Really Random Tuesday: The ABCs of Me

I saw this meme on Marie’s blog, Daisy’s Book Journal (she grabbed it from Cathy at Kittling: Books) and thought it would make a perfect Really Random Tuesday post for you while I’m away at Kripalu (!) for the week. So here goes...

Age: 41

Bed size: Queen

Chore you hate: Pretty much any type of housework, though cleaning the toilet probably ranks lowest (thanks to Mr. B, it’s not something I do very often!)

Dogs: Nope. I’m a cat person. I miss my Thelma every day, but I’m happy to share my life (and my lap) with Cairo.

Essential start to your day: After getting out of bed? Peeing is first on the list, followed soon after by feeding the cat.

Favourite colours: Orange and red

Gold or silver: Silver, though I wear a gold opal ring that used to belong to my nana

Height: 5’5’’

Instruments you play(ed): Piano, once upon a time, long long ago. I also learned to play a djembe, but I’m shy about playing in front of anybody.

Job title: Freelance translator (French to English)

Kids: None

Live: Montreal

Mother’s name: Ann (that’s where the “annschild” comes from in my username)

Nicknames: None. (The only nickname I know of for Avis is Ave, which is my aunt’s name.)

Overnight hospital stays: Can’t remember any.

Pet peeves: Books that contain misused words, sloppy spelling

Quote from a movie: “Yummy yummy!” (from Gosford Park directed by Robert Altman: the Maggie Smith character says it in anticipation of breakfast in bed at Gosford Park)

Right- or left-handed: Right

Siblings: Two younger sisters

Time you wake up: Do I have to answer this question? 9-ish on weekdays. (Thank goodness I work from home.)

Underwear: What about it? (Yes, I wear underwear, if anybody really wants to know.)

Vegetable you hate: Mushrooms (except for portabellas and maybe porcini—I’m undecided about those), though I’m not sure mushrooms qualify as vegetables. Cabbage. Brussel sprouts. Raw tomatoes and onions (cooked are fine).

What makes you run late: Life

X-rays you’ve had: Dental

Yummy food that you make: Vegetarian carbonara (Mr. B and I made up the recipe)

Zoo animal: Giraffe, though zoos make me feel sad. (If we’re talking exotic animals in general, I’d have to go with the blue-footed booby!)

__________________________________________________

Really Random Tuesday is hosted by Suko at Suko’s Notebook. Feel free to join in, copy the button and link back to Suko’s blog.

The blue-footed booby pic is courtesy of Hans Stieglitz via the Wikimedia Commons site. It is under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 licence.

BBAW Day 3: Reading meme

Today’s assignment is a reading meme. I’m going to try to answer these questions as briefly as possible, although the recommended five words or less is pretty hard!

Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?

Chocolate (if I do snack, which is rarely).

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?

I’m horrified by the idea!

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying
the book flat open?

Bookmark (although many things serve as bookmarks in my world!)

Fiction, nonfiction, or both?

More fiction but both.

Hard copy or audiobooks?

Hard copy only.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?

If possible I read to the end of chapters (or sections of some kind).

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?

Nope, but I do write it down and look it up later. (I blame Kathy for this habit!)

What are you currently reading?

Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality by Barbara Bradley Hagerty
Why I Hate Saturn by Kyle Baker

What is the last book you bought?

The Likeness by Tana French

Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time?

Usually one, sometimes two, very rarely more.

Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read?

At night in bed probably, although I read just about anywhere.

Do you prefer series books or standalone books?

Standalone.

Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?

Most recently, I’ve recommended No One You Know by Michelle Richmond to quite a few people, as well as Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki

How do you organize your books (by genre, title, author’s last name, etc.)?

By genre then alphabetically by author and by title.

What’s on Your Desk Wednesday?

What’s on Your Desk Wednesday? is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Sassy Brit at Alternative-Read.com.

You can do one of two things or both!

Grab a camera and take a photo of your desk! Or anywhere you stack your books/TBR pile. And no tidying! Add this photo to your blog.Tag at least 5 people! Come back here and leave a link back to your photo in the Mr. Linky.

List at least 5 BOOKISH things on your desk (your TBR pile or books you haven’t shelved.) List at least 5 NON-BOOKISH things (some of some of the more unusual items on your desk/table). Tag at least 5 people to do the same. Come back here and leave your link, so we can come and visit your blog. Or add your answers in the comments if you don’t have a blog.

