So Georgette Heyer is one of those authors who, thanks to her multitude of fans, I have discovered through book blogging.

For awhile I thought, “Well, I’m sure she’s good and all, but I don’t really read that type of book. I’m not a romance reader …” and kind of pooh-poohed the notion of reading anything by her.

But now I’m thinking I may be wrong about that. Apparently there’s romance, yes, but also cleverness and wit. Sort of a Jane Austen-ish feel if I’m not mistaken? Sounds like a perfect summer read – my only problem now is, where to begin?

So for all you Georgette Heyer fans out there, I’m asking for your help. If you were to choose one of her books as THE book to start with, the book that will endear me to her and not only make me want to read more of her books but also not fall into the trap of making all subsequent forays pale in comparison, which would it be? Whichever book gets the most emphatic and/or most endorsements will be the one I’ll pick. Thanks!

Edit: Thanks very much to everyone who responded! Although The Grand Sophy seems to be a crowd favorite, I’m going to take Claire’s suggestion and hold off on reading that one for a bit. I’ve got quite a few others to choose from, but I think my first foray will be Bath Tangle (although Cousin Kate and These Old Shades are on my virtual waiting list should my first Heyer experience prove positive. Thanks also for clearing up my misconception that Heyer’s books are Austenesque; that will help with my reading expectations.

It’s officially 2010, and as I enter my fifth year of book blogging (oh, how time flies!), I have a couple of things I want to change about my approach to blogging in the coming year.

But first, a look back at my reading in 2009. I read 53 books, and while that’s a decent amount, and more than the average person reads, I was hoping to read more. I hope to rectify that in 2010, by spending less time zoning out in front of the television or on the computer and more time reading. Also, I didn’t join many challenges in 2009 and successfully completed even less. I didn’t enjoy my reading this year as much as I have in years past, and while I don’t think it’s due to my lack of involvement in challenges, I do think I would benefit from having a more definite plan when it comes to at least some of my reading, which is why I’ve joined up for too so many challenges in 2010. I’m not going to stress out about them but hope they help guide me in my reading.

Of those 53 books in 2009, I read:

- 70% that were written by women

- 53% that were borrowed from a library

- 2 collections of essays (my favorite: Housekeeping vs. The Dirt)

- 6 graphic novels (my favorite: French Milk)

- 10 memoirs (my favorite: Someday My Prince Will Come)

- 36 novels (including 3 Young Adult and 1 Children’s)

Here are my top 5 fiction favorites from 2009, in no particular order:

And now, to the year ahead. One thing I would like to implement is a rating system. I’m not quite sure if I’ll like giving a quantitative score to my reaction to a particular book, but it’s something I’d like to try. These will be posted in my sidebar and the score will be listed at the bottom of each individual book post:

A Rough Guide to My Book Ratings:
5: Excellent. This book has impacted me deeply, or has simply been a pure delight to read.
4: Good, solid book that I would recommend to others.
3: Decent, but didn’t grab me in a big way.
2: Maybe somebody else would like this. I didn’t.
1: I had major issues with this book. I don’t recommend it.

I’ve seen a lot of book bloggers posting their source for books in order to comply with the FTC blogging disclosure laws. Although I typically say where I got a book in the body of my post, I will begin making a note at the bottom of my posts to clearly indicate the source. And since my main New Year’s resolution is to not purchase any new books in 2010 (barring a few caveats) I hope and expect that the vast majority will be coming from my own bookshelves or the library.

One last thing I would like to change about my blog is to become more social and not just post about the books I’ve read. I really enjoy reading other bloggers’ posts about their reading habits, etc. through the weekly events such as The Sunday Salon, Library Loot, Weekly Geeks, Teaser Tuesdays, Musing Mondays, Booking Through Thursday and Saturday Shout-Outs. So I plan to participate in at least some of those. The book blogging world has grown and changed a lot since I first began keeping this ‘online book diary’ four years ago, and I feel like I want to be more a part of this online community and have more fun with my blog.

So that’s it, really. I wish you all a Happy New Year and Happy Reading!

We are now in the last hours of 2008, and I’m sitting here once again in my favorite comfy chair by a roaring fire, looking back on the year and the books I’ve read. I managed to read 61 books this year; the complete list is here. My first book was Everything Is Illuminated and my last book was Before Green Gables, and in between were a lot of great books, some average books, and thankfully just a very few that I didn’t really enjoy. Here are my 10 favorites from this year:

Away by Amy Bloom

The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby

The Girls by Lori Lansens

In Beauty May She Walk by Leslie Mass

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty

Open Secrets by Alice Munro

The Bird Artist by Howard Norman

The End of the Alphabet by CS Richardson

Will Storr vs. the Supernatural by Will Storr

I’ve already got a pile of books to be read in 2009 stacked on my nightstand, on bookshelves, sitting on the kitchen counter and coffee table, not to mention all the books in my wishlist and those waiting to be discovered or published. I can’t wait to get started. Here’s to another great year of reading and I wish you all the best in 2009!

