Love a good book!   Gosh, they seem so far and few....but I found a good one!

Still Alice by Lisa Genova.

I started yesterday, read well into the night and finished it last night...I just couldn't put it down!

I cried at least 6 times...and this chick is not a crier.  It was so good.

Just thought I'd pass that on. 

Very weird. I have always absorbed several books every month. Usually non-fiction but some fiction too. Never watched much TV but always loved to read.

At the very moment that Grey Fox and I started writing in 2004, I stopped reading.

I don't know what the reason is but I have a heck of time getting through books anymore. My mind is rotting even as my body is making up for a lifetime of inattention.

Having said that, I'm going to bed to read for a bit before he comes down from his studio.

Oh yeah, and I can't seem to start and finish a painting anymore. Since coming here in Nov '07, I have finished one painting. Its good, I like it and I especially liked signing it with my new last name but why can't I paint?

And, poor Bran Muffin. ONE entry in a year. I have artwork half finished for it, essays that I can't seem to finish. I've always lived for my art, for designing, for selling designs.

*shrug*
Don't know.

I too used to be an avid reader. Have hardly read in the last few years though. About 10 years ago I basically gave up paper books for electronic and audiobooks.

Part of the reason is that I have problems with getting sucked into a book to the point where I neglect everything else. I'll spend an entire day reading a paperback or e-book and nothing gets done, and I get super bitchy at interruptions. For Audiobooks... Dunno, I seem to listen to the same ones over and over and often feel like nothing new out there can compare. I really should start picking up new ones again and listen, and expand my author preferences.

Going to be hitting the public library soon anyhow, so we'll see what they have. I'll look for that one you mentioned.

It's because you got so much to do Bran.

Cor I know what you mean about getting so involved .... I seem to transplant the characters into the book onto people around me and get very involved ... best if I just read and read until I finish out on my own somewhere!

At the time I stopped reading, my head was so full of GF, its all I wanted to think about. Before we were together, I used to look forward to going to bed so I could be "with" him in my head.  What a fantasy life I had going!

Now, real life is even better than I had hoped but I have time to read. I just don't. Or at least, not like I always have.

Doesn't worry me. Its just the way it is right now.

I guess - you don't need the escape and the fantasy.  You've got it in real life.

So true! Such a lucky couple!

I get that way too Cor.  I read 2 books last week and have started on my 3rd.  But not much gets done in the meantime...laundry...pft!  It can wait. I find it harder when the book is really good and satisfying.  Ya, I think I'll draw a bath and read.  Bed looks comfy, think I'll read. OH! It's sunny out think I'll read a bit. lol.... I have lots of excuses! Oh damn, train....where's my book.  I carry it in my purse for any second I can spare.

I haven't done any ereaders. I like the real thing in my hand and to hear the pages turn.

I've got a couple of things on the go right now--one is called "Missing the Ark" by a spoken word artist called Catherine Kidd--it's good in small doses, the language is beautiful but I have to put it down to process. 

Lately it seems I've been losing myself in Nora Roberts books (her new mystery novels are GREAT beach reads) and everything Jodi Picoult has ever written.  I think it's just because they're easy to stop and start and don't require a HUGE amount of attention.  I think my brain is still fried from all that reading in university! 

There's a cute little bookstore in Wolfville, though, that bears some looking into--they sell independently printed stuff as well as bigger names and we were thinking of seeing if they would carry C's book when it comes out in October, since he's now "local" and all

I'm a mystery reader....pretty much exclusively, but I don't care for thriller type books, just light entertaining ones.  I seem to like primarily female authors and female lead characters, particularly in a series.  My folks seem to like similar books so we make suggestions to each other.  My mom got me started on Janet Evanovich books (Stephanie Plum series) and I just love those.  Just ordered 2 of her books from Amazon last night (gotta love that free shipping!).

I've never tried an e-reader and not sure if I'd like it or not.  I buy very few books but go to the library about once a month and check out 4-6 books at a time.  My dad is big into audio books because he's legally blind.   He gets them from the library as well as the government program for the blind which works through a library system as well.  He used to like cassette tapes over CDs because a tape STOPS where you stop it and picks it right back up again.  CDs he'd just pause and leave spinning which is odd, but he said he couldn't see to operate the controls well enough to find his place again otherwise.  Recently he showed me a cool gadget, which I think is from the government program.  It was a entire book on a playing device similar to an mp3 player.  Just put in batteries, plug in your headphones, and press play.  Pretty cool.

There's ALWAYS something to do around the house, so sitting down to just read is not a luxury i allow myself.  It's pretty my just on my lounch hour. 

Yeah, those audiobook players are neat. I get most of my audiobooks on MP3 and listen to them on my iPod or computer.


the E-books are great because I'm a fast and voracious reader when I actually read - not unheard of for me to read 2-3 books in a weekend if I'm just lounging around reading. I want an E-reader but not sure really how much use I'd get of it. Usually I load the books onto my ancient palm pilot - it'd be nice to have a bigger screen. While I like paper books, it's a helluva lot easier to slip my Palm or phone into my purse than it is 4-5 paperbacks when we're travelling.

Usually I only read fantasy novels or some sci-fi, but there are exceptions. I love the Stephanie Plum series too, and I also like Laurell K Hamilton's "Anita Blake Vampire Hunter" series, although the last several of those I read have been somewhat less vampire/horror novels and more erotica bordering on outright pornography. Not really into vampire books otherwise.

cor, the Main Branch of our county library system has e-books to download to your iPod.  Maybe that's something you could check into.  I think I looked into it once for my dad but he can't see well enough to operate an iPod so I didn't pursue it.  I guess you check it out for 3 weeks and then have to "return" it to the library.  Not exactly sure how it works.

I'm the kind of reader who reads 6 or 7 at a time.  Just depends on the mood I'm in.

I like the classics, mostly, but love historical biographies, political, social, technology non-fiction as well.

My favorite author of all time probably has to be Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  Can't get enough of him. 

I've tried the iphone downloads, but it's just not the same as "curling up" with a book in bed, or reading in the bathtub for 2 hours.
 

Sounds heavy DD.  I have a 'simple mind' I suppose. lol...

Guuurrlllll..... don't underestimate yourself!

Its not that classic literature is harder to read, it just takes longer. 

Oooh, also love Stephanie Plum...and the Eve Dallas novels ("...in death")--also happen to be by Nora Roberts, writing as J.D. Robb. 

Other than that though...hmmm...read and re-read Lord of the Rings countless times, same with the Anne of Green Gables books growing up and pretty much anything else Tolkien and L.M. Montgomery wrote.  Big fan of C. S. Lewis as well, besides the Narnia books I really enjoyed "Til We Have Faces."  My parents raised me a hippie so I've also read some out of the way stuff--the The Stranger of Galillee (Sermon on the Mount) by Russell Perkins (who was my highschool religions teacher) and the Way of the Saints, all about the spiritual path known as Sant Mat, which is how I was raised. 

I also recently really enjoyed the His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman--really amazing writing with some powerful undertones, reminiscent of C. S. Lewis for sure, great imagination and style! 

Hubby has me into some really odd books --things he finds by local writers, like "King Dork" and "The Half-Mammals of Dixie,"  I keep meaning to pick them up and read them all the way through but always go back to my simplistic mystery novels  

OOOOOH and the Dark is Rising series by Susan something or other--had me fascinated and captivated, even when I read it in my 20s.  Good imagination always gets me!