Tuesday Thingers: Questions for LibraryThing Users, hosted at Wendi’s Book Corner

My Answer: I post an excerpt and a link to each book review I post in the book’s record on LibraryThing, but I’m not active in the forums there, so I don’t link anywhere else on the site. Right now, that’s the only place I regularly post reviews other than here, but after seeing so many mentions of the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon, I think I may start submitting links to that too. (I post a “Saturday Review” over here too, but I pick the links to include from my own blog-reading through the week, and many of them aren’t book-related.) I was also posting my book reviews on BlogHer for awhile, but I got out of that habit; however, my stats tell me that a few people have found my blog through those posts, so it would probably be worth the time to get back into doing that. 

I’m a contributor to the Los Angeles Moms Blog, and both my bio and the tagline of my posts there include links to my own blog. Links to my new posts are automatically posted on Twitter (speaking of which – if you have a blog and are on Twitter, you should get signed up witb Twitterfeed too) and updated on my FriendFeed; FriendFeed also sends the links to Facebook. In addition to those obviously promotional activities, being an involved citizen of the blogiverse – one who seeks out blogs, gives links, comments (and responds to comments), and participates in memes like this one – offers many more organic opportunities to raise awareness about my site.

If you engage in any shameless self-/blog-promotion, what are some of your favorite ways to do it?

I’m in Iran in the summer of 2005 with Time magazine reporter Azadeh Moaveni, moving into an apartment with my boyfriend during a summer of political and social transition, in her memoir Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran.

It’s Friday – where are you?

TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:

• 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.
• You also need to 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!
• Please avoid spoilers!

This tease comes from a book a little further down in the review stack. My current reading involves one variety of fundamentalism; this book considers another.

“Though Roman Catholic, Flannery O’Connor was Christ-haunted. No matter how far she traveled or what she wrote, Christ was floating right by her, about a foot behind, whispering in her ear.” (page 149)
 – Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl, by Susan Campbell

The link is to Campbell’s blog, which I’m reading regularly and liking a lot.

I rarely read full-scale biographies of authors, to be honest. I do read a fair amount of memoirs, but that’s different, since I’m reading the author’s own words and perspectives on his or her life – but if the writer ventures into fiction later, my desire to read it will be influenced by what I already know about her. I’ll read articles about authors if I come across them, but I really don’t seek out books about them unless it’s for research – and since I haven’t done that sort of research since college, it’s been a long time since this member of the class of 1987 remembers reading author biographies.

My reaction to what I learn from reading about an author varies, but it tends to stay pretty consistent with my feelings about their work. If I already know and like an author’s books, learning that she’s led a fascinating life and has a great sense of humor will probably reinforce my favorable opinion – vice versa for an author whom I already know I don’t like. An interesting, favorable article about an author whom I’ve heard of but never read might give me the nudge to look for one of his books, but I’m less likely to be swayed if I don’t think the books themselves would interest me (they might be in a genre I don’t read). However, one thing that does intrigue me is learning how authors are connected to one another; for example, I’m not sure I would have initially sought out Ayelet Waldman’s novels if I hadn’t known she was married to Michael Chabon, but then I evaluated (and liked) them on their own merits.

The question behind the question here is probably “what about when you love the work, but it was written by a real jerk?” In that case, unless the author has certain biases or opinions creeping into his books that I don’t  share or accept, I’d probably make the same sort of distinction I make between an actor and her roles, and keep reading. What about you?

Questions courtesy of YellowRose this week:

1. Please don’t tell anyone that you saw me dancing and singing to that song – it’s SO embarrassing!

2. Can you take two aspirin and call me in the morning?

3. The color turquoise makes me want to go swimming – in the Caribbean!

4. I have a craving for chocolate – but that should be news to no one, since I always say that.

5. If my life had a pause button, I’d pause it on birthdays and holidays, so I could savor the fun longer.

6. Eyes are the second-most-important part of the body needed for reading (the brain would be first).

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to getting home in under two hours, unlike last night (depends on the weather, though), tomorrow my plans include a nice dinner with my husband (although we still haven’t decided where we’ll have it yet) and Sunday, I want to do something fun and relaxing, although I don’t yet know what it might be!

Got any big – or little – weekend plans?

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