November’s selection for my Virtual Author Visit book club was The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean. The story focuses on Marina, an elderly Russian woman living in the United States, and alternates between the present time and the period in which Marina lived in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) during the Second World War. In the present, Marina is suffering from Alzheimer’s, and we are shown the debilitating effect the disease has on both Marina and her family, which Dean portrays with an empathetic touch. As a young woman, Marina worked as a tour guide at the Hermitage Museum, and the portions of the book that describe that period are also treated with sensitivity and eloquence, including the siege and its devastating aftermath, mass starvation and death. Dean seamlessly goes back and forth in time, and as the novel progresses and Marina’s condition worsens, the two time periods become like one.

Les over at Lesley’s Book Nook also recently read Madonnas. Unlike Les, I had never heard of the book until I decided to pick it for my book club and invite the author to speak with us, and while I enjoyed the parts of Marina’s early life moreso than the later life, I can see why Les felt the opposite. I’ve had a bit of a fascination with Russia and its history though, and I visited the Hermitage back in 1990 when St. Petersburg was still being called Leningrad. I don’t really remember any specific works, but I do recall being amazed at the countless works of art, many with religious themes.

There are some great resources on Dean’s publisher’s website, and the album of book groups even includes one of our group. During our call with Debra she informed us that she is currently working on another novel, teasing us that it was again set in Russia, this time during the period of Catherine the Great. I can’t wait to read it.

This past week was my birthday, and so I treated myself to a couple trips to bookstores, not that I really need an excuse to do that. At one, my niece who was with me surprised me by buying me a copy of Nick Hornby’s Housekeeping vs. the Dirt, which I had been eyeing since at the time I was in the middle of reading The Polysyllabic Spree – thanks, Jennifer! I was enjoying Spree so much that I knew that I wouldn’t want to stop reading Hornby’s accounts of his reading experiences. I think I’m in love with Nick Hornby now, by the way – or at least he is serious crush material.

Then I went to another bookstore, and to my complete surprise and delight (considering I have looked for this book practically every time I’ve entered a bookstore in the past two years) they actually had a copy of Anne Fadiman’s At Large and At Small, a collection of her personal essays. Anne is also the author of Ex Libris, one of my favorite books about books and reading. Aren’t the covers on these books fabulous? The muted colors, the simple but charming illustrations, and even their soft texture invite the reader to sit down with a cup of tea and just relax into the book. I’m looking forward to setting aside some reading time in front of the fire during the Christmas holiday to do just that.

For anyone interested, me, my blog, and my recent reads are the subject of today’s What on a Wednesday over at The Book Depository, a site that is quite frankly, awesome, particularly for those of us on this side of the pond – we can order books not available in the US and get free shipping to boot. They have book news, author interviews and all kinds of other biblio-goodies. Check them out if you haven’t done so already!

I am a really big fan of lists. Whether it’s a daily to-do list, a grocery shopping list, or a book wish list, I love to make them. For me, a big part of the appeal of signing up for reading challenges is selecting and making a challenge book list – and I know I’m not alone in that! So when I was approached by Flashlight Worthy, a book recommendation site whose site is comprised of lists, to create and submit one of my own, I was intrigued.

The first hurdle was narrowing it down to what type of list I’d create. I decided that I’d pay homage to my heritage and make a list of favorites from Canadian literature. The next and biggest dilemma was choosing which books to put on that list. There are several classics of Canadian fiction that I haven’t read, so although they deserve to be on any ‘great Canadian fiction’ lists, they couldn’t yet be on mine. So yes, there are some books that would seem obvious choices that are missing, books like The English Patient and The Stone Diaries. I also restricted my choices to only one book by any particular author, so for example, The Handmaid’s Tale won out over Alias Grace and Surfacing, two other Atwood favorites of mine. There are others, like Barometer Rising, that are part of the Canadian literary canon, but aren’t personal favorites. And finally, I set myself a limit of ten books, and some, like Fifth Business, just didn’t make the cut.

So I hope there are some choices on the list that will surprise you, some that you may be reading about for the first time, and perhaps there’s a perennial or future favorite of your own among these many fabulous books. Without any further ado (or caveats), here is my list: 10 Canadian Fiction Favorites.

As for Flashlight Worthy – and isn’t that an awesome name? – I have browsed some of their many lists since first learning about their site, and have already found a few books to add to my ever-growing wishlist. Book (and list) lovers rejoice!

