I was tagged by Wendi over at Wendi’s Book Corner. That means I’m now supposed to tell you 7 random bookish things about myself and then inflict (erm, I mean tag) another 7 people with this meme. (Heh. I’m just kidding about the inflicting part. I’m really bad at remembering to do these memes so sometimes they die when they get sent here because I don’t get around to them).

Anyway, you probably should know some bookish things about me if you’re taking my bookish opinion for anything (you may not be, for all I know you’re just here for the free books).

Let’s see, what can I tell you that is remotely interesting, yet won’t get me in trouble (hi, mom!):

1. I’m Canadian and I dislike CanLit. Don’t confuse CanLit with Canadian authors. There are many Canadian authors whose work I love, but none write CanLit (think of CanLit as the “classics” academics study and inflict on students).
2. I attended a writing workshop on writing erotica given by an Ellora’s Cave writer. Naughty things were written and read aloud (not mine, I was too chicken).
3. I won the door prize at said writing workshop, but haven’t reviewed it here.
4. I still read A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books.
5. I think everyone should read A. A. Milne’s books as an adult, at least once.
6. I read science nonfiction for fun.
7. My other half still hasn’t read the book I gave him for his birthday LAST year. Okay, that one wasn’t about me, but come on already. I’ve read 49 since January.

Okay, who should I tag?

1. Nicole over at No BS Book Reviews and I Meme It.
2. Chris at Book-a-rama.
3. Iced Tea at Books, TV, etc..
4. PopinFresh at Popin’s Lair.
5. Callista at SMS Book Reviews.
6. Amanda at Reading and Beading, our only Australian book reviewer at Here Be (Book) Reviews.
7. Veena at Giving Reading a Chance, our lone book reviewer from India at Here Be (Book) Reviews.

Tell me some random bookish fact about yourself in the comments here and I’ll give you an extra entry into any or all of the book giveaways I’m having this month (you have to enter on the individual contest thread though to collect the extra entry/entries).

I’ve decided to share my finds and the excellent reviews of my fellow book bloggers each Monday Wednesday. Leave a comment with a link to your post or a trackback if you decide to play along.

The twelfth book to catch my eye is The Face of Death by Cory McFadyen, reviewed on The Friendly Book Nook.

What caught my attention?

The first thing that caught my attention is the premise of the book:

The girl is sixteen, at the scene of a grisly triple homicide, and has a gun to her head. She claims “The Stranger” killed her adoptive family, that he’s been following her all her life, killing everyone she ever loved, and that no one believes her.

No one has. Until now.

As you know, a good premise is not always well executed. So while the premise gets my attention, I need to know whether the author followed through and wrote a good book. The Friendly Book Nook found it a page turner that explored the idea of enduring the horrific. Even though she guessed the killer before it was revealed, the review is positive enough to make me want to read the book anyway.

I’ve decided to share my finds and the excellent reviews of my fellow book bloggers each Monday. Leave a comment with a link to your post or a trackback if you decide to play along.

The eleventh book to catch my eye is World War Z by Max Brooks, which was mentioned on LibraryThing.com (LT) by SpiralStar who has also posted an LT review for World War Z. In fact, there are a lot of reviews for this book and it’s pretty highly rated.

What caught my attention?

I’m not usually into zombie books as a genre, but I’m always intrigued when an author puts a new spin on a genre. This is not your average approach to zombies.

This book chronicles the events of a war between humanity and zombies, but in the form of interviews. Each interview focuses on a different aspect of the war – the initial discovery, the military response, the refugees, the relief to war-torn areas. Many different countries are represented, including Israel, the U.S., China, and Cuba; instead of focusing on a small group of similarly-oriented people, the reader is shown how almost the entire world reacts to this catastrophe.

SpiralStar mentions listening to this as an audiobook, which sounds like it would add to the book since it is based on character interviews. The broad scope that is covered is another thing that intrigues me about the premise. This book is reviewed by 91 people on LT and manages to rate a 4.23/5. That’s good enough for me to take a chance on it.

I’ve decided to share my finds and the excellent reviews of my fellow book bloggers each Monday. Leave a comment with a link to your post or a trackback if you decide to play along.

