One time, early on in my book blogging saga, I received a poorly-written query from an author, let us call him MF, who addressed me as “Dear Editor”. I wrote back — admittedly, somewhat snarkily — and  suggested that next time, MF might find out my name and use it rather than spam me with a form letter. Then I got this reply:

oh, dear, the anal-retentiveness has been awakened; the narcissism and the pomposity is too much. I have been reviewed all over the world by better and more expoxied reviewers than yourself. As a practicing psychotherapist you have more than issues, my dear, inflated sir. Do not respond as I will delete your email; that you would spend so much time crafting a response like yours reveals how little is going on in your life. You are not only an aberration but a self-important prig, a remnant of the 19th century.

I did not write back. It didn’t matter; MF is a little notorious for spamming book bloggers and he queried me several more times both through email and through my blog. I don’t know why he’d keep writing to a narcissistic, anal-retentive, pompous un-expoxied, inflated, self-important, aberrant, 19th-century prig, but there you have it.

I got another email this week — two, actually — from an author whom I’ll call TR. This is the content of TR’s first email to me:

I had a near death experince 9 months ago. As a result I reached nirvana. The buddhists suggest I am teh buddha of teh age but I assure them I am simply heimdall.
In the last 5 months I have written and published 5 books and I have determined to write ininfite books and everplain everything there is to explain in all of existence and I do it rather swiftly.
Now here is where you come in.
[amazon link redacted]
That is the link to the first fouth books.
I will attach the 2,3,4th volume in this main in PDF format becasue I am looking for a harsh critic.
I do not want you to be biased because you had to pay for the books. I am sending them to you freely so that you will be unbiased in your judgement of them. I am looking forward to hearing what you have to say about my books, sunshine.

Thank you for your compassion and understanding,
[TR]

And this is the content of his follow-up (sent 20 minutes later):

If you hate volume 2,3 & 4 you are going to love volume 5 & 6
Attempt to keep this comment in your mind written by freud as you read.

“Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.”

Thats a nice way of saying, if you hate my books it is becasue subconsiously you love them.

I would like to point out that this author’s email display name was “Me”. Do you know how odd it is to get mail from “Me” that you haven’t yourself sent? It is truly bizarre (as is the rest of this pitch).

I don’t even know where to start. There’s the poor spelling, the linkening of oneself to a Norse god, the unsanctioned nickname, five books in five months (hello, iUniverse! Thanks for making publishing a joke industry!), the misunderstanding of some irrelevant Freud, the audacity of claiming that you’ll write infinite books in order to explain everything ever … this is a mess. The kicker, though, is the last line of the second email: “if you hate my books it is because subconsciously you love them.”

Ladies and gentlemen, this is called denial. This means that even if you are asking for a harsh critic, you are going to have your hands on your ears and be yelling — LALALA YOU ACTUALLY LOVE ME — when harsh criticism comes. Up to this point I was almost interested, despite the trainwreck factor of it all.

Le sigh.

I hasten to assure you all that yes, it is possible to successfully pitch to a blogger or reviewer. Authors and publicists do it all of the time. Would you like to do this too? Here are some hints:

1. Learn to spell. Or at least to use spellcheck, for the love of pete.
2. Include a teaser or blurb, like on the back of a book.
3. Ideally, include a writing sample as well.
4. Do not give the reviewer you’re querying an unsolicited nickname, sunshine.
5. Show that you know who you’re pitching too — use their name, and be demonstrably familiar with what they like (ie, don’t send a YA novel to a blog that only reviews nonfiction).
6. If your pitch makes the person you’re contacting afraid to give you her address, you’re probably doing it wrong. Don’t be these guys.

Post from: She Reads Books

How Not to Pitch

One point that came up in both posts (and to which the second was a partial rebuttal/exploration) was the issue of royalties: that is, the question of whether it is ethical to purchase used books, on the grounds that the authors of said books do not receive royalties for said purchase. My argument was that things like libraries and used book stores support authors (and the general reading community) in plenty of ways besides with royalties, and that it’s not the end of the world if you can’t buy new very often.

And, yup, here’s another post on the subject. This is obviously something that I’m still thinking through.

