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A Legend Should Never Be Dimmed

This post was brought on by two things, as usual: my father and a book.  Since who says I can’t be logical sometimes, I’ll start with the former.

Now, my father is a big opera fan; he’s always appreciated opera, a trait he inherited from his mother.  Moreover, he’s a huge Luciano Pavarotti fan and almost shows emotion when he speaks of his death.  He’s not someone who you would call starstruck, but he greatly admired the legend that was Luciano Pavarotti.  Understandably, he was quite outraged when it came out that Pavarotti’s last performance at the Torino Olympic ceremony in 2006 was lip-synched.  At the time, he said something that still haunts me:

“That should never have come out.  A legend should never be dimmed.” Continue reading →

Why do you Read?

Why do you read?  That’s a question I get a lot, mostly because I have my nose in a book over 50% of the time.  But really, why do I read?  Here are just some of the reasons.

Reading is Fun

1.  Enjoyment.

Books are great entertainment and they’re certainly better than what’s on TV 99% of the time.  Hmm…’reality’ TV or a good book that makes me laugh, cry and genuinely care about the characters?  I think that’s a pretty easy decision most of the time.  Of course not all books are great books and some have certainly been much worse than reality TV, but there’s certainly less chance of being lied to constantly when you’re reading.  At least most editors try to get their writers to stick to the facts, whereas most television shows seem to not care as long as they’re getting views.

Good books make you laugh at the characters’ antics, cry at their losses and your heart race when they are in danger.  Movies have the advantage of visuals and audio, but books allow readers to (generally) see inside the characters’ heads and have more in-depth knowledge of what’s going on.  I personally find it easier to connect with characters in books than in movies or television because of that, but that might just be me. Continue reading →

Look What Just Arrived! (#7)

Carrie Pictures 2012 280Yes, I’m posting today.  For real this time!  And yes, I went to the bookstore.  Again.  So what did I get there?

  • Hade’s Daughter by Sara Douglass
  • Kushiel’s Mercy by Jacqueline Carey
  • Kushiel’s Justice by Jacqueline Carey
  • Legends anthology
  • The Josephine B. Trilogy by Sandra Gulland
  • The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George

Most of these, except for the Jacqueline Carey books, were completely random reads.  I was in the Used section after finding nothing too interesting in the small YA section (way too much vampire stuff) and stumbled across most of these.  Hade’s Daughter is completely random and frankly I know nothing about it, but I picked it up because it was about ancient Greece.  The Legends anthology (volume 1) is also another impulse buy but I’m looking forward to this one because it has entries by Stephen King, Orson Scott Card and a couple other big names.

The Josephine B. trilogy sounds oddly familiar, but I know I haven’t read it before.  Most likely I had been drooling over it on Amazon in the past, but never bothered ordering it.  The Memoirs of Cleopatra is one I’ve had my eye on for a while, but for $30 it was never happening.  This is one case where I love buying used because although it is over 900 pages, the price should not be that high for a paperback book.  But hey, what do I know about the factors involved in pricing a book?  (Not much, to be honest.)  What I do know is that I bought all of these used books for less than the cover price of The Memoirs of Cleopatra new.