Musing Monday, A book-mark and book club news

Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about your tbr pile…

How many books (roughly) are in your tbr pile? Is this in increasing number or does it stay stable? Do you ever experience tbr anxiety in the face of this pile? (question courtesy of Wendy)

Oh...my.....gosh. My "To be read pile" is HUGE!! And I keep buying more books. And going to the library. I used to think I was a fast reader, and I'm faster than average, but not nearly as fast as you BOOK BLOGGERS!!!

I actually think I have a sickness, when it comes to buying books. Truly, my tbr pile is close to 60-70 books and I just keep buying more and more. But to be fair, I do frequent used book stores, so I have my list and I "stock up". But I do it OFTEN. It would not be unusual for me to leave a used book store with 15 books. And because we live in a rural town in Northern Nevada that doesn't have a bookstore, when we travel to Reno and I go to Barnes and Noble or Borders, I feel I must buy some books, even if I don't need them.
It's a horrible obsession. No one needs a pile of books, 60-70 deep, that they haven't read. IT'S EXPENSIVE for one thing. And it's clutter for another... but, oh what nice clutter, books just waiting to be read!!
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Last weeks, Booking Thru Thursday question... ( I know it's Monday, but I've been real busy....food blogging, (sorry, book blogging world) but I still want to put my answer down) :

Which is worse:
Finding a book you love and then hating everything else you try by that author, or
Reading a completely disappointing book by an author that you love?

It's a toss up. I think that finding a book I love and then going and BUYING (see the Monday Musing above) other books by that author, and then being disappointed in them, is a huge let-down.
I love the book "Beach Music" so much, that I'm afraid to try anything else by Pat Conroy. That's a lie. I read and liked "The Prince of Tides" also. But no others.... I'm afraid to.
I guess I would be more forgiving of an author that I already loved, if he/she had a bad one. Loving one book and hating others is a disappointment. It's a hard question to answer.
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Bookmarks on Monday

Oregon Coast Bridges. I love Oregon. I love the Oregon Coast, but I have a love/hate relationship with bridges.
I grew up around bridges. I had to cross bridges all my life...to go to work, to go to school, to come home, to visit friends. We grew up in Southeast Washington State, where the Columbia River and the Snake River and the Yakima River all come together.
These are big rivers. Rivers big enough to have barges and also cruise ships come down. Think the Mississippi of the Northwest, when you think of the Mighty Columbia River.

When I cross a bridge tho, for some reason my heart is in my throat. I don't know why. I love the water. I love the rivers. I love the ocean. I guess I've seen that video clip of the suspension bridge coming down. YIKES. That and there is no where to go on a bridge if you needed to pull over. I don't like knowing that... it makes me feel claustrophobic.
I am weird. That's it.

This book-mark has two sides, because the Oregon Coast Highway has so many bridges to cross. It's very beautiful.

Last week, one of my book clubs met to discuss the book "Snow Falling on Cedars".

It was an older book, and I was kind of disappointed in the choice at first, but once I began to read, I fell in love with it.

That's the whole reason I belong to different book-clubs: to be exposed to different genre's of literature. It was a story of love, and small town life and prejudice and war. Set on an island off the coast of Seattle, Washington in the 1950's.

I am not a book reviewer...as I've said many times before, but I can talk about how wonderful our evening was. We had great discussion, which is always good, but one thing that also made the evening special was our host April. She made up a bunch of oriental appetizers. She had a book theme going on.....some of the characters in the book were Japanese and April had lived in Tokyo. She had just the right dishes and decor. Great ambiance.

While we eat, we discuss.

Check out her appetizer table!
Tomorrow I will post April's fried rice recipe on my food blog. (it was so good---just hit my sidebar button for my food blog)

And our next book is.....