Given the state of my desk, I wasn’t about to take a photo of the whole thing, just a choice pile (and the cat)! So here are my answers...

First, the bookish things include:

1. Stack of books awaiting review (see pics below)
2. The Night Watch by Sarah Waters (up next, maybe)
3. Canadian Oxford Dictionary (used for Wondrous Words Wednesday post)
4. Old issue of Shambhala Sun
5. Incomplete drafts of several reviews

Front view of pile (click on photo to enlarge)

Side view of pile (click on photo to enlarge)

Non-bookish things include:

1. Wallet (I just bought my ticket to fly to Halifax next month!)
   
2. Roll of toilet paper (we don’t buy tissues)
   
3. Mug warmer (super practical in the winter; not so useful now)
   
4. Guinness pint glass (last used for juice; I don’t drink beer!)
   
5. Cairo cat (briefly, as pictured below)

Cairo on my desk (click on photo to enlarge)

Finally, I tag the following folks (if you feel inclined to participate):

1. Cindy at Cindy’s Love of Books
   
2. Donna at BookBound
3. Linda at Better with Books
   
4. Lucy at Enchanted by Josephine
   
5. Tina at Bookshipper

Thanks for tagging me, Sassy Brit!

The Bookshelf Meme

Jo-Jo at Jo-Jo Loves to Read! tagged me for this meme. Visit Jo-Jo’s blog to read her answers to the Bookshelf Meme.

The rules are:

• Tag 3-5 people, so the fun keeps going!
• Leave a comment at the original post at A Striped Armchair, so that Eva can collect everyone’s answers.
• If you leave a comment and link back to Eva as the meme’s creator, she will enter you in a book giveaway contest! She has a whole shelf devoted to giveaway books that you’ll be able to choose from, or a bookmooch point if you prefer.
• Remember that this is all about enjoying books as physical objects, so feel free to describe the exact book you’re talking about, down to that warping from being dropped in the bath water…

And now tell me about...

The book that’s been on your shelves the longest:

I’m not sure that A Bargain for Frances by Russell Hoban is really the book that’s been on my shelves the longest, as I still own a few books that I’ve had since childhood, but it’s definitely my favourite of the bunch. So much so that I named my first cat after Frances’s sneaky friend Thelma! (Not that my Thelma is sneaky, just that she looked more like a Thelma than a Frances to me). Here’s a picture of my Thelma:


A book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time, etc.):

My friend suncloud9 (who guest posted a review on my blog) lent me her dog-chewed copy of The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, a book I absolutely loved. (If you haven’t read it yet, get yourself a copy now!) For some reason, her dog occasionally chews on her books (just the corner in this case, so the book was still very readable.) I later came across a nearly brand-new copy at Value Village for only $3.99, which made me very happy. (I’d be very upset if either of my cats took to chewing my books!)

A book you acquired in some interesting way (gift, serendipity in a used bookstore, prize, etc.):

I probably shouldn’t admit this, but when I was in grade 8 I walked out of my high school library with a book I hadn’t checked out (in my defence it wasn’t premeditated—I did it without thinking) and I never returned it. This was obviously in the days before unchecked books would set off alarm bells if you tried to walk away with them! The book in question was The Journals of Sylvia Plath, which I actually couldn’t get through at the time (I got stuck about halfway through). When I did finally read the book in its entirety several years later, it sparked a bit of an obsession with Sylvia Plath. For a while, I collected nearly all the books I could find that were written about her (as well as those she’d written, obviously). I bought The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath when the book was first published, but still haven’t gotten around to reading it!

A book that’s been with you to the most places:

In 1993, I travelled around Europe for nearly two months with a friend after we’d graduated from university and for some reason I only brought one book with me, Changing Heaven by Jane Urqhart. We were on a fairly tight budget (OK, a really tight budget), plus we didn’t want to carry too much, so I read this book extra slowly to make it last the entire trip. (I did eventually pick up another book in a second-hand bookshop in Dublin, but it wasn’t very good and I don’t even remember what it was called.) (Note that the book pictured here has a different cover than the one I own, which I unfortunately couldn’t find on the Internet.)

The most recent addition to your shelves:

The latest addition to my bookshelves is Safe Haven: The Possibility of Sanctuary in an Unsafe World by Larry Gaudet, which was given to me by my friend Helen. Helen read a bit from this book at our last writer’s meeting and it sounds quite interesting.

