Posts under ‘Bibliophilia’

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: Month names link to my full monthly book summaries, book titles link to Amazon, and author names link to either the author’s personal blog or website, or Wikipedia — whichever was more appropriate and/or extant.

March:

A recent BTT question had to do with the books we all have sitting around on our shelves, unread. Many of these books are probably not new arrivals in the TBR pile, but have been on those shelves for months or years, perhaps through moves or reorganizations. Chances are some of them will never be read. And if so, it might be time to get rid of them.

I have to admit that I find it particularly hard to get rid of  books, by any method. After a while they become like friends — yes, even the ones I haven’t picked up in years, or at all — and the prospect of parting from my books is woefully unappealing. Sometimes, though, it has to be done.

So does this fall under coveting, or just plain lust?

A catalogue got sent to me this week by a purveyor of books, and having a few leisurely moments this morning, I flipped through it to see what I could see. Here is what I saw: no less than 15 Jane Austen “sequels” on offer.

What on earth? Who is writing these things? Who is reading them?

I had a meeting downtown yesterday morning, and on the way back to the subway I just so happened to pass by my favourite ever bookstore. And since I had ten dollars in my purse, and am a huge sucker for used books, I decided to stop and see what I could get.

Here’s the haul:

• Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy ($1.00)
• Amnesia, by Douglas Cooper ($1.00)
• The Wars, by Timothy Findley ($1.00)
• Wacousta, by John Richardson ($0.50)
• Lives of Girls and Women, by Alice Munro ($2.00)
• The Fire-Dwellers, by Margaret Laurence ($1.00)

One of my favourite Stephen Leacock stories, “My Financial Career,” starts this way:

When I go into a bank I get rattled. The clerks rattle me; the wickets rattle me; the sight of the money rattles me; everything rattles me.

The moment I cross the threshold of a bank and attempt to transact business there, I become an irresponsible idiot.

[snip]

I went up to the accountant’s wicket and poked the ball of money at him with a quick convulsive movement as if I were doing a conjuring trick.

My face was ghastly pale.

Dear Dancer,

Have you finished The Silmarillion? It’s been a week or two and so maybe you have. I saw you again on the subway and now I want to know. Did you like it?

I saw you the first time on the bus home one night, I think after my night class, so probably at around 8:30 or 9:00. You were with a man I assume is your dad. You look about twelve: you’ve got olive skin and long brown hair drawn up in a neat bun. You might be Jewish. You’re almost definitely a ballerina, something I originally guessed because of your hair and your grace and slenderness, and then mostly confirmed when I saw your National Ballet School gym bag.

My summer course started on Monday, which necessitated a trip to the bookstore yesterday to pick up my new textbooks. We have two: The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction (7th ed.), edited by Richard Bausch, and Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, by Jane P. Tompkins.

I went to the university bookstore and so was nicely overcharged — which I’ve come to expect there since it’s the campus bookstore. But pricing aside, boy, do I love hanging around there. I love bookstores.