Category: Fun

Are You Monogamous or Polygamous (When it Comes to Books)?

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MonogamyorPolygamy

Do you like to devote yourself to one book at a time and give it all your book love, only then moving on to the next? Or do you enjoy having a number of books on the go, flirting with each as the mood takes you? To put it another way, do you like to read in sequence or in parallel?

I can see pros and cons to both but I’ll ‘fess up now to being a dyed-in-the wool polygamist…when it comes to books.

In Praise of Book Monogamy

  • You can give your full attention to the book – the story, the characters, the writing – without any distraction
  • You won’t have any problem picking up where you left off because it will be fresh in your mind, not obscured by anything else you’ve read in between
  • You’ll get through the book in a shorter elapsed time
  • If it’s a challenging read – a long book, a complex subject or unusual writing style – you’ll be able to apply your full concentration to it
  • It will be much easier to recall when you come to write that all important review
  • No temptation to switch to another book leaving the current one unfinished
  • Ideal for the self-disciplined

favourite                     BookPile

In Praise of Book Polygamy

  • You can switch between books depending on your mood. For example, perhaps a few chapters from something light-hearted when you’re feeling a bit down and then back to something more thrilling when you crave excitement.   Or something gentler and slower for bedtime reading.
  • If you’re struggling to get into a particular book, you can switch to another for a time and go back to the first book later.
  • Less chance of a DNF because of the above
  • You can take a break from a challenging read but, rather than do something entirely non-book related, you can polish off a few chapters of another quite different book
  • You may pick up similarities or common themes between books that you wouldn’t have noticed if you’d read them separately
  • You’ve got more chance of finding a book with the right chapter length to fit those odd reading opportunities during the day
  • Ideal for the multi-tasker

So, do you practice monogamy or polygamy when it comes to books?

My Dream Book Conference Panel

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FantasyThank you to global event technology platform, Eventbrite, for challenging book bloggers like myself to come up with our dream list of authors or characters we’d love to hear speak at a conference.  We’re allowed to jettison reality (after all, most of us spend a lot of our time in fictional worlds anyway), so my fantasy book conference is entitled: Two Characters in Conversation with their Authors.

DaphneduMaurierFirst up, Mrs De Winter from Rebecca will be quizzing author, Daphne du Maurier. Questions (if she can summon up the courage to ask them) are likely to include:

  • Why didn’t you tell the reader my first name?
  • Would you try your hand at writing a sequel to Rebecca?
  • Aside from Max and me, who is your favourite character in Rebecca?
  • Mrs Danvers and Rebecca – any girl-on-girl action going on there, do you think?
  • What do you reckon a white ball gown, barely worn, might fetch on eBay?
  • Do you have a cousin called Rachel?
  • Mr Rochester from Jane Eyre – snog, marry, avoid?

CharlotteBronteNext Jane Rochester (nee Eyre) interviews her creator, Miss Charlotte Brontë. Expect probing (but polite and morally uplifting) questions such as:

  • [Spoiler Alert] Did you cry when writing the scene where Helen Burns dies? If not, why not – the rest of us did.
  • [Spoiler Alert] What do you think would have happened if I’d chosen St John Rivers over Mr Rochester?
  • The Red Room at the beginning of Jane Eyre – does it worry you it now has quite different connotations in the book world?
  • Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys – intertextual masterpiece, literary deconstruction of the concept of the “Madwoman in the Attic” or cheap rip-off?
  • Admit it, don’t you wish you’d written Wuthering Heights instead of your sister?
  • Max de Winter from Rebecca – snog, marry, avoid?

boxfishModerator for the conference, to maintain control in case things get fiery or supply a witty one-liner if the conversation lulls, Miss Lillian Boxfish (of Lillian Boxfish Takes A Walk by Kathleen Rooney).

So, that’s my idea – now over to you!