I don’t have a theme for this Sunday’s Salon – I’m a bit random this week.
HELD OVER – Banned Books Week:
After reading Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, I’ve decided to stretch out Banned Books Week a little longer and pull out two books I’d set aside for my failed Shelf Discovery Challenge. Forever… by Judy Blume and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle are very different from each other, but they’ve both been challenged or banned many, many times; while I’ve read them both more than once, it’s been years since I picked up either one. While I intended to re-read both last fall for Shelf Discovery, I never got around to it…and Banned Books Week struck me as an even more appropriate occasion to revisit them. Reviews of all three books will be coming soon.
Walking Behind the Book Bandwagon:
I’m not sure I would have read Speak at this time without all the banned-book conversation about it, but sometimes I’m less readily swayed by book talk. During the last couple of weeks, almost everyone who hasn’t been reading and talking about Speak has been reading and talking about Room by Emma Donoghue. I’m seriously ambivalent about that novel, however, despite all the praise I’ve seen about it. I expect that I will end up reading it at some point, and when I do, I’ll wonder why I resisted for so long…I may, once again, experience the “hundreds of book bloggers could be wrong, but not this time” reaction I did when I (finally) read The Help or The Hunger Games. But I always have some reason for being a wallflower at the hot-book party. With Room, while I wouldn’t say that I find the premise, and the five-year-old narrator, truly off-putting, neither appeals to me very much, and for once, I’m trying to let that outweigh the “everyone’s reading and loving it” factor. The child narrator is the bigger obstacle for me, to be honest, even though I understand Donoghue pulls it off very well. Despite that, I’ll be a holdout on this one – someone has to be the last to read it, anyway.
Sources of Future Reading – Bookseller Trade-Show Season:
I’m looking at you, Southern California Independent Booksellers Association! Your annual Author Feast and Trade Show is coming in less than two weeks, and I know at least a few book bloggers in our region who would love to work with you and your member bookstores – talk to us, please! (I have a prior commitment for that date and couldn’t attend anyway, but that’s not the point…)
24-Hour Readathon/Weekly Geeks:
Are you Readathon-ing too? If you are, and you haven’t participated in Weekly Geeks for awhile (or ever), this would be a great time to join in and share your plans!