Well, it’s been quite a year, literarily-speaking (not to mention the parts of my life that don’t involve books). This is the first year I’ve recorded what books I’ve read. For months beforehand, I’d had people suggest that I start a blog (my response invaribly being that my life wasn’t exciting enough to write about on a daily basis), and at the same time, I’d been wanting to keep a reading diary to keep track of the books I’d read and what I’d thought of them. I figured keeping an online reading blog would be the perfect fit. Little did I know that I would find a whole slew of like-minded folks, and that’s been one of the best things about keeping this blog. I’ve ‘met’ some wonderful, interesting people, and have discovered a veritible cornucopia of books to add to my wishlist. Thank you to all my fellow bibliophiles for enriching this experience beyond what I could have imagined.

In other book news this year, I was given the chance to work at an excellent library in Charlotte, joined a book club, got readdicted reinvolved in BookCrossing, and was even featured in an article on BookCrossing in the Charlotte area. My husband and I also designed and launched Bookwormz, a site that allows users to find (and add) independent bookstores throughout the United States. Unfortunately I had to leave both my job and my book club when we relocated back to Georgia a few weeks ago, but I’m hoping to start a book club where I’m living now, as well as find another job that incorporates my love of reading.

Santa (in the form of my husband) was also very good to me this year. Under the tree were Reading Like a Writer, Special Topics in Calamity Physics and The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived. I also got an appropriately themed calendar and a subscription to Bookmarks. And in my stocking was a bookstore giftcard, which has already been used to buy Little Children, The Last Days of Dogtown, The Birth House and The Expected One. All of these items were on my wishlist, so it was nice to pare that down a little bit!

And since no year-end blog post would be complete without a list, here are the books I read in 2006, with links to the original posts for each. I decided to choose a ‘top ten’ – which was more difficult than I anticipated, having read so many great books. Those that I chose for that (ahem) honor are bolded:

Fast Food Nation ~ Eric Schlosser
Tales of a Female Nomad ~ Rita Golden Gelman
Julie & Julia ~ Julie Powell
Life of Pi ~ Yann Martel
A Field Guide to Buying Organic ~ Luddene Perry and Dan Schultz
Prodigal Summer ~ Barbara Kingsolver
Fingersmith ~ Sarah Waters
Imagined London ~ Anna Quindlen
Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction ~ Sue Townsend
So Many Books, So Little Time ~ Sara Nelson
The Thrall’s Tale – Judith Lindbergh
Into the Wild ~ Jon Krakauer
Kitchen Confidential ~ Anthony Bourdain
Fat Girl ~ Judith Moore
The Minister’s Daughter ~ Julie Hearn
How Reading Changed My Life – Anna Quindlen
The Readers’ Choice ~ Victoria Golden McMains
What to Read ~ Mickey Pearlman
A Year of Reading ~ Elisabeth Ellington and Jane Freimiller
The Reading Group Handbook ~ Rachel Jacobsohn
The Reading Group ~ Elizabeth Noble
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down – Anne Fadiman
My Sister’s Keeper ~ Jodi Picoult
Once Upon a Day ~ Lisa Tucker
The Reckoning ~ Sarah Pinborough
A Northern Light ~ Jennifer Donnelly
The Photograph ~ Penelope Lively
Sharp North ~ Patrick Cave
Birds in Fall ~ Brad Kessler
Summer Sisters ~ Judy Blume
Passing For Thin ~ Frances Kuffel
Kindred ~ Octavia Butler
Women of the Silk ~ Gail Tsukiyama
In Cold Blood ~ Truman Capote
Sand Dollar Summer ~ Kimberly Jones
The Kite Runner ~ Khaled Hosseini
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie ~ Muriel Sparks
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time ~ Mark Haddon
Bloodsucking Fiends ~ Christopher Moore
Atonement ~ Ian McEwan
Mayflower ~ Nathaniel Philbrick
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan ~ Lisa See
The Tea House on Mulberry Street ~ Sharon Owens
(Un)arranged Marriage ~ Bali Rai
Literacy and Longing in L.A. ~ Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack
Almost French ~ Sarah Turnbull
She Walks These Hills ~ Sharyn McCrumb
When the Emperor Was Divine ~ Julie Otsuka
Winner of the National Book Award ~ Jincy Willett
One Thousand White Women ~ Jim Fergus
Women Who Love Books Too Much ~ Brenda Knight
The Myth of You and Me ~ Leah Stewart
Water for Elephants ~ Sara Gruen
Fun Home ~ Alison Bechdel
Rebecca ~ Daphne DuMaurier
Hidden Latitudes ~ Alison Anderson
Persepolis ~ Marjane Satrapi
Eva Moves the Furniture ~ Margot Livesey
Maus I and II ~ Art Spiegelman
The Tooth Fairy ~ Graham Joyce
Goodnight, Nobody ~ Jennifer Weiner
Sleep, Pale Sister ~ Joanne Harris
Persepolis 2 ~ Marjane Satrapi
Blankets ~ Craig Thompson
The Shadow of the Wind ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Gonzalez & Daughter Trucking Co. ~ Maria Amparo Escandon
Saints and Strangers ~ Angela Carter
Stuart: A Life Backwards ~ Alexander Masters
The Thirteenth Tale ~ Diane Setterfield
Sand in My Bra and Other Misadventures ~ edited by Jennifer L. Leo
The Lambs of London ~ Peter Ackroyd
The Day the World Came to Town ~ Jim DeFede
The Woman in Black ~ Susan Hill
Interpreter of Maladies ~ Jhumpa Lahiri
Cold Comfort Farm ~ Stella Gibbons
Holy Fools ~ Joanne Harris
The Bronte Project ~ Jennifer Vandever
English Passengers ~ Matthew Kneale
The Time Traveler’s Wife ~ Audrey Niffenegger
The White ~ Deborah Larsen
Disappearing Ingenue ~ Melissa Pritchard
Challenging the Pacific ~ Maud Fontenoy
Across the Savage Sea ~ Maud Fontenoy
Carter Beats the Devil ~ Glen David Gold
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter ~ Kim Edwards
The Boleyn Inheritance ~ Philippa Gregory
The All of It ~ Jeannette Haien

