Book Meme (Twenty Questions)
Book meme, last seen on suededsilk's journal.
1. Which book has been on your shelves the longest?
Er. If we're talking physically on my shelves - well, my collection has vastly outgrown my shelves. And they're not in front of me now. But I think it would probably be my dad's copy of Ben-Hur that I more or less appropriated when I was about 12. That's... 15 years.
If we're talking "my shelves" = "my collection," it would probably be my mother's (and grandmother's) Nancy Drew books. I'd read them all by the time I started first grade. Say 20 years.
(Once I get home, something Really Ancient is going to metaphorically slug me in the eye and I'll go, "Why didn't I remember that?")
2. What is your current read, your last read and the book you'll read next?
Current read: Detection Unlimited by Georgette Heyer. Just started, so I'm not sure how it'll be.
Last read: Footsteps in the Dark, also by Georgette Heyer. I loved this one. Spooky excitement every which way, and likeable characters who are siblings. I've been meditating the last week or so on how much I really do love books that involve families, particularly siblings, in good relationships. That needs to make it into its own post.
Next read: Not sure. I have one more of the set of four Heyer mysteries I bought, plus a box of her Regency/historical books. My friend gave me To Have and To Hold for my birthday, too, and it looks pretty good. I'm feeling the urge to re-read some of the Foreigner books, too.
3. What book did everyone like and you hated?
I can't think of one. I don't read books that I know I'll hate; and if I stumble across one, I decide I Hate It, and promptly banish it from my mind. (With a high degree of success, apparently.)
4. Which book do you keep telling yourself you'll read, but you probably won't?
Mr. Scarborough gave me Anna Karenina for my birthday a couple years ago, and I feel bad I haven't read it. But I know (very roughly) what happens and I can't imagine I'd enjoy it.
5. Which book are you saving for "retirement?"
"Retirement" isn't an issue. :D There really isn't anything I'm saving. But I used to read a lot more classics in junior high and high school, and some in college. Now I'm just so busy, and tired when I find reading time, that I've found it more pleasurable to read (mostly) shorter, more adventurous things. But I do miss the words and phrasing that run in my head when I read older books, and there's more 19th-century material I want to get back to. Like Scott and Trollope and Gaskell, and there's some Dickens I've left unread.
6. Last page: read it first or wait till the end?
I read the end of an Agatha Christie once (I think because I was bored with it, rare for me), and it's spoiled it for all time. Occasionally at a USB I will glance at the last page to make sure the tone is happy, before I take a chance on it. The same with some books on Project Gutenberg. (I read very fast, even at a glance, and can gather the feel of the thing without really engaging my mind into its plot meaning.) But if I think I'll enjoy a book, I refuse to read the last. It has so much more meaning when read after everything else!
7. Acknowledgments: waste of ink and paper or interesting aside?
I don't mind them. I read them if it looks interesting (again, that quick reading glance) or I more that usually care about the author, and skip them otherwise.
8. Which book character would you switch places with?
Whew. I love adventurous books, but I am privately certain I'd make a pretty poor showing as the heroes in them. Perhaps I'd be happiest replacing a comrade, but not having to lead everything. *g* The other characters I wouldn't mind replacing are, frankly, the women who find a good man. I remember particularly finishing Emma and really longing for a Mr Knightley. What a guy! Emma is my least favorite Jane Austen, too; I wasn't carried away by the story itself.
9. Do you have a book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time)?
I'm sure I do, but none particularly come to mind at the time. Instead, I'll mention again the soft spot I have for siblings with good relationships. I have been wonderfully blessed with a terrific family, mother and father and three younger brothers. (Plus a still-living grandmother, four sets of uncles and aunts, and eleven cousins; not all of whom are quite as terrific, but still a pretty good, and geographically close, extended family.) It's the healthy sibling relationships, though, that I've suddenly realized I truly love in books. Not sisters - I have no experience with that, so it tugs no particular heartstrings - and not super large families so much, but two or three brothers, maybe with a sister? I love it. I feel at home.
Ralestone Luck, a very early work by Andre Norton, is one such book. It's just plain fun to read on its own merits, as a pre-war mystery/adventure story; but the characters are two brothers and a sister. The genial teasing and fun and care they have for each other isn't overt or melodramatic or anything; it just feels right to me. And I like it a lot. (It doesn't hurt that it was written in 1938, as little details and the illustrations online show. It combines my book-likings with my vintage love! I have a paperback from the 1980s that leaves out the pictures, sadness.)
