JulietteJones

I rarely give up on a book, unless it's utter crap. For example, (I'm loathe to bring up Dan Brown, but meh), I read The Da Vinci Code years ago and thought it was a ripping good yarn (it damn well was), but then when I picked up Angels and Demons... yeah well I read about 20 pages in, realised it was the exact same story as the Code, and have never (nor will I ever again) read Dan Brown again. Currently I have a book called Funeral Rites by Jean Genet on the go... it has no chapters... the characters morph into others. Genet jumps from being himself to someone else entirely in the space of a sentence... I can't do it right now, it's too confusing and, quite honestly, a bit of a drag. So it's on hold with all good intentions of being finished. In other words, I'll give up a book if I think it's trite and dull, I will put a book on hold (and feel the guilt every moment I think of it sitting there waiting for me) if I think it's a worthwhile read, but a little too obscure for what I'm feeling at that point. (It took me a year to read Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan, and that has got to be one of my favourite books ever, it just had to be put on hold every few chapters)

I almost refuse to buy new books. I adore second-hand books and second-hand book stores! I especially like second-hand books that have scrawlings and comments from previous owners... dedications are my favourite, and I love when people leave clippings and notes between the pages. I bought a book of Poe, it was 100 years old and had a weird old newspaper article about the signs and markings that gypsies leave behind to let the ones who follow know what kind of place/community they are in. I brought a Ted Hughes book and it also had a very old article about the author shoved into the pages. I have found pictures of the virgin Mary, irate letters to debt collectors and rail-way tickets... all adds to the charm I think. I personally make a point of marking all my books in some way. I get people to write in them for me, or I write in them to myself. I leave notes on how I thought the book was, whether I liked it, and at times I correct grammatical errors that useless editors have overlooked. Second hand books are beautiful! They smell so awfully nice, and I love that someone else has owned them and, in some cases, loved them too.