Category: Booking through Thursday

Booking Through Thursday – Typography

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

You may or may not have seen my post at Punctuality Rules Tuesday, about a book I recently bought that had the actual TITLE misspelled on the spine of the book. A glaring typographical error that really (really!) should have been caught. So, using that as a springboard, today’™s question: What’™s the worst typographical error you’™ve ever found in (or on) a book?

I’ve never seen such a glaring error, although there have been many times when I’ve come across small typos in books. I’ve not kept a record of them so I can’t quote any here. Generally I find them irritating if it means I have to re-read a sentence to make sense of it, otherwise I might not even notice. Some are just amusing and don’t bother me, although I do wonder why a spell check hasn’t picked them up.

I do get upset about punctuation, when it’s is used instead of its for example and read Eats, Shoot and Leaves by Lynne Truss with great pleasure. I used to write reports on rights of way and always had to double check that the l was always there in the word public – so embarrassing if it got missed out.

Booking Through Thursday Live and In-Person

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

  • Have you ever met one of your favorite authors? Gotten their autograph?

  • How about an author you felt only so-so about, but got their autograph anyway? Like, say, at a book-signing a friend dragged you to?

  • How about stumbling across a book signing or reading and being so captivated, you bought the book?

I’™m normally far too shy to ask anyone for their autograph, especially if it was one of my favourite authors. I certainly wouldn’™t ask an author I only felt ‘œso-so’ about for an autograph. It’™s all a bit too embarrassing.

BUT I did do it once. I went to a talk Adrian Plass gave at a local church. Adrian Plass writes really funny books about Christianity and he’™s even funnier in person. A link to his website is here. He’™s written many books, perhaps the most well known is The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass aged 37 1/2 and I think my favourite book is Alien at St Wilfred’™s. He had the whole church in hysterics and I was laughing so much that tears were running down my face. I can’™t remember any other time when I have laughed so I cried ‘“ my face was aching. He hardly ever cracked a smile and delivered his talk in such a deadpan way that made it even funnier.

The talk was called An Evening of Serious Stuff with Adrian Plass. We have it on video, but I can’t find it on Amazon now. He started off as though he were a vicar giving the church notices. One was about opening the Side Chapel of the church ‘“ the key to the chapel is on a hook in the junction box outside the vestry door ‘“ the key to the junction box is in the tall cupboard at the back of the church ‘“ the key to the tall cupboard is in the robing chest, which is outside the vestry door under the junction box ‘“ the key to the robing chest is held by Mr Dumpney ‘“ who has kindly made it available on certain days of the month ‘¦ It’™s much more funny when he says it than when I write it down, believe me.

At the end of the talk his books were on sale and he was signing copies if you wanted him to. Very nervously I joined the queue and when it was my turn and he asked my name I chickened out and said the book I’d bought, A Smile on the Face of God, the biography of Philip Ilott , was for my husband, so he wrote my husband’™s name on the title page and signed it ‘œTo D ‘¦ God bless, A Plass’. I wish now I’™d been brave enough to admit it was for me really, although my husband likes his books as much as I do.

We were at my friend’s Ordination Service in Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford recently and when the Bishop of Oxford read the notices we were both reminded of Adrian Plass’s talk – it made us chuckle, inwardly. It wasn’t the same of course.

Booking Through Thursday – Sunshine and Roses

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Sunshine and Roses

The reverse of last week’s question:

Imagine that everything is going just swimmingly. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and all’s right with the world. You’re practically bouncing from health and have money in your pocket. The kids are playing and laughing, the puppy is chewing in the cutest possible manner on an officially-sanctioned chew toy, and in between moments of laughter for pure joy, you pick up a book to read . . .

What is it?

This is quite difficult to answer, but I think that I’d read a book I’ve not read before, probably by an author I like, such as Margaret Atwood. A couple of books that I would like to read again are Karen Armstrong’s memoir The Spiral Staircase and M Scott Peck’s In Search of Stones. Both are books that I read with anticipation and they lived up to my expectations. Both are personal accounts of the authors’ beliefs and spiritual journeys.

The funny thing is that although I’ve got piles of unread books sometimes I can’t find the right one to read next and end up starting a few and feeling that they’re just not quite right. Then I pick up a book in a bookshop or the library and it’s the right one for that moment. The book I’m currently reading, Astrid and Veronika by Linda Olsson is a beautiful, but sad book (so far) and it’s just right at the moment, but if I was feeling sad myself it would probably make me feel worse.

Some books are hard to read because they’re so moving and I thought of Hannah’s Gift by Maria Housden when I first read this question, because it’s a book that I just couldn’t read if I was depressed. It’s the story of a mother’s three year old daughter’s illness and death and it is heartbreaking. It made me cry and I just had to stop reading it; I picked it up later because I felt I had to know the end.

Booking Through Thursday

Published on by Margaret15 Comments
Comfort Food

Okay . . . picture this (really) worst-case scenario: It’™s cold and raining, your boyfriend/girlfriend has just dumped you, you’™ve just been fired, the pile of unpaid bills is sky-high, your beloved pet has recently died, and you think you’™re coming down with a cold. All you want to do (other than hiding under the covers) is to curl up with a good book, something warm and comforting that will make you feel better.

What do you read?