The flip side of my liking for families like this may mean why I have a harder time with books about more dysfunctional families. It's not that I can't get into books about orphans or in unpleasant situations, no; certainly not. I suppose it's when these, to my mind dysfunctional, families aren't repaired, or are assumed to be normal, that I get subconsciously uncomfortable. The later Falco books started to feel that way for me. It's not really a big deal, but I think it explains some things.
10. Name a book you acquired in some interesting way.
I've got a couple of interesting ones. Nothing outstanding, but interesting.
The manner in which Alistair MacLean's The Secret Ways found itself in my collection I recounted here, nearly three years ago. I don't think anyone I've leant it to likes it, and it is a little different, but I'm fond of it. :)
My copy of Ivanhoe is a little special. It's a small edition, one of those you'll find at antique malls. About 4" x 6", they're smaller than regular paperbacks, and are usually 100 years old or more. They're usually fairly nice books, though, sometimes with illustrations, and good, if small, printing. (My copy of Les Misérables, in two individually-slipcovered books, is printed on Bible paper.) Anyway, these books are sometimes seen as Very Collectible by sellers, and priced for $20-30 apiece. Sometimes they're seen as just little old books and go more reasonably.
In the summer of 1999 (I think) my dad was flying out to Marietta, Georgia, every week for a special job assignment. My mother and brothers and I drove out one week and joined him as a sort of vacation. We had fun, but our one disappointment was that we'd found practically nil in the way of antique shops. So surprising. On the way back, we stopped in Vicksburg in a last-ditch effort, and ended up in a little shop pretty close to the Mississippi. All five of us found something there for awesome prices. My mother, for example, got something like 12 small wooden bowls for about $11, where she'd seen them before at $5 apiece. And I found my Ivanhoe for $4. It's traveled to a lot of reenactments with me. *g*
11. Have you ever given away a book for a special reason to a special person?
Nothing in particular that I remember.
12. Which book has been with you to the most places?
It's always a different book. One semester The Faerie Queene traveled to every class at A&M for about three months, but that's not much of a variety of places. *g* The Morgaine books have been to Fort Washita several times. My little Ivanhoe has probably been to the most reenactments.
13. Any "required reading" you hated in high school that wasn’t so bad ten years later?
I didn't really have much hated reading in high school, and I haven't read that since. I liked Wuthering Heights when I was younger, but now it's slightly infuriating.
14. What is the strangest item you’ve ever found in a book?
I know I've found old boarding passes at least twice. One was from the 1990s or earlier; another is I think from the 1960s.
15. Used or brand new?
Mostly used. Much cheaper and easier to find, for the authors I read. I used to get new books when I was regularly collecting Nancy Drews and other girl books.
16. Stephen King: Literary genius or opiate of the masses?
I don't think I've ever read any.
17. Have you ever seen a movie you liked better than the book?
Mr. Scarborough has called the movie of Ben-Hur better than the book. With slight reservations, I agree. There is So Much More in the book that is good, hence the reservations. But along with leaving out these things, the movie also leaves out some religious/theological aspects (these are not the same thing) that definitely indicate the period Lew Wallace wrote in.
18. Conversely, which book should NEVER have been introduced to celluloid?
Nothing comes to mind.
19. Have you ever read a book that's made you hungry, cookbooks being excluded from this question?
Sometimes the Anne of Green Gables books.
20. Who is the person whose book advice you'll always take?
I don't get much book advice! I tend to be highly skeptical of most recommendations, tending to discount the raptures according to what I know of the person. (How traditional, how trendy, etc. Boy, that sounds cynical.) It's thanks to jordannamorgan, though, that I found the Mr Moto books, estelyn_strider for the Falco books and for Georgette Heyer, and seawasp for Fu Manchu. :p (Surely there's another recommendation of yours I've followed. I haven't dived into the Oz books yet.) I thought I had suededsilk to thank for the Cool and Lam books by Erle Stanley Gardner, but it turns out to have been vice versa! I've been more of an advice-giver and book-loaner, actually. I've converted at least three people outside my family to Alistair MacLean readers, two to Saint fans, and I'm working on one to the Foreigner series. And those are just the ones I know in person. Cooper has started to make comments about my Lending Library, in operation after choir rehearsals. ;)
1. Which book has been on your shelves the longest?
Er. If we're talking physically on my shelves - well, my collection has vastly outgrown my shelves. And they're not in front of me now. But I think it would probably be my dad's copy of Ben-Hur that I more or less appropriated when I was about 12. That's... 15 years.
