9.25.2007

Books, books, books everywhere!
























This is a true story 'bout Uncle an' me.

One morning over breakfast:

Uncle to Aunty Belle, after he spied a new bag from the book emporium:

"Belle, ya' got enough books fer ya' own store."

Me: "Mm-hmmmn ."

Uncle: "We ain't got no more room fer books...ya' filled up a whole spare bedroom with a bunch of ole books and half t'other room. They's shelves in the garage wif hundreds of books ya' hardly notices. Thas' plenty."

Me: "Ain't no such thang as too many books. Them garage books is fer research. Never know when ya need 'em."

Uncle (after a pause), "Belle, doan buy another book. "

Me (After an equal pause) "It's a deal...doan buy another shotgun shell.
Them cases is fillin' up the garage."

Uncle o' course went right out an' got hisself all manner of new huntin' gear....and Aunty is still savorin' her frequent forays ter the book shops and book catalogs.

Iffin' ya ain't tried 'em, go online and git a catalogue from Bas Bleu --an Atlanta based "bookseller by post." I knows ya'll love the covers of the catalog.

Meanwhile, please tell me what is yore all time favorite



Detective story?
Sci-fi?
Romance?
Mystery?
Historical fiction?
Non-fiction?
Adventure?
Spy thriller?
Family saga?
Classic?

What does ya' recommend fer:
a 10 year ole' boy? girl?
a book fer a kid headed to college?
a 20 somethin' beginin' life beyond home?
the one book ya'd recommend fer a 30 somethin' on the the verities of adult life
the best all around book ya' read mor'n onc't

15 comments:

sparringK9 said...

this is a hard question...i like horror if its done well...more to read than watch. i still remember reading silence of the lambs and being afraid to get up and walk down to the bathroom....grrerhaha

cormac mccarthy for the 30's...it was huge for me.

i have NO idea what for a young man.

i still have that book you lent me on the mind of the maker by dorothy sayers...i need to read it again im not sure it all went "in"

grrherha

Aunty Belle said...

Hey She- Pup, yeah, on Silence of the Lambs--I'd been readin' that at the beach, an despite the hot sands and blue sky, I trembled.

An' now, after the movie of it, I cain't see Anthony Hopkins wif'out thinkin' o' Hannibal. I jes' seen FRACTURE (which I does recommend highly!) and there was Hopkins, an wif' openin' credits I'se sore afraid!!

Cormac is in his own category--Really Like No Country For Old MEn (ya'd like that one), and I knows of a cute couple married barely a year who's
been on a Cormac kick--an like ya says, they's 30 somethin's

Oh they's never an end ter book talk!

h said...

I liked Len Deighton's double trilogy "Spy" series. Spy Hook, Line and Sinker. Spy Game, Set and Match.

He and that fruit-bat Johnny LeCarre really WERE spies, you know.

If a "twenty something" is just moving "beyond home" I recommend:

"Grow A Set" by Ori Will Kickyerass.

butterflygirl said...

nothing wrong with having them books

Aunty Belle said...

Hey Artfulsub...hoo-Wheee! I does love a good spy thriller--an' agrees wif' ya on the Dighton and Le Carre books---atmospheric.

Had ya' ever read a spy novel by
Alan Furst? Mostly set i Easter Europe durin' WWII or Cold War?? Real good stuff.

I'se shure hopin' ter hear from somebody on a favorite detective novel. On the lawyer writers, I'se heap more into Scott Turow --I tend ter et Grisham go.


Butterflygirl!! Honey, whar' ya been--so happy ter see ya!
Yeah puddin' no suc a thang as too many books--got a lot at yore house? As a teacher, I imagine ya' do.

Anonymous said...

I don't read as much as I should... I am a slow reader for starters...

I like some novels (I don't read King or Grisham or Brown, etc.), such as Kurt Vonnegut... he is who I would recommend for most people, except 10 year old girls... don't know much about them...

I have many books and agree that there's no such thing as "too much"

well, unless you're eating, sitting and sleeping on them!

maybe you can make a deal with Uncle - each new book you buy, you will take an old, neglected one out of the pile and donate it?

Anonymous said...

PS: I read a lot of books on filmmaking... but that's not for everyone...

h said...

AB,

Grisholm and LeCarre are on my boycott list. Frankly, I think the former is a neverwozzer and the latter a has-been, anyway.

Not exactly a "Detective" series, but the Dortmunder series by Donald E. Westlake is entertaining crime fiction.

Dortmunder is a trollish burgler, by profession. But sometimes finds himself forced to solve other crimes.

