I was chatting with some friends about reading, right around the new year when resolutions were in the air. “Read more” or “Read X books” seem to be goals for a bunch of folks, and it reminded me of the Dark Times.

As in, the years when I was not a Reader.

I started off as a Reader. My wonderful mom read me Tolkien on cross-country car trips, I got piles of wonderful books as gifts from relatives, and I visited the library constantly. My parents were extremely generous in letting me buy books too, and willingly carted me around to numerous used book stores in search of that one Sheri S. Tepper book I just couldn’t find anywhere else (Jinian Footseer! Has anyone else read those? Gosh I loved them…)

Then I went to college. And it was a wonderful place where I met some life-long friends and got to delve deep into all sorts of fascinating things like Topology and Chaucer and Arctic Studies. So I was reading, yes, but not nearly as much fiction, and not nearly as much for fun. And somewhere along the way I kind of forgot how to be a Reader. So once I was done with college and grad school, and off puttering around at my shiny new job, I didn’t really get back in the habit right away.

I still read, but probably only about ten books a year. And I know that sounds like a lot to some people, but it was a fraction of what I used to read. And worse, I wasn’t really excited by what I was reading.

Like I said, they were Dark Times.

It took a deliberate effort to remind myself how I used to read: voraciously, joyfully, widely, and deeply. And even more effort to take steps to change my reading habits and break out of the slump.

So, for anyone who wants to read more, and to enjoy reading more, here are ten things I did, that you can do:

1) Surround yourself with books. Literally. Keep books beside the bed. Take books in the car, in your purse or backback, on vacations. Keep a book on the coffee table so you can read during commercials while watching television. You’re not going to read if you don’t have books around you!

Here’s some of the books I’ve currently got surrounding me:

That’s a mix of books received as gifts, books purchased, library books and used books!

2) Take advantage of libraries. Get a library card at the most convenient library to you. I pay a yearly fee for a membership at the library in the town where I work my day-job, because I can walk over there at lunchtime to browse, and because that library has an excellent online interface (unlike my small, free, local library). Take out lots of books. Take out more than you think you can read. The point is to give yourself options! When you hear about a book that sounds interesting, request it (I have the library system website bookmarked so I can do this with just a few clicks). And with interlibrary loan, most every book I look for is available. Many libraries also now offer eBooks and online downloads of audiobooks!

3) Visit your local Bookstore. Not all bookstores are created equal, but if you’re lucky enough to live near a bookstore run by folks who really LOVE books, take advantage of it! Look for shelf talkers and “Staff Picks” notices. Ask the staff for suggestions. Check to see if there are frequent buyer programs. But please remember it’s not a library. If you want read the whole book, buy it!

4)Buy used books. I usually stick to buying used books by authors who are dead, because I want the money I actually spend on books to support the authors I love so that they can keep writing. But there’s also something magical about puttering around the cavernous halls crammed full of books. You never know when you’ll discover some hidden treasure! And if you are ever in Connecticut, do try to visit my favorite used book store. It’s amazing!

5) Ask friends what they’ve read and loved. One of the most challenging things for me in re-kindling my love of reading was finding good books I actually enjoyed reading. And asking for suggestions from friends has been, by far, my most reliable way of finding new books to read. Of course it works best if you have friends with similar tastes in reading!

6) Check out book blogs. As above, the goal here is to find out about great books. If you don’t have family or friends to make recommendations, try to find other folks who do. There are tons of wonderful, passionate readers online talking about books of all genres. For example, here’s a Sampler Set of kidlit-related blogs. Or you could try poking around the Book Blogger Directory or Kirkus’s Book Blogger Network.

7) Check out Awards and Lists. Again, this can be a great way to find new books. If you like a certain genre, go check out the awards and notable books lists for that genre. For Young Adult books there’s the ALA’s Best Books for Young Adults list and Printz awards. Kirkus, Amazon, and Publisher’s Weekly all feature “Best of…” lists every year, in a variety of genres.

8. Try Shelfari/Goodreads/LibraryThing. Me, I use Goodreads. It can be a scary place for an author (I try my best to avoid actually looking at my own books) but for a reader, these online social reading sites can be a wonderful place to find new books and new reader friends. There are also discussion groups devoted to specific genres and authors, book giveaways, and more. I have to admit that the neurotic, achievement-oriented part of me also really likes being able to track how many books I’ve read each year!

9) Listen to Audiobooks. I always try to have one audiobook in my car, and one on my iPod, to listen to while driving, walking the dog, cooking, folding laundry, etc. It’s got to be the right sort of book — the kind you can enjoy even if it’s only ten minutes at a time. But it’s a great way to fit reading into a busy schedule! And if it’s a really good book, you might find you get a lot more chores done, heh.