If we're talking "my shelves" = "my collection," it would probably be my mother's (and grandmother's) Nancy Drew books. I'd read them all by the time I started first grade. Say 20 years.
(Once I get home, something Really Ancient is going to metaphorically slug me in the eye and I'll go, "Why didn't I remember that?")
2. What is your current read, your last read and the book you'll read next?
Current read: Detection Unlimited by Georgette Heyer. Just started, so I'm not sure how it'll be.
Last read: Footsteps in the Dark, also by Georgette Heyer. I loved this one. Spooky excitement every which way, and likeable characters who are siblings. I've been meditating the last week or so on how much I really do love books that involve families, particularly siblings, in good relationships. That needs to make it into its own post.
Next read: Not sure. I have one more of the set of four Heyer mysteries I bought, plus a box of her Regency/historical books. My friend gave me To Have and To Hold for my birthday, too, and it looks pretty good. I'm feeling the urge to re-read some of the Foreigner books, too.
3. What book did everyone like and you hated?
I can't think of one. I don't read books that I know I'll hate; and if I stumble across one, I decide I Hate It, and promptly banish it from my mind. (With a high degree of success, apparently.)
4. Which book do you keep telling yourself you'll read, but you probably won't?
Mr. Scarborough gave me Anna Karenina for my birthday a couple years ago, and I feel bad I haven't read it. But I know (very roughly) what happens and I can't imagine I'd enjoy it.
5. Which book are you saving for "retirement?"
"Retirement" isn't an issue. :D There really isn't anything I'm saving. But I used to read a lot more classics in junior high and high school, and some in college. Now I'm just so busy, and tired when I find reading time, that I've found it more pleasurable to read (mostly) shorter, more adventurous things. But I do miss the words and phrasing that run in my head when I read older books, and there's more 19th-century material I want to get back to. Like Scott and Trollope and Gaskell, and there's some Dickens I've left unread.
6. Last page: read it first or wait till the end?
I read the end of an Agatha Christie once (I think because I was bored with it, rare for me), and it's spoiled it for all time. Occasionally at a USB I will glance at the last page to make sure the tone is happy, before I take a chance on it. The same with some books on Project Gutenberg. (I read very fast, even at a glance, and can gather the feel of the thing without really engaging my mind into its plot meaning.) But if I think I'll enjoy a book, I refuse to read the last. It has so much more meaning when read after everything else!
7. Acknowledgments: waste of ink and paper or interesting aside?
I don't mind them. I read them if it looks interesting (again, that quick reading glance) or I more that usually care about the author, and skip them otherwise.
8. Which book character would you switch places with?
Whew. I love adventurous books, but I am privately certain I'd make a pretty poor showing as the heroes in them. Perhaps I'd be happiest replacing a comrade, but not having to lead everything. *g* The other characters I wouldn't mind replacing are, frankly, the women who find a good man. I remember particularly finishing Emma and really longing for a Mr Knightley. What a guy! Emma is my least favorite Jane Austen, too; I wasn't carried away by the story itself.
9. Do you have a book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time)?
I'm sure I do, but none particularly come to mind at the time. Instead, I'll mention again the soft spot I have for siblings with good relationships. I have been wonderfully blessed with a terrific family, mother and father and three younger brothers. (Plus a still-living grandmother, four sets of uncles and aunts, and eleven cousins; not all of whom are quite as terrific, but still a pretty good, and geographically close, extended family.) It's the healthy sibling relationships, though, that I've suddenly realized I truly love in books. Not sisters - I have no experience with that, so it tugs no particular heartstrings - and not super large families so much, but two or three brothers, maybe with a sister? I love it. I feel at home.
Ralestone Luck, a very early work by Andre Norton, is one such book. It's just plain fun to read on its own merits, as a pre-war mystery/adventure story; but the characters are two brothers and a sister. The genial teasing and fun and care they have for each other isn't overt or melodramatic or anything; it just feels right to me. And I like it a lot. (It doesn't hurt that it was written in 1938, as little details and the illustrations online show. It combines my book-likings with my vintage love! I have a paperback from the 1980s that leaves out the pictures, sadness.)
