25 QUOTES ON THE VALUE OF READING

By Lois Winston

Ten years ago I received an email that contained a number of quotes about the value of reading. What follows are some of those quotes, along with others I’ve come across. Let’s hear it for reading!

1. You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend. -- Paul Sweeney

2. Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. -- Charles William Eliot

 

3.  What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though. -- J.D. Salinger

 

4. In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you. -- Mortimer J. Adler

 

5. Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home. -- Anna Quindlen

 

6. You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive. -- James Baldwin

 

7. The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours -- Alan Bennett

 

8. Today a reader, tomorrow a leader. -- Margaret Fuller

 

9. A book is like a garden carried in the pocket. -- Chinese Proverb

 

10. Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all. -- Abraham Lincoln

 

11. So please, oh PLEASE, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install, A lovely bookshelf on the wall. -- Roald Dahl

 

12. To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting. -- Edmund Burke

 

13. A house without books is like a room without windows. -- Heinrich Mann

 

14. A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting. -- Henry David Thoreau

 

15. To read a book for the first time is to make an acquaintance with a new friend; to read it for a second time is to meet an old one. -- Chinese Saying

16. Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books, and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three, and you give me a dangerous enemy mind. -- Anne Rice

17. The habit of reading is the only enjoyment in which there is no alloy; it lasts when all other pleasures fade. -- Anthony Trollope

18. We read to know we are not alone. -- C.S. Lewis

19. No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance. -- Confucius

20. The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of the past centuries. -- Descartes

21. The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go. -- Dr. Seuss

22. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few are to be chewed and digested. -- Francis Bacon

23. Once you learn to read, you will be forever free. -- Frederick Douglass

24. Read in order to live. -- Gustave Flaubert

25. A book is the most effective weapon against intolerance and ignorance. -- Lyndon Baines Johnson

NATIONAL LIBRARY LOVERS MONTH

If you’re a frequent visitor to this blog, you’re probably a lover of books. Did you know that February is National Library Lovers Month?

I was in first grade when I received my first library card. Each week I’d walk to the library (that was back when it was safe for a seven-year-old to walk alone in the city) and return home with an armload of books. I’d lose myself in those books until I returned a week later to check out another armload. 

I read so much and so often that my first grade teacher became annoyed that my reading skills had advanced too far ahead of the other students in her class. She actually told my mother not to allow me to go to the library anymore! 

Can you imagine?

A NOTE FROM ANASTASIA: POST A REVIEW; MAKE AN AUTHOR'S DAY

As a literary creation that sprang from an author’s imagination, I have a unique perspective on the world of authors, their books, and the people who read them. Most readers have no idea how insecure the average author is. Heck, if left to her own devices, author Lois Winston, she who writes about me, would hole herself up in her writer’s cave and never come out! Every so often her muse and I have to resort to blackmail to coerce her into stepping out into the sunshine and actually interacting with the rest of the world. The power of a well-timed threat is an amazing thing!

Most readers also don’t realize how important reviews are to authors. If you read a book and enjoy it, please take the time to post a review to your review site of choice. You’ll make an author’s day!

(Special thanks to author Mary Feliz for creating the graphic above and giving her fellow authors permission to modify it for their own use.)

DECLUTTERING WITH GUEST AUTHOR JOANNE GUIDOCCIO

photo by Heffloaf

In 2008, Joanne Guidoccio took advantage of early retirement from a 31-year teaching career and decided to launch a second act that would tap into her creative side and utilize her well-honed organizational skills. Slowly, a writing practice emerged. Her articles and book reviews were published in newspapers, magazines, and online. When she tried her hand at fiction, she made reinvention a recurring theme in her novels and short stories. Joanne writes cozy mysteries, paranormal romance, and inspirational literature. Learn more about her and her books at her website. 

Decluttering My Bookshelves

I delight in the acquisition of a new book. It doesn’t matter whether I purchased it myself or received it as a gift—each book is unique in its own special way.

