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

This week’s question is: …do you have any grammar books? Punctuation? Writing guidelines? Style books? More importantly, have you read them? How do you feel about grammar in general? Important? Vital? Unnecessary? Fussy?

This is a subject near and dear to my heart. I could go on forever, but I’ll try to restrain myself.

To answer the first part of the question, I do. While I was organizing and cataloging my books, I decided to organize and catalog my writing, grammar, and style guides separately and learned I had somewhere around twenty (not including books on the craft of writing or storytelling). And yes, I’ve read them. In fact, I refer to some of them on an almost daily basis.

To answer the second part of the question, yes, I do feel grammar is important. It’s more important than some people realize because we often don’t notice it until it’s egregiously bad. Good grammar helps convey a message with ease. Poor grammar, however, stymies it.

With the proliferation of texting, instant messaging, tweeting, and other mediums which limit the amount of time devoted to crafting a grammatically correct message, it’s as though we get to watch grammar die a slow and painful death at the hands of technology.

People may say grammar doesn’t matter as long as the point gets across, and to a degree that’s true. Grammar doesn’t need to be perfect all of the time (and I’ll be the first to admit I have my moments), but it’s important to be mindful of how your grammatical choices enhance or detract from your writing. It takes more mental power to process a passage that uses poor grammar than one which uses good grammar.

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

This week’s question is: What’s the best book you’ve read recently? (Tell me you didn’t see this one coming?)

This was a tough decision to make. I’ve read some mediocre books of late, but I’ve read some great ones too and I was having a difficult time choosing between them.

But the winner by a few points is The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. (Coming in a close second is Generation Dead by Daniel Waters.)

I adored reading The Lightning Thief and its characters and adventuring with Percy. When I finished the book, I was breathless and in a mild state of awe wondering why I had waited so long to start this series. (It’s kind of like Harry Potter in that sense…you’re beating yourself up for being literarily lazy.)

The review is in the queue. Shame on me for still being lazy.

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

This week’s question is: What’s the worst book you’ve read recently? (I figure it’s easier than asking your all-time worst, because, well, it’s recent!)

I didn’t have to think too long to find an answer to this question…the prize would have to go to The Well by A. J. Whitten.

Usually I don’t finish books if I feel I will dislike them (since life is far too short to suffer bad books), but I was actually looking forward to reading The Well since I knew A. J. Whitten was Shirley Jump’s pseudonym and during the reading I kept praying it would get better. It didn’t.

The book has not yet been released, so I still have hope that it will go through at least one more round of editing.

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

• Hardcover? Or paperback?
• Illustrations? Or just text?
• First editions? Or you don’t care?
• Signed by the author? Or not?

The answer to all of the above questions is it depends.

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

Do you read any author’s blogs? If so, are you looking for information on their next project? On the author personally? Something else?

I do read author blogs. It’s mainly just to see what they think about, how they write, and glean any valuable insights they may be willing to dispense. And sometimes an author’s blog is just downright hilarious.

Basically, since I enjoy writing, it interests me to see how others approach the craft. Where inspiration comes from, what boundaries they set, what obstacles they overcame, and so forth. It’s rather voyeuristic, now that I think about it.