Friday Five: Books!
Dec. 17th, 2018 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackhttps://thefridayfive.dreamwidth.org/84604.html
OK, everyone who thought I had a lot of opinions about cheese is going to have a standard of comparison now... :)
1. Do you enjoy receiving books as holiday or birthday gifts?
Yes! Books are great. I love books. I'm excited to have books.
OK, this is a little less true for a few reasons now than it used to be. One is, I'm sufficiently well off that any book I really want I can usually buy, so I'm more starved for time than for actual books. Another is that I've read a lot more widely in genres I read regularly, so it's a lot harder to find something I'm *probably* excited by but didn't already know about. And finally, I read a lot on ereader now, I do still really like physical books, but they also come with the responsibility of having space to store them in, so it's more of a trade off.
What works best as a present? In some ways, I prefer getting second hand books as a "oh, I'm not sure, but I saw this and thought you might like" as a smaller present, than as a "real" present, because I like to try new things, but I feel better if I don't feel a pressure that I have to love it, and don't feel guilty if I think it's interesting but don't really get into it and give it away.
I'd usually rather get a book you think there's one thing awesome about than something that feels "safe", good choices are something in a genre I like (e.g. f/sf) that's really new or older, or something that's personal to you in some way (your favourite, or related to your expertise or similar) because there's a good reason I'll be interested but maybe not already know it.
If you're one of my friends who's just a lot more widely read than me, then ignore all this, I just trust you to find really cool things I've never heard of :) And I mean, I don't imagine it'll come up much, but if you *want* to give me a book you wrote as a present, I will definitely appreciate it :)
If you're not sure if I've read it, I'm happy for you to ask, I promise it won't ruin the surprise("What have you read by #Author?" might be a good compromise, and I assure you, if you don't SAY you're thinking about giving me a present, I can be pretty oblivious about the possibility :)), but if you think you know, I'm happy for you to take the risk.
2. What book are you reading (or, what is the last book you read)?
I just started a collection of superhero/supervillain short stories, including a short story by Drew Hayes, who wrote the long web serial Super Powereds, because I wanted something interesting but not too addictive as my brain was a bit full.
Before that the books I read over the last approximately two months were:
Aru Shah and the end of time (lovely young young adult borrowed from Ms 10, from Rick Riordan's brand publicising books about other mythologies by other authors)
Johannes Cabal: Fall of the House of Cabal (Last of the Johannes Cabal necromancer series, very funny, very touching, although a little unsatisfying overall-themes-wise)
Traitor Baru Cormorant (Been meaning to read this forever, Baru's home village is conquered by the empire, she rises through the civil service, and tries to reconcile what she's learned from them with hating them and freeing the cultures they've conquered)
Seven and a half deaths of Eveyln Hardcastle (For Jamie's book group, fascinating time travel groundhog day murder mystery premise, but a bit grim in other ways)
Left/Right game (A long reddit weird magic realism esque horror ish story about taking alternate left/right turns and finding yourself in a different landscape)
Girls of Paper and Fire (Animal demons, half castes, and humans, protagonist forced to serve as concubine to the Bull Emperor, rebellion, very beautiful but very heavy themes)
Rivers of London #7 (Pretty good)
Jade city (Awesome wuxia alt-asian mafia adventure)
Zeroboxer (Lovely YA about zero-gravity boxing, climate change, mars colonisation, genetic engineering, etc by the same author)
3. Are you enjoying (or, did you enjoy) that book? Why or why not?
OK, so it turns out that if you want to ask what I'm reading WITHOUT me automatically telling you what I think about it you have to be really specific when you ask :)
Although in this case, I've barely started so I don't have much opinion yet. I didn't get into the first story despite a good first page so I skipped ahead, but haven't started the second yet.
Nowadays I'm usually reading things I'm fairly sure I'll enjoy, although I also find fewer things I absolutely adore. I made a deliberate decision to seek out books that I actively wanted to read, not only in being interesting, but in being comparatively accessible (e.g. not too heavy, not too unfamiliar, etc). And I am still eager to read books that are harder for me to read, and they're often the most interesting because they have more new stuff (from a culture I'm unfamiliar with, or a genre I'm unfamiliar with, or an older book with a noticeably different style, or about topics which are quite heavy), but I make a distinction that sometimes I have a lot of energy to expend in absorbing something and sometimes I don't, and find books that suit both.
4. About how many books do you read in an average year?
It varies a lot. I used to comfort read in ways that now I would probably browse social media, often rereading books dozens of times over many years, and I could easily read a book a day like that when I already knew it well, but it would go through periods when I did that and periods when I didn't. When I'm busy I've often gone a month or two barely reading anything. I think this last year I've probably read forty-something (I do record new books I read, but it depends if you count rereads, how you count loooooong web fic, etc.)
5. What are some of the books on your to-read pile (or list)?
Oh gosh. I have literally hundreds on my "probably want to read this" pile, which is fortunately now a bookmark folder not a physical pile of books I've bought but not read. And dozens in my "pretty much definitely want to read this" pile. So whenever I want something I can usually fish around in there for something I'm in the mood for.
And maybe ten to twenty physical books that I haven't quite read, usually ones that I found hard going but I couldn't bring myself to give away either, either because they were presents or because I was really interested even though I found them difficult. I'm pleased I've been much more realistic about recognising the difference between "I'd hoped to enjoy this but I'm just not" and "I'm enjoying this but it's hard going, I need to read it when I can actually concentrate hard and work at understanding it" and "this is a bit niche, I'm saving it for when I really need a boost/when I'm in the mood to binge some comfort books/when I just want something just like this and don't mind that it's not that well written/etc".
My electronic lists, the to read books are mostly recent books by authors or series I've enjoyed, or books where from the premise I just HAD to read them, or classics I'm really interested in, all waiting until they get to the top of the list.
OK, everyone who thought I had a lot of opinions about cheese is going to have a standard of comparison now... :)
1. Do you enjoy receiving books as holiday or birthday gifts?
Yes! Books are great. I love books. I'm excited to have books.
OK, this is a little less true for a few reasons now than it used to be. One is, I'm sufficiently well off that any book I really want I can usually buy, so I'm more starved for time than for actual books. Another is that I've read a lot more widely in genres I read regularly, so it's a lot harder to find something I'm *probably* excited by but didn't already know about. And finally, I read a lot on ereader now, I do still really like physical books, but they also come with the responsibility of having space to store them in, so it's more of a trade off.
What works best as a present? In some ways, I prefer getting second hand books as a "oh, I'm not sure, but I saw this and thought you might like" as a smaller present, than as a "real" present, because I like to try new things, but I feel better if I don't feel a pressure that I have to love it, and don't feel guilty if I think it's interesting but don't really get into it and give it away.
I'd usually rather get a book you think there's one thing awesome about than something that feels "safe", good choices are something in a genre I like (e.g. f/sf) that's really new or older, or something that's personal to you in some way (your favourite, or related to your expertise or similar) because there's a good reason I'll be interested but maybe not already know it.
If you're one of my friends who's just a lot more widely read than me, then ignore all this, I just trust you to find really cool things I've never heard of :) And I mean, I don't imagine it'll come up much, but if you *want* to give me a book you wrote as a present, I will definitely appreciate it :)
If you're not sure if I've read it, I'm happy for you to ask, I promise it won't ruin the surprise("What have you read by #Author?" might be a good compromise, and I assure you, if you don't SAY you're thinking about giving me a present, I can be pretty oblivious about the possibility :)), but if you think you know, I'm happy for you to take the risk.
2. What book are you reading (or, what is the last book you read)?
I just started a collection of superhero/supervillain short stories, including a short story by Drew Hayes, who wrote the long web serial Super Powereds, because I wanted something interesting but not too addictive as my brain was a bit full.
Before that the books I read over the last approximately two months were:
Aru Shah and the end of time (lovely young young adult borrowed from Ms 10, from Rick Riordan's brand publicising books about other mythologies by other authors)
Johannes Cabal: Fall of the House of Cabal (Last of the Johannes Cabal necromancer series, very funny, very touching, although a little unsatisfying overall-themes-wise)
Traitor Baru Cormorant (Been meaning to read this forever, Baru's home village is conquered by the empire, she rises through the civil service, and tries to reconcile what she's learned from them with hating them and freeing the cultures they've conquered)
Seven and a half deaths of Eveyln Hardcastle (For Jamie's book group, fascinating time travel groundhog day murder mystery premise, but a bit grim in other ways)
Left/Right game (A long reddit weird magic realism esque horror ish story about taking alternate left/right turns and finding yourself in a different landscape)
Girls of Paper and Fire (Animal demons, half castes, and humans, protagonist forced to serve as concubine to the Bull Emperor, rebellion, very beautiful but very heavy themes)
Rivers of London #7 (Pretty good)
Jade city (Awesome wuxia alt-asian mafia adventure)
Zeroboxer (Lovely YA about zero-gravity boxing, climate change, mars colonisation, genetic engineering, etc by the same author)
