A Reader’s Confessions

Is that title Englishy correct? That's my first confession.

Another confession is, with the exception of one genre, which happened more by accident, I don't read books where I've seen the movie first, and vice-versa. One or the other, that being the book or the movie, spoils me... or things. I.E., Roots, The Color Purple, Precious...

Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson is the book I credit for influencing me to put my aspirations into motion. Teaser here; when I got to seeing myself as Hem & Haw, I jumped up from the conference table and scurried into action. Polished off five books I had lying around and published them.

I learned today I am a Bibliophile. Content is extremely important to me, but then so are actual, physical, and held live right in the palm of my hands the actual book. Yes, I collect, gather, garner, amass, accrue, hoard, stockpile and shipmate with a shipload of books.

I began collecting books in 2006, amassing a nice uneven number that any day may topple of my bookcase, cave in my floors, and level my bed. No, I don't need help. I just need to move out my furniture and build more bookcases.

I have failed miserably on my Goodreads reading challenge. What began as thinking I would read 100 books this year, dwindled down to 50. And even still, I'm failing this challenge too.

Another chew toy of a confession; While I will travel great distances to sit through hours of tearful, painful booksignings to have my books personally autographed, *and please don't ask why because I don't know why* ...just believe me when I say it's not the author that most enamors me. It's the work!

With that confession done, I really wished booksignings would come back. I know they are costly, and often only a handful of people show up, unless of course it's a ten-fold best-seller, but still...

Oh, and here's a little ruby. Many books contain certain passages that stay with me. I'm forever indebted to this one inside Andrew Lam's Perfume Dreams; "Home is portable if one is in commune with one's soul. ...For mine is a landscape where Saigon, New York, and Paris intersect, where the Perfume River of Hue flows under the Golden Gate Bridge." ~oh, I love it!

And lean in here. I'm going to whisper... Out of the All Time 100 Novels I've only read maybe three or four of the titles on the list. Actually, it is only recently that I've come across this list,  of which these are titles I'm adding to-read. (Not providing links because it looks like I'm going to have to hunt down the classic version for this collector!)

The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron - 1967

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon - 1966

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carre - 1964

The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West - 1939

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser - 1925

And you know I can't power down until I put this one out there. I don't care what they say, I weeded through lots of goodreads to find these gems. My favorite reads, thus far, this year. (In no particular order.)

The Bee Eater: Michelle Rhee Takes on the Nation's Worst School District by Richard Whitmire
Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron by Bethany McLean
Painted Picture by Sheila Peele-Miller
Diary of a Beverly Hills Matchmaker by Marla Martenson
Crawling: A Father's First Year by Elisha Cooper
Lord Vishnu's Love Handles: A Spy Novel (Sort Of) by Will Clarke
Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black by Gregory Howard Williams
The Gifted Ones by Lisa Vaughn