I like to keep all these treasures. At least, I did until I noticed overflowing bookshelves and unruly piles of books in corners. And I couldn’t remember which books I had relegated to my storage area...two floors down.

It was time to let go of...

…older paperback novels that were falling apart or collecting dust. Many of them are over thirty years old and no longer of interest to me. If I ever wish to revisit these books, I can borrow them from the library or buy the e-book.

…any book that I hadn’t read yet. In the early years of my writing journey, I reviewed books for local and regional newspapers. Enthusiastic editors would send extra ARCs that I mentally filed away for future reading. Checking the publication dates, I realized many of these books were over five years old. Along with the extra ARCs, I have a collection of “gift” books that I couldn’t read past the first chapter.

…any book that reminded me of an unhappy time in my life. While dealing with stressful personal and family issues, I immersed myself in “one-nighters” that would transport me to a safe, predictable world. I have evolved from that place.

…mediocre books that don’t warrant any more attention. Enough said!

What did I do with these books?

I disposed of any damaged books.

I donated the “practically new” and “gently used” books to the library, community centers, and reading rooms in nursing and retirement homes. (Libraries do not accept ARCs)

Thinking and acting globally...

The American Library Association has compiled a list of organizations that distribute books internationally. In most cases, there is no shipping cost. Find out more here.

In Canada, First Book Canada and Books with No Bounds accept book donations.

Do you have any tips for decluttering bookshelves?

Too Many Women in the Room

When Gilda Greco invites her closest friends to a VIP dinner, she plans to share David Korba’s signature dishes and launch their joint venture— Xenia, an innovative Greek restaurant near Sudbury, Ontario. Unknown to Gilda, David has also invited Michael Taylor, a lecherous photographer who has throughout the past three decades managed to annoy all the women in the room. One woman follows Michael to a deserted field for his midnight run and stabs him in the jugular.

Gilda’s life is awash with complications as she wrestles with a certain detective’s commitment issues and growing doubts about her risky investment in Xenia. Frustrated, Gilda launches her own investigation and uncovers decades-old secrets and resentments that have festered until they explode into untimely death. Can Gilda outwit a killer bent on killing again?

Watch the trailer.

Buy Link 

Giveaway:

Click here for your chance to win a $10 Amazon gift card.

5 BOOKS THAT SHOULD BE ON EVERY RENTER'S SHELF

by Lizzy Manthe

It’s hard to build a library when you’re a renter. Shelf space can be scarce, especially if you have roommates. And if you move often, lugging cardboard boxes full of paperbacks gets old quick.

ABODO exists to help renters find their next apartment. But we’re big readers, as well. That’s why we’ve made this handy list of apartment-related books for the renter in all of us. So whether you’re looking to fill a small, manageable shelf, or you’re adding more books to your overloaded boxes, here are five recommendations from the ABODO bookshelf (which is not, unfortunately, built-in).

The Apartment, by Greg Baxter

Greg Baxter’s acclaimed 2012 novel takes place over the span of a single day, as an unnamed man searches for an apartment in an anonymous European city. The peregrinations of the day — from hotel to street, street to train, apartment to apartment — provide scaffolding for fascinating digressions into art, music, and history, both widescale (America’s presence in Iraq) and immediate (the man’s own past).

Life: A User’s Manual, by George Perec

At least one member of the ABODO team tried to read this novel in high school and was disappointed to find out it was not, in fact, instructions on how to live. He should have stuck with it: George Perec’s magnum opus is an engrossing (and occasionally infuriating) portrait of urban life, told through the inhabitants of one fictitious Paris apartment building. For over 600 pages, Perec tells the story of 11 rue Simon-Crubellier, one chapter per room. The cast of characters is wide, the sweep of time vast, and the sense of narrative play — Perec was a member of the French literary group OULIPO, which imposed various constraints to compose their literary work — infectious.