Various commenters chimed in on both posts, with diverse opinions, and also with some ingenuous ways of supporting authors. Mark B wrote,

Here’s an idea to support an author you like – especially a new one. Find their address and mail them a five dollar bill. Tell them what you enjoyed (or didn’t) about the book and thank them for their work.

And Ali said,

If the author is my friend, I’ll buy their book new as a personal show of support. Otherwise, I support authors by reading their books and talking/writing about them, by showing up at their readings/signings, by choosing something other than the latest bestseller to read and then sending the author an email about it.

These are well and good, but I’m still not completely satisfied. I mean, yes, I do talk about books and recommend them to people, review them — but is that enough? What debt, if any, do I as a reader owe to the authors whose books I read? I know that these kind of referrals work, because I’ve acquired many a book after another blogger has reviewed it. But book bloggers are going to buy books anyway — most of us are talking to each other, not to the vast unwashed non-reading public, right? So while such things may be effective, I don’t know if we can reckon them as particularly super virtuous.

What, then, of our own purchases? Heavy readers know that it’s hard to sustain a reading habit while buying new books — that is, author-supporting and royalty-paying books — exclusively. Books are expensive, and are to some extent luxury items, and used bookstores and libraries remain brilliant and necessary outlets for those who cannot necessarily pay full price for everything (or anything) they read. I think that most people are able to accept this.

At this point I will turn to my friend Glumpuddle:

As an author, I’ve worked hard to write a book – but a living wage for that work are non-existent. As a general rule it isn’t authors who make big bucks off books – it is publishers and re-sellers. While everyone might not have equal access, not every one gets a living wage for their work… so I’m afraid I’m still in theoretical favour of buying so authors get something out of it.

Right. Living wages. Historically, being able to make a living wage from artistic endeavours of any sort has been a relatively rare thing. There’s a reason that painters and musicians and what have you sought out wealthy patrons to support their endeavours — and that’s why so many of them seemed to die broke, too. Broke and/or crazy. You know. And authors who were paid a penny a word for their serial novels would have to keep pumping them out like the dickens (haha, I kill me) in order to support themselves. So the ability to support oneself solely from artistic endeavour is historically rare, and has never been a guaranteed thing.

Yet it’s probably not acceptable for us to point at these facts and conclude that authors don’t have to make a good wage from their work now, simply because most of them haven’t before. To make a slightly hyperbolic comparison, you could as easily say, “Well, these people over here have historically been enslaved — so why should we change that now?”. Because things have always been this way is usually not an adequate support for — well, anything, really. If we are preserving old traditions, modes of thought, etc. it should be because they are good, not simply because they are old. Age is not a particular virtue; everything attains it if you wait long enough. And, in theory at least, I think that most people are in favour of authors making a living off of their books — after all, that means that they won’t have to take other jobs in the meantime, and can write more books. Yay authors. Yay books.

But how to go about it? It is true that it’s not authors who make the big bucks off of these expensive trade paperbacks. POD publishing might change that (see Wil Wheaton and his offer of Sunken Treasure as a book from Lulu and an electronic version, most of the profit seeming to go directly to himself) but it largely hasn’t happened yet. We need to work within the existing system, it seems, where publishers get some money for new books, and no money for used.

Given all of these things, it seems that the best thing to do is to support authors directly whenever possible, by purchasing their books at new prices, as galling as that may sometimes seem. As stated above, however, most of us cannot afford to buy all of our books new — there are simply too many books we want to read, and too few dollars to spend on them. So what do we do? How do we go about picking and choosing which authors are supported and which aren’t?

Amy voiced her opinion:

In fact, it would seem that most people who don’t buy new only buy new when it’s a big name author. I would really encourage you if you have the money to buy new when it’s a midlist author, not a best-selling author. Many of these authors are losing opportunities and getting their contracts canceled. Why not help out a little IF YOU CAN.

So: mid-list authors. It still seems a bit sticky to me, though: who’s defining what “mid-list” really means? It’s the sort of vague descriptor that lends itself to manipulation, and I could see myself moving authors around through it depending on my purchasing impulses and not on their actual status. And that’s not so great, right? Right.

After much ponderation, I’ve decided to go with this method: Before purchasing a book, I shall endeavour to find out if the author is still alive. If he/she is I will buy new if possible. If he/she is not, I will use the library or buy used without qualm. I think that’s a logical approach: I will be supporting living authors who are (conceivably) still writing and still in need of money to live off of, but I need not trouble myself over supporting the estates of the deceased.

