Book Review, etc: Funny You Should Ask by Elissa Sussman

This post got long because I had a surprising number of thoughts. Since I can't imagine anyone is all that interested, I decided not to divide it in two. This is the goodreads review I wrote of Funny You Should Ask, a romance novel by Elissa Sussman, followed by further reflections, because the book has been the subject of a minor controversy that I knew nothing about until after I was done reading (and writing my review).

----------So the review I wrote, slightly edited:

Funny You Should Ask by Elissa Sussman

Ten years ago, Chani Horowitz was just starting out as a journalist when she was handed the chance of a lifetime, an interview with Gabe Parker, the actor who had been chosen to be the new James Bond. The story she wrote after spending a crazy weekend with him ended up going viral and changing both their lives.

They've barely seen each other since, but now Gabe’s career has nosedived and his PR team wants her to do it again. Funny You Should Ask is a complicated story that moves back and forth between ten years ago and the current time, but it reads easily— Sussman does a great job of managing the timelines so we get just enough information to move the story along. What did happen during that weekend?

What worked really well for me was the story of a smart, maybe over-educated writer who is trying to reconcile her career of writing “puff” pieces with the more serious careers of her former grad school friends. Chani’s story was pitch perfect. 

What didn’t work so well for me is the same old stuff that hasn’t worked well in almost every recent romance novel I’ve read. And since I’m clearly in the minority, I’ll just make myself sound ridiculous by saying it, but I find it tedious to read through (literal) pages and pages of how strong their sexual attraction to each other is. OK, so you want to lick him. Got it. I don't need two pages of elaboration. That stuff is easy to skim over, though, so not necessarily a deal breaker if the rest of the story is good, and in this case, it is. 

There’s another aspect of the story that had me doubtful, though. I’ve lived in Montana for thirty years, and it’s rare that a writer who doesn’t live here gets it right. So when Gabe turned out to be a Montana native, I rolled my eyes. Montana so often means some symbolic thing to people — it’s romanticized and westernized and sanitized; people who have only visited in the summer in the tourist areas, or winter in the ski towns, don’t get the reality of life here.

But I'm giving Sussman a pass on this, mainly because she didn’t make the mistake of trying too hard. In fact, you have to wonder why she picked Montana, because the handful of scenes that are set here could have been in Wyoming or Colorado or even the Sierra Nevadas. At least there was no wrinkled old ranch hand named Willy who’d known Gabe since he was knee-high and taught him everything he knows about riding a horse. In fact, she leaves horses out of it entirely. There are a lot of people who ride horses in Montana (and more who don’t), but again—super hard to get it right, so good for her.

Besides the obvious wish-fulfillment/fantasy aspect of a world-famous movie star falling in love with a nerdy nobody, the development of Chani's and Gabe's story is believably done. I read it on vacation, and it was exactly the kind of book I wanted to read at the time. Highly recommended if you're in the same sort of mood.

p.s. Gabe is from the fictional town of Cooper, Montana. It didn't occur to me until after I was done reading the book that that is probably a nod to Gary Cooper, the actor and star of many westerns, who was from Helena. 

--------------------

(If that sounds appealing to you, please stop here and read it before continuing on.) 

Then at some point I was reading reader reviews on Goodreads and discovered that Sussman has come under fire for writing this book for a reason that struck me as puzzling. Apparently, Sussman said in an interview that the original idea for the story came from an interview that another writer did with Chris Evans (of Captain America fame) that appeared in GQ. The most upvoted review related the reader's outrage that Sussman never says this in the acknowledgements, never name-checks the other writer, plus more, and is therefore a reprehensible human being because she stole the idea and etc etc etc.

I disagree with the commenter on two fronts, and but it turns out that she changed my experience of reading the book for a reason I don't think she intended. So here goes: First off, she claims that a journalist having a drink with the subject of her interview and interacting with him/her on a personal level is unethical and unprofessional. I'm not a journalist, so I don't know if there are professional ethics standards here, but I call bullshit on this. 

For one thing, it's hard to imagine a similar claim being made if the interviewer were male. For another, there's a long, complex conversation already occurring around the impossibility of any journalist being able to remain "objective" and personally uninvolved in the story they're telling. The myth of the passive observer journalist is just that, a myth. At least in this case she is upfront about her involvement.

Also there's the claim that since Sussman started with something that someone else wrote, she is stealing someone else's idea. I didn't go check, but I don't think there's any accusation made that she actually cut and pasted the words of the GQ article, so I'm inclined to let this one go, too. If you handed the original interview to a room full of novelists and told them to go write a book loosely based on that article, you would get a room full of entirely different ways of working it out, even if you restricted them to writing romance novels. Are there any novels that spring up whole cloth out of the writer's imagination? It's hard to believe that there are.

I do agree that it might have been nice for Sussman to own up to the original spark for her story in the acknowledgements, but seriously-- I am not going to start judging authors for what is and is not in the afterword. Up until the 80s (90s?) or so, most books didn't even have acknowledgements. This is not as big a problem as the commenter wants it to be.

But on the other hand, having a real person identified as the fantasy Gabe really changed my feelings about the book. Chris Evans is someone I follow on social media, and he's someone I like and admire. Putting a real person's name and face on the character of Gabe gave it a ewwwwww factor that wasn't there while I was reading and just imagining some impossibly handsome nameless movie star. 

Honestly, it's surprising to me how much this changed my attitude toward the book, all in retrospect. I originally gave it five stars (I've told you before that I believe strongly in star-inflation, but let's not get off on that right now), and I even considered going back and knocking off a star or two just because of this. The older I get, the more sympathy I have for celebrities and how their "adoring" public must make it practically impossible to have a real life. Which I suppose you could argue, they are complaining about all the way to the bank, and you have a point. 

Trying to think of some smart thing to say in summary, but I can't. That's all. 

Another book review: Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny

I listened to an interview with an artist last week who said that the best, most interesting art is art that surprises him. I don’t know enough about art to know if that’s true, but I do know that a book that surprises me is one of my favorite things. This one did.   

Standard Deviation can be read as a funny, absorbing story of marriage, advancing years, raising a special needs child, and managing relationships with relatives, exes, and house guests. Graham is approaching sixty, and his second wife is a younger woman named Audra who has no filter— which is sometimes hilarious and sometimes appalling. Their son Matthew is an endearing Aspy kid with a passion for origami. That version of the story is enough on its own to be funny, heartwarming, and even sometimes wise. I was startled into laughter more times while reading this book than any book in recent memory.

But it seems to me there are other layers, and I’m making my spouse read it now so I can have someone to talk to about this. Am I making it up? Did she really intend to get into the moral ambiguity of the second half of the novel, or am I over-reading? 

(If that sounds intriguing, stop now and go read it, especially if you live nearby and we can go for coffee (tea), because I really would love to discuss this, and you should go into it without knowing the stuff I'm talking about below.)

