Today’s Booking Through Thursday question asks, “If you had to pick only 5 books to read ever again, what would they be and why?”

Okay. Five books that I wouldn’t get horribly terribly bored reading over and over again for the rest of my life. No big deal, right?

Well, the first one I would pick would be The Phantom Tollbooth, which I have already read about eight million times. I always find different parts to fall in love with all over again, so I could probably read it eight million more, easy.

The other four? That’s more difficult… there are plenty of books that I’ve read and would certainly love to read again, but forever? Or books that I’ve read twice or three times and enjoyed every time, but would I like them a fifth time? Augh!

So, let’s cheat a bit for the next one and pick Fragile Things, a short story collection I read recently and mostly enjoyed. So now I have like 30 stories I can pick and choose from, which makes the rest of my life a little more varied!

A hopeful choice would be The Sparrow, which I’ve only read once but I absolutely adored it and I keep telling everyone else to read it and now I kinda want to go read it again. So, fingers crossed that it has staying power!

Another book I’ve only read once but might be okay reading forever is The Manual of Detection — it’s technically a mystery novel, which would eliminate it from consideration because, hey, I already know whodunnit, but it’s so delightfully written that I think I could dip into it for a dose of wonderful every once in a while.

For a last book, let’s cheat some more and throw in the Oxford English Dictionary, because hey, I want value for my limit and that thing is honking big. And, I mean, it’s a dictionary! That’s useful AND educational AND entertaining if you’re a big enough nerd, which I totes am. I do miss my online access to the OED…

So there you go! Any objections to my list? Additions of your own?

Today’s Booking Through Thursday question is more like several: “What’s the last book you were really EXCITED to read? And, were you excited about it in advance? Or did the excitement bloom while you were reading it? Are there any books you’re excited about right NOW?”

Oooh, good questions! To the first couple, the last book that I was all “omg why is this book not in my hands RIGHT MEOW” about was One of Our Thursdays is Missing, which feeling was only heightened by the fact that I saw it come into the library about a day or two before it made it into my grubby little hands. And it was totally worth it.

The last book that I was excited about while reading it was A Visit from the Goon Squad, which I was vaguely familiar with as “that awesome book that won some schmancy prize or other” but otherwise clueless about. Then I started reading it, and I was just so smitten with the way Egan built the book that I couldn’t put it down. Love.

What am I excited about right now? Well, I have a whole stack of books sitting here at home, but none of them are really crying out to me. And I am terrible at keeping track of when books come out, so I’m not sure what’s out in the near future. I did hear the other day that there will be another Flavia de Luce mystery coming out for the holidays, and while I won’t quite be first in line to get that book, I am definitely planning on reading it!

What are you guys excited about? What should I be excited about, if only I had any idea it was happening?

Today’s Booking Through Thursday asks, “All things being equal (money, space, etc), would you rather own copies of the books you read? Or borrow them?”

Well, I imagine that if I had more money and more space, I would buy more books. Because I like books, and I like authors, and I like supporting the books and authors I enjoy. And I do quite like owning the books that I love because a) I get to see them on a regular basis and b) I can easily loan them out to friends (read: force them upon unwitting victims).

But of course, I am also a longtime lover of the library, as you would know if you saw the shelf my husband just cleared out for me today just for my library books. I have a problem. But it’s a good problem, I think, in that the books are free and when I go to read one and I don’t like it or I realize that I no longer have an interest in reading it, I can go give it back to the library without hard feelings. And if I like it, I can wait a little longer to get the trade paperback (which is cheaper and lighter, which is good for my wallet and shelves) because I don’t usually have an intense need to re-read things immediately.

So, all things being equal, I’d say that I still like my current method of obtaining books — checking millions out of the library, loving a handful, and showing off that handful on my shelf. If only I could afford bigger hands…

Today’s Booking Through Thursday question is… “In contrast to last week’s question–What do you think of censoring books BECAUSE of their intended age? Say, books too “old” for your kids to read?”

There are two components to my answer. The easy one first — I absolutely do not believe in blanket bans on books that are “too old” or “too young” for a certain age group. Kids should have the opportunity to read what they want.

The second one is in regards to my own hypothetical children, or even my kid brother who is twelve these days, which is astounding. As I’ve mentioned before, I take a lot of care in picking out books for William, largely because I want him to like what I get him and thus like reading. Which he seems to, so excellent. He’s not the best reader, and reads a lot of things I would have been well past at his age, so I try to strike a balance between things that are written for kids his age and things that he is capable of reading without giving up on. I won’t buy him the little-kid books he loves because I think he can do better, but I do try to find similar stories in a higher reading level.

