Tag Archives: Reading Lists

What Are You Reading in January?

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What is on your reading list this month?

How are you approaching the new reading year? Eagerly? Obsessively? Or slowly but surely?

I recently started doing research for a book I’ll be writing later this year. A lot of my reading is geared towards that goal.

Since 1st January, I’ve finished:

  • Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee
  • The Tale of Beatrix Potter: A Biography by Margaret Lane
  • Humans of New York: Stories by Brandon Stanton
  • Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
  • The Women Who Made Television Funny: Ten Stars of 1950s Sitcoms by David C. Tucker
  • The Art of Asking: or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help by Amanda Palmer
  • The 1950s Kitchen by Kathryn Ferry
  • The 1950s American Home by Diane Boucher

I’m in the midst of reading:

  • Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Richard Rohr (not my normal cup of tea)
  • Breakfast with Lucian: The Astounding Life and Outrageous Times of Britain’s Great Modern Painter by Geordie Greig
  • Coreography: A Memoir by Corey Feldman (reading it on a dare to myself…but it is actually not bad)

To be read by 31st January:

  • The Partnership: Brecht, Weill, Three Women, and Germany on the Brink by Pamela Katz
  • 1950s American Fashion by Jonathan Walford
  • The 1950s and 1960s (Costume and Fashion Source Books) by Anne Rooney
  • Mae Murray: The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips by Michael G. Ankerich
  • Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s by Gerald Nachman

What is your favourite book this month?

Which book on your list are you most looking forward to reading?

Please share with me in the comments!

Happy reading.

What Are You Reading in December?

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What is on your reading list this month?

Have you given yourself permission to take it easy, as the year comes to a close?

Or, as we race the clock to 2016, are you trying to stuff as many books into your brain as possible?

I am still doing the latter, albeit at a slower pace compared to November.

The other difference between this month and last is that I am currently committed to reading lighter fare.

Since 1st December, I’ve finished:

  • Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema by Tom Lesanti
  • Busted by Thomas J. Craughwell

I’m in the midst of reading:

  • Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance Era Edited by Lean’Tin L. Bracks and Jessie Carney Smith
  • Literary Rogues: A Scandalous History of Wayward Authors by Andrew Shaffer

To Be Read by 31 December:

  • The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1915-1964 by Zachary Leader
  • Effie: The Passionate Lives of Effie Gray, John Ruskin and John Everett Millais by Suzanne Fagence Cooper
  • My Golden Flying Years by Air Commodore D’Arcy Greig
  • The Mind of the Artist by Laurence Binyon
Effie Gray Ruskin by George Frederic Watts, 1851

Effie Gray Ruskin by George Frederic Watts, 1851.

What is your favourite book this month?

Which book on your list are you most looking forward to reading?

Please share with me in the comments!

Happy reading.

What Are You Reading in November?

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What is on your reading list this month?

Have you given yourself permission to take it easy, as the year comes to a close?

Or, as we race the clock to 2016, are you trying to stuff as many books into your brain as possible?

I am doing the latter.

Very much the latter.

Since 1 November, I’ve finished:

  • Holding on Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore by Linda Leavell
  • Eleanor Marx: A Life by Rachel Holmes
  • Benjamin Britten: A Life for Music by Neil Powell
  • All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays by George Orwell
  • Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby by Sarah Churchwell
  • Gloria Swanson: The Ultimate Star by Stephen Michael Shearer
  • Vintage Reading: From Plato to Bradbury: A Personal Tour of Some of the World’s Best Books by Robert Kanigel
  • A Woman of Temperament by Lucile Duff Gordon (in progress)

To Be Read by 30 November:

  • Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (the only novel on the list!)
  • Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee
  • Madcap May: Mistress of Myth, Men & Hope by Richard Kurin
  • White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson by Brenda Wineapple
  • The Mad Potter: George E. Ohr Eccentric Genius by Jan Greenberg & Sandra Jordan
  • Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only: The Life of America’s First Black Filmmaker by Patrick McGilligan

And, if I finish all of these…I have Michel de Montaigne’s essays waiting in the wings.

What is your favourite book this month?

Which book on your list are you most looking forward to reading?

Please share with me in the comments!

Happy reading.

Seven (Eccentrically) Themed Reading Lists for Summer

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I don’t know about you, but my To Be Read List doesn’t need more entries. It’s already massive, unwieldy, and intimidating. With summer officially here, though, it’s natural to dream of sunny days spent lingering over crisp new books. Warm weather adds a refreshing quality to the act and art of reading. Why not take advantage of that fleeting feeling as frequently as possible?