Altogether, I read 87 books. I didn’t post about any books that for one reason or another, I didn’t finish reading – luckily those would be less than a handful. I seem to have read quite a bit of non-fiction, which surprises me as I considered myself more of a fiction reader. I can definitely see my love for YA literature, one of my favorite genres. This was also the year that I discovered graphic novels, and my enjoyment of them was a pleasant surprise.

Here’s to a great 2007 – surrounded by friends, family and books! Happy New Year, Everyone!

I know there are those of you out there who will relate to this – I’ve read your posts on the same subject! We’re leaving tomorrow to go to visit Mike’s family in Atlanta for a few days, and as much as I love spending time with my sister-in-law and the rest of the family, there’ll still be plenty of reading time, including the five hour drive down and back (I’m lucky enough not to get carsick). I always bring more books than I end up reading, because I just never know what I’ll be in the mood for, and heaven forbid I get stuck with nothing to read. My sister-in-law, with whom we’ll be staying, doesn’t have a single book in the house – with the exception of the Bible.

So, tonight at work I visited the graphic novels and checked out Maus I and II, Blankets and Persepolis, so I’ll be taking those with me. But of course, that’s not enough. So, I’ll also be bringing Hidden Latitudes, which I’ve just started. I think I might bring along The Optimist’s Daughter, Brazzaville Beach and Eva Moves the Furniture, since those are all on my bedside table at the moment. I’ll probably throw in The Thirteenth Tale and Rick Steves’ Postcards from Europe and anything else that catches my eye before heading out the door. That one of the pluses of driving versus flying – no real space limitations for books!

I was looking forward to receiving Women Who Love Books Too Much, a BookCrossing bookring that I signed up for earlier in the year. From the subtitle, which I appropriated for this post’s title, I was expecting a discussion about women who devoted at least part of their lives to books, whether in the reading, writing, or collection of them. However, it focuses heavily on the ‘prolific pens’ and any mention of non-writing bibliophiles and bluestockings are relegated to brief sidebars. While I was pleased to discover several obscure writers such as Mary Manley, Dawn Powell, and Lenore Kandel, I would have liked to have seen more print given to women like Helene Hanff, Christina Foyle, Mabel Dodge, and Sylvia Beach.

Knight packs a lot of info into this rather slim volume. It’s a sort of literary buffet, where you are permitted just a taste, and if you want more, then you’ll have to order the entree. I think the book’s title could use some work – I have a minor quibble with the ‘too much’ part (is such a thing possible?) and skewed as it is towards writers, the subtitle isn’t quite accurate – but I now have a long list of women and works that I want to research further, and ultimately, I’m glad I read this book.

Finally, the list of authors scheduled to appear at this year’s National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. has been posted to the website. I’ve never been to the festival, but have been planning to go this time round. Unfortunately, there’s no one on the list that I’m overwhelmingly excited about. I’ve read books by most of the authors listed under Fiction and Fantasy (with an emphasis on the fiction side – specifically, Geraldine Brooks, Julia Glass, Khaled Hosseini, Sharyn McCrumb and Alice McDermott), but didn’t even recognize any of the authors categorized as Family. None of the Teens and Childrens authors particuarly appeal to me and since I’m not a mystery/thriller reader, I don’t have any interest in those writers, either. Under History and Biography, I was pleased to see Nathaniel Philbrick included, and have heard enough about Joan Didion to be intrigued by her name on the list.

Still, all in all, I’m wishing I’d attended last year’s festival instead, and my anticipation of this year’s event has been lessened by my lack of any real enthusiasm.