December 3, 2005

Book & BLOG

This is going to be my Book AND my Blog this week; you’ll see why as you read.

I GOT TAGGED!

Nancy Martin, my friend and a fellow writer, tagged me this week. No, she didn’t sneak up on me with a spray can. She tagged me in her Lipstick Chronicles blog. Now I have to respond. If you want to read about the origins of this new game, check out her column at www.thelipstickchronicles.com.typepad.com/ . I guarantee you’ll enjoy it.

According to the rules (and I am still not sure Nancy is not making all this up just to give me something else to do), I now have to list fifteen facts about my reading preferences . . . which may bore you to tears. But so be it. I can’t let Nancy down! (Translation: I didn’t have any OTHER ideas for my Book N Blog feature.)

(1) I read three or four books a week, depending on a lot of factors – my daughter’s activities, the length of the books involved, whether they’re re-reads or new books, and so on.

(2) I almost never read non-fiction. I used to read a lot of true crime, but my taste for that seems to have cooled. You won’t catch me reading “The Five People you Meet Wherever” or “Men are from Pluto, Women are from Neptune” or any of the popular non-fiction books. However interesting, informative, and illuminating they may be, I just can’t sit through them.

(3) As a continuation of that idea, I never read books about how to write a book, no matter how highly recommended they are. I think other people can benefit from these books a lot, and I have friends who’ve written how-to books that I am willing to believe are just wonderful. I’m sure I would benefit from them immensely. But . . . no.

(4) I like to read sitting on the loveseat in our living room, or on my bed. Actually, I like to read just about anywhere.

(5) I always have a book in my car. You never know when the opportunity to read will arise, and it’s good to be prepared.

(6) When I travel, I always hope I’ll see someone reading one of my books, but that’s never happened. I see people reading my friends all the time, but not me.

(7) Weirdest reading/roommate experience: lying on my bed at the Malice hotel reading Joanna Carl (Eve Sandstrom), while Eve was lying on HER bed reading ME.

(8) Biggest shock matching writer to book – without a doubt, meeting Susan McBride after reading her very grim first book, “And Then She Was Gone.” Susan, one of my favorite people, is cute, smart, bubbly, and smiling. “Gone” was about a child’s murder. Susan’s newer chick-lit series about a Texas girl with a difficult mother is much more like Susan’s own character . . . but don’t forget, Susan’s got a dark side.

(9) Comfort reading for me is almost always English: Jane Austen, Barbara Pym, Miss Read, Mrs. Gaskell, Georgette Heyer. When I’m upset, when crises overtake me, if I’m overwhelmed by my schedule; that’s when I hit the Brits.

(10) Most nervous I’ve ever been around a writer: suddenly discovering myself alone on an elevator with Walter Mosley, not only a great writer but a very imposing man. That day he was wearing a marvelous hat and a coat draped on his shoulders. I could only talk about flights to New York.

(11) Most I’ve ever laughed at a lunch date with other writers: a lunch I had with Toni L.P. Kelner and Dana Cameron at a Bouchercon (I think), where I laughed so hard I thought I was going to fall out of my chair. The conversation involved gerbils.

(12) Strangest lunch I’ve ever had with another writer: the Romantic Times luncheon Nancy Martin (my tagger) and I had with Lennell Dunbar, during which Nancy swears Lennell said he had done – well, maybe I better not go there. I was chagrinned not to have clearly heard this statement (I’m hard of hearing) because I would have loved to have asked questions.

(13) The only book I’ve ever thrown across the room – Poppy Brite’s Exquisite Corpse.

(14) What I like to read on airplanes – I like to read Laurell K. Hamilton’s earlier Anita Blake books on airplanes. I have them in the original paperbacks, and I know what’s going to happen, but I enjoy her energy and creativity every time.

(15) What I like to read at doctors’ offices – oh, READER’S DIGEST, without a doubt. The articles are just the right length for a doctor’s office. I think it should be a law, that doctors have to have RD in their waiting rooms. I hate it when the magazines all reflect the doctor’s affluent lifestyle, which I’ve financed (investment magazines, skiing magazines, etc.).