On the opposite side, you can take my reading habits as a kid — I started reading The Baby-sitter’s Club books in kindergarten and was reading Sweet Valley University when I was ten or eleven. I bring up this latter because I distinctly recall asking my mother what condoms were after reading about them in an SVU book, because from the context I thought they might be snack food and maybe we could get some. Yeah. Gross. I am certainly glad that my parents never kept me from reading whatever the heck I wanted, because I read a lot of great books that way, but I know that my hypothetical children will not be getting books with sex in them for Christmas when they’re eleven. And if they’re reading them on their own, they will be informed that I expect to be able to a) read that book and b) discuss it with them after they read it. It’s not that I want to keep my kids from reading things that are above their age-appropriateness; I just want to make sure they understand what they’re reading, because that’s really the important part.

My poor, poor, hypothetical children.

This week’s Booking Through Thursday asks… “Do you read books “meant” for other age groups? Adult books when you were a child; Young-Adult books now that you’re grown; Picture books just for kicks … You know … books not “meant” for you. Or do you pretty much stick to what’s written for people your age?”

Well. Let me do a bit of a longitudinal study here… -examines Goodreads-

Okay, so. I was going to say that I read a lot of YA and children’s books, because they are short and quick and usually delightful, but it turns out that I read way more adult-age-group (as opposed to “adult,” which sounds skeezy) books in general. But I suppose I read more books for young’uns than the average 25-year-old? I don’t know what the average 25-year-old reads. Nothing?

Anyway. Back to the point. In high school, I read a lot of YA, of course, but I also read a lot of adult-age-group books, including some that I still love today. Excellent. Then, in college, I didn’t read, like, at all for the first few years, except to re-read The Phantom Tollbooth, continue A Series of Unfortunate Events, or read through A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels. Those were some fun library trips!

So the first three or so years of college were about kids books. The summer before my senior year, though, I tried really hard to actually read books over summer break instead of working myself to death, and so I managed quite a lot of adult-age-group books, and then I read lots of stuff for classes during my senior year, and then when I got out of college I continued on that path.

The reason that I think I read all of these YA books is that after I got laid off and started reading ALL of the books, reading more book blogs, and going to library school, I found a lot of cool YA books I had never heard of and therefore devoured. Especially last year, when I took a whole class on YA services and had to read 21 books for it… a lot of my reading time after that class was spent reading the rest of series and other books by the same authors.

So far this year my reading is back to where it was a couple years ago, probably because I’ve burned myself out on YA books, and because I don’t have people constantly recommending new awesome ones to me! And on the flip side, I have lots of people recommending excellent adult-age-group novels to me every day, and my list is just so full! Of course, there’s plenty of year left and this could still change — got any books to recommend me? 🙂

This week’s Booking Through Thursday question is, “All other things being equal–do you prefer used books? Or new books? (The physical speciman, that is, not the title.) Does your preference differentiate between a standard kind of used book, and a pristine, leather-bound copy?”

This is an interesting question. A quick look at my bookshelf shows a preference toward new books, which makes sense since I generally don’t buy books unless I’m going to keep them. And I’ve learned from experience that you can’t keep an older used book indefinitely unless you have a lot of patience and tape. But I do have a few used books that I’m planning to keep; for these I looked specifically for the least used-looking of the bunch, and they have worked well for me.

And I do have a decent collection of last-legs, or nearing there, used books, largely come my way by giant booksales. These I buy because they’re 14.7 cents or whatever and I’m not terribly concerned about liking them or reading them a second time, and I know that if I don’t treat them too terribly I can always take them to a used bookstore where someone else can worry about their cracking spines. Of course, some of them turn out to be really awesome books, and so I try to touch them as little as possible so I don’t have to buy a new copy, but of course eventually they will fall apart and the new books will inhabit my shelves again. 🙂

Today’s Booking Through Thursday asks… “Who would you rather borrow from? Your library? Or a Friend? (Or don’t your friends trust you to return their books?) And, DO you return books you borrow?”

That’s a lot of questions! First, I tend to prefer borrowing from the library, because even though the library lets me keep things for a while it eventually wants them back or I have to start paying some serious fines (it’s $0.20 per day, here!). With friends, there’s usually not a set date for returning books except “as soon as you’re done”… and so unless the book is something I am already interested in reading (like Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, which I read the day I borrowed it), that might take a while.

Second, I’m pretty sure my friends trust me not to, like, lose their books or burn them or something, but I think they know it’s going to take me a while to return them. 🙂 I know that’s how it is with books I’ve lent out, one of which I have been itching to read and am thisclose to checking out of the library. And third, of course I return them! I want mine back, so my friends get theirs back. Just sometimes it takes a while. Like how I’m returning a tape next weekend that my friend lent me… a long time ago. I would say possibly two years. And that I still haven’t watched, but can no longer even attempt to do so because we got rid of our VCR. But I have kept diligent track of it, so I think that counts for something!