Tuesday Thingers (hosted at The Boston Bibliophile)

Today’s
question: Cataloging sources. What cataloging sources do you use most?
Any particular reason? Any idiosyncratic choices, or foreign sources,
or sources you like better than others? Are you able to find most
things through LT’s almost 700 sources?

700 sources?!
Wow. I can’t imagine ever using that many…and since I suspect that
many of them are probably from other countries and/or in languages I
don’t read, I doubt I ever will.

Generally,
when I add a new book to my LibraryThing catalog, I enter the ISBN and
let it search the default LT database, which is tied to Amazon.com.
It’s rarely failed me, except for the times I’ve mis-entered an ISBN
and couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to be – small font and bad
eyes – and then I’ve just done a title search. I don’t think my library
really has anything particularly obscure in it right now. It does have
some editions that were specially published, and a few old books, that
lack ISBNs, so I may have added those manually – but since that would
have been earlier this year, when I was first setting my library up in
LT, and I really can’t remember now. I’ve really had very few problems
with using the default catalog.

Teaser Tuesday (hosted at Should Be Reading)

• Grab your current read
• Let the book fall open to a random page
• Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12. NO SPOILERS!
• Share
  the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way
  people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser
  you’ve given!
• Leave a link to the blog post where you’ve shared your “Teaser“ in the comments to the week’s TUESDAY TEASER post at Should Be Reading. If you don’t have a blog, share the teaser in a comment on that week’s “Teaser” post.

I’m
not only going to share a “teaser” from the book I’m currently reading,
I’m throwing in some from a couple of the books behind it on the TBR
stack – since I haven’t yet decided what I’ll read next, maybe this
will help me choose! (Feel free to cast a vote in the comments.)

“Eat my food, drink my liquor, read my mail, rifle through my drawers. Just don’t leave.”
 – No One You Know, by Michelle Richmond (currently reading in ARC, in bookstores since June 2008)

MRS. CASSIDY: Just, more yelling. Like when he was calling me…when he called me a whore.
 – Between Here and April, by Deborah Copaken Kogan (ARC, in bookstores October 2008)

He was scrubbing pots and pans that were already clean, doing his best, it was clear, to seem occupied.
“Is that all you’re going to say?”
 – Matrimony, by Joshua Henkin (hardcover, due in paperback late August 2008)

“And
younger people always think they know what older people don’t know,”
said Abigail, smiling also. “I have a business proposition for you.”
 – The Great Man, by Kate Christensen (paperback; July/August selection for the Planet Books online book club)

Endings – Booking Through Thursday

I had a couple of people (Readerville and Nithin) leave me suggestions in response to last week’s post on Beginnings, but this one was already on its way! I mean, it was the obvious next question….

What are your favourite final sentences from books? Is
there a book that you liked specially because of its last sentence? Or
a book, perhaps that you didn’t like but still remember simply because
of the last line?

Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!

Once again, I’m felled by my bad memory. It’s not that I ignore details
– when you work with numbers, you do have to be a bit of a nitpicker –
but specific sentences in what I read just don’t tend to stay with me
very well, and when they do, they’re not necessarily the opening or
closing lines, but may be particularly well-crafted passages from
anywhere in the book. Just as with first lines, the closers that I
recall easily tend to be the ones that have become popular quotes, like
“After all, tomorrow is another day!”

Come to think of it, I know that’s the last line of the movie, but can’t be sure it’s the last line of the book Gone With the Wind
– but I do know the last line is NOT “My dear, I don’t give a damn.”
Scarlett gets the last word, even after Rhett has walked out the door.

I remember the scene,
not the exact line. The ending of a book can make a real difference in
how I end up feeling about it. Does it wrap things up neatly, or leave
them a little ambiguous? Have the characters grown over the course of
the story? Does it make sense in context, especially if it’s a surprise
“twist” ending? (One reason I like Jodi Picoult’s books is that most of
the time, her twists don’t come out of left field; I don’t usually see
them coming – when I do, I’m a little disappointed, to be honest – but
I’ve rarely thought they were completely random, in the sense of “oh,
she just threw this in here because she didn’t know how
to end it.”) Most importantly, is it satisfying, or was it a huge
disappointment that nearly ruined the whole thing for me? It’s the
overall resolution, not necessarily the last sentence, that matters to
me – regardless of whether the book has a “happy” ending or not.

How would you answer this week’s BTT question?

Friday Fill-Ins #83

Questions 1 and 2 this
week are courtesy of Sherry, thanks!

Here we go:

1. If I could travel back in time, I’d go to 1982, the year I graduated from high school, and do a few things differently that summer.

2. Give me cookies or give me brownies – as long as they’re chocolate, it’s fine with me!

3. I am listening to my husband and stepdaughter deciding what to order from Pick-Up Stix for dinner.

4. Somewhere, someone is thinking “Now where did I put that?”

5. I’ll always be happy to spend time in a bookstore.

6. My idea of a good time includes good food, good people, and good humor (not the ice cream, but that’s OK too).

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to getting home from work, tomorrow my plans include coffee with my sister and clearing out closets and Sunday, I want to do something fun, but I’m not sure what it is yet!
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******The new Weekend Assignment is to share some good news from your life. Got any to report? I’d love to know! Please share in the comments, and I’ll mention it in my post with a link to you. I usually post my Assignment responses on Mondays, so you have the rest of the weekend if you’d like to be part of it! (Of course, you could always follow that link to get the details and post your own Assignment response – I’m sure Karen would love the participation!)

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