What would you read this summer, if you had nothing but free time?

With this in mind, I’ve compiled seven themed reading lists. They include some of my favourite books, as well as intriguing looking ones that are new to me.

Let’s go!

“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”-Oscar Wilde

FANTASTIC GOINGS-ON:

  1. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by R.A. Dick (BAS BLEU #UJ5352)-$14.95.
  2. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (DOVER)-$7.95
  3. The Secret Rooms: The True Story of a Haunted Castle, a Plotting Duchess, and a Family Secret by Catherine Bailey (DAEDALUS BOOKS #52583)-$4.98
  4. Beowulf Translated by R.K. Gordon (DOVER)-$2.50
  5. The Tempest by William Shakespeare (DOVER)-$2.50

CHARM SCHOOL:

  1. Excellent Women by Barbara Pym (BARNES & NOBLE)-$12.10
  2. Wild Strawberries by Angela Thirkell (BAS BLEU #UK0172)-$13.95
  3. The Technique of the Love Affair: By a Gentlewoman Edited and Annotated by Norrie Epstein (Amazon)-Prices Vary
  4. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (BARNES & NOBLE)-$13.22
  5. The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar by Martin Windrow (BAS BLEU #UJ7662)-$17.00

BECAUSE I SAID SO: Continue reading →

Love at First Site: What Should I Read Next?

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The website What Should I Read Next? is exactly what it sounds like.

Users enter a favourite book title or author, and the site’s database is mined for a “similar” option. What Should I Read Next? is community driven: readers add their own lists, which in turn generate the recommendations.

Although my TBR list is already monstrously long, I decided to give it a whirl.

I intentionally chose a less-than-common novel:

A Glastonbury Romance

A Glastonbury Romance

These are the suggestions I received:

Results, Part 1

Results, Part 1

Results, Part 2

Results, Part 2

I’m not sure how helpful those suggestions are. Middling? Surprising? It really doesn’t matter, because I could do this all day. As a time-wasting game, it’s pretty fun. If my TBR list gains a few new entries, that is delicious, fluffy icing.

If you give it a go, please let me know your results!

A to Z Reading Challenge: My Answers

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I ran across this on Not a Punk Rocker. I enjoyed reading her answers, so I thought I would participate, too. It’s not as if I am working against a deadline today. Nope, I am not shirking my professional duties to write this post. Okay, so maybe I am taking a slight break. Yes, that is it. A break.

If you’re a long-time reader of A Small Press Life (and if you are, thank you!), you’ve probably wondered what happened to our own reader questionnaire series, [R]evolving Incarnations. Never fear. It returns this Friday.

Until then, there’s this.

Oh, and I’ve decided to do it backwards. Z to A, which is how my books are organized.

ZZZ-SNATCHER BOOK (LAST BOOK THAT KEPT YOU UP WAY LATE): I am a late-night reader, so this is a pretty normal occurrence. It helps that I work from home and set my own weird hours.

YOUR LATEST BOOK PURCHASE: You can read about my most-recent book shopping extravaganza here. I don’t think I’ve bought any since then, but I cannot be totally sure. Yes, I have a problem. Oops, okay. I was wrong. I purchased a book whilst on vacation, as well as this one in early August:

The Winning of Barbara Worth

The Winning of Barbara Worth by Harold Bell Wright

I totally have a problem! Continue reading →

A Reading List a Mile Long: Daedalus Books New Arrivals Midsummer 2014

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“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”-Oscar Wilde

Continue reading →

A Reading List a Mile Long: Daedalus Books New Arrivals Late Spring 2014

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A Reading List a Mile Long: Daedalus Books New Arrivals Winter 2014

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[My Top Cold Weather Writers] Honorable Mention: Charles Dickens

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CHARLES DICKENS

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

REASON: Is it possible to get through winter without pulling out a volume of Dickens? What a desperate, weary, chilly world his characters inhabit! It is enough to make the pages freeze mid-turn. 

“Bleak, dark, and piercing cold, it was a night for the well-housed and fed to draw round the bright fire, and thank God they were at home; and for the homeless starving wretch to lay him down and die. Many hunger-worn outcasts close their eyes in our bare streets at such times, who, let their crimes have been what they may, can hardly open them in a more bitter world.”-Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

If you missed My Top Six Cold Weather Writers, go here.

For Honorable Mention: Christina Rossetti, go here.

Thanks to Tom Gething for reminding me that Charles Dickens deserves a place on my list!