Seems fair to me. What do you think? Is this something you trouble yourselves over, or am I just thinking too hard?

Post from: She Reads Books

The Ethics of Royalties

Worthy points, however i have in the last 5 years begun buying new books in order to support the authors, they don’t see a penny off of secondhand sales, and i want them to stay in the business of writing! think of it as voting with your dollars, or tipping a musician.

Another chimed in,

the one great tragedy of the used book is that the author will never receive recompense for it. Sure, the book was bought once, but to never buy a new book? I hope you write your favorite authors so they at least know they’re being read.

Since my answer to both was rather incoherent at the time, let me now explain why I think it’s also important to not support authors directly. (Not that it’s a bad thing to do — but it’s not the only thing to do. This post probably should have been titled something like Why It’s Important that Non-Author-Supporting Literary Outlets Exist, but that’s a little unwieldy. You’ll just have to deal with it.)

There are two main literary establishments that don’t really support authors directly: libraries and used bookstores. Both of these are essential in a literate culture, even though they don’t pay royalties. Why? I’ll tell you:

Libraries and used bookstores keep reading accessible. Earlier in the spring I had a $50 gift card to spend at a big-box bookstore. That $50 only bought three new novels, and I still had to pony up some change to cover the tax. It’s not so bad, really — I had fifty bucks, I got to blow it on books, and all was well. But what if I only had, say, $10? You can’t even buy a mass market paperback with that these days: most of the ones I see are $10.99 or $11.99, plus tax. Having literary havens established where books are cheap (used bookstores) and/or free (libraries) ensures that those who can’t afford to purchase many/any new books can keep reading.

Used bookstores support the local economy. (Well, locally-owned ones do, anyway.) I like going to the handful of used bookstores in walking distance and knowing that I’m spending money in my own community. When I buy books in a local shop, I’m supporting my neighbours as well as my reading habits.

Libraries and used bookstores  are essential in fostering a literate/literary society. This definitely touches on the whole accessibility thing again; books should not be a privilege of the educated or moneyed elite. But it’s more than that: used bookstores and libraries, by making books accessible, are better able to foster literacy than the big all-new chain stores.

Used bookstores and libraries let to try out new authors risk-free. Sometimes we all want to try a new author or series, but aren’t sure if the books will be good enough to justify new-book prices. A used bookstore or a library lets readers try out new authors with very little financial risk or outlay — but doesn’t obligate them to continue to buy that author’s books at discounted prices. All of us have a few authors whose books we love so much that we will buy anything they ever write, and probably in hardback to boot. Being able to widely sample authors at a low cost will allow more authors to become those super favourites — perhaps authors whose books wouldn’t otherwise get picked up in a big box bookstore.

Libraries and used bookstores make good use of resources. Remember the three Rs? There’s nothing that libraries do better than reuse books.

Used bookstores and libraries support authors in ways other than with royalties. Both establishments help to maintain a generally literate culture, and more readers means more books bought and read at all levels of the literary food chain. Libraries and used bookstores encourage readers to try new authors whenever they can. They also provide venues for readings, signings, and other aspects of the book promitional machine.

Should you buy new books if you can? Absolutely. But if you can’t, don’t get your knickers in a knot over it. Libraries and used bookstores may not pay royalties, but they support a culture of literacy — and, indirectly, authors — in several very important ways.

Post from: She Reads Books

Don’t Support Authors

Reader Monica disagreed:

Trying to make sense of this review . . . how is it possible not to be touched by a magnificent woman’s journey into near-death? The audio version, which I downloaded from the library, is hard to put down. Christine must have felt very threatened by the possibilities Taylor presents to us: that by silencing our “monkey brain” we actually gain a profound new appreciation of life.

By the way, “vice” is alternative spelling for “vise.”

I replied,

Not threatened; just allergic to terrible prose.

It doesn’t matter to me how touching or amazing her journey was — I review books, and the book she wrote was very bad, regardless of the events that triggered its writing.

She wrote back,

What do you mean by “bad”? Useless or uninformative, or just badly written as per your judgment? You seem to focus on style while ignoring content. I maintain that what a book says is just as important as how it says it. My Stroke of Insight should be required reading in every medical and nursing school. Having encountered unfeeling professionals in a medical setting, I deeply feel for a “wounded animal” (Jill’s expression) who is shouted at, ignored, or treated as if deaf or stupid by hospital staff.

