I have my three aromatic candles lit and Yanni on the stereo.” it can look a little indulgent.

  9. Computer or longhand? (or typewriter?)

    I’ll do both. I like doing both. It’s a mood thing.
  10. Do you know the ending before you type Chapter One?

    I generally have a sense for how I want the story to end. There’s a writing saying about “the end is in the beginning.” I once figured out the end to a story by chanting that to myself.
  11. Does what’s selling in the market influence how and what you write?

    Thing is, what’s new on the shelves right now is what was selling 12 – 18 months ago. I subscribe to Publisher’s Marketplace, which sends out a list of deals every week (actually, if you’re a site member, you can log on and see/search deals).This isn’t every deal, just those agents/publishers feel like reporting.I find it more inspirational, especially when someone says, “You can’t sell that as a new author.”

    Well, yes, you can sell that as a new author. You just have to do it right. That’s the tricky part.

  12. Editing – love it or hate it?

    Love it, love it. Writing is rewriting and thank goodness for that. The one thing I’m not wild about (probably because I’m doing it this week) is keying in changes. I always edit on paper, which means I have to 1) decipher my own handwriting and 2) make changes without typos procreating around those changes.

Booking Through Thursday: Decorum

This week’s Booking Through Thursday:

Do you have “issues” with too much profanity or overly explicit (ahem) “romantic” scenes in books? Or do you take them in stride? Have issues like these ever caused you to close a book? Or do you go looking for more exactly like them? (grin) 

Well, I think we all know how I feel about swearing (scroll down for that answer). For me, it all has to do with the “higher good” of the story. Does it fit? Does it contribute? Is it crucial to the story?

What I don’t like is sex scenes added simply because the everything must be hot, Hot, HOT these days. But I’d feel the same way if these were car chase scenes, scenes taking place in a church, scenes where the heroine is communing with her bunny friends*. Whatever. Anything can be gratuitous.

*This isn’t a euphemism for anything (that I know of), but I’m thinking it should be.

Today’s Banned Author

Banned in Oklahoma: Maureen Johnson

Since it’s still Banned Books Week, I’m highlighting another author, another one not on the top 100 list, but a case that is both current and very interesting.

I’m not going to say a lot about it here because you can read Maureen’s entire series about her book being challenged in the tagged posts here on her web site/blog. If you want to start from the top, so to speak, you have to scroll to the bottom. However, her last post gives a good overview of what happened and the current situation. It’s a blow by blow book challenge/banning in real time.

From Maureen’s blog:

One of the more bizarre aspects of all of this is the secrecy in which this action was conducted. Without the actions of the librarian, no one would have known this happened. Book banning often happens in small meetings, out of sight. If you’re going to do something like this, I think you have the responsibly of making it public. It’s amazing what happens when you just add public knowledge to the equation.  

Booking through Thursday: Friendship and Banning

Booking through Thursday this week:

Suggested by Marsha:

Buy a Friend a Book Week is October 1-7 (as well as the first weeks of January, April, and July). During this week, you’re encouraged to buy a friend a book for no good reason. Not for their birthday, not because it’s a holiday, not to cheer them up–just because it’s a book.

What book would you choose to give to a friend and why?

And, if you’re feeling generous enough–head on over to Amazon and actually send one on its way! 

Actually, Buy a Friend a Book week coincides nicely with Banned Books Week. If you like, head on over to the American Library Association web site (link above and in the sidebar) and pick a book from one of their lists of most challenged books: from last year or the most challenged books from 1990 – 2000, or the most challenged books from the 21st century.

I’m feeling the sudden urge to corrupt minds with Harry Potter, Captain Underpants, and Judy Blume.

How about you?

When names and romance novels collide

Borrowing shamelessly from Chris at Book-A-Rama.

Go to the advanced book search on Amazon, type your first name into the Title field, and post the most interesting/amusing cover that shows up.

There were a few tempting titles, like: When Charity Destroys Dignity (I’m sorry) and The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity (Don’t blame me; I haven’t been international for years.)  

But, dude, check it! I’m a romance novel.

Actually, I’m several, mostly (and somewhat predictably) inspirational romance. Bah. How boring. True, there is that Ellora’s Cave book, but … uh … we’re not going there. Not when there’s:

bookcover.jpg

Him: Dang, my sleeve’s all bunched up and I can’t get my arm through. Why is my shirt tucked into my pants?

Her (note barely contained eye roll–that’s not passion, that’s disdain): Gawd, he can’t even dress himself. Sigh. Now where’s my circa 1860’s blow dryer and round hairbrush. My layers need some work.