***spoilers ahead***

I think the way you read the second half depends mostly on whether or not you think Audra is having an affair. I think she is— maybe not with the mysterious Jasper, but what else was she doing in that hotel? She certainly has no problem talking about the multiple married men she slept with before she married Graham. And then you find out that Graham cheated on his first wife not just with Audra, but with Marla, and then later he mentions “all the other Marlas” and you start to wonder if these people are really at all what you thought.

There are a whole lot of layers of truth and falsehood — from the amusing social lies/fabrications that Audra spins effortlessly to the lies of omission from Graham. Is Heiny’s point that speaking truth doesn’t really matter? I've told plenty of social "white lies" myself, usually in the name of not hurting someone's feelings, but I'll say it plainly: the deeper lack of honesty bothers me.

But even I can see that I’m being a bit of a killjoy and a preachy bore to suggest that the fun and hilarity of reading about life with Audra has darker underpinnings. What's the problem with serial adultery if it's so much fun to read about? Graham seems to consciously decide that he doesn’t care if Audra is unfaithful—which is totally his choice—but that’s not the same thing as Heiny as an author giving the impression that telling the truth to your partner doesn’t matter. Is it really true that as long as everything looks good, it is good? As long as we're having so much funnnnn, as the kids say on snapchat, does that automatically mean anything goes?

Or did Heiny actively intend all the intricate, ambiguous implications? Is her point that we lull ourselves into complicity because we want to be in on the joke? Maybe Standard Deviation is a fun-hall mirror of seeing our own distortions.

Or maybe I'm over-reading again. Read it for yourself and see what you think.

(a slightly modified version of the review I posted on Goodreads)

7ToF: what a drag it isn't getting old

1. I like being 60. My fifties were transitional, and I'm not someone who deals well with change. 60 feels like I have arrived at something, although my friends who are already in their 60s seem a little mystified by this. I've written quite a bit about coming to terms with being a senior citizen and of course I'm not entirely there yet-- but once I made some semblance of a shift to thinking of myself as an elder, a crone, an old person, I really like it.

2. Which is why I've twice recently gotten myself into (briefly) tense situations. A couple of months ago, I was watching a movie with friends and when we paused for intermission (ie, snacks), one of them said, I refuse to say that I'm old. I don't feel old. and of course I couldn't keep my mouth shut about that, and I said I am embracing being old. That's one of the reasons our society has such a fixation with youth, I went on, because those of us who are old continue to chase after youth. If even those of us who are old are saying, ewwww, being old stinks! why should younger people think any different? Unsurprisingly, she was not convinced.

3. The next time was a few weeks ago when we were at a dinner party where everyone was about the same age (early sixties), but technically, I was the youngest one at the table. It was the week of Doug's 61st birthday, so I teased him that turning 60 is cool, but turning 61 is just old. There was this frozen half-second of silence (during which we can pause and recognize that I am sometimes a complete bonehead), and then one of the other women said with a fair amount of heat, why do you always have to remind us that you're the youngest one here? 

Which honestly kind of stunned me. First of all, I think of us as being the same age, because I'm 60 and the oldest person at the table is 63. Who the hell is worried about a two-and-a-half year age difference? I am as old as they are. And secondly, it's not insulting (in my opinion) to be old, although I reserve the right to tease and complain about it. I am continually surprised that people are so touchy about this. Why are we so brittle and sensitive around something that is a) inevitable, and b) not so bad?

4. My conclusion (besides the one about me being an insensitive idiot) is that our culture is just flat-out weird about aging, which we all already knew, so why am I even telling you these stories. I don't know. I guess I have to write about something.

5. Another thing people can be so touchy about: when someone asks me if I've seen whatever the latest TV sensation is, and I say I don't watch much TV because I'd rather read, a perfectly appropriate response would be: oh, that's too bad, you're missing some really great shows. Because that is true, and I know it. I'd still rather read, but I don't say it to be a snob, it's just my preference. The immediate assumption is that I'm bragging because somehow reading has a reputation for being intellectual and grandiose, while watching TV is supposedly pedestrian and dumb. 

6. Anyone who follows along here knows that I hardly have high-brow taste in reading. Among other things, I read cozy mysteries and romance novels and sci-fi (I'm in the middle of a Star Wars novel right now) and all sorts of genre fiction, some of which is fairly literary and some of which is really, uh, lightweight. But it's impossible to say, "I'd rather read than watch TV," without people assuming you're being a snob. So mostly I avoid  talking about it. A friend: Have you seen Killing Eve? (which I understand is seriously well-written and -acted), me: No, tell me about it!

7. This week's worthwhile listens:
- "How to Lose a War" on the SmartyPants podcast- an interview with Elizabeth D. Samet, who teaches English at West Point and has a unique window into the minds of people in the military. I was fascinated. (SmartyPants is the podcast of The American Scholar magazine.)
- "From Evangelical Pastor to Buddhist Nun" on the Ten Percent Happier podcast- if you're interested in either Evangelicalism or Buddhism, this one is also interesting. Probably you need to have a little basic knowledge about Buddhism to follow the conversation, but the general outline of her movement from Evangelicalism to Buddhism is pretty clear.
- I'm hit or miss on Gretchen Rubin's podcast Happier, but their episode on Burnout was thought-provoking. There's a difference between burnout and exhaustion, and the solutions to each are different, too.
- And of course I always plug the only podcast that I've continually listened to since I discovered podcasts: What Should I Read Next? hosted by Anne Bogel, which is usually just Anne interviewing some normal person about what they read and why, and then she recommends three books she thinks they might like. It's so much a part of my Tuesday morning routine that when she skips a week (as she did this week for spring break), my whole day feels off. Darn it, Anne.

I just realized that this will post on April Fool's Day and I spent about 30 seconds trying to think of a way to prank you, but that's never been my thing. Be careful out there.

Reading Report 2020: part two, book report

At the end of the year, I always have a few books that stand out in my mind as the "best" books I read-- and "best" just means the ones that meant the most to me, or had the most effect on me, or that I was still thinking about days or weeks after I read them. Those books for this year:  

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
How to be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi
The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradal
The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune

Then there is a new-to-me category this year, books that I'm thinking of as "quirky-nerdy" that are my new favorite kind of book. They're smart and layered, but they have a sense of humor and a bit of optimism about the human race. I'm happier than I can tell you that I found books that were both literary and fun this year, although a bunch of them are not recent (which tells me maybe I've just been reading the wrong books).

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia
The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine
Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
    (I know, everyone else has already read it)

And there's always a few Sci-Fi/Fantasy:

The Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers
The Fifth Element by N.K. Jemisin
The Library at Mt. Char by Scott Hawkins
Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames

And then the promised romance novel titles. If you're not familiar with the terminology, m/m is male/male, m/f is male/female. (if you're searching for romance novels, you can use any combination of those to find what you want. Just so you know.)