They made a movie with Danny DeVito (also on boycott list) from one of them. Didn't see it.

boneman said...

I found m'self on bas blue mailin' list, but, I reckon I didn't buy enough fer 'm t'keep up sendin' them catalogues.
No matter, though.
One day I had painted a picture of m'self as a scarecrow, bib overalls, plaid red shirt, hair messed up and just hanging there on a stick....
Then a catalogue shows up with a picture of me, bib overalls, red plaid shirt, hair all neatly under the hat....oh. Neatly? Reckon that wasn't me after all.
Still, pretty scary from my perspective....

Now as fer the book, ten or twenty, boy or girl all the same.
The book's Musashi by a fellow named Yoshikawa (maybe. I'm getting older, now, and sometimes I remember the strangest things. Fer example, I actually thought we had a planet named Pluto, but, maybe not.)
Anyway, it's a book that teaches honor, doing the right things in life even if they're the hard things to do.

Aunty Belle said...

OH mah Bawgs, ya's readin' on film makin? Is ya' plannin' on makin' a movie? Wow. I jes' seen several odd movies--on my sidebar I list an early JAck Nicholson movie THE PASSENGER...suppose ter be one that budding film folks watches a lot--

Artful, yeah--boycott Grish---hey, I'se thinkin' mebbe that is a topic for MM--"What does ya boycott?" An' danny DeVito is a good start. I'll take a look at Westlake.

Boney, Sugar, I ain't never knowed of Musashi..so now I'se excited ter git a copy, check it out.

Unknown said...

my favourite: historical fiction with some macabre/horror ~ but not stupid stuff, stuff that's intelligent ... and most importantly, it has to be character driven.

10-yr old boy: harry potter

10-yr old girl: harry potter ... also anne of green gables

college-bound: fall on your knees

flying the nest: the joys of cooking

30-sthg pondering life: the piano tuner ... also the stone angel ... or madame bovary ... also anna karenina

the best book i've read more than once: cinderella (when i was a wee girl i would read it over and over - i knew every word by heart) ... i don't read books more than once anymore ...

i agree with whomever said john lecarre is the spy novel master. margaret atwood is also someone i'd recommend a 20 yr old read ... and timothy findley, too. but, i find the books 20 yr olds need most is cookbooks (not my kid!) just an observation.

Unknown said...

re: best book i read more than once ~ also the bible ~ its a best in many ways, quite mystical, many levels of meaning and has influenced lots of literature and such ... also i had several nice big collections of faery stories ~ the old grimm's collection, etc. that i loved to read over and over as a kid. i saved one or two of them. and the cinderella book.

Aunty Belle said...

Wow--these here is some wunnerful suggestions... jes' cain't have too many books!

When I was a child, why I had this school boook fo stories--the Blue Sky Book. My sister and I fought at grown wimmen about who it belonged to (ha!). What I 'specially recall are two stories--both "shocking" fer 9 year olds...but then it seems to me that 9 year olds were more respected--that they could read serious thangs..

anyway, the two stories were "Cruel Master" about a boy who discovers a neighbor man is mistreatin' a dog, and the other title I doan recall--but it were about a child fallin' in a vat of molten metal that were bein' cast fer a bell..and how the bell rang so sweet.

Like Red, Anne of green Gables was a dogeared thang, and all them Nancy Drews....oh my--
so many books .

the booklady said...

Thanks for stopping by Aunty Belle! Your house sounds like mine! Books, books and more books! God bless you!

Feast of St. Faustina

Bird said...

one of my biggest complaints about teaching was that it left very little time for me to read what I wanted to read (as opposed to reading materials i might use in my classes and scholarly journals in my field).

but moving to SF and using the public transit system has changed that.

god bless San Francisco Municipal Transit System!

i read on the bus, the train, the trolley(when i'm not people watching).

so i recently renewed my love affair (in remittance for over a decade) with Virginia Woolf and reread Orlando. Ah! I love Woolf's rich, wandering, stream-of-conciousness style and especially how she pokes fun at writers and literature in Orlando.

now i'm rereading Austen's Emma.

and oddly enough, I'm considering using both Orlando and Emma in a second-year comp class in the the spring. hahahaha!

i culled my book collection when i moved -gave away boxes of books, which i don't regret - they were just sitting upon the shelves and hadn't been opened in years and years - they were crying out to be united with a reader somewhere in the world - the poor dears were languishing for lack of air upon their pages, for want of an index finger turning page after page, for the sigh that escapes a reader's lips when she is satisfied with the richness of the words. so i gave the darlings away - pushed them out of the nest so they might find their own lovers.