Sunday, February 16, 2014

Sunday Stealing

(Link in meme-roll)
Books Meme

1: Favorite children's book The Little House series, and also The Little House by Virginia Burton. I'm nothing if not consistent.

2: The last book you've read The last one I've read out of is The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson. The last one I finished was Stuart Kaminsky's Vengeance on CD. Last eyeball-read was The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.

3: Books on your "to read" list There are 120 of them on my Goodreads lists. They range from Blue Like Jazz (Miller) to Rebecca (du Maurier) to The Possessed (Batuman) to The Golem and the Jinni (Wecker). I need to quit my job and read full-time.

4: Top 5 authors Wow, that's hard. Anne Lamott, Sara Paretsky, Joseph Hansen, Kent Haruf, Dr. Seuss. Those are the ones I'm picking today.

5: Favorite genres Mystery, essays, short stories, history.

6: A book that has made you extremely mad Every one of Sara Paretsky's.

7: A book that you've cried over Most of Paretsky's, and a LOT of others. I cry easily. For heaven's sake, I cried reading every Harry Potter book!

8: A book that made you laugh out loud Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. And a bonus: One For the Money by Evanovich.

9: Fiction or nonfiction? Yes. I read both, but fiction is easier. Usually.

10: First book you've read by your favorite author The first one I read by Lamott was Traveling Mercies. It absolutely floored me on almost every page.

11: Best book-to-movie adaption "The Hunger Games" movies have not (yet) disappointed.

12: Do you read comics/manga? I have done. I find them difficult.

13: Hardcovers or paperbacks? Don't care, though hardcovers are easier to read flat; paperbacks tend to snap closed even with a book-weight.

14: Do you buy books as soon as they come out or wait a while? I rarely buy books. Except as part of my job at the library.

15: Do you buy books spontaneously without any prior knowledge of what happens in it? Nope.

16: Have you ever bought a book based on the cover alone? I've checked out a few books on this basis, yes. Mostly kids' books, though.

17: Where do you usually buy your books? Uhmm...on those rare occasions that I buy a book for myself, I get it through my local independent bookstore. That's where I try to buy most of my gift books too.

18: Book that had a strong impact on you The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom. I read that book over and over as a tween.

19: Historical or science fiction? I prefer historical. Science fiction doesn't thrill me, though some speculative fiction does.

20: Dystopian or Utopian? Pretty hard to find utopian fiction lately, but it's what I prefer.

21: Worst book-to-move adaption? So...very...many...painful...choices. Can't pick one.

22: Book that should have a movie adaption? Oh, I don't think any books should. There are some that would make good movies--pretty much everything by Grisham or Patterson, for instance.

23: The first book you've fallen in love with My love affairs with books started very young. I remember a really wonderful book of animals I had growing up that was shaped like a barn (probably 15x15") with 8 or so small books inside, one about each animal. I adored that book.

24: Humor or angst? HUMOR!!

25: How many books do you own? Several hundred. Which is I N S A N E!

26: Do you go the library? At least 5 days a week.

27: How many books do you read a year? It's hovered near 100 for a long time, though tailing off in the last few years. Maybe I just need to read shorter books?

28: Favorite "required reading" book? I loved Jane Eyre (C. Brontë) sucked me on page 1 and never let me go. I also liked Wuthering Heights (E. Brontë) but it was more of a struggle (and to be clear I do not consider it a love story).

29: Favorite quote? Seriously?? The one on my work sig right now is "The public library is the most dangerous place in town" (John Ciardi). It's about due for a change though. Maybe "One man is as good as another until he has written a book." (Benjamin Jowett).

30: A book you absolutely hate I could not finish Moby Dick (Melville) or The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck--whom I love in his other books) and, while I did reach the end of The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway), I hated every second of the damn thing.

10 sweet-talkers :

Kwizgiver said...

Love your answers. My hate for the Poisonwood Bible overrode any other thoughts.

Anonymous said...

I love Anne Lamott--I could have added her to my favorite author answer.
Interesting about Grapes of Wrath--that's my favorite Steinbeck book!

CountryDew said...

Love your answers. All of them! And I wish I had a job in a library.

Bud Weiser, WTIT said...

I knew you'd love this meme. I'm totally back. I wanted to organize the next phase of WTIT. What amazed me as I reassembled to get the 4 other guys, one of the original guys came back after 28 years. We record every other month (as opposed to once or twice a year.) Mission accomplished.

Bev Sykes said...

If all of Sara Paretsky's books make you mad, why do you read them? :) (I have never read her...will have to check her out!)

Cat. said...

KW: crack me up. Did you read the whole thing, or did you just bail partway through?

Bookmamma: I should probably try GoW again--my boss was raving about it this past week. I was probably too young when I tried it.

CountryDew: I love my job, and the people with whom I work (with notable exceptions).

Bud: This meme TOTALLY made me think of you. lol

Bev: They make me mad at the world, not at her nor at her writing. She always points out that, despite solving "the mystery", the world at large still fuckin' sucks. I threw one of the early books across the room when I finished it.

The Gal Herself said...

Paretsky is a tough go, isn't she? She's such a good Chicago writer, she gets the city down so well, that I keep coming back.

I did love me my Bronte's when I was in high school. I find that, as an adult reader, Jane Eyre holds up better than Wuthering Heights. I have so much less patience for Heathcliff and Cathy now than I did back in adolescence.

Stacy said...

I find absolutely nothing insane about owning several hundred books. ;)

Cat. said...

Gal: yeah, she's tough. She lays it out, all of it--the graft, the human condition, the petty-ness, the dirt--and cleans up a microscopic corner of it in the book which pointing out that it's ONLY a small clean spot.

Heathcliff scared/scares the shit out of me! I have never understood the attraction. Cathy's a whiny, insipid bitch, and reminds me a great deal of a lot of people I've known over the years.

Stacy: the insanity is why I'm keeping 80-year-old books of my dad's knowing I'll never read them and they are full of babble. And our college textbooks (from 30 years ago!)...and cookbooks I'll seriously NEVER use...and so on.

zippiknits...sometimes said...

27. Books are tending to get exceedingly long! The last E. George I had to quit halfway through, on about page 380, so that I could regroup and recover my sanity and use of hands.

Cook books should find a new home at my place, too. Way too many and no one uses them anymore!

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