First post - Welcome!

Hello everyone!  Welcome to my new blog, the View From the Bookshelves, which is where I’m detailing what I’ve started to call ‘The Bookshelf Project’.  What exactly is the Bookshelf Project?  Basically, what I’m going to attempt to do is read or re-read every book that I own.

Let me explain.  I’m the sort of girl who likes to collect things.  Not hoard, but when I like something, I tend to end up with a sizeable about of that thing (you really don’t want to know how many nail polishes I currently own…).  This habit extends to books as well.  A book with an interesting title catches my eye, I pick it up, and it sits around for three years.  I come back with twenty-two books from a vacation and I only read half of them in the ensuing years.  So on and so forth, until I have quite a few books sitting on my shelves and me not sure if I’ve actually read them or not.  I plan to remedy that with this project.

This means that I will read just about everything I own.  Literary classics, fantasy, research, young adult, sci-fi, poetry collections, teach yourself Russian books and more.  The lists may be expanded upon as I find more books lurking in the trunk of my car or on a friend’s bookshelf after I loaned a few for research.  I picked up these books for a reason (mostly…), and I’m hoping to rediscover those reasons through this project.  I’ve divided my collection of over 400 books into three spreadsheets: fiction, non-fiction, and spiritual.  Spiritual’s where I’ve classified holy books and mythological texts, feeling that they didn’t quite fit in either of the other two spreadsheets.

My goals for this blog are the following:

• -          To post frequently with the status of the book that I’m currently in the middle of.  I hope to give a daily page count, and any opinions or insights that I have while reading.  If I give up on a book halfway through for some reason or another, I’ll tell you that too.

• -          To be honest about how I feel about a book, whether those feelings are good or bad ones.

• -          To encourage conversation about books.  As I’m sure is obvious by now, books are one of my favorite things in the world, so let’s talk about them!  If you’ve read a book I’m posting about, or if you have any recommendations for further reading, comment away – I’d love to hear about all of them.

There’s a chance this blog may veer into other topics along the way.  I’ve got quite a few interests out there (especially in regard to things fandom related) so some posts about those things may pop their heads in occasionally.  The main focus of this blog will always be about the books, however.

So I’ll start here.  I’m currently on page 168 of Quite Ugly One Morning, by Christopher Brookmyre.  I’ll be done in the next couple of days, so expect a more detailed reaction then.  For now, I’ll say this: this isn’t the first or the second time I’m reading this book, and I still am having one hell of a fun time.

L.