A bonus book that you want to talk about but doesn’t fit into the other questions:

A few times now I’ve come across a book that I was really drawn to, even though I knew nothing about the author and had never heard of the book before—something about the book seemed to be calling me and I was sure I was going to love it. One such book was Ancestors by Robyn Davidson. I remember spotting it in a second-hand bookstore and knowing I had to take it home with me. I was right—I loved it. The shame of it now is that I can barely remember it, although I suppose the advantage is that it means I can enjoy it all over again!

Now it’s my turn to tag some folks (apologies if you’ve already been tagged):

• Cindy at Cindy’s Love of Books
• Margaret at BooksPlease
• Myckyee at BookBound
• Sandra at Fresh Ink Books
• Tanabata at In Spring It Is the Dawn

Bookworm Award

Kylee at Kylee’s 2009 Blog has given me the Bookworm Award. Thank you, Kylee!

Here are the rules:

Open the closest book to you—not your favourite or most intellectual book, but the book closest to you at the moment—to page 56.

Write out the fifth sentence as well as the next two to five sentences.

Pass this on to five blogging friends.

The book closest to me is Weaving a Way Home: A Personal Journey Exploring Place and Story by Leslie Van Gelder, which has been on my TBR pile for a shamefully long time. The excerpt from page 56 is from chapter 4, “Always Leaving, Always Coming Home”:

For some, the displacement is an act of politics as one group in power moves another across the land. For others, countless immigrants around the world, the move is voluntary but perhaps no less wrenching, as the separation of person from place simultaneously severs and reinforces what it means to be home. To be home, to have a homeland, to be a people who are of a place.

My ancestors were river people. I, too, was born at the confluence of the Hudson and East rivers near the northern tip of an island whose name in its original tongue meant “place of intoxication”—the isle of Manhattan. My mother’s parents were born along the Neumans in Lithuania and my father’s father along the Thames in London.

So now the question is who to tag next? Apologies if you’ve been tagged before and just ignore me if you’re not into this kind of thing. I hereby tag:

Luanne at A Bookworm’s World
Kathy at Bermudaonion’s Weblog
Sandra at Fresh Ink Books
Trish at Hey Lady! Watcha Readin’
Ramya at Ramya’s Bookshelf

Edited to add:

Thank you to Alea at Pop Culture Junkie, who also gave me this award!

Bloghopping Challenge

I’m trying to catch up on posts I’ve been meaning to put up for a while...

I first saw this challenge mentioned on Lenore’s blog, Presenting Lenore over a month ago, but the idea originated at Alpha Heroes. The rules are:

1. Starting at Alpha Heroes, find a linked blog that you’ve never been to before. It does not have to be book-related. If none of the links in my sidebar are new to you, hit the BBAW list and start there.


2. Go to the blog you’ve chosen and browse through the posts until you find something interesting. Leave a comment. Mention where you found the link. Mention of this challenge is optional.


3. Using the links in THAT blog, repeat. If you find yourself somewhere that does not have any new-to-you links, go back to the BBAW list. Be sure to leave a comment in each location, mentioning where you found their site linked.


4. Repeat until you have visited 10 new blogs.


5. Write a post on your blog showing your bloghopping trail. Content is up to you; you can highlight your favorites, critique the sites or just post the list of 10. I recommend you open up a Word document (or whatever you use) and list out the URLs as you go. It’s really REALLY easy to get distracted doing this and lose track of where you were.


6. I’d love it if you link back to this post.


7. Optional: add your favourites to your own sidebar or temporarily put up a blogroll widget with the 10 sites you visited.


8. Optional: Come back here and leave a link to your post in the comments.

I started with a blog I found at random in the BBAW list and went from there. Here’s my trail:

1. At Mary’s Library, the first stop on my tour, I came across a review of The House at Riverton by Kate Morton, which just confirmed to me that I must read this book. (Gosford Park is one of my all-time favourite movies!) From there, I clicked on...


2. A Fondness for Reading, where I commented on Robin’s review of My Invented Country by Isabel Allende, which has been sitting in my bookcase waiting to be read for quite a while now. From there, I visited...


3. My Reading Diary, which is one of the most beautiful blogs I’ve ever seen. Janice illustrates nearly every review with her own amazing artwork. I had to leave comments in several places (here, here and here). This is a site I’m definitely adding to my blogroll! From there, I hopped over to...


