Another bookish list...

I love books. And bookstores. I also love books about bookstores. And, as an unapologetic bookworm, I have to admit I even love reading books about books and reading. (Almost as much as I love bookish lists.) So in the interest of combining all these loves in one post, here's my list of 10 bookishly bookish reads:

The "bookstore" books:

The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap by Wendy Welch
Three Things You Need to Know About Rockets by Jessica Fox.
     (Which is not at all about rockets, but about love and romance and a bookstore in Scotland.)
Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books by Paul Collins
     (This one takes place in Hay-on-Wye in Wales!)
The Yellow-Lighted Bookstore by Lewis Buzbee
Shelf Life by Suzanne Strempek Shea

All of the above titles are memoirs about books and bookstores...if you like that kind of thing. Which I do.

"I am the unique sum of
the books I have read.
I am my literary DNA."
--Susan Hill  

          The "Reading" Reads:

Howard's End is on the Landing: A Year of Reading From Home by Susan Hill
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
Reading the OED by Ammon Shea
    (This crazy guy actually read the entire Oxford English Dictionary!)
The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma
The Year of Reading Dangerously by Andy Miller

"Is it wrong to prefer books to people? A book is

like a guest you have invited into your home, except

you don't have to play pictionary with it."     

--Andy Miller        

A bonus eleventh recommendation:

Happy Reading!

Bookish first impressions...

While a book's cover or title may make me pick it up, often it's the first line that helps me decide whether or not to read it. First impressions are so important! Here are the first lines of some books I recently read---books that I enjoyed reading, but didn't review. See if any of their first lines strike you.


First Line:  "By 1927 there were twelve girls who danced all night and never gave names, but by then the men had given up asking and called them all Princess."
Title: The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine
(This is a creative retelling of one of my favorite fairy tales: The Twelve Dancing Princesses; I love that Valentine set her novel in the Roaring Twenties.)

First Line: "I want a refund from ancestry.com."
Title: Ungifted by Gordon Korman
(This is a fun and entertaining middle-grade fiction novel about kids who are gifted...and those who aren't.)

First Line: "The first time Nakajima stayed over, I dreamed of my dead mom."
Title: The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto
(A quiet and beautifully written novel about two lost souls living in Japan and their hesitant romance.)

First Line: "The water was so cold it took Heather's breath away as she fought past the kids crowding the beach and standing in the shallows, waving towels and homemade signs, cheering and calling up to the remaining jumpers."

Title: Panic by Lauren Oliver

(This book is NOT a copy of The Hunger Games like everyone said. For one thing, it's not set in a dystopian future, for another, the seniors who decide to participate in the Panic aren't forced to play. And it's a game played for money. I thought it was a fun read.)

First Line: "The bride stood like a pillar of salt, rigid under layers of itchy petticoats."

Title: The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris

(This novel is a poignant immersion into the arranged marriage of Chani and Baruch and into London's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. Very interesting!)

Happy Reading!