Category Archives: Goodreads

June 30, 2015   sharon   Goodreads, quotes, reading, Sharon  
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Living Sentences

 

I’ve been thinking about sentences today. This morning I came across a Buzzfeed post rounding up “53 Of The Most Heartbreaking Sentences In Fantasy Books”, including DGLM author Jacqueline Carey at #9. Then around lunch time David Morrell’s RAMBO was included in a HuffPost list of great opening sentences. And just now a Facebook pal shared this beautiful Paris Review essay about discovering a sentence from his long-out-of-print book had a wild and unexpected new life. The signs are clear – sentences are the theme of the day, and it got me curious about sentences that truly stand out.

Fiction writers work so hard over every detail of their books, carefully choosing a setting in place and time, planning out the key plot events, bringing the main characters to life. But it seems that many of the most quoted (most Pinterested, Instagrammed, tattooed, wedding-vowed) sentences have very little to do with the story or its characters. Just browse the most popular quotes on Goodreads, and you’ll see that I’m right – very few of these offer any sort of spoiler, or are hard to understand if you haven’t read the book. They are sentences powerful enough in their meaning and in the beauty of their language to live outside of the book that was their first home.

I spent some time pondering my favorite sentences from my lifetime of reading, and wanted to share a couple with you here.

“It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Corrigan had lost his line with God: he bore the sorrows on his own, the story of stories.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“No bathroom on earth will make up for marrying a bearded man you hate.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“How quickly he fell; how soon it was over.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

 

Have you ever loved a sentence from a book you haven’t read? What are your favorite sentences?

Share in the comments!

November 18, 2014   sharon   Goodreads, great books, netflix, Sharon  
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Rory’s Reading List

I’ve started watching this great show on Netflix. It’s called Gilmore Girls – ever heard of it? Okay, so maybe it’s not a hidden gem; when the series hit Netflix a month or so ago, my Twitter exploded with glee from ecstatic fans who began planning marathons, comparing favorite episodes…and chastising in shock and horror those of us who have never seen an episode (even our own Miriam Goderich was appalled at me).

So this weekend I finally bowed to the pressure. And I found something to love right away – Rory Gilmore has a book in her hand in almost every scene. In fact, her high school sweetheart first notices her when she is so utterly absorbed in a book that she is oblivious to a fight breaking out nearby.

And it turns out I am not the only one to notice the bookwormyness of Gilmore Girls. From this EW list highlighting seven titles to this massive Buzzfeed post on all 339 books mentioned in the show, the internet seems to love Rory’s reading lists as much as they love the show itself. One superfan even pledged to read every one of those 339…and this Goodreads list will make it easy for the rest of us to add a few to our own TBRs.

Reading is not a spectator activity, usually, so hats off to Gilmore Girls for making the love of literature so prominent in such a lively show. And now I’m thinking how to add more bookishness to my favorite shows…maybe one of the firms on The Good Wife could represent a library facing an FBI subpoena of patron activity! And come to think of it, The Mindy Project just finished an arc in which one of Mindy’s party-boy coworkers dated a romance author and learned authors a lot more fun than he expected.

What other shows would you like to see add a book-loving character? Ever discovered a favorite book recommendation through a character on television?

 

November 04, 2014   sharon   awards, competition, Goodreads, Sharon, Voting  
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I VOTED

It’s Election Day today!  Kudos to those of you already proudly sporting an I VOTED sticker, and to those of you who will make it to the polls by the end of the day. But don’t let the voting fun end there! Another election is taking place right now, one even more exciting and important than the one which determines our nation’s government – and you don’t even have to wait in line in a school gymnasium to vote in this one: The 2014 Goodreads Choice Awards.

 Okay, so maybe this is a little more for fun and a little less for the fate of the future (unless you’re an author with a book in the running, that is!). But it’s still fun to think about your favorite books of the year. There are 15 books presented in each category –Goodreads picked their initial nominees based on the stats from their site, so it’s TRULY democratic. But don’t worry, you can write in your own picks as well! And if you’re like me, and second-guess every award short list that’s announced, this is the perfect chance to actually have a say in picking winners!

New to Goodreads? It’s a fun way to catalog the books you own, the books you’ve read, or to simply check out what passionate readers thought of a book you’ve been planning to pick up – I’m planning to check out The Romanov Sisters and The Museum of Extraordinary Things. So click through the categories and cast your vote. Bonus points if you just so happen to vote for some DGLM authors’ books, like these Jim suggested on Twitter for starters.

Did you any books that didn’t appear on the list as nominees? Add any new titles to your To Read list? What’s your favorite way to use Goodreads?