(Any bets on how quickly somebody says the Bible or some other religious text? A good choice, to be sure, but to be honest, I was thinking more along the lines of fiction’¦. Unless I laid it on a little strong in the string of catastrophes? Maybe I should have just stuck to catching a cold on a rainy day’¦.)

If I’m feeling really miserable there is nothing that I could read that would make me feel better. I just wouldn’t be able to concentrate on reading; if it was a cheerful or funny book that would make me feel worse and if it was a sad, tragic book that would just pile on the agony.

If it was just a rainy day and I feel a cold coming on that would be different. But I wouldn’t go for “comfort reading”. I’d want a book to interest me and take me out of myself, something I hadn’t read before. There aren’t many books that I actually do re-read as there are so many other books and life is too short to read all the books that catch my eye. I looked through the lists of books I’ve read in the last few years and there are some that I’ve marked “re-read” but only a few that have made it and those were ones that I hadn’t read for some years and it was like reading new books, although I knew where they were going and it was the details of getting there that I’d forgotten. This means that I could more slowly and actually enjoy the writing.

Booking Through Thursday – Goldilocks

Published on by Margaret15 Comments

Goldilocks September 6, 2007

Today’s Booking Through Thursday’s question is a good one:

Okay, so the other day, a friend was commenting on my monthly reading list and asked when I found the time to read. In the ensuing discussion, she described herself as a ‘œgoldilocks’ when it comes to reading’“she needs to have everything juuuuuust right to be able to focus. This caught my attention because, first, I thought that was a charming way of describing the condition, but, two, while we’™ve talked about our reading habits, this is an interesting wrinkle. I’™d never really thought about it that way.

So, this is my question to you’“are you a Goldilocks kind of reader?

Do you need the light just right, the background noise just so loud but not too loud, the chair just right, the distractions at a minimum?

Or can you open a book at any time and dip right in, whether it’™s for twenty seconds, while waiting for the kettle to boil, or indefinitely, like while waiting interminably at the hospital’“as long as the book is open in front of your nose, you’™re happy to read?

I’m most definitely not a Goldilocks reader. I read wherever I can – yes, when I’m waiting for the kettle to boil and certainly whilst waiting at the hospital, unless it’s an appointment that I’m really worried about and then I can’t concentrate – but I’ll try. The only time I really can’t read is when I’m too ill either to hold a book or to concentrate on the words – that’s most frustrating.

Times and places I’ve read include:

  • Waiting for the lift in the tower block building where I used to work – I could snatch a few minutes there.
  • Whilst cooking – whilst waiting for the timer to go off for the next stage in a recipe.
  • Whilst knitting, if the book will stay open on my knee – that’s one example of where it does have to be just the right book.
  • When waiting in the car whilst my husband is in a DIY shop – he can spend as long in there as I can in a library or bookshop, I have no objections about that.
  • Break times at work – a job where we had to take individual breaks – that was really good as I could stretch a few extra minutes if I was lucky.
  • During the adverts on TV, and sometimes during a programme if it’s not too hard to follow.
  • In bed.
  • On a plane journey, at the airport, railway station, bus stop.
  • In the garden of course, preferably in a hammock, but that’s not a definite requirement, any old chair will do, or the on grass.
  • In a cafe or tearoom (but not a restaurant – that would be too unsociable).
  • Walking round the house (I used to get told off as a child for doing this – I’d jump down the first three steps to the turn of the stairs and amble down the rest).

I keep a book in the car and take one in my handbag ready for that unexpected time when there just might be an opportunity to read. I can’t actually read whilst travelling in a car or bus as it makes me feel sick, but other journeys are great for reading.

Booking Through Thursday Statistics

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

 

There was a widely bruited-about statistic reported last week, stating that 1 in 4 Americans did not read a single book last year. Clearly, we don’t fall into that category, but . . . how many of our friends do? Do you have friends/family who read as much as you do? Or are you the only person you know who has a serious reading habit?

In last week’s reply I wrote how both my parents were readers and encouraged me to read, but they never read as much as I do. None of my friends at school read very much as far as I remember, but then we didn’t talk about books so they could have done. When I went to Library School things were very different and we all read and discussed the books we’d read. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy was the in-book at the time, as was the children’s TV programme The Magic Roundabout – we weren’t high-brow in our tastes.

D (my husband) and I go to a book group that meets only about 3 or 4 times a year, because the other members all find it a bit difficult to finish a book any quicker than that – I have to pace my reading for that group otherwise I’ve read the book too soon. Oh dear, that reminds me we meet next week – can I re-read C S Lewis’s Letters to Malcom by next Thursday? It seems that not many people in Britain read books either as when I’ve mentioned reading to others they often say they haven’t time or they only read magazines. I have got a few friends who read, but I don’t think they’re as addicted as I am. I think that my reading has encouraged D to read, but he doesn’t read as many as me either – he says it makes him go to sleep. Our son is an avid reader and he belongs to a book group that meets much more regularly than ours. Our granddaughter – 7 next Monday – loves reading, I’m pleased to say.

Since I’ve been writing this blog it’s been good to find other people who love books. Our local library is advertising for new people to join the book group, so I’m looking forward to joining that to have ‘live’ discussions and also to joining a friend’s group as well, although I think they’re going to be reading plays mainly and I’m not sure that’s for me at present.