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nsumstine
I like my family and my books, creative ventures including but not limited to drawing, painting, paper crafts, sewing, gardening (more the planting not the weeding). I work in a public library, have co-managed a small bookstore (ordering is fun, accounts payable is boring), and have worked or volunteered in some capacity with print all of my adult life. Actually my first volunteer job was at the grade school library. The book bug bit early.
I'm a bibliophile, but with a budget. I used to be a hardcover book snob and still try never to buy a paperback if I can get it in hardcover. It helps that I work at a library and am not a used book snob. I also read ebooks but my comprehension is substantially better with a book of which I can hold and turn pages. I listen to audiobooks while I work on projects. It is wonderful to listen to Thich Nhat Han while pulling weeds barefoot.
I like just about any good story but especially a good mystery with very little (if any) gore, and not anything with a villain preying on women. No rapists or serial killers and no MH-Clark books. She gets into my head and totally freaks me out. Many of my favorite authors are dead - Dorothy Emily Stevenson, Alan Paton, Mary Stewart, Anne McCaffery, as well as the Modern Classics like Austen and Dickens. I like C. J. Box, Deborah Crombie (although her victims are often women), Sarah Dessen, Seanan McGuire, and have been surprised by writers like Dannika Dark, Diane Henders, Elizabeth Boyle, and Cassandra Clare because they wrote what I thought were pulp fiction genres but turned out to be just really great stories peopled with three dimensional characters.
I started reading romance a few years ago after another library lady loaned me a couple of spy romance novels. I had returned to college and needed mind candy. I was so surprised at the quality of writing. There is a massive amount of poorly written and/or poorly edited fiction out there but it is not exclusive to what people used to consider the pulp genres. I need writing to be well edited. I get too distracted by typing errors, grammatical errors, outrageous implausibilities (make me believe it!). If you can catch and keep my interest I will read any genre except one.
I recently refined my reading rules (more what you'd call guidelines) to three or four including but not limited to:
1. A new book gets three errors before I (figuratively) toss it. Exceptions can be made if the story is so engaging that I don't want to stop reading.
2. Regardless of the quality of editing, if a story cannot hold my interest by the second or third chapter it gets tossed.
3. A highly recommended author gets two books before I quit. I did quit half way through the second book of a very popular series by a best selling author because the writing was so elementary that I just didn't want to waste any more time. I watched the first movie.
4. Implausible characters? I will give it a shot but make me believe it or it gets tossed.
5. I am not likely to pick up an ebook with whatever popular trope happens to be circulating although I am waiting for an alpha shape-shifter-vampire-former Seal to tie me up and whip me until I tearfully and willingly time travel to have his mind reading babies. Just mentioning that, just in case, one never knows who might be reading.
6. No Horror.
7. No math.
I think I'd be considered a 'crunchy conservative', but let's not talk politics! Although I'm often freaked out about social or environmental isssues and am friendly I don't have a lot of energy to join bandwagons or committees. I will write a letter and post something on social media. I might even rant. I will try not to opionionize facts but that doesn't mean I will will feel less passionately about certain issues.
I learned somewhere that we should not make pets of our peeves so I will just say that a thing that often irritates me, besides bad editing, is rumour, lies, or erroneous information passed off as fact. My relatives do this, some of my dear friends have done this, if I do this you may call me on it and I will stand corrected. Opinion is not fact so don't try to correct me with your opinion, back it up.
That is a lot about me, let's hear about you!
I'm a bibliophile, but with a budget. I used to be a hardcover book snob and still try never to buy a paperback if I can get it in hardcover. It helps that I work at a library and am not a used book snob. I also read ebooks but my comprehension is substantially better with a book of which I can hold and turn pages. I listen to audiobooks while I work on projects. It is wonderful to listen to Thich Nhat Han while pulling weeds barefoot.
I like just about any good story but especially a good mystery with very little (if any) gore, and not anything with a villain preying on women. No rapists or serial killers and no MH-Clark books. She gets into my head and totally freaks me out. Many of my favorite authors are dead - Dorothy Emily Stevenson, Alan Paton, Mary Stewart, Anne McCaffery, as well as the Modern Classics like Austen and Dickens. I like C. J. Box, Deborah Crombie (although her victims are often women), Sarah Dessen, Seanan McGuire, and have been surprised by writers like Dannika Dark, Diane Henders, Elizabeth Boyle, and Cassandra Clare because they wrote what I thought were pulp fiction genres but turned out to be just really great stories peopled with three dimensional characters.
I started reading romance a few years ago after another library lady loaned me a couple of spy romance novels. I had returned to college and needed mind candy. I was so surprised at the quality of writing. There is a massive amount of poorly written and/or poorly edited fiction out there but it is not exclusive to what people used to consider the pulp genres. I need writing to be well edited. I get too distracted by typing errors, grammatical errors, outrageous implausibilities (make me believe it!). If you can catch and keep my interest I will read any genre except one.
I recently refined my reading rules (more what you'd call guidelines) to three or four including but not limited to:
1. A new book gets three errors before I (figuratively) toss it. Exceptions can be made if the story is so engaging that I don't want to stop reading.
2. Regardless of the quality of editing, if a story cannot hold my interest by the second or third chapter it gets tossed.
3. A highly recommended author gets two books before I quit. I did quit half way through the second book of a very popular series by a best selling author because the writing was so elementary that I just didn't want to waste any more time. I watched the first movie.
4. Implausible characters? I will give it a shot but make me believe it or it gets tossed.
5. I am not likely to pick up an ebook with whatever popular trope happens to be circulating although I am waiting for an alpha shape-shifter-vampire-former Seal to tie me up and whip me until I tearfully and willingly time travel to have his mind reading babies. Just mentioning that, just in case, one never knows who might be reading.
6. No Horror.
7. No math.
I think I'd be considered a 'crunchy conservative', but let's not talk politics! Although I'm often freaked out about social or environmental isssues and am friendly I don't have a lot of energy to join bandwagons or committees. I will write a letter and post something on social media. I might even rant. I will try not to opionionize facts but that doesn't mean I will will feel less passionately about certain issues.
I learned somewhere that we should not make pets of our peeves so I will just say that a thing that often irritates me, besides bad editing, is rumour, lies, or erroneous information passed off as fact. My relatives do this, some of my dear friends have done this, if I do this you may call me on it and I will stand corrected. Opinion is not fact so don't try to correct me with your opinion, back it up.
That is a lot about me, let's hear about you!
