I stole this meme from Danielle who got it from Simon. Make an alphabetical list of some favorite books and authors. For some letters, I had a lot of authors to choose from and for others I had to really think about it. Anyway, this was fun.

• Atwood, Margaret – The Handmaid’s Tale
• Booth, Martin – Islands of Silence
• Cisneros, Sandra – Caramelo
• Donoghue, Emma – Slammerkin
• Esquivel, Laura – Like Water for Chocolate
• Fitzgerald, Penelope – The Bookshop
• Gaarder, Jostein – Sophie’s World
• Hill, Susan – The Woman in Black
• Irving, John – A Prayer for Owen Meany
• Japrisot, Sebastien – A Very long Engagement
• Kingsolver, Barbara – The Bean Trees
• Lansens, Lori – The Girls
• Mistry, Rohinton – Family Matters
• Niffenegger, Audrey – The Time Traveler’s Wife
• Olsson, Linda – Astrid & Veronika
• Pym, Barbara – Jane and Prudence
• Q – Nothing…
• Rice, Anne – Interview with the Vampire
• Shapiro, Jeff – Renato’s Luck
• Toole, John Kennedy – A Confederacy of Dunces
• Urrea, Luis Alberto – The Hummingbird’s Daughter
• Vreeland, Susan – Artemisia
• Waters, Sarah – Affinity
• X – Nothing…
• Yoshimura, Akira – Shipwrecks
• Zusak, Markus – The Book Thief

It was fun to come up with this list because I got to think back on the books I’ve read. Some of these favorites I read ages ago (I wonder if I’d still like them the second time around and so many years later) and some are a lot more recent.
Who else has done this or wants to play?

Bowl of noodles anyone? Just kidding. That’s my bowl of vellum strips soaking up wheatpaste. This afternoon I didn’t work on my springback book because I wanted to get ahead in a new binding technique I’m learning which will hopefully result in a large journal to be used as a photo album.

The vellum strips will be used in the binding to give it a bit more flair. Why soak them in wheatpaste? Vellum is hard so I want the strips to soften up so I can sew them through the spine and be a part of the binding.

This will be a short post tonight because I need to go rest my arms – I couldn’t even make it to yoga tonight. I had to make 10 cutouts in the spine of the book, where the thread and vellum strips will go through, and this was particularly hard to do because I’m also using vellum on the spine. The spine is thick cardboard reinforced with vellum so it’s quite sturdy. Seriously, I could barely straighten my arms after holding on to scalpel and ruler while I made those precise cuts.

More book talk tomorrow!