The flip side of my liking for families like this may mean why I have a harder time with books about more dysfunctional families. It's not that I can't get into books about orphans or in unpleasant situations, no; certainly not. I suppose it's when these, to my mind dysfunctional, families aren't repaired, or are assumed to be normal, that I get subconsciously uncomfortable. The later Falco books started to feel that way for me. It's not really a big deal, but I think it explains some things.
10. Name a book you acquired in some interesting way.
I've got a couple of interesting ones. Nothing outstanding, but interesting.
The manner in which Alistair MacLean's The Secret Ways found itself in my collection I recounted here, nearly three years ago. I don't think anyone I've leant it to likes it, and it is a little different, but I'm fond of it. :)
My copy of Ivanhoe is a little special. It's a small edition, one of those you'll find at antique malls. About 4" x 6", they're smaller than regular paperbacks, and are usually 100 years old or more. They're usually fairly nice books, though, sometimes with illustrations, and good, if small, printing. (My copy of Les Misérables, in two individually-slipcovered books, is printed on Bible paper.) Anyway, these books are sometimes seen as Very Collectible by sellers, and priced for $20-30 apiece. Sometimes they're seen as just little old books and go more reasonably.
In the summer of 1999 (I think) my dad was flying out to Marietta, Georgia, every week for a special job assignment. My mother and brothers and I drove out one week and joined him as a sort of vacation. We had fun, but our one disappointment was that we'd found practically nil in the way of antique shops. So surprising. On the way back, we stopped in Vicksburg in a last-ditch effort, and ended up in a little shop pretty close to the Mississippi. All five of us found something there for awesome prices. My mother, for example, got something like 12 small wooden bowls for about $11, where she'd seen them before at $5 apiece. And I found my Ivanhoe for $4. It's traveled to a lot of reenactments with me. *g*
11. Have you ever given away a book for a special reason to a special person?
Nothing in particular that I remember.
12. Which book has been with you to the most places?
It's always a different book. One semester The Faerie Queene traveled to every class at A&M for about three months, but that's not much of a variety of places. *g* The Morgaine books have been to Fort Washita several times. My little Ivanhoe has probably been to the most reenactments.
13. Any "required reading" you hated in high school that wasn’t so bad ten years later?
I didn't really have much hated reading in high school, and I haven't read that since. I liked Wuthering Heights when I was younger, but now it's slightly infuriating.
14. What is the strangest item you’ve ever found in a book?
I know I've found old boarding passes at least twice. One was from the 1990s or earlier; another is I think from the 1960s.
15. Used or brand new?
Mostly used. Much cheaper and easier to find, for the authors I read. I used to get new books when I was regularly collecting Nancy Drews and other girl books.
16. Stephen King: Literary genius or opiate of the masses?
I don't think I've ever read any.
17. Have you ever seen a movie you liked better than the book?
Mr. Scarborough has called the movie of Ben-Hur better than the book. With slight reservations, I agree. There is So Much More in the book that is good, hence the reservations. But along with leaving out these things, the movie also leaves out some religious/theological aspects (these are not the same thing) that definitely indicate the period Lew Wallace wrote in.
18. Conversely, which book should NEVER have been introduced to celluloid?
Nothing comes to mind.
19. Have you ever read a book that's made you hungry, cookbooks being excluded from this question?
Sometimes the Anne of Green Gables books.
20. Who is the person whose book advice you'll always take?
I don't get much book advice! I tend to be highly skeptical of most recommendations, tending to discount the raptures according to what I know of the person. (How traditional, how trendy, etc. Boy, that sounds cynical.) It's thanks to jordannamorgan, though, that I found the Mr Moto books, estelyn_strider for the Falco books and for Georgette Heyer, and seawasp for Fu Manchu. :p (Surely there's another recommendation of yours I've followed. I haven't dived into the Oz books yet.) I thought I had suededsilk to thank for the Cool and Lam books by Erle Stanley Gardner, but it turns out to have been vice versa! I've been more of an advice-giver and book-loaner, actually. I've converted at least three people outside my family to Alistair MacLean readers, two to Saint fans, and I'm working on one to the Foreigner series. And those are just the ones I know in person. Cooper has started to make comments about my Lending Library, in operation after choir rehearsals. ;)