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJKlune, m/m
Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall, m/m
The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary, m/f
Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston, m/m
Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn, m/f
Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert, m/f
The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren, m/f
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli, m/m

The re-reads that kept me going through lockdown: a half dozen Georgette Heyers, the first three Murderbot Diaries, and the Earthsea trilogy. And some good mysteries: Attica Locke, Elsa Hart's Li Du series, and I finally read a couple of Vera Stanhope mysteries and loved them. The classics I finally read this year: Mrs Dalloway, Go Tell it on the Mountain, Sister Outsider, This House of Sky.

I'm looking over my big list and realizing I could go on and on. So many good books this year. But that's enough. Check my goodreads page for more (if that link doesn't work, just search for Barb Nelson in Montana on the community page), where I write short reviews of every book I read (usually).

Reading Report 2020, part one: to read, or to watch? that is the question

Reading at the laundromat (RIP dryer)

(This post is about my reading year, a topic that sounds boring to me before I even start, and the next one will be actual book recommendations. You've been warned.)

One good thing about 2020--I read a lot more books than usual. The previous two years I'd been right at a hundred books; in 2020, I read 120. That might sound like a lot, but I've heard plenty from people who read two to three hundred during lockdown. That doesn't include the many that I started and didn't finish (was I the only one who couldn't settle on what I wanted to read? I feel like I bailed on two for every one I finished, but I don't know for sure since I don't usually track DNFs). 

During the spring, Doug was working longer hours than ever. He and the pandemic team at our hospital spent 10-12 hours a day, seven days a week, figuring out how our hospital would respond to COVID-19. Which meant that I was home alone, like a gazillion other people, for weeks on end. So I read.

I'm not sure I can explain why I prefer to read than watch TV. Since it's what I like, of course I think it's "better," but objectively, there's no reason for that. Plenty of people who are way smarter than me have said that the best writing and creative work of the past dozen years have been in television-- more than in movies (taken over by blockbusters and superheroes) or print (because serious literary fiction has become so dense and impenetrable that nobody wants to read it). 

TV feels like too much to me. It might even be a neurological thing. The way my brain is wired, the combination of visual stimuli and music and characters coming to life on the screen feels overwhelming, especially if those characters are being bullied or tortured or oppressed. It feels like I'm handing control of my brain over to someone else, opening the door and inviting in images of devastation and despair. It's too much. Things inside my brain are dark enough without inviting that stuff in.

So I'd rather sit with a book, preferably not one of the dense/miserable/despairing types. And anyway, it seems to me that there's been a movement away from literary despair in the past year or two. I read a handful of books this year that were intelligent, self-aware in literary terms, and fun to read. Ten or fifteen years ago, you couldn't claim to be a serious writer if your book ended in anything other than hopelessness. I think that's starting to change.

Of course, that has never been true of romance novels, and it's one of the reasons romance has been derided as frivolous and negligible. (It's also a typical strategy of the traditional patriarchy-- restrict women to the world of home and relationships, and then define any art that deals with home and relationships as unimportant or silly.) 

I've told you before that I am an ardent defender of people's right to read whatever the hell they want, whether that is a steady diet of romance novels or anything else. But I haven't been entirely forthcoming with my own reading of romance novels, because tbh I haven't read a romance published in the last few years that I liked. Readers of romance get enough criticism without me piling on, and if it's what you like, then it makes no difference what I think. So I just didn't say anything.

It seems to me that the current trends in romance are either to concentrate on the sexual attraction between the two characters almost to the exclusion of anything else (like a plot), or to use a strange type of narrative that irritates me no end-- there will be one line of dialog, then several paragraphs of interior monologue, then another line of dialog and a page and a half of interior monologue, and then another line of dialog.... etc. 

The first time I read one, I thought it was kind of odd, but okay, I can go along with this. But now it seems like every one I pick up is that way, and I am so done with it. Sometimes it feels like you've read a dozen pages for a five-minute conversation. Yawn. Other than the occasional novella that bucks the trend (for example), until recently it had been years since I read a currently published romance novel all the way through. It's really disappointing to me, because it used to be a reliable way to cheer me up-- a fun rom-com about people figuring out their relationship, with a happy ending. What's not to like? 

That seems to be changing, though. I read several romance novels I liked this year, and three that I loved. Two of them were by British authors (is that relevant?) and two of them were LGBTQ romances (is that relevant?). Titles to come. Stay tuned.

7ToF: an update on my efforts to de-plastic and de-Amazon my life, and a brilliant travel plan

1. You remember my New Year's resolve to cut down on single-use plastic (see the end of this post)? I'd give myself a B- on this so far. I've found some replacement products that are working well, and I've found them at Target, so you know that means that the anti-plastic movement has hit the middle class mainstream. So now I can usually (not always) avoid using ziplock bags. I'm partial to these brown paper sandwich bags because I can toss them and not have to bring home a dirty bag, but MadMax likes the reusable bags better (see photo).

I'm pretty consistent about using reusable bags for shopping and carrying my own water bottle. But that's about all I've done. I need to get back to putting energy into this. I confess I bought some reusable produce bags that are still in the box.

2. I'm not doing so well on disentangling myself from Amazon (if you missed the post on why I'm trying to avoid Amazon, it is here). There are so many things that we just can't get around here even when there's not a pandemic, and the shutdown definitely made it worse. I buy local when I can, and I've ordered stuff from Target, Wal-Mart, etc. when I can't. But I've also ordered stuff from the Big A. ("A" can stand for whatever you want to insert there, depending on mood.)

3. On the other hand, I am doing much better about not buying books from Amazon. I think I've only ordered one physical book from them in the past six months. Bookshop.org is great, and they've become my go-to for ordering actual physical books. They redistribute their profits among independent booksellers. It's not as fast as Amazon, but I rarely need the books on my doorstep in 48 hours. 

4. I was so committed to cutting back on my reliance on Amazon that I bought a refurbished Nook, Barnes&Noble's e-reader, in an effort to quit buying new books for my Kindle. It works fine, but I have to tell you there is no comparison between a Nook and a Kindle. The Kindle is more thoughtfully designed, has better back-lighting, and feels about three times faster. So I'm conflicted about this. Kindle e-readers are a good product that I really enjoy and use the heck out of. I'm hoping that recent pressure from publishers and maybe even some thoughtful legislation will level the playing field so that I can keep using my Kindle without feeling guilty about it, because I do love it. It's complicated.