Her description of losing the ability to organize experience–what a gift. How many stroke survivors regain enough verbal fluency to tell their story? I maintain that this is a unique and extraordinarily valuable contribution, and not just because of its right-brain/left-brain spiritual implications.

And I replied,

By “bad” I mean that it’s poorly written — and yes, that is my judgement (whose it might be otherwise, I’m sure I don’t know). My issue with My Stroke of Insight is that the style is so bad that I couldn’t even get to the content. Perhaps I should have stuck it out, I’ll give you that, but as I was reading the book I really didn’t think it’d be worth the trouble. The writing wasn’t good enough to hold my attention, and I moved on.

I have nothing against Jill Taylor. I think it’s fantastic that she recovered so completely from her stroke — would that more people could do the same. But her amazing recovery has little to do with whether she can write clearly or compellingly. And there are books out there that tell the same story, in better prose — Norman Doidge’s The Brain that Changes Itself, for example. Her contribution to the field of stroke recovery/treatment may be ultimately valuable, but her writing is not for me.

Now, I’m not particularly interested in who’s right and who’s wrong in regard to this particular book — I don’t think that either of us is going to convince the other. But she did raise an interesting point that I want to explore further: the question of style versus substance. Which is more important when it comes to the books I read?

It’s a tough call, and I can understand that it’s a divisive issue, because both style and content can make or break a book — sometimes more one than the other, perhaps, but they definitely both come into play.

For me, brilliant prose can make up for almost any sin. Last year I read The Road Past Altamont, by Gabrielle Roy, which is one of the most CanLitty books of all CanLit ever. It’s beautifully wrought, the prose is great, I really enjoyed it — but when I finished, I was all, “Wait a minute, was there actually a plot?”. There wasn’t a plot, nothing at all happened (this is CanLitty CanLit, remember) but it was enjoyable and worthwhile all the same, simply because the writing was beautiful. In this case, the prose was able to make up for the fact that, as stated, the entire book passed by without anything really happening.

Good prose can also help make up for, or smooth over, times when an author is writing about uncomfortable topics. Like incest, for example. Incest is uncomfortable and squicky, but the writing in Jeffery Eugenides’s Middlesex is so good that you can look past it. Or for another example, see the death of a young girl, sexual abuse, and yes, more incest in The God of Small Things, by Arundathi Roy. Uncomfortable? Of course. Worth reading anyway? Of course.

On the other hand, sometimes it really is the prose that’s lacking. Can a good story make up for writing that’s just not that great? Sure it can — see my review of Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale, for example. The writing in The Thirteenth Tale is not fantastic — I found a lot of it irritating, actually — but the plot was astounding and I couldn’t put it down. In this case I was able to overlook the clunky writing for the sake of the mystery of the plot.

(It doesn’t always work, though. Sometimes the opposite happens: the prose is so bad that the reader can’t even get to the plot. One example of this that really stands out for me is Mark B. Pickering’s Story of the Sand, a novel about an American soldier who has come home after deployment in Iraq. As I said in my original review, it’s an important story and needs to be told — but not this particular way, in this particular book.)

Generally speaking, I think that good prose saves bad plots more often than the other way around. But how does this work with non-fiction? With non-fiction there’s often no “plot” to speak of — except perhaps in the biography/memoir and true crime, and maybe a few other genres — so how do style and substance interact once you leave the 800s?

For starters, I think that they’re both entirely necessary. In a non-fiction text, the author doesn’t want to tell a good story so much as to inform, enlighten, or convince the audience. The message (the substance) must be good: if your reading audience thinks that your message is stuff and nonsense, you will capture few hearts and minds. If your message is enticing, informative, or otherwise top-notch, your writing is more likely to have an impact on your readers. Possibly.

Why possibly, you ask? Shouldn’t an author’s message trump their writing style?

The way I see it, the answer is yes — and no. As with our examples in fiction writing, above, a good story (or a good message) can sometimes make up for a style that is not quite shipshape. But it doesn’t always work out that way: sometimes the message is good, but the prose is so bad, the writing so clunky, that readers can’t bear to stay the course. I feel like I’ve run into more than my fair share of these through things like LT’s ER book programme — things like Four Secrets to Liking Your Work, for one (review).