4. Letters from a Hill Farm, which is a mix of recipes, personal posts and book-related posts. I commented on Nan’s review of Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad about My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman (which sounds like a fun read). I found my next blog in one of Nan’s posts (in which she tags folks for a “Nice Matters Award”) and visited...
   


5. My Random Acts of Reading, where I commented on Kay’s review of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, which she says “may well get the #1 spot on [her] list of reads for this year.” Since this blog has no blogroll, I doubled back to Letters from a Hill Farm and from a comment there headed over to...


6. A Garden Carried in the Pocket, which features lots of reviews of mysteries (a genre I love). I commented on Jenclair’s review of Wild Life by Molly Gloss, an author I’ve heard about but never read. From there I popped over to...


7. A Reader’s Journal, which I love the look of! I commented on Booklogged’s review of Cassandra and Jane: A Jane Austen Novel by Jill Pitkeathley. (What is it about Jane Austen that has spawned such a plethora of novels either about her or about her characters?) From there, I headed over to...
   


8. A Work in Progress, where I commented on Danielle’s post about The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm by Juliet Nicolson. From there, I found...
   


9. the madwoman in the attic, which has a great tagline: “People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.” I commented on her review of The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman. From there, I ended my tour at...


10. Of Books and Bicycles, where I commented on Dorothy’s review of Virginia Woolf’s Nose by Hermione Lee. For some reason, I didn’t clue in immediately to the fact that the title refers to the movie The Hours (in which Nicole Kidman wears a prosthetic nose to play Woolf)!
    

What a great idea this was! It was fun to discover 10 new blogs. One quick recommendation to all bloggers: Please have a blog archive, preferably one with a drop-down list for each month! It makes it so much easier for a new reader to browse through your old posts.

Michele at A Reader’s Respite posted about this challenge. Has anyone else completed this challenge?

Seven random facts: Book edition

Monie at Reading with Monie has tagged me for the book edition of the seven random facts meme.

Here are seven random book-related facts about me:

1. One of my fondest memories as a child is going to the local municipal library with my mum and sisters every Friday evening. The library was housed in a room at the back of the church and I read nearly everything it had to offer, whether kid-friendly or not. I remember trying to read La Mare au Diable (The Devil’s Pool) by George Sand when I was about 10 but giving up because it was too hard to follow.


2. When I was in grade school, the students were only allowed to use the library as of grade 4, but my parents pulled some strings so I could go as early as grade 3. Needless to say, I was thrilled! (I also read nearly every book in that library!) My mother was later instrumental in making sure all kids could use the library, from kindergarten on.


3. Most of the books I read are written by women. Only about 10% of the fiction I own is written by men.


4. I haven’t read over a third of the books I own (and there are over 1300 books in my library).


5. When I started actively collecting books as a teenager, my intention was only to keep books I really really loved, so I would often buy books I had already read. (I still do this occasionally.)


6. I once wrote a letter to Susan Swan complaining about the ending of The Last of the Golden Girls. Months later (it had taken a while for my letter to be forwarded to her), I received a very gracious reply in which she explained why she had chosen to end the book the way she did. I was quite impressed that she’d replied to me, although it didn’t change the way I felt about the book.


7. I’ve been part of a women’s writing group for the past 17 years. We meet monthly to write together, taking turns facilitating each meeting. Whoever facilitates reads excerpts from books or articles and then suggests exercises for us to do. In this way, I’ve been introduced to many new writers, including Barbara Kingsolver and, more recently, Elizabeth Gilbert.

Now the question is, who to tag next? I hereby tag:

1. Kathy at Bermudaonion’s Weblog
2. Ti at Book Chatter
   
3. Cindy at Cindy’s Love of Books
4. Sandra at Fresh Ink Books
5. Nicole at Linus’s Blanket
6. Ramya at Ramya’s Bookshelf
7. Iubookgirl at Reader for Life

Apologies in advance if I’m tagging anyone who’s either been tagged before or is not interested in this sort of thing!

The rules are as follows:

• Link to the person who tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
• Share seven random and/or weird book-related facts about yourself.
• Tag seven random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
• Let each person know that they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog!

If you want to participate but haven’t been tagged, feel free!

Six weird and random things about me

I was tagged by Trish at Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’? for the six quirky things about me meme. (This is the first time I’ve been tagged for a meme, so thank you, Trish!) The rules are:

1. Link to the person who tagged you
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Write six random things/unspectacular quirks about yourself
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them
5. Let each person you have tagged know by leaving a comment on their blog
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is posted.
   

