One of the things that happens to you when you’re a book blogger is that authors and publicists email you about books they’d like you to read and review. And sometimes those emails are insane. One time, early on in my book blogging saga, I received a poorly-written query from an author, let us call [...]
Posts under ‘Bibliophilia’
The Ethics of Royalties
Those of you who have been following this blog for a while will know, beyond doubt, that I am a huge fan of purchasing, acquiring, and reading used books. The first post that I wrote to really make it big in terms of comments and social media talked about why I love second-hand books. And [...]
Don’t Support Authors
Back in February, I wrote a post about why I love second-hand books — something that I didn’t see as particularly controversial, but which did generate some oppositional comments. One commenter wrote the following: Worthy points, however i have in the last 5 years begun buying new books in order to support the authors, they [...]
Style Versus Substance
Yesterday an interesting discussion developed in the comments section over my review of Jill Taylor’s book My Stoke of Insight. My review, in a nutshell, was that this book is very poorly written and I didn’t recommend it. Reader Monica disagreed: Trying to make sense of this review . . . how is it possible [...]
BTT: Book Storage
This week’s question: How do you arrange your books on your shelves? Is it by author, by genre, or you just put it where it falls on? How very appropriate as a question for me! I am smack in the middle of reorganizing all of my bookshelves, which previously fell under the “wherever it fits” [...]
Book Reorganization: The Purge
It’s reading week, and since I have some time for things like basic living-space maintenance, I’m starting to do a long-desired book purge. I have four book cases in my room and they are full and overflowing onto my desk, the floor, and other flat surfaces; and recently receiving a gift card for a bookstore [...]
Why I Love Second-Hand Books
Recently I was given a thank-you note for a service I’d performed for my choir, and inside that note was a gift card for Chapters of some certain value. When I thanked T, the purchaser, she said this: Now you don’t have to go to the used bookstores. You can buy new books, that look [...]
Best Books of 2008
Now that 2008 is officially over, it’s time to pick the best books of the year! Golly gum golly, it was quite the year of reading for me. Here follow my picks for the best books I read last year (not necessarily published last year), month-by-month. A note on the many, many links embedded here: [...]