The thing with non-fiction is that those books tend not to have strong hooks in the same way that their fictional counterparts do — things like exciting plots,  loveable and/or exasperating characters, or space aliens. Because there isn’t anything plottish to draw the reader in, the writing becomes even more important. It has to pull a lot of weight. It has to be just that much more compelling.

The trouble is, of course, that many non-fiction writers are not primarily writers: first and foremost they are actors, scientists, politicians, engineers, and doctors. Which is fine, when they’re being actors, scientists, politicians, engineers, and doctors. It just doesn’t work so well sometimes when they’re trying to write books. They’re not writers, and that’s not a bad thing in and of itself, but it can result in a bad manuscript that in turn results in a bad book. Editors will fix egregious syntax errors and other grammatical mistakes, but aren’t necessarily going to edit out a writer’s style. And I think that when non-writerly types write, they’re probably more focussed on their message, on getting things out there, than on nuances of the writers’ craft. (But this is a problem: see above).

A case for more ghost writers, perhaps?

Post from: She Reads Books

Style Versus Substance

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” system, often coupled with the “oh well, the floor is good enough” method of shelving. So the other day I did a book purge, and now I am attempting to reorganize everything. Step one was to take all of the non-book material off my shelves:

… which left me with nowhere to sleep, but shelves that looked something like this:

Now, of course, comes the difficult part: actually recategorizing and organizing everything. For now, I’m pulling books off the shelves one genre at a time and putting them in piles:

Right now my shelves are about halfway empty, and I still have some of the bigger genres to take off. Right now Canadian Lit and Mystery have two piles each; Science Fiction and Children’s Lit will probably run to three apiece. And once everything’s off, everything wil go back on again — but in a much more sensible fashion! I’ll be shelving by genre and then alphabetically by author within each genre. (Which means I don’t know how I’ll cope when I have to add books, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it).

How do you arrange everything? Ever had to start over, like me?

Post from: She Reads Books

BTT: Book Storage

Too, I’ve been thinking about which books I’ll take with me when I move out of my parents’ house, probably in the next couple of years. One shelf’s worth? One bookcase’s worth? Almost everything or just the most beloved? It’s a hard decision both in terms of space now and future space, but what I think it boils down to is that I don’t have space to waste on books I don’t love.

So, I purged! First to go were several sets of doubles — I don’t really need two copies of Anne’s House of Dreams, do I? Didn’t think so. And after that, off go the books I don’t love. Adios, everything written by Henry James. Sayonara, Hemingway. Goodbye, random mystery anthologies I’ll probably never get to. The Nanny Diaries, I read you a few times and now I don’t need to do that anymore.

The end result is that I’ve boxed up 64 books to get rid of:

They’ll be picked up by a local charity that takes your stuff and sells it to Value Village and whatnot. I still have some large piles of books up for reading & review, but I have a feeling that most of those will go the way of the dodo once I’ve posted about them… so I guess that in a few weeks I’ll need new boxes.

You know what? It feels great. Later this week I’ll post on phase two of my project, which is actually re-shelving all my books by category instead of all helter-skelter.

Have you weeded your collection lately? How do you decide what stays and what goes?

Post from: She Reads Books

Book Reorganization: The Purge

Now you don’t have to go to the used bookstores. You can buy new books, that look nice on the shelf.

And I didn’t say anything to her then, but I was a little bit flabbergasted by this statement. Sure, new books are okay, I guess — but I love second-hand books. I don’t shop for used books because they’re all I can afford (well… sometimes they are, but it’s still not the primary reason). I shop for used books because I genuinely prefer them.

Why do I like you better, second-hand books? Let’s count:

1) You are cheap, cheap as all get-out. I love that I can go to a used bookstore and get my school reading for $20 instead of $100. I love being able to buy ten books at a time … at a buck apiece. And being able to get a book for a small cash outlay means that I’m more likely to try out new authors, whose books I may afterwards buy at full price — if they’re good enough!

2) You are used. It might seem strange, but I don’t like reading new books. I don’t like new books as objects: too shiny, too crinkly, too bright. I like my books to have some character: some dents, maybe some tears, yellowed pages. It’s a character thing, and also a mark that a book has been well-read, if not necessarily well-loved. I feel more connected to other readers, somehow, when I know I’m reading something that’s been in other hands before.

