Booking Through Thursday: Recent Serious

What’s the most serious book you’ve read recently?
(I figure it’s easier than asking your most serious boook ever, because, well, it’s recent!)

This is rather difficult as I read significantly less fiction than I should. As you can tell from "Currently Reading" at the top of the page, all four books I'm reading at the moment are non-fiction. However, if I had to choose one, I'd probably have to say a People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, or maybe the Joseph Smith Biography. Patience and Fortitude is a good read, but its rather fluffy. Charing Cross Road is an epistolary and rather laugh out loud funny, think female Lewis Black Chewing out a British Bookseller, and you've got the basic idea. The Joseph Smith biography, I'm obviously kind of speechless on. The thing has its ups and downs, definitely has some "What the..." moments, but overall its pretty dry and boring. Zinn's book is extremely interesting in approach and ideas, but it feels like walking through thick mud at times, which is why in the end, it ties with the Smith biography. I just can't decide.

Booking Through Thursday Double Feature

Doing something a bit different this week. I'm doing two weeks of BTT at the same time! I missed last week's, so I'm doing it now just for the hell of it, and I'm also doing this weeks. The current BTT question is first, followed by the previous one.

Do you buy books while on vacation/boliday? Do you have favorite bookstores that you only get to visit while away on a trip? What/Where are they?

There are two mom and pop metaphysical bookstores where I live, Quest, run by the Theosophical Society, and East/West, run by Ananda. However, my favorite normal bookstore of all time, Powell's City of Books is in Portland Oregon. I try to at least go in and look around whenever I'm in Portland. The store is amazing. The flagship is a giant maze of a story that you could literally get lost in, thankfully they have maps available at the front door.


What would you do if, all of a sudden, your favorite source of books was unavailable?

While B&N is great, my two favorite bookstores of all time are run by religious brotherhoods. Quest, run by the Theosophical Society, and East/West, by Ananda. Given, I could probably get most of the books these two stores sell somewhere else, maybe even cheaper if they went out of business. However, part of shopping there is the experience itself. I know many of the people who work at both stores personally from going to church and other functions with them, and the buildings themselves seem to have their own life and energy that the books retain. Looking at my collection, I could probably tell you what I bought from one of these stores and what I got online simply because they "feel" different.

BTT: Trends in Reading

Have your book-tastes changed over the years? More fiction? Less? Books that are darker and more serious? Lighter and more frivolous? Challenging? Easy? How-to books over novels? Mysteries over Romance?


When I first started reading, it was mostly novels, adventure stories, Louis Satcher, Wayside, stuff like that. As I've gotten older, my taste in novels has advanced appropriately, I'm reading more "adult" authors, but I've also started reading more non-fiction than fiction. I'm more likely to pick up a Krakauer, than a Kostova, Zinn than Koontz. However, I do still read a number of novels. Comics are another thing. All through elementary school and highschool I read a bunch of Foxtrot and Calvin & Hobbes, and once I got into highschool, I started reading manga. I still read the funnies, and I'll read some manga on occasion, but it just doesn't hold my interest anymore. I should note that I started reading quite early. I was, I think, six or seven when I cracked my first book, a Berenstein Bears book, but give me a break, its still reading.