10) Don’t be afraid to stop if you don’t like something. The fastest way for me to get into a reading slump is to get stuck on a book I’m just not enjoying. Because if I start to dread picking it up, I read less, and then I don’t move on to other books I might actually enjoy. Sometimes even a good book just isn’t the RIGHT book at a particular time. You can always come back to it later!

So there you go! Ten Steps to Reading More (And Hopefully Enjoying it!)

What about you guys? How do you stay out of reading slumps and keep yourself excited about reading?

This was not a particularly bookish summer, as my own writing consumed a lot of my brainspace and didn’t want to relinquish it. But I did manage to get in some reading, and have been trying to catch up a bit now that I am on a break from drafting. Here are some recent favorites! You can click the links for plot summaries; I’m just going to babble about why I enjoyed them.

Note: For the sake of younger readers, I should mention that these are all YA or above in listed reading level.

A LONG, LONG SLEEP by Anna Sheehan
I fell right into this and didn’t want to leave. A gorgeous character study and the world building just slips right around you. I appreciated the variety of different interpersonal relationships all tangled up here. Note: I wanted to read this book as soon as I read this post about it by Jaclyn Dolamore (author of the beautiful YA fantasy MAGIC UNDER GLASS).

THE WINTER SEA by Susanna Kearsley
This is an adult book featuring intertwined historical and contemporary stories. I loved this most of all for the atmosphere — it was a perfect book to curl up with in a cozy chair with a cup of tea! I preferred the contemporary half of the story, about an author researching her historical subjects in a wintry Scottish seaside village. I admit I did not find the ending entirely satisfying, but I still loved the experience of reading this book, and am eager to read more by the author. Note: I had this book on my library wait list for AGES after I first heard about it from author Stephanie Burgis (author of the delightful MG Regency fantasy KAT, INCORRIGIBLE). Our Maine libraries have only one copy and when I first ILLed it I was number 23!

GIRL OF FIRE AND THORNS by Rae Carson
I do love a good secondary world fantasy with a strong female main character! I can only imagine that today’s 12 year old girls will look to this book in the same way I looked to Robin McKinley’s THE BLUE SWORD. Wonderful setting, intriguing plot twists and turns, and lovely writing. And although it’s the first in a trilogy, the ending was entirely satisfying.

JANE by April Lindner
A modern retelling of JANE EYRE. I really enjoyed seeing how Lindner paralleled the original story, but I also loved this for its own charms. Rochester reinterpreted as a rock star was particularly delightful. This one is kind of on the YA/adult border both in terms of the protag (who is in college) and the content.

ULTRAVIOLET by R. J. Anderson
A stunning and twisty genre-bending ride! But it’s hard for me to say exactly why I love this one so much without spoiling the book for those who have not read it! It is not the story you may think it is, but it’s a wonderful and compelling (and romantic, to me, at least) tale. The prose describing the perceptions of the synesthete main character are especially evocative.

THIS DARK ENDEAVOR by Kenneth Oppel
This one has a fantastic premise: the story of Victor Frankenstein as a teen, imagining what sort of events would have shaped the young man who would grow up to create Frankenstein’s Monster. I found the voice of young Victor tremendously engaging, and despite his flaws he is a bewitching character and I could not help but root for him and feel sympathy for his struggles. The external plot is exciting and atmospheric, but it was the character interactions that kept me reading. Also one of the few love triangles I’ve found believable (and it’s really a triangle: all three parties are deeply tied to one another, as opposed to the “love arrow” we see so often lately).

I’m headed to the bookstore this weekend! I already plan to get SO SILVER BRIGHT, the final book of Lisa Mantchev’s marvelous Théâtre Illuminata trilogy (really excited to see how it ends!).

What have you read lately that’s blown you away?

I originally thought we were going to see SUCKER PUNCH this weekend. I mean, the trailer was pretty nifty. Dragons! Airships! Girls kicking butt! But both the critical reviews and the informal feedback led me to believe that I would be better served just watching the Disney mash-up trailer again instead. At this point I have too many suspicions that the people behind SUCKER PUNCH are of the belief that girls in sexy outfits kicking butt = female empowerment. Not that there aren’t plenty of great movies with girls in sexy outfits kicking but who are also empowered and have agency in their worlds.

