Second meme from microbie!
1. Five of the best living writers
Barbara Kingsolver
Hilary Mantel
Jo Walton
Neal Stephenson
Marge Piercy
A. S. Byatt
(So many people are relatively recently dead, whom I wanted to list! Ursula K. LeGuin, Octavia Butler, Margaret Frazier...)
2. Five formative books
Anne of Green Gables
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (and Tom Sawyer)
Harriet the Spy
The Lives of a Cell
The Communist Manifesto
3. Five books you recommend to anyone
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Nickled and Dimed
SevenEves
The Lilith's Brood trilogy
Shogun
4. Five books that are overrated (hard because mostly if I think they're overrated, I refuse to read them, so can I really judge?)
anything by John Updike (and Philip Roth, too)
Eat, Pray, Love (have not read it)
Wuthering Heights
Catcher in the Rye
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
5. Books people expect you to have read based on your background/job/interests
A teacher? Who teaches 7th grade Social Studies and English/Language Arts? I think they expect me to read a lot of contemporary literature and young adult fiction. Otherwise, a socialist and feminist?
Virginia Woolf
Karl Marx
Harry Potter series
YA dystopian series
Paulo Freire
6. Have you read them?
Never read any Virginia Woolf. I've read a LOT of Karl Marx, and that guy is more of a stylist (and more of a comedian, in the snarky sense) than you might expect. I've read Harry Potter, and most YA dystopian series, and even horrible stuff like the Twilight series when it first came out, to keep up with the kids. I have indeed read Paulo Freire, the Brazilian revolutionary pedagogy theorist and practitioner.
7. Books you recommend based on your background/job/interests
Class Dismissed, about Berkeley High and race and class
The German Ideology, one of the best things Marx wrote
Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
lots of Marge Piercy, lots of Octavia Butler for feminist sci fi
Kim Stanley Robinson for projections about future socialist possibilities and climate change
8. Books that have been on your to-read list for years
Moby Dick -- I read the first few pages and the writing is insanely glorious, but then I bog down
The History of the Russian Revolution, by Leon Trotsky
Lolita, though I quail and may never do it
Tacitus and Suetonius
October (and several other novels) by China Miéville
9. Books you like to have around (this is a little problematic for me now, because I have an iPad which probably has more than 2,000 books, which makes me SO HAPPY)
I used to carry Voltaire's Candide in my shoulder bags at all times
The Communist Manifesto & The German Ideology & Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts
Stephen J. Gould and Lewis Thomas essays
tons of 19th c. YA lit, from Twain through Alcott to Frances Hodgson Burnett
Shogun (I have everything by Clavell, and also everything by McCullough except I don't care about Thorn Birds, and everything by Jean M. Auel, ridiculous though it is...)
10. Any spicy book takes?
I'm not sure what this question means... 19th c. porn? The fact that I have a Goodreads shelf called "Books I've Read More than 25 Times"? My niece tells me that this question means "Hot Takes" -- anything I have a controversial view of... hm. I don't give a damn about the Russian classics, except I liked the one Turgenev book I read. I've never read Lolita and probably never will. I hate 99% of Oprah books, but that doesn't mean I don't read junk, because I SO do. I love genre fiction (genres I love: mysteries, historical mystery series, sci fi, historical fiction, Regency romances and the occasional chick lit one...).
Barbara Kingsolver
Hilary Mantel
Jo Walton
Neal Stephenson
Marge Piercy
A. S. Byatt
(So many people are relatively recently dead, whom I wanted to list! Ursula K. LeGuin, Octavia Butler, Margaret Frazier...)
2. Five formative books
Anne of Green Gables
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (and Tom Sawyer)
Harriet the Spy
The Lives of a Cell
The Communist Manifesto
3. Five books you recommend to anyone
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Nickled and Dimed
SevenEves
The Lilith's Brood trilogy
Shogun
4. Five books that are overrated (hard because mostly if I think they're overrated, I refuse to read them, so can I really judge?)
anything by John Updike (and Philip Roth, too)
Eat, Pray, Love (have not read it)
Wuthering Heights
Catcher in the Rye
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
5. Books people expect you to have read based on your background/job/interests
A teacher? Who teaches 7th grade Social Studies and English/Language Arts? I think they expect me to read a lot of contemporary literature and young adult fiction. Otherwise, a socialist and feminist?
Virginia Woolf
Karl Marx
Harry Potter series
YA dystopian series
Paulo Freire
6. Have you read them?
Never read any Virginia Woolf. I've read a LOT of Karl Marx, and that guy is more of a stylist (and more of a comedian, in the snarky sense) than you might expect. I've read Harry Potter, and most YA dystopian series, and even horrible stuff like the Twilight series when it first came out, to keep up with the kids. I have indeed read Paulo Freire, the Brazilian revolutionary pedagogy theorist and practitioner.
7. Books you recommend based on your background/job/interests
Class Dismissed, about Berkeley High and race and class
The German Ideology, one of the best things Marx wrote
Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
lots of Marge Piercy, lots of Octavia Butler for feminist sci fi
Kim Stanley Robinson for projections about future socialist possibilities and climate change
8. Books that have been on your to-read list for years
Moby Dick -- I read the first few pages and the writing is insanely glorious, but then I bog down
The History of the Russian Revolution, by Leon Trotsky
Lolita, though I quail and may never do it
Tacitus and Suetonius
October (and several other novels) by China Miéville
9. Books you like to have around (this is a little problematic for me now, because I have an iPad which probably has more than 2,000 books, which makes me SO HAPPY)
I used to carry Voltaire's Candide in my shoulder bags at all times
The Communist Manifesto & The German Ideology & Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts
Stephen J. Gould and Lewis Thomas essays
tons of 19th c. YA lit, from Twain through Alcott to Frances Hodgson Burnett
Shogun (I have everything by Clavell, and also everything by McCullough except I don't care about Thorn Birds, and everything by Jean M. Auel, ridiculous though it is...)
10. Any spicy book takes?
I'm not sure what this question means... 19th c. porn? The fact that I have a Goodreads shelf called "Books I've Read More than 25 Times"? My niece tells me that this question means "Hot Takes" -- anything I have a controversial view of... hm. I don't give a damn about the Russian classics, except I liked the one Turgenev book I read. I've never read Lolita and probably never will. I hate 99% of Oprah books, but that doesn't mean I don't read junk, because I SO do. I love genre fiction (genres I love: mysteries, historical mystery series, sci fi, historical fiction, Regency romances and the occasional chick lit one...).