The ninth book to catch my eye in my book blog browsing was Neuropath by Scott Bakker reviewed over at Blood of the Muse.

What caught my attention?

Wouldn’t a review that starts like this get your attention? Especially when it’s clearly not a brief review:

This review is pointless; it is deceptive, illusory and filled with meaningless rationalizations. Yet I’ve become conscious to the fact that I am writing it. Or I believe at least that writing it is an act of my own volition. Now that I’ve lost my entire audience with my incoherent ramblings, I can assure you that I haven’t descended into philosophical lunacy or decided to embrace my inner nihilist. (I’m all for spanking one’s inner nihilist, by the way.) Instead, I find myself slowly coming to grips with Scott Bakker’s unsettling new novel, “Neuropath”. And “unsettling” may just be a drastic understatement!

If that doesn’t make you want to read the review, well then I really can’t help you.

I’ve decided to share my finds and the excellent reviews of my fellow book bloggers each Monday. Leave a comment with a link to your post or a trackback if you decide to play along.

The eighth book to catch my eye in my book blog browsing was Sweet Love by Sarah Strohmeyer reviewed by S. Krishna over at S. Krishna’s Books.

What caught my attention?

I’m always interested by an interesting premise, especially when it is followed by an enthusiastic review. Here’s the premise from S. Krishna’s review (which, in turn came from the dustjacket so I don’t feel too guilty for borrowing it:

Like other well meaning mothers, Julie Mueller’s believed that she did the right thing when she secretly ended her teenage daughter’s crush on Michael Slayton, a wild older neighborhood heartthrob with a penchant for Shakespeare and the pedigree of trailer trash.

Twenty years later, Betty Mueller has come to realize that was a big mistake. Her daughter Julie – divorced and raising a teenage daughter alone – is a workaholic obsessed with her career. And Michael, the one man who could make her happy, is the one man to whom she won’t speak a word.

Of course, an interesting premise isn’t always well executed. S. Krishna’s verdict is:

I have but one word to describe Sarah Strohmeyer’s Sweet Love: DELICIOUS. The novel was beautifully written, hilarious, at times tragic, and altogether wonderful.

Of course, S. Krishna says more about why she found the book so delicious. But you’ll have to go read her review to find out for yourself.

I started answering in the comments, but it’s a) not a short answer and b) a question I’d like to see your answers to. So this is how I pick my books:

One way is my favourite authors. Once I’ve read two or three books by an author that are consistently enjoyable, I buy their books sight unseen (and in hardcover no less). Once I’ve bought one or two books that are poor by those authors, I stop buying them. I might check out the next book or two at the library, but after that I’m done.

When it comes to picking books by authors I don’t know, I’m much more careful. If I’m in a bookstore I go by title and cover. If I can get past those, I’ll look at the marketing copy on the book. If I get past that, I read the first page. If I get past that and I’m still interested I might put it on my wishlist. I’ve never been able to pin down exactly what it takes to get me past each of those hurdles. I’m more of the “I’ll know it when I see it” book chooser

Only if I’m hooked and can’t wait (or desperate for a book) I’ll buy it right away. Er, desperate for a book often means I’m eating take out in the food court and I need reading material. Your definition may vary.

Most of my book buying nowadays is done online (reasons for that are a whole other post). Instead of browsing the shelves, though that is possible, I will do a search on a particular topic or come across a book review on another book blog (I post those finds on Mondays). Once I get to a book though, the process is pretty much the same as in a bookstore (especially now that you can find excerpts and first chapters online, which is huge in terms of getting me to commit to a book I can’t hold before I buy).

I do look at the publisher before I consider a book online, which I don’t do in a bookstore. Anything self-published gives me pause because there is a lack of editorial quality control (and though the occasional author is right that their manuscript should not have been turned down by established publishing houses, the majority are mistaken).

One thing I haven’t been looking at (and that I’ve since learned to look at through book blogging, though I often forget even if the information is available) is the trim size and the number of pages. I’m often surprised by the thickness (or thinness) of books I receive and the overall page size because I haven’t bothered to look.

