(majoring in literature)
So it’s been a while since I’ve done a Top Ten Tuesday list, but this week the topic is definitely one that tends to occupy the minds of us bookish types – how can you recognise a book lover? Well, here’s my humble attempt at a field guide to your garden-variety bookworm (helluo librorum vulgaris).
1. You regularly have dreams about characters from books that are more vivid than the dreams you have about your friends and family.
So here’s a sobering thought: in the year 2018, I read a grand total of 15 books.
Yes, you read that right. 15 books. It’s a number so astonishingly low you would be forgiven for thinking that I in fact died in February of the previous year, and have spent the remaining time haunting the library and bewailing the fact that when I try to pick up a book now it just passes right through me, which incidentally is the feeling I get whenever I try to muster the enthusiasm to finally read Ulysses.
I don’t normally write about lectures and seminars that I go to, but I recently had the opportunity to attend a rather interesting lecture at the National Library of Scotland that I thought I’d share with you all. The lecture has some fun bookish connections: organised by the Edinburgh-based author Alexander McCall Smith, the Isabel Dalhousie lecture is dedicated to one of Smith’s beloved characters, Isabel Dalhousie, philosopher and amateur sleuth, and (naturally) lover of Edinburgh and Scottish culture. This year’s lecture just happened to be on a topic I’m particularly interested in. Juliette Wells, an American scholar, gave a talk on the first American edition of Jane Austen’s Emma and its significance for Austen scholarship and the study of Austen’s reception in America. I read Wells’ book, Everybody’s Jane, for Austen in August last year (I was also supposed to re-read Emma itself for that particular event, but as I mentioned in my review of the novel, that turned out to be a massive bust…) so I was curious to hear her talk.
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt from The Broke and the Bookish is a really great one. After all, what makes a bookworm happy? There are (almost) no wrong answers, everybody….
We all have reading and book-related habits we’re proud of. Whether it’s a reading plan of such mind-boggling complexity that it makes government spending plans look like a toddler’s crayon drawings, or a meticulously designed reading room that required years of planning, blueprints, and trips to IKEA to get right, we’ve all got them. But for every reading habit we’re proud of, there’s also those habits we’d rather not have. This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is devoted to just that.
Rest in peace, Sir Terry Pratchett. Much like a sunflower, you brought smiles to the faces of millions.
We all love books here, but even books are not without their problems. Delayed publication dates, e-reader mishaps, and pages ripped out of library books – I kind of feel like I’ve seen it all when it comes to book-related crimes.
This week, the folks behind The Broke and the Bookish asked us to list our top ten book-related problems, a topic that I can definitely get on board with.
So here goes….
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly prompt at The Broke and the Bookish. This time the theme is ‘Top Ten Book Covers I’d Frame As Pieces of Art’. Now I’ll admit (a little shamefully) that I am a bit of a visual person, and I do tend to fall into the trap of judging a book by its cover. A lot. I know, it’s terrible. This week’s prompt, however, lets me indulge my shockingly bad habit, so I just couldn’t resist.
1. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. I’m a big fan of this style, showing only slices of the image instead of the whole thing:
The world lost a great writer last week. Rest in Peace, Gabriel García Marquez.
Every week over at The Broke and the Bookish readers are given a theme for a Top Ten list. This week the theme is ‘Top Ten Most Unique Books I’ve Read’. This can be anything that stood out from the herd. Style, characters, plot and/or structure – it all counts. Many of the books I’ve listed below aren’t necessarily completely unique, but at the time I read them I’d never seen or experienced anything similar. So here’s my Top Ten.
(majoring in literature) 