It’s Thursday and you know what that means…another edition of Booking Through Thursday is here.

This week’s question is: What books do you have next to your bed right now? How about other places in the house? What are you reading?

As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words…

(Apologies for the super-craptasical camera phone picture quality.)

Rundown of the books are: Reading Like A Writer by Francine Prose; The Eyes of the Amaryllis by Natalie Babbitt; Goody Hall by Natalie Babbitt; The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan; Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen; White Cat by Holly Black; Ash by Malinda Lo; Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater; The Invisible Gorilla by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons; A Wish After Midnight by Zetta Elliot; The Metamorphoses by Ovid (which is concealed); Bite Me by Christopher Moore; The Rural Life by Verlyn Klinkenborg; The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot; The Autobiography of an Execution by David R. Dow; and The Hollow by Jessica Verday.

And probably not surprisingly, I also have a stack of books on the floor near my bed, but I’ll spare you. As for having books in other places in the house, um…of course. An easier question would be, where don’t I have books?

Right now my reading is rotating between three books. Having finished The Unwritten Rule on Sunday and slated to complete Dork Diaries (Book 2) today, I will be working Shade by Jeri Smith-Ready into the mix with Stolen by Lucy Christopher and Rumor Has It by Jill Mansell. (I’m a mood-based reader, hence the seemingly random book pool.)

It’s Thursday and you know what that means…another edition of Booking Through Thursday is here.

This week’s question is: Plots? Or Stream-of-Consciousness? Which would you rather read?

Plots.

Unless the author’s stream of consciousness is phenomenal and offers some redeeming quality like insightful character development or makes me ponder something greater than myself such as life, death, or love.

In fact, I’d love to hear about any great stream-of-consciousness stories if anyone has read one. Maybe I might change my mind about it.

It’s Thursday and you know what that means…another edition of Booking Through Thursday is here.

This week’s question is: Do you take breaks while reading a book? Or read it straight through? (And, by breaks, I don’t mean sleeping, eating and going to work; I mean putting it aside for a time while you read something else.)

The default answer (for everything, it seems) is: It depends. Sometimes a book is so gripping that taking a break is near impossible—it even trumps eating and sleeping. For the most part though, I take breaks.

It’s like I have adult ADD or something. But really I’m just a mood-based reader. Sometimes I’m in the mood for something light and fun, other times I want something solid and pensive, then I might want frightening. It all boils down to what I’m in the mood to read at any given moment.

Right now, I’m actually alternating between three different books: two fiction (supernatural fantasy and coming of age drama) and one non-fiction (true crime). For the most part, I try not to read within similar genres. So if I’m already reading a supernatural fantasy, I won’t read another one along side it—mainly so I don’t mix them up.

Frankly, though, I’ve become insane with keeping reading notes which means I don’t need to worry about mixing storylines anyway. (This would require a complete post of its own…which is on my schedule, so look for it soon.)

It’s Thursday and you know what that means…another edition of Booking Through Thursday is here.

This week’s question is: Which do you prefer? Lurid, fruity prose, awash in imagery and sensuous textures and colors? Or straight-forward, clean, simple prose?

Florid or unadorned prose? It’s a difficult decision to make if you enjoy both. But, my preference often depends upon mood and whether said florid prose shifts into the realm of purple and whether the unadorned prose is so sparse as to remove all color.

Two good examples to illustrate my point are The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle (review) and I heart you, You haunt me by Lisa Schroeder (review). (Bet you thought I was going to say Shakespeare and Hemmingway, didn’t you?) I enjoyed both of these books although the former was especially florid:

The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam, but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea.

While the latter was spare in its language:

I pull out the bikini.
The one Jackson bought me.
The one I wore that day.

I can’t wear it.
I won’t wear it.
Never
ever
again.

I should throw it away.
But Jackson gave it to me.
It’s the last thing he gave me.
So I’ll keep it.
But I won’t wear it.

To me, it all boils down to deftness of the writer and whether I’m in the mood to savor a book or devour it.

It’s Thursday and you know what that means…another edition of Booking Through Thursday is here.

This week’s question is: How do you feel about illustrations in your books? Graphs? Photos? Sketches?

Looking around here (especially considering I just published a book review featuring my own illustration), you might have already figured out my answer, and for the most part you’d be right. But the extended answer would be, it depends.

Do the illustrations/graphs/photos/sketches bolster the story? Are they well done? Are they unobtrusive? And probably the most important question is whether it’s a picture book or tutorial—if the answer is yes, then I most certainly expect some illustrations.

Sometimes I’ll even seek out a book because of its illustrations (or artist) and some of my favorite reads of late are graphic novels.

The pictures often help to spark my own creativity.