5. One of my Instagram friends posted a picture of a trip to Barbados that she took a couple of years ago, mourning our inability to travel. I was suddenly struck by an intensity of longing to go somewhere that was so strong it was almost physically painful. God, I miss traveling. SO. MUCH. But then I had a brilliant idea. For me, about half the fun of travel is planning the trip, so what if I go ahead and plan a trip? Maybe we'll never actually do it, but I can order the books and do internet research and make a plan. I'm so excited about this. It is actually pretty difficult to get to the Caribbean from here (as opposed to Hawaii or Mexico, which are two short plane flights away), so maybe I will even take advantage of the fantasy aspect and plan a trip to Barbados. Or Turks & Caicos. Or St. Lucia. I don't know. I'm just getting started. 

6. A friend of mine told me recently that her GI doctor told her she should be taking a probiotic. I nodded along, half-listening, because I've been taking a probiotic off and on for years. I even buy the refrigerated kind. But then she said he told her it has to be a particular brand, Culturelle. And then she said, I've been taking it for a month now and it's like my metabolism is working again. Well, enough said, because we all know what it feels like to have your metabolism slooooooooow doooooown. Good grief. So I trotted off the next day to Target (they also have it at Costco, I haven't looked anywhere else), and I've been taking it for three weeks now, and I have to agree. I have no studies, nothing but my friend's anecdotal evidence and my own. But it's definitely worth a try. Also, it doesn't have to be refrigerated, so I actually remember to take it since it's in the same place as my other meds/vitamins.

7. This week's movie worth re-watching: Galaxy Quest. If you didn't like it the first time, re-watching won't change your mind, but it's one of our family favorites and it had been too long since we'd seen it. By Grabthar's hammer, what a savings. oh lord, do I love Alan Rickman. I could go on and on about lines that have entered our family conversations, sometimes without us even remembering where they came from. Those poor people. Could you fashion some sort of rudimentary lathe? Hey, I'm just jazzed to be on the show. That was a hell of a thing. And of course, Sigourney Weaver's classic, Look, I've got one job to do on this ship. It's stupid, but I'm going to do it.

Have a great weekend.

Day 18: in which I bore you because I am bored: Georgette Heyer, audiobooks, and free samples

After a quick scroll through bookstagram, it's obvious that almost universally, book lovers are having trouble reading anything but comfort reads. A few people are looking for thrillers or true crime to keep them sucked into a story, but most of us just want to read something that feels positive and leaves us feeling uplifted instead of despairing.

In the past few weeks, I've re-read a favorite series from childhood (Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula LeGuin), Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell, and a couple of romance novels (Red, White, and Royal Blue and Love Lettering) that worked for that. Also The Lager Queen of Minnesota, which isn't exactly a comfort read, but has lovable characters who have to deal with a variety of different (occasionally hilarious) life situations, and resolves in a thoroughly satisfying way.

But really, what I'm mainly doing is re-reading Georgette Heyer. You may remember my first obsession with her if you've been around for awhile. She's not a perfect writer-- you have to forgive her inordinate love of exclamation points, and you have to be able to skim over her sometimes excessive use of period slang. But once you get past those flaws, they're so much fun. Some of them I would say even qualify as romps.

Stack of books by Georgette Heyer

This time around, I started with Black Sheep, which wasn't one of my top favorites, but I remembered liking it. It worked so well that I moved on to Reluctant Widow. Now I'm reading Cotillion, which is one of my top faves of hers. Maybe my #1 favorite.

The problem with Cotillion is that there's vast cast of characters, and it takes awhile to figure out who's important and how they are related to each other. Kitty, an orphan who has lived for years with her miserly, wealthy guardian, is outraged when he more or less puts her up on the marriage auction block to his grand nephews. Since she is penniless on her own, she comes up with a plot to get at least a month in London, a last moment of freedom, before she has to accept the inevitable and figure out what she's going to do. Of course that gets more and more complicated, and then she meets other people and gets involved in their complications, and the whole thing is just a delight.

Spoiler alert: it ends happily for everyone; well, except for the people who deserve what they get.

And, bonus: the audiobooks are fabulous. The narrator of Cotillion, Phyllida Nash, is a genius. I made Dean listen to it the other night while we were working on a jigsaw puzzle, and he was so hooked that he ended up reading the whole thing. Just give it time, because it takes awhile to get oriented to all the characters, and Kitty's complicated plans.

And here is a clue for taking advantage of Amazon. Amazon has always allowed you download a free sample of a kindle ebook or an audiobook (through their subsidiary, Audible). The audiobook samples stream, and even if you don't have a kindle, you can download the kindle app and take advantage of the free samples. It usually amounts to about 20 pages of an ebook, or about five minutes of an audiobook. Why not use them?

I've had it work both ways--sometimes the five minute sample of an audiobook helps me get into a print book I'm having trouble with (for example, Gods in Alabama). Sometimes the 25 page sample of the ebook helps me get a complicated cast of characters straight when the audiobook feels like chaos (for example, And Then There Were None, which is ably read by Dan Stevens, but introduces so many characters in the first chapter that I was bewildered until I was able to read the print version).

That's it for me today. Thank you for letting me go on and on, since I am now considerably less bored than I was yesterday. Did I tell you yet that MadMax came home on Friday? Our internet may not be up to the task of his online classes, but he had had enough of living alone in an apartment during shelter in place. It's nice to have some company.

The Amazon dilemma

I'll admit it, I started out as a huge Amazon fan. When they first opened in 1994, they sold books, every book you could imagine, and that was all they sold for a few years. We did have a local bookstore back then (in fact, we had two, a B. Dalton at our tiny mall and an indie) and I bought books at those places, too. But as a nerd and a night owl, with small children to boot, I was so happy to have a place that was available 24-hours a day where I could browse books, order them at a discount, and read other people's opinions and reviews.

Back then it was a brand new thing that people could post honest reviews about what they were reading, and they did. A quite fervent bookish community built up--it was as if all of us introvert nerds had been waiting for Amazon. And then they came out with the kindle, and even though it took years, eventually I became a kindle convert (I've written about that before).

Our B.Dalton closed in the 90s at some point, and the indie soon after (I'm terrible at remembering dates, so that may not be exactly right). A lot of indies closed around that time, and although that gets blamed on Amazon, in my personal experience, a lot of them were on the verge of closing anyway, and they just used Amazon as the big bad guy excuse. I never got the sense that Amazon was purposely undermining local retailers. They offered a service, and made it convenient, and I used it.

But gradually that started to change. First there started to be fake reviews. Amazon changed the rules so that you had to admit it in the review if the review had been solicited, but still. There was no real effort on Amazon's part to stop people from gaming the review system, and as far as I can tell, there still isn't.

Then there occasionally started to be small "mistakes," like recently when the rating for a book in a popular author's catalog was incorrectly linked to a highly rated unrelated product. Oops! It was obviously a "mistake," but if you saw the 4.8 star rating and didn't click on the link and scroll down to read the reviews, you'd have never known. You'd just assume the book had a 4.8 (out of five) rating. Maybe it was an honest mistake. Maybe it wasn't.

