StephanieW's Profile

(I am proud to say that I was a charter member of PBS. I originally joined a month after its founding in 2004 and completed a few trades. However, the selection here was slim at the time and I left the site. It's now a few years later, the book availability is sky-high, and I'm back! My old username was "Stephanie" [it was frozen and is now unavailable due to inactivity]--so if you recognize me here now, it's the same me! Oh, and I absolutely love new friends on here--so add me if you'd like to do so.)

*** All of my books come from a household free of smoke, animals (with the exception of our 6 lb. Pomeranian dog) and children (I know kids can sometimes wreak havoc on books). Some of my books come from other members here or through Ebay and I can't verify if they've ever been around smoke, cats, etc. I can detect a smoky-smelling book a mile away, so rest assured that I'll never send one--new or secondhand--that smells like smoke (if requested). I will also never send a book that has stains, foul odors, or looks as though it's about to fall apart. (I've actually thrown away--before reading--a handful of books I've received that smelled like urine, were stained, or whose bindings were not intact, so rest assured that I only list books in the condition that I would want shipped to me.) Also, I ship books out promptly--usually within one day of receiving a request and I mark books sent/received within a few hours of mailing or receiving.

Stephanie Is: 27. a rural Ohioan. happily married to Bill since December 27, 2005. owner of an adorable Pomeranian dog, Luigi. small town girl. one quarter away from earning a (with a 4.0 GPA) Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature (with a Women's Studies minor) from Wright State University. planning to attend graduate school at Drexel University and obtain a Master's degree in Library and Information Science. hoping to become an academic librarian. child-free by choice (most likely until her 30s). a lover of artistic aesthetics. of Czech heritage. appreciative of sunny days, kindness, & small dogs with big eyes. the creative type. writer of words. connoisseur of books. literary theory dilettante. feminist. unabashed liberal. sometimes sarcastic. wearer of peasant skirts and Birkenstocks. adoring of the rural life. a music fiend. consumer of classic television. prone to philosophical ramblings. a prayer devotee. a dreamer. a believer in Judaism and Christianity. a believer in loving, not hating. a dweller in a quaint apartment. currently at work on her first young adult fiction novel. overcoming depression and an anxiety disorder. an INFP. best friends with her ma(ma). unapologetically imperfect. suffering from cornea disease (it started at age 19 due to contact lenses) so severe that she can no longer drive at night and is considered legally visually impaired. praying for miracles.

About My Love of Books and Writers: My writer and librarian mother started reading to me the moment I was born. At the age of 3, I learned to read on my own and began a lifelong obsession with books and words. While most children begged to go to the playground or toy store, I begged to go to bookstores and libraries. To add the weirdness, I'm known to read coupons, ads, and telephone books if nothing else is available to me. I have over 2,000 books on my bookshelves (60 percent which I have yet to read), but I continue to buy more. (FYI: A lot of books are purchased brand new by me.) I convince myself that someday I will have time to read them all--and plus, there is something oddly comforting about possessing so many books. The aisles of literary fiction, biographies, and novels about creative living are my first stops in bookstores, but I also harbor a secret love for (shhh!) true crime, teen literature, well-written chick-lit, and self-help novels. For proof see my Amazon.com wishlist. It contains academic (i.e. literary) works and pleasure reads. I'm also a magazine fiend and subscribe to 34 magazines. (Oh, and my book/writer lists are not all-inclusive. To compile such a definitive list would take me forever. No kidding.)

Favorite Writers: Muriel Spark, SARK, Jeanette Winterson, Flannery O'Connor, May Sarton, Mikhail Bulgakov, Sabrina Ward Harrison, Boris Pasternak, Nikolai Gogol, Graham Greene, Chuck Palahniuk, Michael Chabon, Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Walker, Dorothy Allison, Natalie Goldberg, Wilkie Collins, Haruki Murakami, Joyce Carol Oates, Edith Wharton, Adrienne Rich, Shay Youngblood, Richard Wright, Saul Bellow, Betty Smith, William Burroughs, Tom Wolfe, Margaret Atwood, Annie Dillard, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ann Patchett, Suzan-Lori Parks, Laurie Notaro, Ann Rule, Dante Alighieri, Virgil, Megan McCafferty, Seneca, Henry James, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Michelle Tea, bell hooks, Meg Cabot, Marge Piercy, Mary Gaitskill, Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou, Simone De Beauvoir, Sylvia Plath, Douglas Coupland, Francesca Lia Block, Maxine Hong Kingston, Virginia Woolf, Milan Kundera, Marianne Williamson, Pagan Kennedy, Ian McEwan, Evelyn Waugh, Daphne Du Maurier, Alice Sebold, James Joyce, Penelope Lively, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, E.M. Forster, Oscar Wilde, Stephen King, Leo Tolstoy, Elizabeth Bowen, Geraldine Brooks, Elizabeth Berg, A.M. Homes, Alice Hoffman, Khaled Hosseini, Jeffrey Eugenides, Lisa See, Jane Austen, John Updike, Mary Shelley, Kiran Desai, Anita Desai, Rita Mae Brown, Sir Thomas Malory, Pat Barker, Jamaica Kincaid, etc., etc.

Genres That I Love: literary fiction, personal memoir, world literature, British literature, medieval literature, feminist/women's studies literature, Indian (as in belonging to India, not Native American) literature, gothic fiction, victorian literature, well-written psychological thrillers, supernatural thrillers (true or fictional accounts; no paranormal romance or time travel), personal improvement literature, religious and theological literature (with an emphasis on Judaism or Christianity), poetry, fiction or non fiction written by marginalized women and/or other marginalized groups, artfully written horror and suspense, true crime, classic literature, intriguing mystery fiction, escapist--yet carefully crafted--teenage and adolescent literature.

Genres That I Loathe (I'm Sorry!): romance, westerns, poorly written and/or plotless chick-lit, science fiction, graphic war or military sagas, most cookbooks, most fantasy.

"No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books." -Elizabeth Barrett Browning