Writing about books makes this workweek suck less.
bluepapermate tagged me to write about books.
1. One book you have read more than once
See, I bet most of the answers for this are going to come from my highschool and college years, when I had lots of time to read and reread and get emotional about what I read. So, yeah: Catcher in the Rye. I read it five or six times, I think? Actually, no, that number seems a little low. Also around the same time that I was reading Catcher a whole lot, I was obsessed with "DeDaumier-Smith's Blue Period," from Nine Stories. The paperback I have still opens to the beginning of that story, despite that it's been pressed into a crowded bookshelf for years. I've read that story at least twenty times, and I've read all of Nine Stories probably four times. Man. I wonder what would have become of me had I spent less time in high school and college reading the same books over and over.
2. One book you would want on a desert(ed) island.
The Literate Loner's Island Survival Guide. NEW BONUS SECTION: Raft-Building For Dummies! I hope this exists. If not, I'd bring Ulysses so that I could try to finish it before I died of starvation.
3. One book that made you laugh.
I believe I may have rolled off the couch when I was reading Pastoralia, by George Saunders. Saunders was presented with a MacArthur Genius Grant last week, and if you read Pastoralia, you'll know why.
4. One book that made you cry.
I'm pretty sure I cried at The Sound and the Fury the first time I read it. Besides the fact that my eternal Literary Boyfriend, Quentin Compson, spouts eloquence for 110 pages and then DIES, there's also the last scene of the book, with Dilsey and her kids and Benjy at church on Easter, and it exudes hope and hopelessness in such a perfect, familiar way that you just have to let out some palpable show of emotion -- a tear, a sigh, anything.
5. One book you wish you had written.
Lolita. Hell, if I could write a single page that exhibited something approaching Nabokov's linguistic mastery, I'd be totally fine with getting shipped off to that island, sans Literate Loner's Survival Guide, and dying of starvation.
6. One book you wish had never been written.
Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The last person who asked me "why?" surely regretted it, but was very polite and somehow restrained herself from asking me to shut up. I'll save my rant for the same entry in which I talk about The Squid and the Whale, which I think I disliked for similar reasons.
7. One book you are currently reading.
Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson. I've been on a YA kick lately.
8. One More than one! book you have been meaning to read.
For the last ten years or so, I've wanted to read Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel. My ignorance of what it's even about, save for a bare-bones storyline, is a huge, dark hole in my knowledge of Southern literature. Also, I've been dying to read more Joan Didion, but when I was at the library the other day, I was so distracted by my YA obsession that I forgot to see if they had The White Album. And speaking of YA, one of these days I'm finally going to read M.T. Anderson's Feed, and John Green's Looking For Alaska.
9. One book that changed your life.
High school: Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky
College: The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
Post-college: Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
I'm tagging: anyone who enjoys writing about books.
1. One book you have read more than once
See, I bet most of the answers for this are going to come from my highschool and college years, when I had lots of time to read and reread and get emotional about what I read. So, yeah: Catcher in the Rye. I read it five or six times, I think? Actually, no, that number seems a little low. Also around the same time that I was reading Catcher a whole lot, I was obsessed with "DeDaumier-Smith's Blue Period," from Nine Stories. The paperback I have still opens to the beginning of that story, despite that it's been pressed into a crowded bookshelf for years. I've read that story at least twenty times, and I've read all of Nine Stories probably four times. Man. I wonder what would have become of me had I spent less time in high school and college reading the same books over and over.
2. One book you would want on a desert(ed) island.
The Literate Loner's Island Survival Guide. NEW BONUS SECTION: Raft-Building For Dummies! I hope this exists. If not, I'd bring Ulysses so that I could try to finish it before I died of starvation.
3. One book that made you laugh.
I believe I may have rolled off the couch when I was reading Pastoralia, by George Saunders. Saunders was presented with a MacArthur Genius Grant last week, and if you read Pastoralia, you'll know why.
4. One book that made you cry.
I'm pretty sure I cried at The Sound and the Fury the first time I read it. Besides the fact that my eternal Literary Boyfriend, Quentin Compson, spouts eloquence for 110 pages and then DIES, there's also the last scene of the book, with Dilsey and her kids and Benjy at church on Easter, and it exudes hope and hopelessness in such a perfect, familiar way that you just have to let out some palpable show of emotion -- a tear, a sigh, anything.
5. One book you wish you had written.
Lolita. Hell, if I could write a single page that exhibited something approaching Nabokov's linguistic mastery, I'd be totally fine with getting shipped off to that island, sans Literate Loner's Survival Guide, and dying of starvation.
6. One book you wish had never been written.
Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The last person who asked me "why?" surely regretted it, but was very polite and somehow restrained herself from asking me to shut up. I'll save my rant for the same entry in which I talk about The Squid and the Whale, which I think I disliked for similar reasons.
7. One book you are currently reading.
Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson. I've been on a YA kick lately.
8. One More than one! book you have been meaning to read.
For the last ten years or so, I've wanted to read Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel. My ignorance of what it's even about, save for a bare-bones storyline, is a huge, dark hole in my knowledge of Southern literature. Also, I've been dying to read more Joan Didion, but when I was at the library the other day, I was so distracted by my YA obsession that I forgot to see if they had The White Album. And speaking of YA, one of these days I'm finally going to read M.T. Anderson's Feed, and John Green's Looking For Alaska.
9. One book that changed your life.
High school: Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky
College: The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
Post-college: Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
I'm tagging: anyone who enjoys writing about books.