3) You are found in charming places. I’ll go to the big shiny bookstores when I have a gift card or something, but mostly I like the shopping experience at used/discount stores better. One of my favourites has tiny aisles and giant piles everywhere and styles itself the “world’s messiest bookstore,” an epithet which is probably deserved. Finding a book there is like treasure-hunting.

4) I can treat you badly and not worry about it. I bend corners and use things like mugs and table edges instead of bookmarks, and I throw my books around a lot when they’re being moved between my bag and the shelves, or rather from my bag to the floor and eventually possibly onto a bookshelf. Used books are already a little dingy, so hey, what does it matter if I accidentally break the spine?

5) Marginalia, mementos, and other things are enclosed. Sometimes used books come with surprises inside. Old receipts. Photographs. Cartoons. Grocery lists. I found a copy of Alias Grace with a very sweet dedication in it. And my $2 copy of E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India has this to say on the inside back cover:

I don’t understand — I still don’t really understand why he wants to see other people. Why does he need to kiss them? Yuk. it must be that he needs to put himself in a situation where something could happen and see if he could allow it to. almost as thought he’s testing his feelings/love for me. Perhaps he wants to see if he could kiss someone else too. if he feels something when he kisses them then… to me this seems a bit naive. i’m sure if i put myself in a situation where i was with someone i’d always found attractive i’d be able to kiss them. if I put myself in that situation with brooke actually i don’t know. has about danielle? I have this feeling if i did it would be disappointing. I’m not sure — the thought of him kissing someone else makes me want to throw up. I can talk about this forever with everyone and still I feel nauseous when I think about it.

Gee, I’m sorry to hear that! Maybe he wants to kiss other people because he’s a big jerk. You know, just my two cents.

6) Did I mention the “cheap” thing?

Post from: She Reads Books

Why I Love Second-Hand Books

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:

March is when I started doing this book blogging thing in earnest, and so it’s also the earliest point from which I’ve been tracking my reading. A good deal of March’s reading was for school, with a boatload of Pratchett thrown in to boot.

Best book: Tess of the D’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy

Honourable mentions: Whitethorn, by Bryce Courtenay; The King’s Daughter, by Suzanne Martel.

April:

I don’t know why, but April seems to be a bit thin on the excellent books front. I mean, Pratchett is excellent, and I read a lot of his stuff, but I didn’t read much of the Pratchett that really stands out as exceptional. And Atonement actually made me angry. But still, there was some good reading going on, and I give you my picks:

Best book: Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov.

Honourable mentions: Thud! by Terry Pratchett; Dining with Death, by Kathleen Molloy.

May:

There are a lot of honourable mentions for May, because I read a lot of very good books. And now I’m thinking that perhaps it would have been easier to separate things by genre rather than by month — but, in for a penny, in for a pound.

Best book: Fall on Your Knees, by Ann-Marie MacDonald.

Honourable mentions: Gaudy Night, by Dorothy Sayers; Agnes Grey, by Anne Brontë; Girl Meets God, by Lauren Winner.

June:

June was a bumper month for me; I read a whopping 26 books, mostly thanks to Roger Zelazny and Laura Ingalls Wilder (5 and 7 books each, respectively). I didn’t pick any of those as the best, though.

Best book: Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi.

Honourable mentions: The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkein; Four Fires, by Bryce Courtenay.

July:

Best book: Proust was a Neuroscientist, by Jonah Lehrer.

Honourable mentions: Yellowknife*, by Steve Zipp; Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett; Smilla’s Sense of Snow, by Peter Høeg.

August:

I read some lovely and fascinating books last August. Here are three of them.

Best book: The Brain that Changes Itself, by Norman Doidge.

Honourable mentions: When We Were Romans, by Matthew Kneale; Résistance, by Agnès Humbert.

September:

September was when I started having to read books for school again. None of them made the “best” list, though… somehow… *cough*HenryJamesBoring*cough*.

Best book: Alias Grace, by Margaret Atwood.

Honourable mentions: The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak; The Big Over Easy, by Jasper Fforde.

October:

Good books in October; yay, October books.

Best book: Looking for Alaska, by John Green.

