Okay, it’s been forever since I did a book blog, but I swear I have a good excuse. I’m working to fill two roles at work (Content/Copy Editor and Managing Editor of the magazine), buying a house, and joining The Southern Order of Storytellers. Add health concerns and family issues into the mix, and I’ve been one heckabusy gal!
However, this one sounded like a fun (and comparatively short) book blog, so here we go. The lovely folks at The Broke and the Bookish want to know our shameful little secrets, our private penchants, and our otherwise bizarre bibliophilic behaviors. So, ladies and gents, I give you my Top Ten Bookish Confessions!
1. I sometimes fall asleep while reading in the bathtub and drop my book in the water—This has happened more times than I care to admit (though never with my Kindle thank goodness!) The most memorable victims were my first copy of Dracula, a friend’s copy of Black Beauty (which I replaced), and Moby Dick (which I found deliciously ironic.)
2. Until the fourth book, I scoffed at the Harry Potter series—However, when Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire came out, I was in college studying to be an English teacher. I was taking a class in middle school literature and recognized I would have to know something about what my future students were reading. So I checked out the first book from the library and fell promptly in love. So much so, in fact, that I picked up my copy of book seven at midnight wearing my house colors! Ravenclaw rocks!!!
3. I sometimes skip words when I’m reading really exciting scenes just to see what happens—Granted, I always force myself to go back once I recognize that I’m doing it, but it’s still sad to find yourself skimming glorious words. I remember gliding over a certain chapter in The Scarlet Pimpernel just to see if Marguerite would make it to Sir Percy Blakeney in time.
4. I’ve always wanted to name a kid “Atticus”—No lie! I’ve admire the noble protagonist of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird so much that I’ve almost thought about about adopting a boy just to name him Nathaniel Atticus Hughes. The first name, naturally, is borrowed from another great love of my life, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
5. I utterly loathe James Joyce’s Ulysses—I can’t remember if I’ve ever admitted this before, but it’s true. I’m a confirmed connoussuer of literature who loves obscure books and chose to read Anna Karenina at the beach one summer, but I’m at a loss when it comes to why this book qualified as “The Best Book of All Time” in some circles.
6. I sometimes judge books by their covers—At times, when I don’t have a particular book in mind to read (which is rare), I actually roam the hallways of a bookstore just looking at covers. If it looks interesting or does something novel (HA! Pun!), I read the back matter. If that’s worth the cost, I usually buy and read it. That’s how I discovered books like Knick Knack Paddy Whack by Ardal O’Hanlon and Night of the Avenging Blowfish: A Novel of Covert Operations, Love, and Luncheon Meat by John Welter.
7. I get high on “old book smell”—When I travel home to Jacksonville, I try my darndest to stop in and shop at Chamblin Book Mine. The place is a gloriously messy place, a group of buildings and rooms cobbled together and stuffed to the rafters with used, new, and rare books. It’s a beautiful fire hazard I’d take pride in going up in like some nerdy Viking. I’ve gone in there and lost hours at a time as I search through stacks looking for books to fill the shopping bags I just traded in. Seriously, if I had just a little less dignity, I’d roll on the floor like a dog does when he finds something he likes.
8. I buy books I know I will likely never read—There’s something about empty bookshelves that unnerves me. I want them filled with colorful spines galore, titles that just beg people to take them off the shelves and give them a go. Also, I like it when people come into the house and remark about how many books I have. I guess it’s the same way a hunter feels about putting the heads of his kills on the wall over the mantelpiece.
9. I firmly believe the movie is NEVER better than the book—Let me put it to you this way, I was the ONLY person who walked out of the Jim Caviezel version, for lack of a better term, spittin’ mad. Everyone else loved it, and all I could think about was how the ending ruined the overall theme of revenge and made it too “neat.”
10. I once tricked my students into turning on one another like rabid dogs to get them to read literature—Nothing was off limits when I was in the classroom. If it would get “non-readers” to open the book, I was game. To get them interested in The Crucible, I set up a scenario where one half of the class was going to get in trouble for something the other half did. They flipped on each other like mid-level mobsters. I also once filled a cauldron with hot water and dry ice and impersonated a witch to teach Macbeth and made my students write papers entirely in Newspeak to prove that language matters. It was doubleplusgood.
2. Jane Austen–With six complete novels, you think I’d be satisfied. No, cracker. No. I’m not. Austen had a wit and an acerbic humor that has just never been matched by another author. Anyone who tries to write like her or take up her mantle and write another “Pemberly” book or something of the sort is begging for trouble. Reading a knock-off Austen book is like eating generic cereal from a bag when you really want Froot Loops.
5. Harper Lee–I fell in love with To Kill a Mockingbird and always wanted to read something else by this wonderful author, but there is quite literally nothing else. I know she and Truman Capote were good friends and that it galled him when she won the Pulitzer for it. A book that good deserves a sibling. I’d love to see what she’d write now regarding race—considering what’s changed (and what hasn’t). Also, to see Atticus Finch in action again would simply make my decade. Seriously, is there any more wonderful or admirable a character than that gentlemanly Southern lawyer who was a crack shot but wouldn’t play football for the Methodists?
8. Elizabeth Kostova–I loved The Historian. I “read it” on unabridged audiobook when I was teaching on three different college campuses and down time/drive time to deal with. I was late for my own class on more than one occasion because I was desperate to get through the end of a chapter. Twenty-two discs, and I was dying for more. I know she wrote The Swan Thieves a year or two ago, but I haven’t gotten around to reading it. However, she has a great grasp of description and of history, so I don’t doubt anything she writes would be interesting. A book like The Historian that focused on the Frankenstein would be super.
9. George R.R. Martin–I know, I know. He just released Dance With Dragons this year, and I should be happy about that. However, like Oliver, I have audacity to ask for more. Why? Because if he doesn’t get the remaining members of the Stark family back together soon, I think I shall scream. It’s almost like his story has turned into the possessed broom from Fantasia, and the more he tries to tie up loose ends, the more they fray into other plot lines. Seriously, I don’t think this book is ever going to end… which is both a good and a bad thing.
10. The Apostle Paul–If I could meet anyone (besides Jesus, of course) and share a meal with him in order to pick his brain about all things biblical, it would have to be Paul. I know he’s the most “popular” of all the New Testament writers, but I feel a certain kinship with him because of my illness. (In fact, 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 is my testimony/life verse. Go check my