(Re)Introducing Lori

Hi, I'm Lori.  I was with The Broke and the Bookish in the beginning, then I took a lengthy leave-of-absence due to the craziness that is getting a Master's in History.  But life has finally calmed down enough for me to be able to return and the old regulars were gracious enough to let me.

What is your dream bookish job?

My dream bookish job would be to organize the papers of some of my favorite authors.  I would love to be a Hemingway scholar or a Faulkner scholar.  This more or less combines all of my training and loves--books, History, and the MLIS degree I'm currently working on.  But now that I'm getting into the swing of things...being a free-lance writer sounds really appealing--variety, the ability to choose my own projects, working from home.  We'll see.

Do you have any authors whose books you'd put on an "auto-read" list...no matter what they wrote?

I would definitely auto-read Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, and Plath if they were still contributing.  For an author who is still contributing (I think, I hope) I would say Rebecca Wells because I love the four books she's written and I hope more are forthcoming.  I'm sure there are others, but those five quickly come to mind.

Favorite place to shop for books?

I generally order books from Amazon or off of my Nook because Stillwater, Oklahoma doesn't have a very good bookstore.  I have Amazon Prime, so I get books really quickly.  And (I discovered yesterday) our UPS man is awesome!  He delivered a book to me at the beginning of his route because Zach and I are such good customers (his words).  But I love when Zach and I make a trip to the city and go to Barnes and Noble.  We browse for quite a while, usually one of us buys a book we don't need and don't have room for, then we sit in the cafe and have coffee and read.  It's one of the most special things we do.  In my hometown there is a fantastic used bookstore that has just about everything.  You really have to dig because literary fiction can be found in about three different sections.

How do you organize your bookshelves?

I would show you all of my shelves if I could but they're scattered between two locations.  I have just a few books at the apartment I'm sharing with Zach, so I don't have much to organize there and most of my books are at my parents' house.  All of my books are split between fiction and non-fiction.  At the apartment, the organizing ends with alphabetizing.  At my parents' house, the non-fiction is categorized chronologically (Revolutionary War, then Civil War, then late 19th century, and so on).  I have a couple of subcategories--bookish reads, sports history, and Hollywood-related books--that are separated out.  Fiction is separated into contemporary fiction and the Classics, which are divided by country (with a few categorized by continent because outside of France and Britain, I don't have much European lit)  Within each group, everything is alphabetized.

How do you balance reading and school/work?

I just do it.  Once I'm done with work, I try to read on the couch when I'm not making supper or cleaning or doing something with Zach.  Now that I've started up school again, I'm striving to get all of my schoolwork done during the week so the weekends are largely open to reading.  I'm also going to make a point to read for a bit each night.

Are there any types of books you WON'T read?

I traditionally have not been a reader of YA, but I am trying to be more open-minded and less judgmental about it.  However, I will not read Twilight or The Hunger Games.  I just don't want to get into it.  I am Harry Potter all the way as far as series go.

Do any of your friends, family or significant other share your passion?

My dad and papa will read anything I hand them and tell them to read.  Zach reads a lot as well.  Right now he's mostly reading history books because of his comp exams and then his dissertation.  But he has a pretty impressive fiction collection as well.  And he's actually read the books he owns (show off).  So, I guess you could say that the three men in my life share my bookish passion.

And for a few facts about me…

The basic: I graduated from Oklahoma State University with BAs in English and History and a French minor in 2010.  I finished an MA in History - Public History in 2012.  My thesis was a literary history piece that I would consider working on again in the future.  I will finish my online MLIS degree in 2014.  I live with Zach in Stillwater.  After we both graduate we'll get married and move wherever he gets a teaching job, then I'll find something because my options are a bit more diverse (whereas he can only teach at a university/college; not wanting anyone to think I'm being negative about his opportunities).

The bookish: I have always loved reading.  I credit my parents with this love.  They read to me each night.  Once I could read on my own, they never really monitored what I read, so I started reading grown-up books when I was about 8 and it kind of went from there.  I fell in love with Gilmore Girls when it came out because it was so literary (other reasons too, but that helped).  One of my goals is to read all of the classics on the Rory Gilmore list.  I am horrible about buying books.  My bank account will be so low that I have to transfer money over to cover my Amazon bill, but I keep buying.  It's like the Erasmus quote:  "When I get a little money, I buy books.  If there is any left over, I buy food and clothes."

The random: I have two other passions aside from reading.  I love cooking.  So much.  I usually cook Southern or Italian food, but Zach and I are shifting to a Mediterranean type diet, so I'll start cooking those dishes as well.  I wish I could spend my entire day cooking and reading because you can do one of my favorite activities with those--drinking wine.  My other passion is baseball.  I have a team, but I also just love having it on in the background while I read.  I have a few close friends who love baseball as much as I do, so we always talk baseball.  I'm afraid of birds and sponges.  I love coffee.  I am on Pinterest pinning things all the time, but I hardly ever make any of them.  

I guess that's about it.  Feel free to ask if you have any questions.

New Contributor - Get to Know Bridget

Hi, I’m Bridget! I’m so excited to be writing for The Broke and The Bookish—I’ve been following for quite a while! Here are my answers to some fun interview questions.

What is your dream bookish job?