The Poetics of Space, by Gaston Bachelard

Keeping it French: Philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s eccentric meditation on the concept of interior space — home, room, closet, etc. — examines architecture as a shared human environment. Don’t expect a traditional history of architectural form, or an explanation of Corinthian versus Doric. Instead, Bachelard explores the ways we treat the spaces around us — and how they retain traces of our familial and emotional lives. It might sound airy or abstract or… difficult, but the writing is consistently witty and accessible, even if you never took Phenomenology 101. You’ll never look at a dresser drawer the same way again.

Billy Baldwin Decorates, by Billy Baldwin

No, not that Baldwin. Billy Baldwin was an interior designer whose work from the 1930s to ‘70s helped free American interiors from 19th century fussiness. He famously designed apartments for Cole Porter, Paul Mellon, Diana Vreeland, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and his aesthetic — eclectic, art-centric, and personable — has become a hallmark of American decorating. It’s also a much-needed antidote to bland Life-Changing Magic of Tidying-induced minimalism. (Seriously, how many more blank white walls, blond wood, Edison bulbs, and succulents do we need?). Baldwin’s taste was eccentric, and at heart he believed that a room should reflect the personality of its owner. In addition to charmingly dated photos of his interiors, Billy Baldwin Decorates includes advice about how to develop your own decorating eye, in bite-sized chapters like “What to Make of a Wall” and “Avoiding the Unhappy Medium.” Although some of his advice might prove outside of your price range — one of the photographs in his book is of a couch upholstered in the same pattern as the original Matisse hanging above it — that’s part of the fun.

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond

Matthew Desmond’s analysis of eviction in low-income communities is heartbreaking, insightful, and incisive. In a country where more people than ever before are spending over half their income on rent, once-rare evictions are now a depressingly common occurrence. Desmond’s book is the product of years of fieldwork and follows eight Milwaukee families and the landlords who evict — or threaten to evict — them from their homes. It’s a bracing, impeccably researched snapshot of failed urban policy, and a moving portrait of the men, women, and children caught up in it.

READ TUESDAY

Read Tuesday: It’s going to be HUGE!

Give the gift of reading this holiday season.

Today is Read Tuesday, and we're hoping it will be as huge a shopping day as Black Friday but for buying and gifting books at amazing sale prices.

Read Tuesday is also a great way to help improve literacy. Encourage someone—especially, a child—who doesn’t read much to read more. 

Click on the image for the Read Tuesday website to find participating authors and their books, steeply discounted for this one day sale.

READ TUESDAY. TWENTY QUESTIONS FOR…RLL.

Who is RLL? He’s one of the writers taking part in the worldwide Read Tuesday movement scheduled for December 10th. In order to get the word out about Read Tuesday, he came up with twenty questions for participating authors to answer, theirs on his blog, his on theirs. You can find author Lois Winston’s answers to his questions here. 

And here, for your amusement and enjoyment, are RLL’s answers to his own questions:

1. Fire rages in your house. Everyone is safe, but you. You decide to smash through the window, shielding your face with a book. What is the book?

THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, by Stephen Crane. I should have liked this book. It fell flat on first reading. As I know I must return to the tale, it's the book to save.

2. Asleep in your rebuilt house, you dream of meeting a dead author. But not in a creepy stalkerish way, so you shoo Mr Poe out of the kitchen. Instead, you sit down and have cake with which dead author?

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson. He finishes Weir of Hermiston. I offer him a can of Irn-Bru, telling him it's a very Scottish drink.

3. Would you name six essential items for writers? If, you know, cornered and threatened with torture.

Half a dozen plaques to hang on your wall.

   NEVER GIVE UP.

   MAKE MISTAKES AND LEARN FROM THEM.

   READ YOUR WORK ALOUD.

   OFFER HELP TO OTHER WRITERS.

   READ COPYRIGHT LAW.

   ALWAYS LOOK BOTH WAYS WHEN CROSSING THE ROAD - ESPECIALLY WITH AN UNFINISHED NOVEL WAITING AT HOME.

4. Who’d win in a fight between Count Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster? If, you know, you were writing that scene.