And then last fall, Amazon "accidentally" shipped Margaret Atwood's new book a week early. Oops!! they said. Blush!! We screwed up! Technical error! But come on. They shipped thousands of copies of a highly anticipated book--possibly the most highly anticipated book of last year-- and nobody noticed that they were shipping it a week early? I don't believe it.

And they didn't stop shipping it, either, once it became clear what had happened. People who were anxious to get their hands on it canceled their local indie order and got it early. I know that happened at least once because I heard a woman sheepishly admit on a podcast that she had done it. (It was a podcast that I was trying out for the first time, and it was one of the hosts, and between that and the constant fake laughing, I've never listened to it again.)

Finally, I'm done giving them the benefit of the doubt. That was clearly an attempt by Amazon to undermine local independent booksellers. It made me a little sick to my stomach.

So what to do. I still live in a town without a bookstore. We have a wonderful local library, and I use it, but it's a small town library and their selection isn't always the greatest. I make my semi-annual trek to the bookstore in the next town over, and even though they rarely have what I want, I buy stuff to help keep them in business. I also buy books from indie bookstores when we're traveling.

But I read a lot. My current solution has been to order from other retailers. Powell's is good, and they ship promptly. Like Amazon, they stock both new and used books. I also paid the annual membership at Barnes&Noble so I could get free shipping from them. (How crazy is it that buying books from Barnes & Noble now seems like a subversive act? I seriously do not want Barnes & Noble to go out of business.)

When I use up my current Audible credits, I'm probably going to switch to Libro.fm, an audiobook site that allows you to buy through your favorite independent bookstore. (Audible is owned by Amazon.) Since I don't store audiobooks on my phone the way I store ebooks on my kindle, that won't be a difficult switch to make. And over a year ago, I stopped buying anything else (besides books, I mean) from Amazon unless it was something I couldn't get locally.

But I still buy kindle books from Amazon, mostly when they're on sale. I've got too much invested in my kindle to stop doing that, and I've never seen another e-reader that I like as well.  And honestly, I still sometimes buy other non-book things from them, too. It's convenient when you live in northwest Montana.

I guess I've reluctantly, imperfectly joined the #notAmazon crowd. I'm so disappointed in them. They used to be the shining beacon of what an internet retailer could be, but they've turned out to be just as coldly money-hungry and profit-maximizing as everybody else. Maybe they were always that way and I was just naive, but I'm telling myself that it's only been the last half-dozen years or so and I've just been slow to realize it. Good-bye, Amazon. I loved you while it lasted.

7ToF: my favorite books of 2019, and some odds and ends

1. Have you looked at any of the dozens of "best books of 2019" lists that have been published in the last couple of weeks? Maybe I'm just reading a strange bunch of lists, but what has struck me is that there is very little consensus. The Nickel Boys and Normal People (neither of which I've read) are on many lists, but not all. Other than that, it's kind of a grab bag. Seems odd to me, like part of the point this year is to prove that you read a bunch of obscure books.

2. When I was thinking about my personal favorite of 2019, three immediately came to mind: The Great Believers (Rebecca Makkai), The Friend (Sigrid Nunez), and Washington Black (Esi Edugyan). So that's that, I thought. But then I started scrolling through Goodreads, and was surprised at how many books I had given five stars and then forgotten. (Is there a lesson there?)

3. So for the record, here are ten favorites that I read this year. I was going to list all the ones I gave five-star ratings, but there were twenty, which seems like a lot. So these are just ten that stood out when I scrolled through the list:  

The Intuitionist Colson Whitehead
Mary Poppins on audio with Sophie Thompson narrating
The Great Believers Rebecca Makkai
Less Andrew Sean Greer
The Friend Sigrid Nunez
What Truth Sounds Like Michael Eric Dyson
Born a Crime Trevor Noah, on audio
Matilda by Roald Dahl, on audio narrated by Kate Winslet
Washington Black Esi Edugyan
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green
Runners-up: American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson, Dreyer's English by Benjamin Dreyer

Pretty good, huh? I still have a few more I might get through before the end of the year, so maybe there will be more. I can hope.

4. I wasn't thinking about the End of The Decade until I recently saw a list of the best books of the decade. Whoa. The top one was Visit from the Goon Squad, which I haven't read but which was fortuitously available immediately from our library website, so maybe I will get it done before The End of The Decade.  Ha.

5. The Reading Glasses Dilemma, otherwise known as, How To Find a Pair of Reading Glasses When You Need Them. My solution for the past ten years that I've been wearing cheaters is to have a dozen pairs and spread them out--a pair in the bedroom, a pair in the kitchen, etc-- so I could always find one. But of course it didn't work. I could never find them. My new solution, which has only been for three weeks but is working much better: I have a ceramic jar on my kitchen counter and I keep all of them there. So any time I see a pair, I bring them to the kitchen and drop them in the jar. The only ones that aren't there are the ones in my purse, which I try to never take out so I always have a pair with me when I'm out of the house. So far, there has always been a pair in the jar. If you've got a better plan, please let me know.

6. Dean's solution, in case you were wondering, is to wear Clic Magnetic glasses, which are split in half at the nose piece and join up with a really strong magnet. Hard to describe, you'll have to go look at the picture. They hang around his neck almost all the time so he never loses them. But the band that goes around your neck is stiff, and it doesn't fit right under my hair, so I haven't been able to use them.

7. If you're in despair about today's young people, I strongly encourage you to show up for some activities at your local high school. Check the school website and show up for a play, or a band or choir concert, or a volleyball game. We've been to a couple of events recently, especially the winter choir concert, and the kids are bright, talented, and enthusiastic. They have worked so hard. They're going to be just fine, except they've got to deal with the mess we made.

And that's it for me. Hope you have a lovely rest of the holiday season. I'm not sure when I will post again but it might be after the New Year.

7ToT: Bouchercon trip report

1. Bouchercon 2019 was fun. In fact, if you're a book lover, there's probably not much that's more fun than going to a book convention. Everyone around you is as big a nerd as you are. Bouchercon is devoted to the world of mysteries, which they define broadly as anything that involves a crime. So there were authors and readers of everything from thrillers to cozies, and a broad array of panels to match.

Convention Pro Tip #1: Know how to pronounce the convention name. The "boucher" in Bouchercon rhymes with "voucher." It is named after a devoted mystery writer, editor, and critic named Anthony Boucher. Fortunately, I heard someone else say it before I embarrassed myself too badly.

2. It was in Dallas this year, so I spent the first half of the week in East Texas with my mom and sister, and then drove to Dallas on Thursday (because, like a dummy, I didn't read the schedule ahead of time, so I didn't realize there was a full day of activities on Wednesday). 

Convention Pro Tip #2: Look over the schedule before you go. Duh.

