Booking Through Thursday - Niche

Today's question:

There are certain types of books that I more or less assume all readers read. (Novels, for example.)

But then there are books that only YOU read. Instructional manuals for fly-fishing. How-to books for spinning yarn. How to cook the perfect souffle. Rebuilding car engines in three easy steps. Dog training for dummies. Rewiring your house without electrocuting yourself. Tips on how to build a NASCAR course in your backyard. Stuff like that.

What niche books do YOU read?

My answer:

I suppose my 'niche' books have changed, or evolved, over the years as my interests have developed.  Of course, there have been constants. My collection of cookbooks has been growing and changing for almost 25 years.  Some I use often, while others come out only for holidays, a specific season, or a special occasion.  Here are a few of my favorites:

The number of gardening books seems to be increasing. They are kept on an easily accessible shelf for quick reference.

This higher shelf is home to niche books I don't use as much anymore.  Some of my antique furniture and pottery books are her, as well as a few dog books, and child/adolescent/parenting books (I should probably pull these down for a  "teen" refresher!).

The needlework, craft, and decorating books can be found on another shelf, along with various travel guides, and an assortment dictionaries and atlases.  Most of the home remodeling books were donated to the library book sale (we're not doing that again!). If you add in my husband's niche books, the collection looks even more eclectic! 

Read more answers to this question at Booking Through Thursday.

Teaser Tuesdays - June 9

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.  Anyone can play along!  Here's how it works:

- Grab your current read 

- open to a random page

- share two teaser sentences from somewhere on that page (avoid spoilers!)

- be sure to include the title and author, so other TT participants can add the book to their tbr list if they like your teaser

My teaser:

" It was a long journey across the Atlantic, she knew, at least a week on a ship, and it must be expensive.  She had a sense too, she did not know from where, that, while boys and girls from the town who had gone to England did ordinary work for ordinary money, people who went to America would become rich."   page 26

Brooklyn: A Novel

by Colm Toibin

TSS - At least I'm thinking about reading

Good morning, readers!  As the school year is winding down, the end-of-the-year activities are in full swing.  This week we've had a concert, awards banquet, and the first graduation parties of the season.  It almost goes without saying, but there hasn't been much  reading going on.  However, I have been thinking about reading.  In particular, I've been thinking about authors I have 'discovered' over the course of the school year.  Here are ten authors whose work I have sampled and want to spend more time with. 

Tobias Wolff

Old School, featuring literature and loss of innocence, is set in a New England prep school in the 1960's.  

Next:  This Boy's Life, a memoir, or a short story collection.  Wolff is probably best known for his stories.

Colm Toibin is my most recent discovery.  I just finished listening to Brooklyn and was totally captivated!  

Next: I've heard good things about The Blackwater Lightship and The Master.  Both are on my tbr list.

W. Somerset Maugham

The Painted Veil was one of my favorite books of 2008.   The character of Kitty Fane is not easily forgotten.

Next:  Of Human Bondage? The Razor's Edge?

Emile Zola

Therese Raquin will surely be on my list of favorites this year. It paints a fascinating psychological portrait of lovers who commit a horrible crime in order to be together.

Next:  ???  I don't know much about Zola's work and welcome any suggestions.

Alan Bennett

I wrote about The Uncommon Reader in last week's Sunday Salon post.

Next: The Clothes They Stood Up In - I've decided to try the audio version.

T.C. Boyle

The Tortilla Curtain was another favorite of 2008.  Set in California, this novel put very real faces on both sides of the illegal immigrant question.

Next:   The Road to Wellville, a short story collection, or his new novel The Women

John Cheever

The Wapshot Chronicle, the saga of the Wapshot family of New England, won the National Book Award in 1958. 

Next: The Wapshot Scandal or his collected stories

Alice Walker

I posted about "Everyday Use" a couple of weeks ago for Short Story Monday.

Next:  The Color Purple, of course

Tillie Olsen

I stumbled across Olsen's story  "I Stand Here Ironing"  in the Norton Book of American Short Stories and wrote a Short Story Monday post about it.

Next:  Tell Me A Riddle

Cynthia Ozick

I read her story, "The Shawl", in The Best American Short Stories of the Century.  It was a very short, brutal story set in a Nazi concentration camp.

