Yzabel / June 28, 2012

Reading Habits

This was posted in one of the groups I follow on Goodreads, and I thought it was an interesting little set of questions to answer to:

1. Books or Nook/kindle?
Books, because I still favour the physical item, the scent of paper, and the overall feeling of holding a real bok in my hands. But I’ve come to realize that I like my e-reader more than I thought I would (and its leather-like covering smells nice, too).

2. Where do you like to read?
On the sofa or in bed.

3. Do you use a bookmark, piece of paper, Dog-ear, or lay book flat open?
Usually the receipt from when I bought the book. Its also useful to prove that the book in mine, for instance when I bring it in my bag and have the portal at some store’s entrance accidentally beep.

4. Do you listen to music, watch TV, or Prefer to have it nice in quiet?
It depends on the book. Music for easy novels, but plain silence for academics/complex reads.

5. Do you write little notes in your book, or are you horrified about markings in your book?
I don’t like markings/notes in my books, except in the ones I study for exams. In this specific case, I go trigger-happy on writing down notes in the margins and highlighting text with colour pencils.

6. Do you read to the end of the chapter, or can you stop anywhere?
I read to the end of the chapter, or at least to the next white line if there’s a ‘pause’ in the chapter.

7. What are you currently reading?
“The Sin Collector” by Jessica Fortunato.

8. Do you have a favorite Time/place to read?
At home, in the evening, or at meal times.

9. Do you snack while reading? If so whats your favorite reading snack?
Not really. I often read while having my meals (otherwise I’m alone and just plain bored: eating itself isn’t such a fun activity!), but other than that, I won’t grab some bone fide snack just because I’m reading.

10. Do you lend books to people or are you selfish with your books?
I seldom lend books, and it depends on the book itself (I won’t lend books printed on fragile paper to anyone).

11. How do you organized your books? By genre,title, authors last name, etc..?
Wherever there’s some free space left on a shelf. I vaguely tried to keep my books in English from the ones in French, but the English books have been spilling all over the place for quite some time now.

12. Why do you love to read?
Because I love discovering characters, plots, new worlds… as well as learning new things.

Yzabel / June 11, 2012

Book reviews: ARRs and ARCs

Part of the reasons why I’m very busy this year is that I’ve been trying to read more—I’ve always been an avid reader, but having many projects and many centers of interest make it so that I only have a little time to devote to each of those. And reading is what tends to be put on the back burner, since it’s one of my least ‘productive’ activities. (By ‘productives’, I mean ‘an activity that leaves me with a finished product, such as a piece of drawing, a chapter, a short story, etc.’ Of course reading will always be more productive to me intellectually than, say, watching TV.)

Putting aside required readings, such as those that’d be useful for my job or for my studies—I’m an eternal student, really—I’ve also been taking part from time to time in what’s usually called ARRs (Author Requested Readings) and ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies). Both are in a way similar, being offered by authors and publishers. The difference, as far as I’ve understood, is that ARCs are the step right before official publishing—a sort of last proof-reading—so of course, they’re not always perfect in terms of typos. ARRs are requested by their authors, for instance, indie authors going through self-publishing (which doesn’t mean that such novels are bad just because they’re indie, of course).

So far, I’ve only done that through a couple of groups on Goodreads, but this experience was interesting, and I may do it again elsewhere if the opportunity strikes. I’ll also post here the few reviews I wrote about such books. Some were pleasant reads; others were less interesting. I tried to remain as objective as possible when writing my critiques.

Yzabel / October 21, 2006

Updating The Books Page

It had been months I hadn’t kept up with my current & past readings listing, and it was high time to dust the place off. The past readings page is now up to date, at least when it comes to the present time–it was too much of a hassle to remember exactly when I had read each book during spring and the end of winter, so I just kept these out for the time being.

Also, I’m not sure I’ll put everything I read in there. Lots of these are/will be for school, and I’m not sure I want to brag much about the ‘How to write a proper text analysis’ books and the likes. I’ll see what I’ll do about these.