"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."

Anonymous asked: Two questions: 1) If you had to recommend one single book (and I realise how difficult the choice must be) as the one everyone NEEDS to have read, which one would that be? And 2) You read so much, do you ever write yourself too (eg. a journal)?

Oh hello Anon! (I LOVE getting nice anons!)

1) is a horrid horrid question, I hope you know that XD Speaking from experience, there are two books that I’ve ever actually spur-of-the-moment bought friends when they said they’d never read it. Those are Pride and Prejudice and To Kill a Mockingbird. However, I’ve had limited success getting people as enthousiastic about these as I am. My best and oldest friend (who is also a person I take book recs from regularly) shockingly did not care for Mockingbird, though she had previously read P&P and liked it (though not to the same extent that I do). I’m actually trying not to do this anymore, because I find that my very enthousiastic recommendations often feel pushy to the recipients and the expectations are too high. It’s basically me sitting there (metaphorically) going “and? and? do you love it yet? do you adore it? did you cry?” and that just doesn’t work at all. I regularly casually recommend books, usually one from my re-read list, and those get a better reception.
To answer the “why these” implicit in your question: I think that everyone should try Austen. There is so much to learn in each of the novels about human nature and how society works (even now) that I disagree completely with those who call her work outdated. The humor in her novels, the rich character development: that will always be worthwhile to read.

It’s much the same for To Kill a Mockingbird: both novels show you, without telling you, what right and wrong might mean, what might help you decide what’s important to you - who you are.
Good novels can show you nuances in the world around you - that’s the most important part, to me. I explain it poorly, but that’s about it for me.

2) I don’t write a journal, because nothing very exciting ever happens to me and, having once perused one of my teen journals, the potential for future embarrasment always stops me whenever I try now. As a young teen, I wrote a (very poorly constructed though fun to write) “book”, but after that first one, never finished another story. Whenever I have urgent school deadlines, the desire to write strikes me again, but I suppose I just haven’t been inspired.

30 day book challenge - day 9.

30 day book challenge - DAY NINE.

9. Your favorite quotes about books.

Can I just say I’m really enjoying this challenge? First off, the one I’ve already posted in “quotes from books” and that I’m getting tattooed at some point:

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”

Then there are a couple of excellent Austen quotes, from and about books:

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”
(For once, Caroline Bingley has a point even if she’s just pretending. Pride and Prejudice) 

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
(Henry Tilney, Northanger Abbey) 

And then the same sentiment returns in a more explicitly sex-oriented way in this John Waters quote:

“We need to make books cool again. If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t fuck them.”

30 day book challenge - day 5.

30 day book challenge - DAY FIVE.
(I know it’s a day late!)

5. If you were stranded on a desert island, what five books would you take with you? Include one reason for each.

Those would probably be my re-read classics, or some of them. I’d add the complete Shakespeare, because that isn’t cheating.
The reasons are pretty much the same across the board: I know I can re-read these forever.

so:

- Either the complete Austen, or just P&P

- To Kill a Mockingbird

- One Hundred Years of Solitude OR 1Q84

- The complete Shakespeare

- 1984 OR Brave New World, depending.

And if I wanted to be a smart-ass, some kind of “how to survive on a deserted island”. But not Robinson Crusoe.

30-day book challenge - day 1

30-day book challenge: DAY ONE.

1. Your ten favorite books of all time.

See, I hate “favorite book” questions, because they are too difficult, but ten is doable. Ten is an okay number. If you read my blog, and the book blog, regularly, you probably know that I have a number of what I call Re-Read Classics which I pick up about once a year. Here are some of those :)

- Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen [and basically all her other novels minus perhaps S&S]

- To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

- One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Márquez

- Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

- 1984 - George Orwell

- Good Omens  - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett

- Dune - Frank Herbert

- Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami

- Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

-The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

So for the giveaway

isserleylovesbooks:

I was thinking two, maybe three paperbacks from my re-read classics list? P&P, To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, A Handmaid’s Tale, Never Let Me Go, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Looking for Alaska maybe…

Either with or without notes from me at favorite parts - written in or on post-its if you prefer your books pristine…

Would people be interested in this?