Booking Through Thursday: Gifts

Any books you’re hoping to get for the holidays this year?

How about giving? Are you giving any good ones?

I have mentioned that I would like the newly reissued audiobook of Brideshead Revisited (as read by Jeremy Irons), but I don’t expect it. While I won’t say who gets what (just in case they read my blog, which I doubt), there are copies of Outlander and Friday Night Lights under the tree. I just really hate giving books that I personally haven’t read and think the recipient might enjoy, so I’m ultimately quite picky.

Book Blogger Appreciation Week 2010

I have to admit, I’m a bit tentative about registering for Book Blogger Appreciation Week–it feels a bit presumptuous on my part. But the website says, very firmly, that you’re simply registering yourself as a blog in a certain category, and then, a lot of fellow book bloggers are doing it. So why not?

The Literary Omnivore is what Book Blogger Appreciation Week terms an eclectic book blog, in that I don’t specialize in any one genre and make an effort to read widely. Besides reviewing books, I also review films adapted from books (whether I’ve read the book in question or not), feature books on my ever-increasing reading list in my weekly feature, The Literary Horizon, and try to use my Sunday Salon posts to address issues in the book and publishing world that I’ve been contemplating or just talk about the joy of books. As an ace woman, I also hope I can provide an interesting and fresh perspective on romance and sex in literature.

I feel the following posts from this year are representative of my blog as a whole.

1. Review: The Gaslight Dogs
2. Review: Friday Night Lights
3. Review: Mirror Mirror
4. Page to Screen: The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy (Extended Editions)
5. The Sunday Salon: Bookmarks

(We now return to your regularly scheduled posts.)

Review: Friday Night Lights

Friday Night Lights by H. G. Bissinger

I do not understand sports. It took me halfway through watching Rudy to identify Rudy’s devotion to Notre Dame football to my geekier devotions and enjoy the film. (Sean Astin was amazing in it, but there’s neither here nor there.) I guess I just don’t have the sort of competitive streak that sports require. So when I saw Friday Night Lights at a book swap in my student center, I picked it up because I wanted to understand. I still don’t understand sports completely, but I have a better handle on it now.

The Sunday Salon: Bookplates

In the way that other people often dream of their weddings, I dream of my ultimate library. The centennary editions of Tolkien displayed lovingly on a shelf by themselves, the wall to wall shelving (a dark wood, but not black, I think), and the filing system–fiction on one wall, nonfiction on another, alphabetically organized. There’ll either be a roaring fireplace or a wide window, depending on the space and what level the library is on. And each book will have a bookplate, neatly pasted on the very first page (hardbacks) or the inside cover (paperbacks), declaring that it comes from my library.