So anyways, instead we say RED RIDING HOOD. And I really enjoyed it. It helped that I had just rewatched Veronica Mars Season 1, so I was predisposed to associate Amanda Seyfried with excellence. But I also loved the visuals (especially the village and Grandmother’s house), the band of multi-ethnic werewolf-hunters, and the fact that the love “triangle” wasn’t particularly sordid or annoying. But when it was over and Bob and I were walking out of the theater I kept feeling like there was something that had been missing. I finally figured out what it was.

Humor.

There was not a single scene or bit of dialog in that movie that made me laugh (intentionally). And it made me realize just how important humor is. Even in a dark romantic story about werewolves. Even in an epic fantasy adventure (hello, Merry and Pippen!). It’s the comedic notes that allow us, in a way, to take the brutal, epic stuff seriously. And without them, I ended up laughing at a number of inappropriate moments, because they just seemed so overblown and over-dramatic.

I really liked the definition that author Laura Amy Schlitz gave of comedy, in her recent write up of her choice in the ongoing Battle of the Books at School Library Journal. She writes:

Comedy is a celebration of human resilience. At its best, it takes the tensions and failures and tragedies of life, and transmutes them. It pulls the threads taut, mending the rift in the cloth. It draws the toxins out. And of course this is tremendously refreshing, because we are surrounded by tensions and failures and tragedies.

It’s fitting that I should be thinking of humor and comedy now. Because one of the writers who taught me the power of humor, how the best books make you cry and laugh, was Diana Wynne Jones. The world lost a huge creative talent when she passed away earlier this week. DOGSBODY was one of the books that made me want to be a writer. When I daydream about the kind of writing career I aspire to, I think of her. What an amazing legacy she has left us. Dozens of books, filled with flights of imagination and dazzling characters. And so many readers– so many authors, including me!– who name her as an inspiration.

Thank you, Diana Wynne Jones, for inspiring me to dream and to create. For making me cry over the ending of DOGSBODY and laugh over Chrestomanci’s quirks and hope for a happy ending for Howl and Sophie.

I will confess that I have not read every book by Diana Wynne Jones. I do that sometimes, with my most beloved and prolific favorite authors. Because I don’t want the day to come when there are no more. So I am, indeed, grateful that I still have copies of HEXWOOD and CONRAD’S FATE and several others sitting on my to-read shelf. I think it’s probably a time to pick one of them up and remind myself of the magic and wit and humor that Diana Wynne Jones gave us.

When I was a little kid I used to love to play along the creek by my grandparents’ farmhouse. One of my favorite things to do was to build small houses on the rocks along the bank, filling them with clover blooms and rosehips and birch catkins for the faeries who lived there.

What is it, do you suppose, that is so enchanting about the idea of tiny people living alongside us, under toadstools or even in our walls, making stools out of spools and bathtubs out of gravy boats?

I’ve read two different books lately that both feature small folk, and I loved both of them for different reasons.

(I won’t bother with plot summaries, but you can click on the titles below for links to Goodreads, where you can find much better ones than I could provide.)

Can you see how much I loved them from that gleam in my eye? Unfortunately some faery children have apparently run off with my camera cord to use it as a jump-rope, no doubt, thus I must rely on my (inferior quality) laptop camera.

Small Persons with Wings by Ellen Booraem has a rare sort of humor that reviewers have rightfully (in my opinion) compared to Diana Wynne Jones. There’s a certain absurdity to the antics of Mellie and the Parvi (the “small persons with wings”), but yet it’s balanced a weight of real emotion and consequence. A “grandeur” (to use a term oft-mentioned within the book itself). I particularly loved Mellie as a main character — she’s gutsy, determined and snarky. This one just came out in January, so it you find that combination as appealing as I do, you can check it out for yourself!

(Full Disclosure: Ellen is a friend, a lovely person, and and a fellow Mainer, though sadly several hours away from me. I first read SPWW a few months ago, pre-publication, and was honored to be able to provide a blurb.)

Arrow by R. J. Anderson is the third book in the series that began with Knife(UK)/Spell Hunter(US) and continued with Rebel(UK)/Wayfarer(US). Each book has featured a new main character, but is part of an overarching story of several bands of faery folk and their human allies, of love and honor and bravery and magic.

I have loved them each in turn, but I think Rhosmari may be my favorite of the three protagonists. Not only is she, refreshingly, a “faery of color”, but she’s a pacifist. She’s the sort of character a lesser author might have turned into a preachy, insufferable bore, but in R. J. Anderson’s hands Rhosmari is anything but. She’s vivid and full of emotion and over the course of the story her beliefs are tested to the core. I can’t say much more about her personal arc without spoiling it, but I really loved it. And then there’s Martin. Ah, Martin. I can’t help it. I am a sucker for bad boys when there’s a possibility of redemption.

