This tag has been circulating among my Facebook friends this week and since I was up at 2:00 a.m. last night unable to stop coughing long enough to fall asleep, I thought I would do something productive with my time. I was actually an English major many moons ago although for the past few years I have rarely put my needles down long enough to read much, unless you count stitch pattern books that is. As a kid growing up on a farm, with few playmates near by and not really liking the outdoors much I found quite a bit of refuge in reading. I devoured everything that I could find over the summers, whether it be Zane Gray paperbacks from my father, Harlequin Romances that I snuck away from my Mom, and I would make regular visits to my Nana's attic to go through her boxes of historical novels and old books with well worn pages.
I saw this tag referred to as a modern day parlor game in a comment which I think is appropriate. It is kind of like sneaking a peak into your friend's book shelves. Sometimes I'm surprised by what I see sitting there, sometimes I feel stupid and unread, and sometimes I come away with something I must read immediately.
1) What author do you own the most books by?
D.H. Lawrence
2) What book do you own the most copies of?
The Catcher in the Rye
3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
not really
4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
not ashamed to say Mr. Darcy.
5) What book have you read the most times in your life?
Anne of green Gables
6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
Again with the Anne of Green Gables
7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?
My well intentioned mother in law insisted that I read The Shack.
8) What is the best book you've read in the past year?
Revolutionary Road, no I haven't seen the movie. The other would be my friend Brian Katcher's young adult novel Playing With Matches that I reviewed here.
9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
Man's Search for meaning by Frankl
10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for literature?
I really can't say, since I don't keep on those things.
11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
Any anthology by Sedaris
12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
Can't believe what they did with Running With Scissors.
13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
I really can't recall at this moment.
14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?
Harry Potter.
15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
Slaughterhouse - Five, I barely made it through.
16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?
1920's interpretation of Two Gentlemen of Verona
17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
Always had a thing for Russian poets.
18) Roth or Updike?
Updike I suppose.
19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
Definitely Sedaris
20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Shakespeare
21) Austen or Eliot?
Absolutely Austen
22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
My Mark Twain exposure is very slim for growing up in Missouri.
23) What is your favorite novel?
Fear of Flying, Erica Jong, helped me to embrace my feminism impulses as an 18 year old and still resonates today for me. Second would be The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, cliche but true.
24) Play?
No Exit, Sartre Hell is definitely other people...
25) Poem?
You Might as Well live by Dorothy Parker has been my mantra at various times
26) Essay?
A Room of One's Own
27) Short story?
Rape Fantasies by Margaret Atwood.
28) Work of non-fiction?
NoonDay Demon: An Atlas of Depression
29) Who is your favorite writer?
probably Atwood
30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
I have to agree with my husband's answer: Toni Morrison, although I do respect some of her work, particularly Beloved.
31) What is your desert island book?
my leather bound Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy set, would help me to accept the absurdity of the situation.
32) And ... what are you reading right now?
a history and philosophy of the Mayans, it's called something about why the world is going to end in 2012 but I'm reading since we'll be touring the ruins in a few months.
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6 comments:
Anne of Green Gables! Me too! I loved those books.
I'm gonna be a total geek here too and give my response: I also can't believe they made Running with Scissors into a movie. I mean, good for Burroughs, but it's not really movieable- too many obscure details that really matter! Slaughterhouse Five- Interestingly enough is what turned me on to Vonnegut and I'm really bored by war stuff usually- it had just the right twist. And the Bell Jar....I've read it about 3 times over my lifetime and always forget whether or not I've read it until I get to the sentence: "...swimming up from the depths of a black sleep..." for some reason that was always burned into my memory. But I now know that yes, I have read that book! Sorry so long....I'll stop now:)
loved your post! I don't know if I could answer all those questions, but it was sure fun to read! I'm reading To the lighthouse, by Woolf right now, for my book club. I have two copied of A room of one's own - but never read anything! by her before this! Now I know what to read next!
Oh no another D.H. Lawrence fan. Lol only teasing, my daughter wrote her doctoral thesis on Lawrence and I am not a fan of the Modernist' era.
I go more for The Romantics. If I am to read poetry, my faves are:Wordsworth, Blake, Thoreau, Tennyson, and Shelley.
I no longer indulge in any serious heavy duty reading. I love Mary Higgins Clark.
Yes I know she is basically a serial type writer rewriting the same story over and over, only changing characters and setting, but, she's such a light and relaxing read....puts me right to sleep!
Happy weekend!
~Jackie:-)
Have to agree with storybeader, in that I'm pretty sure I couldn't answer all of those questions. And Anne of Green Gables-LOVED it. All of them actually. Can't remember, now, how many there are. I think I even watched the movie(s) a time or two. My favorite, most recent, read, however, is The Memory Keeper's Daughter. Highly recommend it. Stay away from the movie, though. I caught a little bit of it on Lifetime a while back. It was awful!
Did you say you're going to see Mayan ruins? When? Which ones? How exciting! I've seen most of 'em, it's an experience you'll never forget.
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