Literary Junkies: Intro and Book Club

First off I need to get the hang of posting on a more consistent basis. There are so many posts in my head that I WANT to do, there’s just not enough hours in a day to do the actual prep work to do them. However, I am going to start getting better about that and as I write this I’m actually editing pictures for another post that will go live either later today or tomorrow.

Now on to the reason for this post: Literary Junkies.

What are Literary Junkies? I’m glad you asked. Literary Junkies is a link-up party about books that is being hosted by Taylor, from Goings on in Texas, and Lesley, from By the Porchlight. Essentially it will be a monthly link-up that has questions centered around books.

This month’s questions are:

…But wait that’s not all [she says in her best game show host voice]. Literary Junkies also has an online book club that was just launched. The way that the online book club works is that we have a private Facebook group where we chatter about books in general and each month we have a book that we have to read. Then we meet-up on Twitter and chat about the book. November’s book is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and we will be meeting up to discuss the book on Twitter at 1pm CST and 7pm CST (Taylor and Lesley had the brilliant idea of having at two times so that there were options for people who could not meet an early or a late time frame) on December 18th using the hashtag #LiteraryJunkies

And now onto the questions!

1. What book are you currently reading? Give a little synopsis and your review.

This question should say what are you currently NOT reading in order to be a more accurate portrayal of what my reading list looks like. Due to joining the Semi-Charmed Winter Book Challenge and the Literary Junkies Book Club my reading list is a mile long. However, I’m not to far into any of them to give a review of them, so I’ll just have to go with a synopsis.

I have been “testing” out all the books that I have to read for the Semi-Charmed challenge but the one that I have gotten the furthest in for that is: 11/22/63 by Stephen King which has a 4.24 star rating on Goodreads.

Goodreads.com Synopsis:

On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed forever.

If you had the chance to change the course of history, would you?
Would the consequences be worth it?

Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of his students – a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.

Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane – and insanely possible – mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life – a life that trangresses all the new normal rules of time.

Explore the Possibilities…

The other book that I am currently reading is one for the Literary Junkies book club and that’s The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern which has a 3.99 star rating on Goodreads.

Goodreads.com Synopsis:

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tent is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Reves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway – a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love – a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

2. What are your three favorite books of all time?

Really?! Only three?! I don’t know if I can do that!! I mean just three? Sheesh, well…umm…hmm…

The first one I would have to pick would be Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. I have loved that book since the first time I read one of the poems in it. As a matter when I was a kid I had this on a year long check-out from the school library. I would go in the first day of school and check it out and then go back every two weeks and renew it until the last day of school. For some reason though I have never actually owned this book. I may need to rectify that.

The second one that I would pick would be Othello by William Shakespeare. While technically a play this is a story that I love. It also seems to be a play that if you are trying to get people into Shakespeare is the one to introduce them with. It’s also one that you can use different themes to totally mess with people’s minds. I did a paper in my junior English class about why Iago was actually the good guy in the play!

The third one that I would pick would be Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I ADORE this book. I love the 1996 version of the movie. I love this book so much that my character in World of Warcraft is named after it, Thornfield. I have read, reread, and then read it again. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of this book.

3. What is your “approach” upon entering a bookstore?

I should start by saying that I do NOT go to big box bookstores for books and there aren’t any small new bookstores around me. The only time I go to a big box bookstore is when I pass through to go to the coffee shops inside.

I do try to go to as many used bookstores as I can, usually because that’s where you can find a lot of well loved classics that are just looking to be rediscovered. You can also tell a lot about a book by how you find it in the book store. If there are tons of copies of a book and the spines are hardly creased etc. it has been my experience that those are usually the books that got rave reviews but when you actually read them weren’t that great.

My approach when I enter a used book store depends on how it is laid out. If it’s just shelves with no real categorizing apart from Fiction and Non-fiction, I say a prayer that my OCD doesn’t cause me to go nuts and start from one side and make my to the other. If there are categories I go in order of favorites; classics, romance, thriller, general fiction, cookbooks, biographies, etc. etc.

That’s all for this month. Keep an eye out next month for another Literary Junkies post and throughout this month for my opinions on all the books that I’m reading. Also, below you’ll find a list of links that you may enjoy.

Links You May Enjoy:

Literary Junkies Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/literaryjunkies/
My Goodreads Profile: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/8805075-cassie-tucker
My Post About the Semi-Charmed Winter 2012 Book Challenge: http://www.southeastbymidwest.com/2012/11/semi-charmed-winter-2012-book-challenge.html

What are you guys currently reading?