3. Are you enjoying (or, did you enjoy) that book? Why or why not?
OK, so it turns out that if you want to ask what I'm reading WITHOUT me automatically telling you what I think about it you have to be really specific when you ask :)
Although in this case, I've barely started so I don't have much opinion yet. I didn't get into the first story despite a good first page so I skipped ahead, but haven't started the second yet.
Nowadays I'm usually reading things I'm fairly sure I'll enjoy, although I also find fewer things I absolutely adore. I made a deliberate decision to seek out books that I actively wanted to read, not only in being interesting, but in being comparatively accessible (e.g. not too heavy, not too unfamiliar, etc). And I am still eager to read books that are harder for me to read, and they're often the most interesting because they have more new stuff (from a culture I'm unfamiliar with, or a genre I'm unfamiliar with, or an older book with a noticeably different style, or about topics which are quite heavy), but I make a distinction that sometimes I have a lot of energy to expend in absorbing something and sometimes I don't, and find books that suit both.
4. About how many books do you read in an average year?
It varies a lot. I used to comfort read in ways that now I would probably browse social media, often rereading books dozens of times over many years, and I could easily read a book a day like that when I already knew it well, but it would go through periods when I did that and periods when I didn't. When I'm busy I've often gone a month or two barely reading anything. I think this last year I've probably read forty-something (I do record new books I read, but it depends if you count rereads, how you count loooooong web fic, etc.)
5. What are some of the books on your to-read pile (or list)?
Oh gosh. I have literally hundreds on my "probably want to read this" pile, which is fortunately now a bookmark folder not a physical pile of books I've bought but not read. And dozens in my "pretty much definitely want to read this" pile. So whenever I want something I can usually fish around in there for something I'm in the mood for.
And maybe ten to twenty physical books that I haven't quite read, usually ones that I found hard going but I couldn't bring myself to give away either, either because they were presents or because I was really interested even though I found them difficult. I'm pleased I've been much more realistic about recognising the difference between "I'd hoped to enjoy this but I'm just not" and "I'm enjoying this but it's hard going, I need to read it when I can actually concentrate hard and work at understanding it" and "this is a bit niche, I'm saving it for when I really need a boost/when I'm in the mood to binge some comfort books/when I just want something just like this and don't mind that it's not that well written/etc".
My electronic lists, the to read books are mostly recent books by authors or series I've enjoyed, or books where from the premise I just HAD to read them, or classics I'm really interested in, all waiting until they get to the top of the list.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-18 10:05 pm (UTC)I think I'm very much PRONE to having a gigantic to read pile, but several things helped. I've always been very firm with my hoarding tendencies, because my parents had trouble and I didn't want to make the same mistake. Liv was ever so supportive at helping triaging my books when I moved out of my first flat -- I got rid of more than a third solely from ones I didn't care about much without needing any really harsh decisions. I'm fortunate enough that spending money on a book is not too difficult, so if I get rid of several hundred books and then a few years later buy one of them again, I feel like that was a winning outcome :)
And eventually I got realistic about books I was intending to read: would I ACTUALLY read them? Would I enjoy them? Or did I just feel I should and was never actually going to be excited about it? And the number I thought I was actually likely to read was quite small.
Also, I was lucky enough with books and unlucky enough in housing prices that I learned rapidly that buying books because I was excited to read them at some point and they were cheap was usually a false economy for me, and buying books I wanted to read RIGHT NOW was usually better.
But even so, I keep needing to raise the bar for books I add to my bookmark folder of "would like to read", it used to be anything with an interesting blurb and in the right genre was an automatic in, but now it's growing faster than I read it even with books I'm really quite eager for. And I learned to accept I'd only read so fast however many books I had I wanted to read :)