(Full Disclosure: R. J. is also a friend. I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to meet such excellent and talented folks– it is one of the best parts of having been published! I bought my copy of Arrow from Amazon UK, as it is sadly not available from any US publisher at this time).

And now the giveaway, courtesy of the vagaries of international postal service!

I ordered myself copies of both Rebel and Arrow from Amazon UK earlier this year. And waited. And waited. 15 days after the expected arrival date I sent a note to customer service. They wrote back to say something must have gone awry, and that they would send another set. And that if, for some reason, I did end up getting the first batch, to keep them with their compliments, since returning them overseas would be silly.

So this week, of course, I got both packages, one after the other. So… I am going to give away the extras: one copy of Arrow, one copy of Rebel! And while I’m at it, I’ll also send out a copy of Small Persons with Wings!

If you would like to win a copy, please comment on this post and tell me which book you would like (ARROW, REBEL, or SMALL PERSONS WITH WINGS) and why! And please provide an email address so I can contact you if you win!

I will pick three winners (one for each book) randomly on March 14th.

US/Canada shipping addresses only, please!

Note: I will ONLY be tracking responses to the ur-post on my devafagan.com site, and the crosspost on livejournal. If you comment on Facebook or Goodreads I will not be able to count it. Thanks!

I feel like I’ve had a run of particularly good luck this year in terms of reading! I’ve been trying to pay attention to my own reading “mode” better, and it seems to be working (though I do end up returning heaps of books to the library!)

Here’s a few of my recent favorites:

If I Stay by Gayle Forman
I picked this up as an audiobook from the library after reading numerous rave reviews. And they were right. Heart-wrenching and beautiful, full of so many exquisite details and characterizations. A book that truly made me feel for the character, and her loss. When I first read the premise, particularly the choice the main character must make (I am being vague to avoid spoilers), I wondered to myself how I could really feel any tension over it. The choice, to me, seemed clear. But as the story drew me in, I understood why it was such a difficult choice for the character. And although I didn’t really doubt the ultimate resolution, I felt scads of tension over the character’s journey to reach that resolution. I am very excited about the sequel, coming next year!

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly
I read the author’s earlier YA A Northern Light a few years ago and thought it was readable but not quite for me. But some combination of the compelling cover, the Parisian setting, and the intriguing plot summary (two parallel stories, one in contemporary Paris, one during the Revolution) kept drawing my attention back to it. But I think the thing that really made me half to read it was this quote, referenced in one of the reviews I read: “The world goes on stupid and brutal, but I do not. Can’t you see? I do not.”
I didn’t know the context, but those words kept ringing in my brain, until I finally sought out the book and read it, almost all in one sitting. And I still love that quote, and how the book leads to that recognition, how the characters deal with the stupidity and brutality of the world, and their own terrible losses. But it wasn’t just the themes that made me love this one: it was the characters, the humor, the weaving together of different lives and goals.

StarCrossed by Elizabeth C Bunce
This is one of those books I feel might have been written specifically for me, as a reader! It was such a fun book to read, too. It’s got a well-detailed nifty fantasy setting, interesting characters, nice twisty plot, mystery, adventure, magic! Oh, and several different strong female characters! I ate it up. And I want more! This one has really crawled into my heart and stuck with me, too. It’s a world and characters I want to go back to. Fortunately there’s a sequel on the way, so I can do just that.

Chalice by Robin McKinley
I really enjoyed this. It was perfect reading for being curled up sick, swaddled in blankets and drinking tea (as I was when I read it). The words were so pretty that if I lost my place due to my muzzy head it didn’t matter as I could re-read them happily. Also, I think perhaps I appreciated it more because of my muzzy-headedness, which meant I didn’t mind the skipping backwards and forwards in time so much (there was a lot of the character in present time storyline remembering things that had happened the day before, or months before, in the middle of other events).

I appreciated that this was a sort of gentle, earthy story: not about the the fate of the world in general, but about the fate of the characters’ personal world, the things they most valued. And I enjoyed seeing the subtle but powerful relationships develop between the characters. It felt like the book equivalent of a cup of hot tea with honey!

Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik
I’m very glad that I bought a copy of this at the same time I bought the first three books in the series. Because after I finished the third (Black Powder War) I really wasn’t sure I wanted to keep going. I still loved the characters, but the third book was difficult for me to get through. But, since I had this on my to-read shelf, I eventually did pick it up again, just to see what I thought, and… I couldn’t put it down! There’s a compelling backdrop (a terrible disease, a race for a cure) as well as old favorite characters I’d missed in the last two books, and a fascinating new dragon-human society in Africa. Plus, lots of chewy ethical issues and some interesting divergences from real world history. Be warned, though, there is a serious cliff-hanger! But one that is, I think, necessary to lend strength and weight to the development of the overarching plot, and the changes in the perspective of the characters. I was, however, very very glad I had waited so long to read this, because it meant I could run out and buy the paperback of book 5 right away!

Note: I talk about Mockingjay below — general reactions not specifics, but just FYI if you are avoiding any discussion. I also talk about Stroud’s Ptolemy’s Gate and Clare’s City of Glass, though again trying to avoid specific details.

So, I finished the third book in a brilliant (imo) series on Tuesday night. I was expecting that. What I wasn’t expecting was that it wasn’t Mockingjay. It was Ptolemy’s Gate, the third of the Bartimaeus series by Jonathan Stroud.

I fully intended to start Mockingjay as soon as I got home with my copy after work that night, but I was also almost done with Ptolemy’s Gate. And I discovered I really really wanted to finish it. So I did. And the ending was so overwhelming emotionally, that when I did finally pick up Mockingjay, I only could read the first bit of it. Because what I really wanted to do was just sit there thinking about the end of Ptolemy’s Gate.

I did end up waking very early and reading most of Mockingjay, then finishing it at lunch Wednesday. And I was satisfied. It was a wild ride. I probably read it too fast. There were moments and characters I loved. But still, it was Ptolemy’s Gate that stayed in my heart.

Which, again, is a surprise to me because although I enjoyed The Amulet of Samarkand (the first of the Bartimaeus books), it didn’t blow me away like The Hunger Games did. But a series is more than a single book, and it’s been interesting to me to look at my own reactions to entire series I have read. And to those I have enjoyed early books in, but haven’t actually completed– which is where I thought the Bartimaeus books were going to end up.

But then I happened to pick up the audio book of The Golem’s Eye a few weeks ago because I had no other audio book and the reader is excellent, and I figured “Why not try it?”

I’m so glad I did. I had, to put it bluntly, simply not liked one of the two main characters in Amulet. Nathaniel, the orphan boy wizard, was just not someone I was particularly driven to read more about (although I did love Bartimaeus, the djinn who Nathanial enslaves to assist him). But in the second (and third) book, the real complexities of Nathaniel’s character emmerged, and I realized that in fact perhaps I wasn’t meant to like him. He wasn’t the Luke Skywalker of the story. He was the Anakin Skywalker. (Making Bartimaeus Han Solo, I suppose!). Plus, a third main character, Kitty, was introduced, and I was immediately invested in her story.

In the end, these three character arcs provide a fascinating web of inter-relations. I loved seeing the impact each had on the other two, and to begin to perceive how they might come together in the end. As in the Hunger Games series, I expected that there would be a bittersweetness to the ending. But the exact way that Bartimaeus, Nathaniel and Kitty’s stories ended (which I won’t go into here for fear of spoilers) blew me away. I know some readers probably don’t like it, but to me it was the perfect ending for the story. And I keep thinking about it, turning it over in my head, asking whether I would have liked it better if different things had happened. But the answer so far as always been no. It ended the way it had to end.

By contrast, my reading of the Hunger Games series was such a breathless race to the ending that I think I didn’t actually allow myself time to appreciate the interactions of the character arcs or the more subtle developments. Perhaps if I had, the ending might have struck me more deeply. Perhaps I should read the entire series again (or listen to the audio books, to force myself to slow down) and see if it changes my perceptions. There were things in Mockingjay that I felt should have affected me more deeply than they did, and I wonder if that was because the driving pulse of the plot superceded them.

So now that both are done, I have one trilogy that I love for how it ended, and one I love for how it started.

What about you? What are your favorite series endings and beginnings? Are there series that you loved more for how they start than how they end? Or vice versa?

Addendum: I was going to talk about Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series here too, since I found City of Glass to be one of the best conclusions to a three-book story arc (and at the time, what I thought was a trilogy) I’ve read. There are several scenes near the end that continue to stay in my mind (as with Bartimaeus) and to resonate emotionally with me. But since it turns out there are going to be three more books on the way, I’ll hold off on that. I am so pleased with the ending of CoG I admit I’m almost sad there will be more books, but then, I’m also very excited to see more of Simon, Clary, Jace, and (of course!) Magnus Bane.

And since I missed National Dog Day yesterday, here is a belated picture of my dog Charlie, demonstrating his good nature by letting me do silly things to him: