Stories (Booking Through Thursday)

August 28th, 2008 · 5 Comments

If you’re anything like me, one of your favorite reasons to read is for the story. Not for the character development and interaction. Not because of the descriptive, emotive powers of the writer. Not because of deep, literary meaning hidden beneath layers of metaphor. (Even though those are all good things.) No … it’s because [...]

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Tags: On Reading

Books vs. Movies (Booking Through Thursday)

May 22nd, 2008 · 7 Comments

Yay–my question got picked!! If you’re coming here from Booking Through Thursday, please note that my url is superfastreader.com, with no “wordpress.” I’d be ever so grateful if you update this if you are linking to me. And thanks for the link love!

Books and films both tell stories, but what we want [...]

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Tags: On Reading

Mayday! (Booking Through Thursday)

May 1st, 2008 · 8 Comments

Quick! It’s an emergency! You just got an urgent call about a family emergency and had to rush to the airport with barely time to grab your wallet and your passport. But now, you’re stuck at the airport with nothing to read. What do you do??
And, no, you did NOT have time to grab your [...]

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Tags: On Reading

Writing Challenge (Booking Through Thursday)

April 10th, 2008 · 9 Comments

Pick up the nearest book. (I’m sure you must have one nearby.)
Turn to page 123.
What is the first sentence on the page?
The last sentence on the page?

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Lit-Ra-Chur (Booking Through Thursday)

April 3rd, 2008 · 4 Comments

When somebody mentions literature what’s the first thing you think of? (Dickens? Tolstoy? Shakespeare?) Do you read literature (however you define it) for pleasure? Or is it something that you read only when you must?
Honestly? I think of books I don’t want to read, not because they’re bad, per se, but because they’re [...]

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Tags: On Reading

Real Live Boy Weighs in on Girl Book Debate

March 9th, 2008 · 2 Comments

My pastor has four kids, all of whom are great readers. His second son in particular is a real book lover, and though he is 13 I feel like he is a kindred spirit to me, because we like a lot of the same books.
So I posed him the question I raised in the [...]

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Tags: On Reading

Hero (Booking Through Thursday)

March 6th, 2008 · 20 Comments

You should have seen this one coming … Who is your favorite Male lead character? And why?
I don’t connect with male protagonists the way I do with female, so I can’t really come up with an absolute favorite. And this reminds me of a conversation I’ve been having with my pastor’s wife, who [...]

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Tags: On Reading

Format (Booking Through Thursday)

February 21st, 2008 · 6 Comments

All other things (like price and storage space) being equal, given a choice in a perfect world, would you rather have paperbacks in your library? Or hardcovers? And why?
I prefer trade edition paperbacks, for the most part, because I do a lot of my reading on the subway, and hardcovers get really heavy and unwieldy. [...]

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After the Honeymoon (Booking Through Thursday)

February 14th, 2008 · 16 Comments

Here’s something for Valentine’s Day.
Have you ever fallen out of love with a favorite author? Was the last book you read by the author so bad, you broke up with them and haven’t read their work since? Could they ever lure you back?
In college and for a time afterwards, I was obsessed with Umberto Eco’s [...]

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Huh? (Booking through Thursday)

January 24th, 2008 · 21 Comments

What’s your favorite book that nobody else has heard of? You know, not Little Women or Huckleberry Finn, not the latest best-seller . . . whether they’ve read them or not, everybody “knows” those books. I’m talking about the best book that, when you tell people that you love it, they go, “Huh? Never [...]

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Tags: On Reading