Recent Book Activity

I am a reader, traveler, kayaker, hiker, old film lover, baker, homebody, adventurer, photographer and bookcrosser!

I love to travel, but I try to pack light. Books are great to have along on a long trip abroad, but a little heavy to tote around, so I give my books away as a I go, leaving them at hostels or giving them to friends. I did this long before I joined bookcrossing!

Since joining bookcrossing, I'm always hoping for a great catch. I love the randomness of wild releasing. As soon as a book has been read, I leave it somewhere or pass it on to a friend.

Because I'm always looking for books so that I can wild-release as many as possible, my shelf doesn't necessarily reflect my tastes.

I love many classics, even more so than most current novels. I've found a few quotes in a couple of modern novels that reflect my thoughts on why this is:

"I read old novels. The reason is simple: I prefer proper endings. Marriages and deaths, noble sacrifices and miraculous restorations, tragic separations and unhoped-for reunions, great falls and dreams fulfilled; these, in my view, constitute and ending worth the wait. They should come after adventures, perils, dangers and dilemmas, and wind everything up nice and neatly. Endings like this are to be found more commonly in old novels than new ones, so I read old novels." --The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield

"A tale of friendship and adventure [The Three Musketeers]that has stayed fresh even though tastes have changed and there is now an idotic tendency to despise action in novels." --The Club Dumas, Arturo Perez-Reverte

I tend to prefer stories with a bit more action in them and not, as a modern trend seems to be, emotional journeys. I enjoy British cozy mysteries. Give me a big old country-house and a tramp through the moors and I'm happy. Oh yes to Sherlock and Agatha Christie and G.K. Chesterton. I also love Edith Wharton, Jane Austen, George MacDonald, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Alexandre Dumas, Arturo Perez-Reverte, Jasper Fforde and L.M. Montgomery.

I've got a blog about life, food and travel and a brand sparkling new twitterfeed that I'm not sure if I like, under the name @photogjenn.

I enjoy reading history also and am particularly interested in history and fiction about London

and Edinburgh
and Scotland
and Alaska
and New Zealand(all of where I lived a while)
and Japan (where I visited)
and my homeland--the Great Plains of America.
I've recently moved to Southern Cal and would love to read up on the history of the area.