Does Size Really Matter?

Does Size Really Matter?

I've been noticing how much my reading has changed over the years, and boy has it changed.  One of the biggest things I have noticed is my aversion to big books.  As a teenager and well up to a couple of years ago my motto was "the bigger the better". 

Prior to PBS (paperbackswap) or the discovering of "chick lit" I didn't have a book collection/library.  I joined PBS in 2007, and when I joined I only had a couple of books here and there that I would buy because my local library didn't have any "chick lit" books.  Before my discovery of chick lit I would go to the library (really small, and crappy) and get books that were fat.  I loved really big books because I wanted to stretch the reading experience out.  I would check out Jacqueline Briskin books because they were big, and about strong women, or Judith Michael.  These books were epic stories spanning decades in the lives of the chacters.  I loved them, sadly I don't read them anymore..

I discovered the genre of chick lit after picking up Bridget Jones Diary at a library.  After that I couldn't get enough of it.  Of course, I swayed towards the big books.  Anything less than 400 pages I didn't want. I was use to my Briskin's and Michael's size.  Even when I joined PBS I would look at page count, and if it had less than 350 pages I just wasn't going to order or WL it even if it sounded great.  Wierd, I know but that was just my preference.

Now for the last probably 2 years I can't get myself to want to read a really big book.  I still have Stephen King's Under the Dome and Duma Key in my TBR, as well as other popular big books.  Don't get me wrong I want to read them but now they seem so time consuming.  I think because now I have so many books I dont' want to spend so much time on just one. 

I kind of miss the days of old when I was just glad to be reading.  I wasn't worried about all the books I haven't read, but was concentrating on what I was reading at the time.

Jacqueline Briskin, Judith Michael I think back on you with fond memories.  I don't miss getting made fun of though because of those crappy covers, but your stories were magnificently weaved, and your heros were to die for.

I also want to add that I kind of outgrown the chick lit phase.  I read them every now and then, but it use to be all I read.  My local library now has a wonderful collection of chick lit books thanks to yours truly.

What do think about size?

The Elusive 3 Rating and Ratings in General

“A three ain’t for me” – Jesse (the hubby)

"If it's a four, go on and send it to my door"- Jesse


When I first started Coffee, Books and Laundry I would rate the books I read on a 1 through 5 system, sometime in early 2010 I decided to eliminate ratings because it seemed too subjective. I came to that decision because my husband who is by no means a passionate book lover wouldn’t touch a book if a book was rated 3 or below (that’s if he touched one at all). I would try to tell him that a three is actually not a bad rating, but he wasn’t buying it. After debating book ratings with him I decided to eliminate them from my blog, but I recently started thinking about putting them back. I love looking at ratings when reading a review, in fact I usually skim a review and look for the rating.

For instance, my last review posted, In the Woods would have gotten a rating of 3 from me. I enjoyed it, but had some problems with it also. With my husband’s logic he would have read the review, and saw the rating and would have passed on reading it. WTF! I thought it was entertaining with some minor annoyances. Basically, it wasn’t a waste of my time.

Is a 3 rating equal a C grade, 5 an A, 4 a B and so on? In that case a 3 is still freaking passing!
What does a three rating mean to you? What do ya’ll think about ratings? Is the 1 through 5 system too plain? Most importantly though, do you debate whether you should give a book a try with a rating in the 3's on Goodreads or Amazon?

Cataloging Books

Does anyone use a book cataloging software?  I need suggestions, I really want a database of all books i've read, and own that I don't have to access the internet to retrieve.  I've tried excel, but I know nothing about excel, and was having difficulty just getting the little boxes bigger.  Do people seriously fix all the boxes (bigger, wider etc.) one at time as they go.  That would be the most time consuming thing i've ever done, and I'm not up for it. 

Help!

Any suggestions are welcome!

DNFs and Ratings

Recently I adapted the 50 page rule I hear so many people do when picking up a new book. The pages vary from person to person, but basically it’s the page we stop and stamp a big DNF (Did Not Finish) on a book, because we just couldn’t get into the plot/characters etc. I’m a DNF skimmer, when I give up on a book I skim the rest. I have a review policy of not reviewing books I did not finish, only because how can I review something I didn’t read, but I wander if maybe I should do something like a mini review, basically saying “Hey, I didn’t finish this one, because….” . I wonder what other bloggers take are on the DNF. Do you slug on even if you are bored, or annoyed with the story? Do you give popular books more of a chance than a obscure book? Do you have a page rule, and what page do you think is enough to have honestly given a book a chance? Do you review DNF, and if you do, how do review it?

I have a fascination with what people are marking as DNF. I see a post about a book someone gave up on, and immediately have to go to Goodreads to read the synopse, and see what the rating is, and read other reviews. Most of the time I want to read it even more. I guess it’s a shining example of ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity”. Am I the only one out there who does that? Which brings me the question, how much does a book rating factor into your decision to read a book? Have you ever been excited about a new release only to see the ratings poor, then lose interest in reading it? How much of your book buying decisions are based on blogger reviews, and are there certain bloggers who tend to have more clout?

I recently put aside Crescendo, and mentally stamped it with a DNF. This series is a very popular series right now, and though the story is good, I simply do not like the characters. I tried to give it more than 50 pages, and finally gave up around 120. As I said before I don’t review books I didn’t finish but I have so many things that I want to say about this series that I wanted to ask what is everyones take on a DNF book?

New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/books/review/100-notable-books-2010.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Hmm, I've only read one book from the list...The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson.  Totally agree about this book, everybody who had read the first two were waiting on pins and needles for this one, including myself.

There is a couple that I've been wanting to read like  Great House by Nicole Krauss, Room by Emma Donoghue,and One Day by David Nicholls. 

I think i'm going to make a personal challenge to read as many as I can. 

Any thoughts on the list?

My January Can't Wait Read

This month one of my highly anticipated books came out, The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova.  The Swan Thieves is the second book by Ms. Kostova.  I'm a huge fan of her first novel, The Historian.  I feel in love with her writing, and descriptions in The Historian that I really can't wait to read The Swan Thieves.

From goodreads.com the description on The Swan Thieves is

Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe has a perfectly ordered life--solitary, perhaps, but full of devotion to his profession and the painting hobby he loves. This order is destroyed when renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient. In response, Marlowe finds himself going beyond his own legal and ethical boundaries to understand the secret that torments this genius, a journey that will lead him into the lives of the women closest to Robert Oliver and toward a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism. Ranging from American museums to the coast of Normandy, from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth, from young love to last love, THE SWAN THIEVES is a story of obsession, the losses of history, and the power of art to preserve human hope.

Doesn't that sound sooo good? 

Book Info:

Hardcover: 576 pages

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (January 12, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316065781