Honourable mentions: Jpod, by Douglas Coupland; The Book of Lost Things, by John Connolly.

November/December:

I didn’t keep track of my reading in the last two months of the year well enough to be able to say what I read when, so I just smooshed the two months together. And I don’t know how I’m going to choose the best for these months, because I read a whole lot of books that are just crazy-excellent. But since it’s two months in one, I’ll just pick twice as many books for each category. Hooray!

Best books: Babel Tower, by A. S. Byatt; The Bartimaeus Trilogy, by Jonathan Stroud.

Honourable mentions: Tales from Outer Suburbia, by Shaun Tan; Paper Towns, by John Green; The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman; Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome.

*Note: I haven’t linked to Yellowknife because Google’s giving it a malware warning at the moment. Boogie-boogie!

And that’s it, folks! May 2009 bring us even more good books to read! What were your favourite picks this year?

Post from: She Reads Books

Best Books of 2008

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.

This brings us to the question: What are the best ways to get rid of books you don’t want anymore?

1) Donate them

1. Libraries. Be sure to check with your librarian about donating — libraries don’t always accept donations anymore, or they may not want or need certain types of books for their collection. But if you’ve got gently used books, your local library might be interested in them
2. Friends of the Library organizations. Many public and academic libraries have Friends of the Library organizations that will hold periodic book sales to raise funds. Your books will be sold in order to help support the library in question.
3. Charities. There are many options here, from your local Goodwill or Salvation Army Thrift Store to organizations looking for books specifically. You might try Books Beyond Borders, Books Through Bars, Books for Africa, and others.
4. Churches, Seniors Centres, Women’s/Homeless Shelters, Halfway Homes, etc. Many of these establishments will have small libraries to which donations may be given. Check with organizations in your local community.

2) Give them away (non-donations)

1. Have a blog? Why not hold a giveaway drawing? You’ll have to pay for shipping, of course, but it’s neat to know that your books are going directly to people interested in them.
2. BookMooch.com is a site dedicated to getting used books from one place to another. You can list books you’d like to get rid of, and have people mooch them for points, and you can redeem your points to mooch other people’s books. I have personally had a lot of sucess with BookMooch.
3. PaperBackSwap.com runs on the same idea as BookMooch. I haven’t used PBS myself but have not heard any complaints about it.
4. Birthday/Christmas/etc. presents. Do you have a book that’s new or only slightly read — or even one that is well used but excellent –  that would be perfect for someone you know? Why not just give it to them? Or if your children are older, why not pass on some of their books to parents with younger kids? Books made great “just because” presents as well.
5. Book Crossing. Release those books into the wild!
6. Put them on Craigslist under “free stuff”. You list it, people take it away. What could be simpler?
7. Put them on your front lawn with a sign that says “Free!”. I’ve snagged books this way.

3) Sell them

1. There are a lot of marketplaces to sell used text books online. One of which is at ValoreBooks.com [advertisement].
2. Have a garage sale (though you might want to wait until summer!).
3. Sell them to a used book store. You probably won’t get a huge amount of money back — let us be realistic — but it’s a good way to support a local used bookstore and make some cash at the same time. Not all stores want all books; be prepared to make several trips. And if you live in a college/university town, don’t forget about campus bookstores.
4. Sell them to students (1). Do you have old textbooks that you don’t want? Do you have lots of classic texts that are likely to be on reading lists? If you google “sell used books [city]” or “sell used books [university]” you’re likely to come up with some good leads. I personally use tusbe.
5. Sell them to students (2). If you’re currently in college or university, check whether your student union organizes any book sales. It’s often a good way to get rid of books you don’t need or want, especially since you can market them to specific courses.
6. Sell them online. Try Craigslist, Amazon, Half.com (an eBay subsidiary, it appears), Facebook Marketplace, AbeBooks, Biblio, etc. If you use a listing to sell books in person, remember to use good personal safety practices.

4) Recycle them

No, don’t recycle them into your blue bin! Make something new. Here are some examples to inspire you:

1. Chair made of paperbacks
2. Bookshelves made of hardcovers
3. Hardcover book purse
4. Book sculptures and other art (very cool!)

5) Your Suggestions

What do you do with your used books?

1. MLO: Another way to give books away is through the Freecycle Network.

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