Shoot, if I could be Stephen King’s editor or his blurb-writer (if that’s a thing), I think I would die of happiness. Not only just because I love his books, either; he just seems like a really great person from what I’ve seen/read of him. But since that will never actually happen, I would settle for being a reviewer for a publication and more or less getting paid to read. I used to want to go into publishing but not so much anymore. So basically my ideal is probably doing reviews part-time for extra money while also slaving away in the non-profit sector as I do now.

Do you have any authors whose books you'd put on an "auto-read" list...no matter what they wrote?

Stephen King, for sure. A few years ago I probably would have said Dean Koontz as well, but he hasn’t been living up to my expectations with his past few books. Most likely J. K. Rowling, depending on how this non-Harry Potter book of hers turns out. And definitely Jane Austen, if she was still alive and writing (or if they ever find any more of her unpublished works).

Favorite place to shop for books?

All bookstores are magical, but for different reasons. Sometimes I crave the clean, wide open spaces of a Barnes & Noble, or I want to get something immediately and/or in hardcover, and you can’t deny that “new book smell” is awesome. Other times, if I’m just looking to browse or I’m looking for a book that I don’t want to pay full retail price on in case I don’t like it, I’ll find a used bookstore. The musty, cramped, you-never-know-what-you-might-find excitement of a used bookstore can be really fun! The same goes for library book sales—when I was at school in Boston I used to love going to those. And finally, it’s nice to be able to shop on Amazon sometimes just because then I don’t have to move my lazy butt off the couch and the books are delivered straight to my door. :)

What does your bookshelf look like and how do you organize it?

Here’s one of them:

...and here’s the other:

My boyfriend and I live together so these are shared bookshelves. The first is entirely fiction, organized alphabetically by author, and the second is a mix of the rest of the fiction we couldn’t fit on the first shelf and non-fiction, which is organized by subject. We’re going to need another bookshelf for my boyfriend’s giant stack of dental school textbooks, which is currently taking up the space by the window:

How do you balance reading and school/work?

I try to make a conscious effort to read something every day, even if it’s not necessarily a book—I love Slate.com and can always find an interesting article if I need a five-minute break at work! But I do try to bring my books to work with me to read on my lunch break, and my boyfriend and I generally like going to bed early to read together.

Are there any types of books you WON'T read?

I refuse to read any of that “paranormal teen romance” stuff that has been clogging up YA shelves these past few years. I didn’t really get into YA until after I was sort of past “the age” for it, but I love dystopian series like Divergent and The Hunger Games. I also don’t really go for romance generally, but that’s just because I burned myself out several years ago on V. C. Andrews—that was literally all I would read pretty much from the ages of 12-15. Luckily I found Stephen King right around then and haven’t looked back.

Do any of your friends, family or significant other share your passion?

My boyfriend and I are both pretty voracious readers. Our tastes differ quite a bit, though. He’s very much into non-fiction (he’s incredibly smart and is constantly on a quest to “learn a little bit about everything”), especially about the Civil War or anything written by A. J. Jacobs. We’re both huge Jane Austen geeks, and he’s also a big Oscar Wilde fanboy. I’ve gotten him into Stephen King in the past few years, but he’s had rather less success with getting me into his favorite genres, although I do enjoy A. J. Jacobs quite a bit as well. Most of my friends are also hugely book-nerdy like me. Other than that, though, neither of my parents are big readers, and my younger sister (she’s 20) literally only JUST started reading for pleasure earlier this year when I bought her a boxed set of The Hunger Games.

And for a few facts about me…

The basic: I’m a 2011 Boston College graduate, double major in Linguistics and Communications. I won’t be 23 until November but I am for whatever reason often convinced that I already AM 23. My family is huge and exhausting. I live with my boyfriend of almost four years in Anne Arundel County, Maryland and work as a Community Manager with the American Cancer Society. I am strangely proud of the fact that I was a sousaphone player in the marching band in college (hey, we had some really cool experiences, like the one below...the Dropkick Murphys invited the band to play at their St. Patrick's Day concert at the House of Blues in Boston, and the sousas got to go up for an encore). 

I'm the one all the way on the left.

The bookish: I have loved books since before I could read. I apparently used to memorize my childhood books to such an extent that I would reprimand my parents for skipping pages when they wanted to be done quickly. Other relatives quickly discovered that this was a great way to amuse themselves and they would read every other word just to make me crazy. (When I was a toddler. And they wonder why I’m messed up.) I’m slowly coming around to the concept of an e-reader and I’ll probably get myself an iPad sometime around my birthday (I’ve used iBooks on my phone and I actually like it quite a bit, especially because you can actually “turn” the “pages,” unlike on a Kindle). Retail therapy, for me, much more often consists of buying books than buying clothes.

The random: Styrofoam really freaks me out—I hate touching it, I hate the sounds it makes, I hate everything about it. One of my life goals is to learn at least one musical instrument from every “family” (i.e. woodwind, string, percussion, brass, etc.) and ideally dabble in all of them, or at least the ones in a traditional orchestra. I have a HUGE thing for men in uniform (my boyfriend is Army and most of the men in my family have been in the service at one point or another). I am DYING to own a Bernese Mountain Dog because aren’t they just the fluffywuffiest things EVER?? 

My heart just exploded.

So um…I guess that’s it about me. I’m going to go look at pictures of Bernese Mountain Dog puppies now. If you'd like to learn more about me and see some of my writing, you can check out my blog here :) Thanks for reading!