3. It was really remarkably well-run, especially since it is done entirely by volunteers. My only complaint is that there was no way you could get to all the panels you wanted to hear. There were seven or eight going on at any given time, and you can only go to one at a time. I think my favorite was the one with a retired trauma surgeon, a forensic scientist, a molecular biologist, and a cop, who talked about things that writers get wrong in books and movies/TV. They were great--very funny, very talkative. That one could have gone on for a couple of hours, easy.

4. Book conventions are great if you want to meet authors. Sandra Brown was there, and Charlaine Harris, Elizabeth George, Rhys Bowen, Laurie R. King, Sherry Thomas, Kellye Garrett, Julia Spencer-Fleming, and dozens more. Of course, you already know I'm way too shy to approach an author on my own, so I only met two.* My friend Karen introduced me to Laurie R. King, author of the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series, who is just as lovely in person as I expected from reading her books (I'm on #8). And I bolstered my courage and stood in line to meet Christine Carbo, who lives one town over here in Montana. I don't know why I'm so scared to walk up and introduce myself, because both of them were very nice.

* three, if you count Julia Spencer-Fleming, who struck up a conversation with several of us in the elevator while I tried not to hyperventilate. I managed not to squee until I got back to my room. But we didn't exchange names, I only knew who she was because I could see her nametag.

part of my #bookhaul

5. At Bouchercon, you get four coupons when you check in, and then you get to go to the Book Bazaar and pick out FOUR FREE BOOKS. Pro Tip #3: get there early on the first day. I didn't get there until late afternoon the second day, so it was a little picked over. But even then there were two books that I really did want, and somehow I managed to pick out two more. Then I bought three more at the paid book area, and bought three more at Half-Price Books (the flagship Half-Price Books is in Dallas, and it is huge). I could barely get my suitcase shut, even with the extension unzipped.

6. Which means that all that good work that I did at the beginning of the year with not buying new books is now shot to hell. Especially because I bought two before I even made it to Dallas, and three a couple of weeks ago in Phoenix that I haven't found shelf space for yet. Oh, well. I'm not feeling particularly upset about it, as you can tell.

Most Memorable Line of the Weekend: Sherry Thomas, in a panel on Women in Sherlock: "Let's face it, the original Sherlock stories are competence porn." 

7. There were plenty of breaks in the schedule, including an hour-long lunch break, so it wasn't nearly as exhausting as it could have been. But at lunch time, everyone wants lunch, and the restaurants in the convention center were packed. This particular hotel only had one nearby restaurant, and everybody knew about it, so it wasn't much better. Next time I do this, because I definitely want to do this again, I need a better supply of snacks. I ran out by my second day. In fact, since there was a fridge in my room, I should have just brought some food. Pro Tip #4: Bring snacks, more than you think you need.

That's everything I can think of about Bouchercon. Hope you get to go some day!

7ToF: the days go by

1. Suddenly, right at the moment when I'm surprised to look up and see that it's already October, it is October tenth (eleventh by the time you read this). I have no idea how these things happen. Part of the reason I've been busier than usual is that I signed up for a creative writing class-- not necessarily fiction, it's for whatever kind of writing you want to do. Since it's hard to write a blog post after I've spent hours working on something for the class, I might post a couple of the things I've written. So if something strange pops up in your feed, no worries, it's just me, practicing.

2. I've been wearing the same power of cheaters (+1.75) for at least five years. Just in the last couple of weeks, it appears that it might be time to change to +2.00. Ouch. The downward spiral.

3. Paper towel update: I figured out that the reason I like using paper towels for cleaning is that you throw them out, as opposed to using dish/wash cloths, which hang around wet, dirty, and germ-y, waiting to be used again. Yuck. The solution seems to be having enough dish cloths that they can be single use. I use one to wipe down the counter and then throw it in the laundry. For some strange reason, in the past this has felt uncomfortably wasteful to me, which is weird because really it is way less wasteful than paper towels. For now, it is working. They take up hardly any room in the washing machine, so there's no increase in laundry-- which would be a deal breaker. Also, I've been having fun finding cheap cotton cloths.

4. In an effort to get out more, we've been going to more movies. We don't usually go-- in the past, we've been to the theater maybe three or four times per year. It seemed like the worthwhile ones were always depressing, and the fun ones always seemed to involve hours of car chases. Is there anything more boring than a car chase? Apparently that is one of my many unpopular opinions, because all blockbuster movies have car chases, even sci-fi or fantasy ones where they're not actually driving cars, they're driving some hopped-up moon rover or dune buggy or whatever. You just sit there and watch special effects chase around the screen until they're done.  /*rant over*/

4a. Sadly, though, even though we've seen more movies lately, I don't have any to recommend. We've seen some that kept us entertained for a couple of hours, but none that were knock-your-socks-off. Although I will say that The Goldfinch was way better than I expected, given its terrible reviews.

5. Am I the last person to find out about the phone app Serial Reader? You download it to your phone, pick a classic novel, and then every day a snippet of that novel appears in the app. So by reading 15-ish minutes a day you can get through Jane Eyre in 72 days, Frankenstein in 28 days, or The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in 5 days. It's mostly books that are in the public domain, of course, and the selection is a little limited, but he's adding new stuff all the time. I'm working my way through various Sherlock Holmes stories right now. The basic functions are free, or you can pay more to read more than one book at at time, plus other features. Love it.

6. That said, I've realized over the last few months how much self-imposed pressure I've felt to keep up with my TBR pile. One of the things I've lost is the joy of re-reading. I have always loved re-reading my favorite books. When I was a kid, I used to read the Narnian Chronicles every year. I've read Pride and Prejudice at least five times. But now I'm so aware of all the books out there that I want to read, I've allowed myself to succumb to reader FOMO. I don't have time to re-read! I've got to keep up! So now I've resolved to have at least one re-read going all the time. Right now it's The Thirteenth Tale, which I've actually only read once before, but I wanted to see if it's as good as I remember before going on to her new book, which came out this summer.

7. You know what I don't mind? I don't mind being referred to as a guy. When I'm sitting with a group of friends and one of them says, "What are you guys reading?", it just doesn't bother me. It's partly regional-- "you guys" is the midwest equivalent of "y'all." But it's also just not that big a deal. I've been treated with kindness and respect by people who use all the wrong, politically incorrect words, and I've been treated badly by people who said all the right things. I know which I prefer, and it's not the people who can check off all the correct buzzword boxes.

wow, two rants in one post.

Have a great weekend.

7ToF: If you want to destroy my sweater, hold this thread as I walk away

1. I told you awhile ago about my happiness with using microfiber washcloths instead of single-use disposable face wipes, and I am still happy with them (in fact, I just ordered some more). I am not as happy about my attempt to get rid of paper towels. I ordered bamboo towels that come on a roll just like regular paper towels, but you can run them through the laundry and reuse them for months instead of throwing them away. Unfortunately, before they were washed, they were stiff and hydrophobic, and once they were washed, they were very "linty," if you know what I mean. They left hairy bits on everything. So I am still working on a replacement for paper towels. I don't actually use that many, so I'm not sure how important this is to me. If you have any ideas, let me know.

2. Drumming update: I have progressed to Weezer's Sweater Song. The basic version of the drum part has to be the simplest of any top 40 hit ever, bless them.

3.  If you enjoy smart, thought-provoking conversations about books, try the So Many Damn Books podcast episode about the literary canon and how it has changed/should change (episode 120, Back to School)(episode 117, about Lonesome Dove, is also relevant). The Front Porch's episode #242 from this week is an unexpectedly interesting conversation about banned books. I am forever grateful that my parents, conservative as they were, never restricted my reading in any way. It was partly because back in the sixties, parenting was a much more hands-off activity than it is now. But it is also partly because they were really in favor of reading. Left to my own devices, I tended to pick books that were pretty tame anyway (see item 5).

Aside: a further shoutout to So Many Damn Books for recommending the book Dreyer's English in episode 119, which is so fun if you are a word nerd. Funny, literate, frequently deliberately provocative. Five stars. The interview the SMDB guys do with Dreyer is also interesting, and spurred me to re-read To the Lighthouse this summer.

4. I am, for lack of a better term, an immersive reader. When I'm reading, I'm in there, in the story, like it's happening to me. When I was reading Sing Unburied Sing, I had to put the book down at one point because I was so angry and upset that the mom wasn't feeding her children. It was several minutes before I pulled myself out of it enough to remind myself that it was fiction and it wasn't really happening right that minute.

5. And I can't read horror or suspense books because they (not kidding) give me nightmares. I remember not being able to sleep for several nights when I was in junior high and read 83 Hours Till Dawn, about an heiress who was kidnapped and buried alive in an oversized coffin for more than three days. I can't give you a more recent example than that because I never read a book like that again. Gone Girl, which I tried because I kept hearing about it, gave me nightmares. I can recognize her innovations, and the on-the-nose description of a marriage that's a mess, but I'm not reading anything else she wrote. Nope.

6. I'm starting to realize that reading like this really inhibits my enjoyment of what could be some great stories, but I have no idea how to change. If you have any ideas, let me know. I'm working on it right now. I was listening to a tense part of an audiobook yesterday and I paused it, made myself breathe and reminded myself this isn't happening to me. It's not even really happening to her, since it's a fantasy novel. HA. How ridiculous am I??

7. At our house, all of us have... well... ummm.... lucky underwear. Is this just us? When you have something especially scary or stressful happening on a particular day, you wear your lucky underwear. For me, it also extends to socks. I have several pairs of socks (like the ones with pink and purple stripes that my friend Susan gave me, or the ones with goldfish on them) that help me feel brave when I'm feeling intimidated. You can't see them, but I'm wearing my lucky socks! For some reason this week it occurred to me to wonder if we are just as weird as we could possibly be, or if everyone does this.

So, that's it for me. Have a great weekend.

My So-Called Reading Life, Part I Stopped Counting: Bookstagram and Reading Challenges

I've been on Instagram for awhile now. I like it better than Facebook, because for people my age--or at least, among my friends-- it isn't about presenting your best fake self, it's about pictures of grandkids and craft projects and vacations. And we don't usually write long captions, so there's not much in the way of opinions and rants. In other words, it's the way FB used to be.

Matilda, for a book and ice cream prompt

Then last year I discovered #bookstagram, which isn't a separate app, it's just a hastag within instagram. People post pictures of their books or their bookshelves or their bookish stuff. For booknerds, it is totally fun.

I've enjoyed it enough that I've created a separate account for it (@bookspate). Finding people my age with my interests is not exactly easy, but I've found a few who are my age-ish and who love to read. Some of them take amazing photos, and some just snap a pic of what they're reading next to a cup of coffee. It's fun.

And I've discovered to my surprise that it's really fun to mess around with my way-too-many books and my way-too-many tchotchkes and take pictures of them. (The photos in this post are from my bookstagram account.) Weird, yes, but I suppose there are stranger hobbies. I just don't know what they are.

Reading challenges: In a reading challenge, someone comes up with a list of somewhat arbitrary categories--a book with a blue cover, a book set in Asia, a book that was published in the year you were born-- and challenges you to read something in each category within a certain amount of time, usually a year.

The first one I ever saw, maybe four or five years ago, was PopSugar's (their most recent challenge is here), and I thought it was a great idea. I printed out the list at the end of December, set it on my desk, and promptly forgot all about it.

The whole point of a reading challenge is to get you to read more, and since I already read plenty--some might say, and do, too much-- I then decided that I wouldn't do reading challenges.

But somewhere on Instagram I found Book Challenge by Erin. Twice a year, you're supposed to read ten books in four months. At the time, I was looking for a way to motivate myself to read some books that had been on my shelves for far too long, so I decided to try it.

I'm in the middle of my second time, and it is working well for me. It's run through Facebook and I know that's an immediate no for several of you. But if the idea of a book challenge appeals, there are dozens of them out there (google "reading challenges"), so keep looking until you find the one that works for you.

Favorite books-into-movies prompt

I think a year was too long a time frame for me. Ten books in four months is do-able, but it's a short enough time period that I have to get to work on it. Having an accountability system to get specific books read has worked great.

The only problem is that there are sometimes categories that are (for me) a little obscure, so I end up picking a book that I don't really care about just to finish the challenge. For example, in the current challenge, one of the categories is "a book with 'rain,' 'lightning' or 'thunder' in the title," and I don't have a single unread book on my shelves that meets the criteria.

I picked up a used copy of James Lee Burke's Rain Gods, but it is now my tenth book of the current challenge, and I cannot get excited about reading it (unlike several other non-challenge books I have on my TBR pile).

Should I read it and finish the challenge? or bag the challenge and read something I really want to read? There's no penalty if I don't finish, of course, just my own personal need for completion.

Black and white #bookstack prompt

I'm going to start it next weekend and see how it goes. Maybe I will discover an untapped love for James Lee Burke, who lives part of the year near Missoula and is considered one of our own around here. I just don't usually read thrillers. (Is it a thriller? police procedural? I actually don't know. I guess I'll find out.)

Every time I write the last 'reading life' post, I think up six more things to say, so I think I will stop numbering them as part 4, part 5, etc. and post them occasionally.

Have a great day.

My So-Called Reading Life, part 3: choosing what to read, podcasts, and the tyranny of my library hold list

Figuring out what to read next has always been a random process for me (in other words, if you're trying to figure out how to choose books, I'm not going to be much help).