It was quite fun to think up some weird things about myself that I was willing to share with the general public... Here goes:

1. I’m paranoid about not being able to find the washrooms in restaurants (in part because I have a bladder the size of a pea). This means I tend to ask the other people I’m eating with where they are, even if they’ve never been to the restaurant before either!
   
2. I think tomatoes are inedible unless they’re cooked.
3. I hate talking on the phone when someone else is in the same room with me, especially if I’m talking to a stranger (when ordering food or making an appointment, for example).
4. I’m geographically challenged. This means I’m terrified of getting lost when taking a bus I’ve never taken before. Luckily I’m good at reading maps!
5. My partner, Mr. B, and I have kept a list of all the movies we’ve seen together. In nearly 11 years, we’ve seen 532 movies.
6. I’ve considered getting a tattoo on my left shoulder to “even out” the birthmark on my right shoulder (which is vaguely in the shape of a turtle).
   

Now the question is who to tag next? I have no idea who has already done this meme, so apologies in advance if you’ve been tagged before (or hate this kind of thing). I hereby tag:

1. Bonnie at Redlady’s Reading Room
2. Cindy at Cindy’s Love of Books
3. Iliana at Bookgirl’s Nightstand
   
4. Michele at A Reader’s Respite
5. Donna at BookBound
6. Sandra at Fresh Ink Books
   

I got my first bloggy award (twice, no three times)!

I must say I’m thrilled to have received this award first from Ti at Book Chatter, then from Shana at Literarily (now sadly defunct) and then from Dar at Peeking Between the Pages. Thank you so much to all of you! (I love your blogs too!) It’s great to know that others are reading and appreciating my blog. And I love the image that comes with this particular award.

Now it’s my turn to nominate at least seven other blogs for this award. I’ve tried to nominate blogs that haven’t gotten this award before, but there is some overlap. Without further ado, I nominate...

• A Reader’s Respite
• B&b ex libris
• Bits of Things
• Breaking the Spine
• Reader for Life
• Redlady’s Reading Room
• She Is Too Fond of Books
• Shelf Love
• The Book Lady’s Blog

Of these, Bits of Things is the blog of a friend of mine (I mean someone I know in real life) and the only one in the list that isn’t a book blog. However, she’s a great writer and I think her blog deserves a wider readership, so head over there to check it out. Thanks again, Ti, Shana and Dar!

Reading questionnaire

This questionnaire came via Patti’s Pen & Picks, who got it from Shelf Awareness.

On your nightstand now: Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell, The Late Bloomer’s Revolution by Amy Cohen and Midwife of the Blue Ridge by Christine Blevin

Favorite book(s) when you were a child: I don’t remember a specific favourite, but I loved Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and Secret Seven series (both of which I read in French). Blyton was recently voted Britain’s “most loved writer,” ahead of Roald Dahl, J.K. Rowlings, Jane Austen and William Shakespeare.

Top five favorite authors: Amy Tan, Nathalie Goldberg, Barbara Kingsolver, Nancy Mairs, Margaret Laurence (at the moment and in no particular order)

Book you’ve faked reading: I’m not sure I’ve ever actually faked reading a book. However, there are a couple I had to read in school that I wish I’d faked reading! Call of the Wild by Jack London and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad come to mind.

Book(s) you are an evangelist for: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, A Door into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski and The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

Book you’ve bought for the cover: I don’t think there are any books I’ve bought solely for their cover, with the exception of Ammonite by Nicola Griffith (I already owned a mass-market paperback copy but loved this trade paperback so much more!); however, there are several where the cover definitely influenced my buying them, including The Honey Thief by Elizabeth Graver, Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett and What the Living Won’t Let Go by Lorna Crozier.

Book that changed your life: Real Food for a Change: Bringing Nature, Health, Joy and Justice to the Table by Wayne Roberts, Rod MacRae and Lori Stahlbrand, which inspired me to eat organic.

Favorite line from a book: I can’t think of one at the moment.

Books you recommend as regeneration when people say, “I’m bored by almost all contemporary North American writers“: Well, I must admit I’m not sure what that means (how can you be bored by all contemporary writers??), but I’d have to recommend The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and The Hours by Michael Cunningham.

Book you can’t believe that everyone has not read and loved: The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, A Door into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

Book you most want to read again for the first time: The Diviners by Margaret Laurence