The battle is interrupted by Peter Vincent, who sees off Dracula. Vincent's colleague is Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. She tells the monster to shape up or ship out. Elvira and Vincent then marry in Vegas. A preacher dressed as Elvis seals the deal. His fee - an autographed copy of Fright Night - a documentary about vampirism.

5. It’s the end of a long and tiring day. You are still writing a scene. Do you see it through to the end, even though matchsticks prop your eyelids open, or do you sleep on it and return, refreshed, to slay that literary dragon another day?

Sometimes a burning need to finish a scene kills tiredness. It's easier to keep going if writing a scene. And it's much harder to keep going if editing.

6. You must introduce a plot-twist. Evil twin or luggage mix-up?

I'd introduce an evil luggage mix-up.

7. Let’s say you write a bunch of books featuring an amazing recurring villain. At the end of your latest story you have definitely absitively posolutely killed off the villain for all time and then some. Did you pepper your narrative with clues hinting at the chance of a villainous return in the next book?

If fictional villains are hard to kill, they should be hard to bring back.

8. You are at sea in a lifeboat, with the barest chance of surviving the raging storm. There’s one opportunity to save a character, drifting by this scene. Do you save the idealistic hero or the tragic villain?

My natural optimism convinces me that I won't actually survive the raging storm. In attendant newspaper stories, the deceased hero is painted as a cad, the deceased villain is painted as something of a hero, and I am painted tartan. The type of tartan is misrepresented by journalists who weren't within 500 miles of the disaster.

9. It’s time to kill a much-loved character – that pesky plot intrudes. Do you just type it up, heartlessly, or are there any strange rituals to be performed before the deed is done?

I take out an order barring Kathy Bates from my country.

10. Embarrassing typo time. I’m always typing thongs instead of things. One day, that’ll land me in trouble. Care to share any wildly embarrassing typing anecdotes? If, you know, the wrong word suddenly made something so much funnier. (My last crime against typing lay in omitting the u from Superman.)

Once I couldn't even manage typos, as I'd disconnected the keyboard.

11. I’ve fallen out of my chair laughing at all sorts of thongs I’ve typed. Have you?

Now I think on it, I tend to trip, fall, vault, fly, careen, career, carom, crash and crump my way through life.

12. You take a classic literary work and update it by throwing in rocket ships. Dare you name that story? Pride and Prejudice on Mars. That kind of thing.

I try a literary mash-up, taking the idea from Fantastic Voyage and bolting it to Mark Twain's work - giving us King Arthur's Court in a Connecticut Yankee. Arthur and his knights are reduced to micro-miniature size and take a submarine strip through the veins of a disgruntled American. Raquel Welch plays Guinevere.

13. Seen the movie. Read the book. And your preference was for?

Fritz Lang's Moonfleet is an adaptation that wanders far from J.Meade Falkner's book. With that in mind, I much prefer the book - though 'twas the movie led me to the tome.

14. Occupational hazard of being a writer. Has a book ever fallen on your head? This may occasionally happen to non-writers, it must be said.

I feel more pain on seeing books mistreated.

15. Did you ever read a series of books out of sequence?

As I'm providing different answers on each guest-spot, I am fast running out of examples. On a side-note, years passed between reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and picking up a copy of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I read Tom's adventures again, just before I tackled Huckleberry's. Over time, Huck's adventures have acquired the definite article - something guaranteed to infuriate and amuse Twain by turns.

16. You encounter a story just as you are writing the same type of tale. Do you abandon your work, or keep going with the other one to ensure there won’t be endless similarities?

I think the important thing is to avoid writing the same tale twice.

17. Have you ever stumbled across a Much-Loved Children’s Classic™ that you’ve never heard of?

Occasionally, you stumble over works you thought you'd heard of. Jules Verne stands as one of the most-translated authors in literature. His work lays claim to a less-beneficial title. Verne is probably the most-mistranslated author out there. This meant it was a long while before I realised Verne's book was called Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas.