Next: I brought The Shawl home from the library last  week. It pairs the title story with a novella that picks up the same character living in Florida thirty years later.  Her novel, Heir to the Glimmering World is near the top of my tbr pile.

I'll also mention Sebastian Barry here.  I've recently started The Secret Scripture and, after just 50 pages, I know this an an author I will come back to.

So, there you have it - my new authors of the school year.  Of course, there are countless others 'discovered' earlier that I've yet to get back to.  And the many authors still on my tbr list?  We won't even go there...

What authors have you discovered this year?

What's Your Word?

Your Word is "Think"

You see life as an amazing mix of possibilities, ideas, and fascinations. And sometimes you feel like you don't have enough time to take it all in. You love learning. Whether you're in school or not, you're probably immersed in several subjects right now. When you're not learning, you're busy reflecting. You think a lot about the people you know and the things you've experienced. What is your word? I found this fun quiz at Fleur Fisher reads today.

Booking Through Thursday - Sticky

Today's question comes from Shelley and asks:

"This can be a quick one.  Don't take too long to think about it.  Fifteen books that you've read that will always stick with you.  First fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes"

My answer:

Though not necessarily my "favorite" fifteen,  these are books, both fiction and nonfiction, that have really stuck with me over  the years. They have opened my eyes to new places, cultures or time periods.  They have increased my understanding, or broadened my perspective of people or events. The writing may have been some of the best I'd ever read, or perhaps it was a book from childhood that I returned to over and over again.

1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
   
2. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
   
3. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
   
4. Corelli's Mandolin by Louis deBernieres
   
5. Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
   
6. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
   
7. The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz (Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street)
   
8. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
   
9. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
   
10. Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
    
11. The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim Defede
    
12. And The Band Played On by Randy Shilts
    
13. Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
    
14. The Diary of Anne Frank
    
15. Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

Teaser Tuesdays - June 2

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.  Anyone can play along!  Here's how it works:

- Grab your current read 

- open to a random page

- share two teaser sentences from somewhere on that page (avoid spoilers!)

- be sure to include the title and author, so other TT participants can add the book to their tbr list if they like your teaser

My teaser is from The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry.  Since I just started reading last night, the teaser is from the beginning of the book, and I've included three sentences, instead of two:

"I am completely alone, there is no one in the world that knows me now outside of this place, all my own people, the few farthings of them that once were, my little wren of a mother I suppose in chief, they are all gone now.  And my persecutors are gone in the main, I believe, and the reason for all this is that I am an old, old woman now, I may be as much as a hundred, though I do not know and no one knows.  I am only a thing left over, a remnant woman, and I do not even look like a human being no more, but a scraggy stretch of skin and bone in a bleak skirt and blouse, and a canvas jacket, and I sit here in my niche like a songless robin - no, like a mouse that died under the hearthstone where it was warm, and lies now like a mummy in the pyramids."  (page 4)

I love this lyrical writing and can't wait to get back to the book this evening!

The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick

This is week's short story comes from Cynthia Ozick, an author who has been on my 'to read' list for far too long.  The Shawl, first published in The New Yorker in 1981,  is a harsh, brutal story set in a concentration camp during World War II.   It opens:

"Stella, cold, cold, the coldness of hell.  How they walked on the roads together, Rosa with Magda curled up between sore breasts, Magda wound up in the shawl."

Rosa, her infant daughter Magda, and 14 year old niece Stella are prisoners at a concentration camp.  Magda, silent and hidden in the shawl, is unknown to the German soldiers.  Food is scarce.  It is presumed that Magda will die.

"It was a magic shawl, it could nourish an infant for three days and three nights. ... Rosa knew Magda was going to die very soon; she should have been dead already, but she had been buried away deep inside the magic shawl, mistaken there for the shivering mound of Rosa's breasts; Rosa clung to the shawl as if it covered only herself.  No one took it away from her.  Madga was mute. She never cried."

Rosa's fears are realized when Madga is eventually discovered.  Written with spare prose, the ending of this story is truly horrifying. 

The story is paired with a novella entitled "Rosa" and published as The Shawl.  "Rosa" picks up thirty years later, as she has survived the Holocaust and is living in the United States. This short book may be a good choice for the next read-a-thon.

Teddy Rose is hosting Short Story Monday this week.  Check here to see who else has a story to share.