Booking Through Thursday: Day and Night

Today’s question is suggested by Mae.

“I couldn’t sleep a wink, so I just read and read, day and night … it was there I began to divide books into day books and night books,” she went on. “Really, there are books meant for daytime reading and books that can be read only at night.”
– ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera, p. 103.

Do you divide your books into day and night reads? How do you decide?

The way I have my schedule structure, the time I have for just pleasure reading is an hour and half before bed–the rest of the day I’m usually pouring over Jane Austen, Shakespeare, or medieval English literature. In that way, I guess, I separate them out- academic reading during the day, me reading during the night. The only other way I separate it, I guess, is if I’m reading horror, which I won’t read at night. For instance, there’s a story about a haunted Majora’s Mask cartridge floating about the Internet that finished up last night, but I couldn’t finish it last night, as I would like to, you know, actually sleep. But otherwise, not really.

The Sunday Salon: Two-Part Film Adaptations

For those among us who have been living under a rock, the next three big book to film adaptations are Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (or, a generation grows up), Breaking Dawn (or, the death of Taylor Lautner’s career), and The Hobbit (or, I didn’t come with a funny name because I’m so freaking excited). The other thing all three of these films have in common? Well, as the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows trailer puts it, they’re all “presented in two parts”. As fannish friends, reader friends, and filmmaker friends express approval over this trend, I often feel a bit awkward when I admit that I think it’s a terrible idea.

Booking Through Thursday: Now or Then?

Do you prefer reading current books? Or older ones? Or outright old ones? (As in, yes, there’s a difference between a book from 10 years ago and, say, Charles Dickens or Plato.)

While I theoretically don’t have a preference, since I like to think I gravitate more towards quality than newness, in practice, books published after 1950 dominate my reading list. The few old books are mostly classics–Ivanhoe, for instance.

It could be the long-winded writing style I sometimes see in 1800s novels that I don’t like, or the fact that I naturally gravitate towards fantasy, which Tolkien downright invented in 1954, although I do have a handful of pre-Tolkien fantasy novels on my reading list to educate myself about the genre. Maybe it’s a subconscious inclination for female protagonists. I can’t really explain myself here, but it might be because I’m fairly young and an English major in college–any desire to read classics is covered by my classes at the moment. I’m taking a class about race and Shakespeare (mmm, Shakespeare’s race issues) and an author study about Jane Austen, which should prove fascinating, although I will have to read Emma again. Thus, I don’t feel the need to seek out classics in my personal reading.

Teaser Tuesday: The Tempest

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

PROSPERO
Dost thou hear?
MIRANDA
Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.

pg. 19 of The Tempest by William Shakespeare

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT with either the link to your own Teaser Tuesdays post, or share your 2 ‘teasers’ in a comment here (if you don’t have a blog). Thanks!