Back before the internet, there were libraries and bookstores. There were certain authors I would always buy if they had published something new, but for the most part, I figured out what to read based on reading jacket flaps in a bookshop, or because of something I overheard or a friend's rec. Choosing a book because of a cool cover illustration was not unheard of.

Now there are more online ways to indulge my love of find books than I could possibly exhaust. There are email newsletters, blogs (yep), vlogs on YouTube, browsing online bookstores (besides Amazon, Powells, Page1, The Bookshelf, and Alibris are ones I've used recently), the bookstagram hashtag on Instagram, and my favorite-- podcasts.

Podcasts are great. I just enjoy listening to people talk about books. I have three that I listen to devotedly-- So Many Damn Books, The Front Porch, and I've told you before about What Should I Read Next-- and half a dozen more that I listen to occasionally (Reading Glasses, Currently Reading, etc.).

So Many Damn Books is two guys, Christopher and Drew, in NYC, I think in Brooklyn (although I'm always a little fuzzy on the boroughs having only been there twice). They love to read, and even though they're the age of my daughter, I love listening to them talk. If I were their age, I think Christopher would be practically my reading twin. On a recent episode, their guest asked what was the first book they stayed up all night reading. I think she was expecting them to say some amazing, life-changing work of art, or at least a thriller, but Christopher sheepishly said it was probably Redwall, and Drew--equally sheepishly--agreed. I heart those guys so hard.

And for the record, I've never stayed up all night reading, even when I was young. Which is weird, because on average, I stay up way later than anyone else I know. It's just never all night. I'm usually asleep by 12:30 (a.m.). And even when I'm reading something I can't put down, somehwere around 2:30 or so, my need for sleep is greater than my need to find out what happens. (or *blush* I flip over and read the end so I can sleep.)

The Front Porch is Annie, owner of The Bookshelf in Georgia, and her friend (and possibly bookshop employee??) Chris, who is a recently minted PhD in (something humanities). I rarely agree with them, but they are interesting and engaging and like I said, I love listening to people talk about books. In a recent episode (which had guest host Hunter instead of Chris), they actually convinced me to give The Goldfinch a try. I've heard so many negative reviews that I had decided it wasn't for me (even though I loved Secret History). But now I think I'm going to try it. Just not any time soon because my library hold queue is already full.

I've already told you about What Should I Read Next so many times that I'll just say I still listen and I still love it. Anne, the host, is not an exact match in taste with me-- she tends a little more toward the soulful, all-the-feels type of book. But there's enough overlap that I can usually figure out from the way she describes something whether or not I will like it. She recommended Good Morning Midnight, To Night Owl from Dogfish, and Less, among recent favorites.

Honestly, the real way I currently figure out what to read next is by my library hold list. Our library allows you to have up to ten ebooks on hold, and I usually have eight to ten books on there. Then I read whatever book becomes available next. It's pretty simple.

About a year ago, I decided I should try to be more intentional about what I'm reading, but now I've decided it's actually a pretty good system. As with everyone who uses their library queue, that means I have the occasional unfortunate problem of three books I've had queued for weeks becoming available within two days of each other, but I suppose there are worse crises.

Oddly, I've had several experiences lately of unintended similarities in the books I'm reading. I've read three books this summer that had to do (loosely speaking) with time travel or the ability to pursue alternate timelines (Dark Matter, Life After Life, and Doomsday Book). And I just finished a book about life in a great English house between WWI and WWII (Remains of the Day) only to find that my next book, a mystery novel called Justice Hall, is also set in a great English house between WWI and WWII. How odd is that?

I've rambled on long enough that I'm even boring myself. As far as I know, everybody who reads this blog is also an avid reader, so you probably don't need any advice about how to pick books. So, one might ask, what exactly was the point of this post? And I can't say I know. But now that I've typed it out, I'm posting it.

Because it's 12:15 a.m. and it's time for bed.

Other posts in this series:
My So-Called Reading Life, part 1: writing book reviews
My So-Called Reading Life, part 2: rating books

My So-Called Reading Life, part 2: ratings

There has been a push recently among some readers to stop rating books. It's not fair to authors, the argument goes, because ratings have become disproportionately important in determining all kinds of things in this age of data mining--things like product placement and print runs and search result standings.

What could mean nothing to you-- a bad rating that you gave on a day when you were already in a bad mood-- could mean all kinds of dire things for a self-published author who is trying to make a living in competition with publishing conglomerates.

And also, if you find someone who is clever enough to know how to get away with it (they're definitely out there), and you can afford to pay for it, the system can be gamed by posting fake reviews--either positive for your own products, or negative for your competitors.

They have a point. But with all the book ratings I've seen and reader reviews I've read, I've only seen one example where I felt like there was a serious misuse of the system.* I've read about a few others, but overall, I'm not convinced there's a problem here. Generally speaking, good books have good ratings.

So I use the star rating system on Goodreads. It's useful to me. At the end of the year when I'm trying to remember my favorite books, or when I'm having coffee with a friend and she wants to know what's the best book I've read in the past couple of months, I can just scan down the list on my phone. Otherwise I'd have to go through and read the individual reviews to remember what the book was about.

And if you're thinking, if you can't remember the book three months later, it must not have been that great, you have a point. But I also think that if you thought that, you are under the age of fifty. Half the time I can't remember my children's names and birthdays if I'm put on the spot, let alone the name of that great book I read a month ago.

The Goodreads system is one star (not good) to five stars (great). The stars, of course, mean different things to different people and I'm no exception. My concession to the people who are worried about authors' feelings is that I almost never give below a three-star rating.

My rating system is: three stars=meh, four stars=liked it, five stars=loved it. It works for me. For the most part, if I don't like a book, I stop reading it, so those books don't make it onto my Goodreads shelves anyway.

When I first started using Goodreads, I thought I needed to give low star ratings to lower quality books because I had to prove to the world that I have good taste. But a couple of years ago I realized how nonsensical it was to give a three-star rating to a book I loved just because it was genre fiction.

So, now my ratings are purely based on how much I liked the book-- although I'm unlikely to enjoy a really dumb book, so there's that. In my last three books, I gave a four-star rating to both Evvie Drake Starts Over (a rom com) and Life After Life (literary fiction), and a three-star rating to The Idiot (brilliantly intelligent, but tedious to read and ultimately--in my opinion--clichéd). If that offends your literary sensibilities, you are welcome to not look at them.

(My Goodreads page, which I forgot to give you in Part One.)

* it was a YA book published by a Big5 publisher that had a suspicious number--like hundreds-- of short five-star reviews like "Loved it!" or "Great book!" compared to dozens of one- and two-star ratings with long, passionate reviews by readers who felt betrayed by the author over a controversial ending. It was hard not to think that the publisher had somehow used a bot to stack in the positive reviews in an attempt to gloss over an almost universally reviled ending.