18. You build a secret passage into your story. Where?

The title. Click on that to open the door.

19. Facing the prospect of writing erotica, you decide on a racy pen-name. And that would be…

Tougher than I thought. Make it up! Er, then check the internet. I started with Delfine Augier and switched to Delphine Augier. No good. Those people are out there. But surely I'd get away with Delphine Aubergine...

20. On a train a fan praises your work, mistaking you for another author. What happens next?

The train collides with a dirigible before either of us can say another word.

~~~

For LOIS WINSTON/EMMA CARLYLE/ANASTASIA POLLACK answers to my questions, visit REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Here's a blog post on READ TUESDAY.

And here's a funny one on CONTACTING PEOPLE FOR READ TUESDAY.

Featured in the READ TUESDAY sale on December the 10th, 2013 - Neon Gods Brought Down by Swords and WITCHES. Both will be free on the day. 

THE FUSSY LIBRARIAN

Love to read? Of course you do! And you'll love the Fussy Librarian. We do! Sign up for their newsletter, and you'll receive a daily email suggesting books based on your interests and content preferences.

BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--GUEST AUTHOR LOIS WINSTON

Author Lois Winston writes the critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series (sound familiar? Hint: it’s the series about moi!) as well as romance, romantic suspense, women’s fiction, and non-fiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. Her most recent release is Revenge of the Crafty Corpse, the third book in the series about moi. Today she stops by to share with us some very special quotes about the value of reading. Learn more about Lois at her website and her Emma Carlyle website. – AP

25 Quotes on the Worth of Reading

When I was a child, I escaped into books. They were my refuge from a childhood that was less than ideal. So it always comes as a shock to me when people tell me they don’t read. I can’t imagine a world without books to read, whether they be physical books or ebooks. Here are some thoughts on the topic by others:

1. You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend. -- Paul Sweeney

2. Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.  -- Charles William Eliot

3.  What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though. -- J.D. Salinger

4. In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you. -- Mortimer J. Adler

5. Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home. -- Anna Quindlen

6. You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive. -- James Baldwin

7. The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours -- Alan Bennett

8. Today a reader, tomorrow a leader. -- Margaret Fuller

9. A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.  -- Chinese Proverb

10. Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all.  -- Abraham Lincoln

11. So please, oh PLEASE, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install, A lovely bookshelf on the wall. -- Roald Dahl

12. To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting. -- Edmund Burke

13. A house without books is like a room without windows. --  Heinrich Mann

14. A truly good book teaches me better than to read it.  I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.  -- Henry David Thoreau

15. To read a book for the first time is to make an acquaintance with a new friend; to read it for a second time is to meet an old one.  -- Chinese Saying

16. Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books, and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three, and you give me a dangerous enemy mind. -- Anne Rice

17. The habit of reading is the only enjoyment in which there is no alloy; it lasts when all other pleasures fade. -- Anthony Trollope

18. We read to know we are not alone. -- C.S. Lewis

19. No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance. – Confucius

20. The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of the past centuries. – Descartes

21. The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go. -- Dr. Seuss

22. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few are to be chewed and digested. -- Francis Bacon

23. Once you learn to read, you will be forever free. -- Frederick Douglass

24. Read in order to live. -- Gustave Flaubert

25. A book is the most effective weapon against intolerance and ignorance. -- Lyndon Baines Johnson

Revenge of the Crafty Corpse

Anastasia Pollack’s dead louse of a spouse has left her with more bills than you can shake a crochet hook at, and teaching craft classes at her mother-in-law’s assisted living center seems like a harmless way to supplement her meager income. But when Lyndella Wegner—a 98-year-old know-it-all with a penchant for ruffles and lace—turns up dead, Anastasia’s cantankerous mother-in-law becomes the prime suspect in her murder. Upon discovering that Lyndella’s scandalous craft projects—and her scandalous behavior—made her plenty of enemies, Anastasia sets out to find the real killer before her mother-in-law ends up behind bars.

Buy links: (ebook) (paperback)