Dirt Cheap Book Alert!!

March 29, 2013March 29, 2013 / still a dreamer

Did that get your attention? If you, (and your kids), love to read, don’t miss the upcoming Hunterdon County Library Annual Book Sale!

It’s coming up this month on Saturday and Sunday April 20th and 21st at the National Guard Armory on Rt. 12 in Flemington. Check the library’s web site for location, directions and complete details.

Saturday, hardbound books are generally $2.00, paperbacks $1.00, and on Sunday, they’re half that. The main armory houses fiction, children’s books and YA, and the secondary building houses non-fiction. And it’s free as is the jitney transport back and forth from the county complex to the armory when their lot is full. Hard to beat if you love books. It is anticipated that there will be approximately 120,000 books for sale.

I understand that this event draws people from quite a distance, so even if you’re not “local,” come on down and take advantage of the wonder of books for what is truly a pittance.

Why We Read, Why We Write … the Inspiration

February 24, 2013February 24, 2013 / still a dreamer / 8 Comments

I count myself very fortunate. Reading was an important and integral part of my life from when I was very young. Everyone in my family read – parents, grandparents and us kids – we always had a book, a magazine, a newspaper or all of the above. If we wanted something to do and the parents were busy, the answer was “Then go read your book,” and it was never a punishment.

In my pre-toddler years I was ensconced at one side of my Mom while she read to my older brother sitting on the other. I was soaking up those words like nobody’s business, and as a result I was reading … and writing … at a very early age. To this day, I am deeply grateful for this gift. It has served as a firm foundation for my never-ending love of reading, learning and writing.

When I was old enough to have a library card, and I believe that was at 5 years old and in kindergarten, I was part of the weekly trek to the town library, where my brother and I would each return with a stack of books. It was one of my greatest thrills to go to that library. And I remember it well because the original building was unlike most others in our little town. The Dixon Homestead Library was an old Dutch Colonial stone house with a gabled roof. (In doing a little research, I found that it was built between 1780 and 1790 by Derick Banta, a Revolutionary War soldier whose birth home on this same site was burned down by the Tories.) When I was a bit older, an adjoining addition for children was built and I remember being able to walk from one “house” to the other.

As a result of my love of books, I also loved to write and still do. Today, as I picked up Bird by Bird – Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott, and after finishing The Smoke Jumper last night, I couldn’t help but think about why we write and why we read.

I believe we read to learn about another’s experience … to be transported into another world in which we feel something that is meaningful to us, whether that is romance, terror, curiosity, amazement or intellectual enrichment of all kinds. We want to experience that which another knows and/or feels and can bring us through words. A good writer touches some part of us that says, Yes! This speaks to me.

Is this, then, why we write? If we are true to our hearts, I would have to say yes because we are at our best when we write what we know. Our writing has the most impact when our reader is drawn in to the world we create and wants to stay. I am aware that when I write, I want to make a difference to a young reader; whether he or she is 5 or 12 years old, it is my fondest hope that her life will be enriched in some way by my words. As I embark on a new writing project, I know I have a lot to think about and learn. I will have to revisit memories and feelings that will make a story come alive. But in this way, I hope to carry the torch of so many amazing authors that have inspired me, touched and enriched my life over the years.

But then … I also write because I simply love to write.

The Restless Reader

January 3, 2013January 3, 2013 / still a dreamer / 2 Comments

Have you ever experienced periods of time in which you wanted to read … well, everything in sight? Yet at the same time, you couldn’t find exactly the book you wanted to read? It’s a special and odd kind of frustration.

Here is but one bookshelf of books all waiting to be devoured … but I can’t make a choice. These are largely from the library’s annual book sale, but a couple are purchased or from a friend, and I really do want to read every single one, but I can’t choose.

But wait – there’s more! Like one of those TV infomercials in which you can get twice as many items for the same price if you’ll just order NOW, there are more books waiting to be read! Some of these are middle grade, some YA and some adult … some from my friends’ book swap … and all are calling to me as well. (And we don’t want to know, there is another small group on top of another bookcase.) Plus I’m still in the middle of another fabulous book, Paradise by Toni Morrison. So what’s with the restlessness? Are you experiencing this, too?

I’m thinking it might be the holidays – schedules are completely off for work, rest, entertainment, visiting … and distractions, wonderful as they are … are at a yearly high. Sometimes we just have too many choices. But if fabulous books that cost me little or nothing are what I have too many of, well … it sure could be worse.

Things are settling back into some semblance of a routine and the evenings have become particularly chilly. Seems like the right time to cozy up with a hot cup of cocoa and open up a good book. That and the sound of so many fabulous authors calling my name is becoming deafening.

A Balance of Fiction and Non-Fiction

September 4, 2012September 4, 2012 / still a dreamer

Here’s what I’ve found … I really do like reading a balance of fiction and non-fiction. I usually am reading one novel, be it adult, MG or YA, and also one non-fiction book (generally) of a metaphysical nature.

Recently, after finishing my last novel, I started reading Dying to Be Me by Anita Moorjani. I have been slowly working my way through Wayne Dyer’s Wishes Fulfilled a second time because it is so spot on, but I found I miss the thrill … the immersion in a story that I can’t put down. I want a book that nurtures my heart and soul as well as one that calls upon my mind and emotions and takes me places I’ve never been.

So I am going to Paris with the vampire Pandora by Anne Rice, a selection I’d made at The county library’s annual book sale. If you’ve never read Anne Rice, you will find her riveting. I read Interview with a Vampire, The Mummy and several others, but I loved the New Orleans Mayfair witches trilogy the best – The Witching Hour, Lasher and Taltos. They remain on my bookshelf as worth keeping and reading again. I’m looking forward to sitting with Pandora in a Paris café where she recounts her history; she was once a highborn woman in Augustan Rome who later named herself after the Pandora of mythology and in time, came to pursue Lestat.

Balance restored. How about you? Are you a one-book-at-a-time reader or do you multi-read, too?

The Book That Disappoints

August 27, 2010 / still a dreamer

It happens to all of us, right? We’ve selected a book that seems as if it will be really good, and it’s just a disappointment.

I loved the title of this book; I liked the premise of the story; and it got some great reviews. I also liked the jacket art. But what happened? I know what happened. The author failed to make the characters truly come alive for me. (Obviously not so for some of the reviewers.) Pearl Tull was filled with rage at being left by her husband, but although it was described, the elaboration of it and the emotions of her children in response were thin. If a mother is flying into tantrums and calling her children scum and nailing them against the wall when she is so incensed, shouldn’t I feel it? I didn’t.

The author follows each child’s life, but again, somehow, I felt a distance from all the characters. Sometimes the writing was good, but I just wasn’t engaged. I liked Ezra the most – he seemed the most real to me, but at the end of the book, when the children and their families were gathered after the mother’s funeral, and the father who abandoned them shows up, it’s the oldest son who becomes the focus. Not Ezra, the son who was so devoted to the mother, or the daughter at all.

I kept on reading in the dutiful way we sometimes do – either sure it’s going to get better anytime soon, or because it’s just not that bad to stop entirely. But disappointing. Have you found any books lately that left you feeling the same?

I’ve picked up one of my favorite authors – Alice Hoffman – as a balm to my disappointment, and am looking forward to her usual good writing. I’m ready for the book I can’t put down.