I rarely grab a book on a whim, because when I buy a book I plan on keeping it. In order to keep a book, it needs to be either non-fiction or a good enough book to reread after a year or so (I’m unlikely to remember a book’s plot after reading 100 books in the meantime).

I am not an easy sell. Even as a book blogger where it’s possible to get a book by promising a review, I am not an easy sell. If I ask for a review copy, I am committing to read that book which is a huge time commitment. On top of that, I’m committing to write a review of that book. It’s much harder to write a review of a book I didn’t like, so I try to reduce the chances of not liking a book by being picky about what I request. I look at it as a test of a book’s marketing. If you’ve snagged me as a reviewer, you would have snagged me as a reader (assuming I had unlimited time and money).

If I’m not the right audience for the book after all the pre-checking I do, then I think I owe it to other readers to explain why. I’d rather have picked a good book for myself to begin with.

So, how do you pick your books? Join the discussion at Mini Book Expo, leave a comment here, or blog it.

I’ve decided to share my finds and the excellent reviews of my fellow book bloggers each Monday. Leave a comment with a link to your post or a trackback if you decide to play along.

The seventh book to catch my eye in my book blog browsing was The Hob’s Bargain by Patricia Briggs reviewed by Lynn over at Paperback Writer.

What caught my attention?

When I’m not reading book blogs, I’m reading author blogs. Lynn Viehl has written 40 books. Think about that for a minute: 40 books. So when she had this to say about The Hob’s Bargain, I was curious:

The Hob’s Bargain was a quiet landmark in my writing life. Just as I was really being trampled by the indifferent hooves of publishing’s herd and hoopla, it reminded me that this is what writing books should be about: creating great stories to delight the unsuspecting reader. It was also the first book I put on what would become my writer’s writers shelf.

There are books that inspire us, and then there are books that save us. This one did both for me.

I have a collection of books that I keep to inspire me to write. Some of them I keep because they are very, very bad (there’s hope for me) and some of them I keep because they are very, very good (I want to write like these people). I prefer to add to the second pile. And who knows, maybe one day I’ll get to live in a parallel universe like Lynn does:

If you’d told me in 2001 that someday a quote from me would appear on the cover, I’d have laughed myself into the hiccups. In what parallel universe could something like that ever happen?

Go read the whole story of what this book means to Lynn as both a reader and a writer.

Random lines from my current read (once again I’m cheating a bit):

Once the acid of his methodological doubt had eaten its way through everything else, what he was left with was not, technically, even an “I,” but merely the realization that there was thinking going on. More correct than “I think, therefore I am” would be “Thinking is taking place, therefore there must be that which thinks.” But that hardly has the snap to make it a slogan fit for generations of T-shirts and cartoon panels. (p. 29, ARC)

–Descartes’ Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason by Russel Shorto

I’ll go back to following the rules next week (maybe, I keep saying that every week).

Random lines from my current read (I’m cheating a bit because it just such a nice passage):

I no longer inhabit a world that tolerates people born without the capacity to deceive. The world I’ve chosen regards such people as children, with no idea of how the world really works. These children, meanwhile, regard the inhabitants of my world as pitiable cynics who happened one day upon their last remaining hope clinging by its fingernails to the edge of the abyss, and decided with great weariness to just stomp the damn hand. (p. 71, ARC)

–A Monk Jumped Over A Wall: A Novel by Jay Nussbaum

I wish this guy wrote more books. I’ll go back to following the rules next week (maybe).

I’ve decided to share my finds and the excellent reviews of my fellow book bloggers each Monday. Leave a comment with a link to your post or a trackback if you decide to play along.

The fourth book to catch my eye in my book blog browsing was A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini reviewed by The KoolAid Mom over at In The Shadow of Mt. TBR.

What caught my attention?

The KoolAid Mom wrote a lengthy review so it’s hard to pick out one thing in particular that caught my attention. This paragraph sums up what piqued my interest:

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a visceral account of life in a war zone, the horror, the sounds and the bodies. It is beautiful at times with poetic passages and loving moments between characters, while revealing the life of oppression women were forced to endure during the Taliban rule in Afghanistan. It is haunting, depressing, joyful, and hopeful.

There’s quite a bit more to this thoughtfully written review, so I encourage you to check it out.