Booking Through Thursday: The Worst of the Best

This week’s question is: “What’s the worst ‘best’ book you’ve ever read—the one everyone says is so great, but you can’t figure out why?”

It’s hard to narrow this down to just one, so I’ve picked three (or five really, since three are part of a series):

The His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman: This series was recommended to me by my sister, but I just didn’t get the appeal. I actually read the first two books and then quit halfway through the middle of the last book. I found the main characters unsympathetic and unappealing; and the whole god-and-angels thing in the third book bored me.

The Fox by D. H. Lawrence: I read this book years and years ago, but I remember hating it intensely (although that didn’t stop me from reading it in its entirety). The story struck me as way too obvious in its symbolism and, quite frankly, sickeningly misogynistic. I’m pretty sure I’ve read another Lawrence novel, though I don’t remember which one. In any case, I’m not likely to read any others!



Testimony by Anita Shreve: I’m not sure this book strictly qualifies as either a “worst” book or a “best” book, but it is an example of a recent book I reviewed that (almost) everybody seemed to love except me, and I can’t quite figure out why... I was especially disappointed in this book because Shreve is a favourite author of mine.


Has anyone else read these books and either loved them or hated them too?

Read other answers to this week’s Booking Through Thursday question.

Booking Through Thursday: Authors Talking

Last week’s question was: “Do you read any author’s blogs? If so, are you looking for information on their next project? On the author personally? Something else?”

What can I say, I’m behind again... I wanted to answer this question and didn’t get around to it last week, so here I am doing it now.

I read three author blogs on a regular basis and in all cases what I’m looking for is either info on the author personally (their thoughts on various topics) or “something else.” Not so much info on their next project because they could hardly blog about that on a regular basis. (Not that I’m not interested in that too, but I’m more likely to go to an author’s website for that sort of information.)

The author blogs I read and love are:

1st Books: Stories of How Writers Get Started, which is Meg Waite Clayton’s blog (of The Wednesday Sisters fame): As I’ve mentioned before, this is a blog where authors guest post about their experience of first getting published. And despite the fact that all the stories illustrate how much hard work is involved in making that happen, every single post is inspiring. I highly recommend this blog, especially if you are interested in getting published some day.

This Is My Secret, which is Kristin Cashore’s blog (of Graceling fame): I haven’t actually read Graceling (though I plan to) and I can’t remember how I came across Kristin’s blog, but I’m hooked. I’m not sure I can put into words why I love this blog so much. Read her Valentine’s Day post, “Interplanetary Be Who You Are Day” to see what I mean. I want to forward this post to everyone I know!

Writerly So, which is DeAnna Cameron’s blog (her novel, The Belly Dancer, is set to be released in July 2009): This blog is mostly interviews with authors, another behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to become published. Fascinating stuff!

I’m sure there are heaps of other great author blogs out there that I don’t know about or haven’t thought to look for. What are some of your favourites?

Read other answers to last week’s Booking Through Thursday question.

Booking Through Thursday: What’s Sitting on Your Shelf?

Okay, so here is an interesting blurb by Christopher Schoppa in the Washington Post.

Avid readers know all too well how easy it is to acquire books—it’s the letting go that’s the difficult part. During the past 20 years, in which books have played a significant role in both my personal and professional lives, I’ve certainly had my fair share of them (and some might say several others’ shares) in my library. Many were read and saved for posterity, others eventually, but still reluctantly, sent back out into the world.

But there is also a category of titles that I’ve clung to for years, as they survived numerous purges, frequent library donations and countless changes of residence. I’ve yet to read them, but am absolutely certain I will. And should. When, I’m not sure, as I’m constantly distracted by the recent, just published and soon to be published works.

So, the question is: “What tomes are waiting patiently on your shelves?”

According to my LibraryThing account, I own 498 unread books (eek!). It’s actually more than that because I don’t mark reference-type books as read or unread. Crazy talk, I know. I don’t even want to think about how many years worth of books that is (as I keep buying and otherwise acquiring new books). So to answer the above question, I’m going to narrow it down to five books I was really excited about acquiring but somehow haven’t gotten around to reading yet.

Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favourite authors, so I’m always on the lookout for her latest book. I patiently waited for Animal, Vegetable, Miracle to come out in paperback and ordered it from Amazon as soon as it did... but somehow still haven’t read it.



I can’t remember where I first heard about Madeleine Thien; I think a friend read me part of one of her stories at some point. I was thrilled to find a brand-new copy of her first novel Certainty secondhand... (I just noticed that Thien won the 2006 Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award for this book.)

Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson is actually a trilogy of novels that chronicle working-class life in Victorian Oxfordshire. I asked for this one for Christmas (a few years back), specifically because I’ve been researching my family history and some of my ancestors came from Oxfordshire...

I’d been looking for a good history-of-food book (mainly because I want to know more about where various foods originally came from), so when I spotted this one (called Food: A History) by Felipe Fernández-Armesto, I snatched it up. This was when I was in London, England, back in 2003...


According to the inside flap, In and Out of the Garden by Sara Midda “is an exquisite potpourri of garden lore painted in minute, jewel-like detail.” Every page, including the text, has been hand-painted. It looks beautiful. And since I grabbed this one from another woman at a book fair (she had found it and actually graciously offered it to me when I expressed an interest in it), you’d think I’d have read it by now...

What books do you own that you were excited about when you first acquired them, but haven’t gotten around to reading yet?

Booking Through Thursday: Beginnings

According to the Booking Through Thursday website, it’s not a terrible faux pas if I post this late, so here goes...

The question was: “What are your favourite first sentences from books? Is there a book that you liked specially because of its first sentence? Or a book, perhaps that you didn’t like but still remember simply because of the first line?”

I knew the answer to this question immediately, or at least I knew which book contains my favourite first sentence: The Last Magician by Janette Turner Hospital. The only problem is that I don’t remember the actual sentence word for word and at the moment all my books are in storage (with a few exceptions), so there is no way for me to check what it is. It’s taken me the better part of a week to figure out that maybe, just maybe, the book is available on Google Book Search... and sure enough it is. The first sentence is:

“In the middle of the journey, I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost.”

Intrigued? Of course this is a paraphrase of the beginning of Dante’s Inferno, although I confess I didn’t know that when I first read the book.

Other first sentences (from some of the novels I have on hand):

“A single line of blood trickles down the pale underside of her arm, a red seam on a white sleeve.” (Labyrinth by Kate Mosse)

“The Wednesday Sisters look like the kind of women who might meet at those fancy coffee shops on University—we do look that way—but we’re not one bit fancy, and we’re not sisters either.” (The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton)

“It is difficult to know quite where to begin this story, but I have fixed my choice on a certain Wednesday at luncheon at the Vicarage.” (The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie)