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thisbluespiritJust about everyone on my flist seems to have been doing this book meme. I hesitated, because I couldn't think of answers, but on the other hand, I did find a strange thing in a book once...
1. Which book has been on your shelves the longest?
Is that which book have I owned the longest, or which has been hanging around on my to-read shelf the longest? If the former, probably my rather amazing Disney Snow White book (it tells the story of the film with over 100 stills. I've never seen any other picture book of an animation anything like it. Shame my sister and I coloured in all the red bits, but we were very small). If the latter, Green Dolphin Country by Elizabeth Goudge - I read all her other books about 12 years ago and saved this one. Hmm.
2. What is your current read, your last read and the book you'll read next?
Currently I am reading (because I flit about annoyingly): Drood by Dan Simmons, Millennium by Tom Holland and The Sanctuary Seeker by Bernard Knight, two magazines, and probably something that fell under the bed. My last read (please bear in mind what my job is/was) was the second two in Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpey Kid, Rodrick Rules and The Last Straw. (The Last Straw made me laugh out loud). They are very entertaining and clever. Grown ups don't have anything like this to read, poor things. ;-D Given that I'm only 10 pages into all of the above, I think I'd better finish at least one first.
3. What book did everyone like and you hated?
Teen novel Shadowmancer. I read the reviews, wondering if anyone else actually read the same book as me. I find it awful in so many ways.
4. Which book do you keep telling yourself you'll read, but you probably won't?
I don't know. If it gets that bad, I'll get rid of the book, as clearly, I won't and I need the shelf space. I need it badly.
5. Which book are you saving for "retirement?"
That sounds like a silly question, (why?) but unless I get on with it, possibly, Green Dolphin Country.
6. Last page: read it first or wait till the end?
Almost all my flist have gone: Shock! Horror! Why would anyone do such a thing??? So, sheepishly: yes, sometimes I flick to the end. Sometimes I stop myself. It's a sort of reasurance thing - I don't want plot spoilers but I want some idea of which of these several characters I've met I'm following to the end (is the one I like a red herring?) or just the tone of the ending. If it's going to be bleak and I'm reading for fun, not work, I want warning, thanks. I sometimes want to know who isn't the murderer (am I safe in liking this character?). However, I did once completely the spoil the end of a series I had been addictively reading through by the utterly spoilerish last line. Funnily enough, my best friend did exactly the same thing with the same book.
Mind you, half the time, I'm reading history books and looking at the last line is not exactly going to have spoilers. ("Oh, they all died." "look who lost the battle etc..." :lol:)
7. Acknowledgments: waste of ink and paper or interesting aside?
I quite like them. No, wait, I mean 'dedications' which usually amuse me. Acknowledgements - depends.
8. Which book character would you switch places with?
I don't think I would. I suppose when I was younger, I might have liked to be Doctor Dolittle, and talk to the animals, but only in the one where he also had a post office in Africa with flavoured stamps.
9. Do you have a book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time)?
There's a PDA (or was it an EDA?) by Gary Russell about some sort of space olympic games with Foamasi. I hated it, which was partly to do with the book, and mostly to do with other things - I'd never even want to look at it again: to me it means Bristol Parkway, hating the journey, hating the station, hating the book and being unhappy. Oddly I can't remember why, unless that was my last journey out of Aber, but I'm sure I read some Trollope book, which was long and engaging enough to save me from crying my eyes out all the way home that time. (That would have been inconvenient and embarrassing).
10. Name a book you acquired in some interesting way.
I suppose I inherited a lot of my Granny's books, because I wanted the bookcase. I didn't want most of them, but there was Georgette Heyer and Ngaio Marsh and some lengthy things like The Forsyte Saga and Penmarric I'd never have read otherwise. In that teenage, I'll read nearly anything to hand, way.
11. Have you ever given away a book for a special reason to a special person?
When Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones came back into print, I went into the shop and bought 3 copies - 1 each for 2 friends and my younger sister (for their birthdays). I had been so desperate to give them a copy, but that was the one thing I couldn't spare of mine! The woman serving did think it was odd, but she could hardly complain.
12. Which book has been with you to the most places?
Well, I don't usually take the same book with me, but I never go anywhere much without one. (I suppose, if it counts, I'd have taken my old, now totally fallen-apart NIV Bible with me the most places, but that's not the same. Ditto various incarnations of notebooks.)
13. Any "required reading" you hated inhigh secondary school that wasn’t so bad ten years later?
I think, generally, if they make you read something and you hate it, you're not so likely to read it or anything like it again. I suppose I have come back to Robert Frost, despite the awful slur on his character as a poet of being liked by my Demon English Literature teacher. And I do still admire Tess despite his doing his best to ruin it, along with Chaucer.
14. What is the strangest item you’ve ever found in a book?
I work in a library: a chocolate covered millionaire's crispy cake. I thought the book felt a bit odd when I pulled it off the shelf. Other than that, only bookmarks, receipts, train tickets. I suppose, technically it could count that I found that one of my 10p Target DW books from Oxfam had been signed by Tom Baker in 1979, which I never noticed till years after I bought it. (I just thought it said, To Paul, love Aunty Milly, or something and it was a long time before I looked and went: 8-o Tom Baker?!! 1979?!!)
15. Used or brand new?
Both. New is more tempting, but then finding battered bargains of unlovely hardbacks that turn out to be just what you were after is also a joy in itself.
16. Stephen King: Literary genius or opiate of the masses?
Um. Never read anything by him. Who knows? I'd imagine either is probably unlikely.
17. Have you ever seen a movie you liked better than the book?
I think so. I can't remember what it was, though.
18. Conversely, which book should NEVER have been introduced to celluloid?
Do you want a list? :lol: No, it's usually interesting to see what has been made of a book. Usually, the chances are far better if it is a BBC TV drama (but not always: cf. The Woman in White.)
19. Have you ever read a book that's made you hungry, cookbooks being excluded from this question?
Reversely, in A Tale of Time City by Diana Wynne Jones there's this particular food they have in it, that's supposed to be amazing, but the copy in the library (that I borrowed about ten times) smelled really odd and I associated the smell and the fictional food and got put off rather than made hungry.
20. Who is the person whose book advice you'll always take?
*Shame* I am terrible about taking book advice. Although a recommendation by anyone I like / respect will make me look twice at a book I might have ignored.
1. Which book has been on your shelves the longest?
Is that which book have I owned the longest, or which has been hanging around on my to-read shelf the longest? If the former, probably my rather amazing Disney Snow White book (it tells the story of the film with over 100 stills. I've never seen any other picture book of an animation anything like it. Shame my sister and I coloured in all the red bits, but we were very small). If the latter, Green Dolphin Country by Elizabeth Goudge - I read all her other books about 12 years ago and saved this one. Hmm.
2. What is your current read, your last read and the book you'll read next?
Currently I am reading (because I flit about annoyingly): Drood by Dan Simmons, Millennium by Tom Holland and The Sanctuary Seeker by Bernard Knight, two magazines, and probably something that fell under the bed. My last read (please bear in mind what my job is/was) was the second two in Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpey Kid, Rodrick Rules and The Last Straw. (The Last Straw made me laugh out loud). They are very entertaining and clever. Grown ups don't have anything like this to read, poor things. ;-D Given that I'm only 10 pages into all of the above, I think I'd better finish at least one first.
3. What book did everyone like and you hated?
Teen novel Shadowmancer. I read the reviews, wondering if anyone else actually read the same book as me. I find it awful in so many ways.
4. Which book do you keep telling yourself you'll read, but you probably won't?
I don't know. If it gets that bad, I'll get rid of the book, as clearly, I won't and I need the shelf space. I need it badly.
5. Which book are you saving for "retirement?"
That sounds like a silly question, (why?) but unless I get on with it, possibly, Green Dolphin Country.
6. Last page: read it first or wait till the end?
Almost all my flist have gone: Shock! Horror! Why would anyone do such a thing??? So, sheepishly: yes, sometimes I flick to the end. Sometimes I stop myself. It's a sort of reasurance thing - I don't want plot spoilers but I want some idea of which of these several characters I've met I'm following to the end (is the one I like a red herring?) or just the tone of the ending. If it's going to be bleak and I'm reading for fun, not work, I want warning, thanks. I sometimes want to know who isn't the murderer (am I safe in liking this character?). However, I did once completely the spoil the end of a series I had been addictively reading through by the utterly spoilerish last line. Funnily enough, my best friend did exactly the same thing with the same book.
Mind you, half the time, I'm reading history books and looking at the last line is not exactly going to have spoilers. ("Oh, they all died." "look who lost the battle etc..." :lol:)
7. Acknowledgments: waste of ink and paper or interesting aside?
I quite like them. No, wait, I mean 'dedications' which usually amuse me. Acknowledgements - depends.
8. Which book character would you switch places with?
I don't think I would. I suppose when I was younger, I might have liked to be Doctor Dolittle, and talk to the animals, but only in the one where he also had a post office in Africa with flavoured stamps.
9. Do you have a book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time)?
There's a PDA (or was it an EDA?) by Gary Russell about some sort of space olympic games with Foamasi. I hated it, which was partly to do with the book, and mostly to do with other things - I'd never even want to look at it again: to me it means Bristol Parkway, hating the journey, hating the station, hating the book and being unhappy. Oddly I can't remember why, unless that was my last journey out of Aber, but I'm sure I read some Trollope book, which was long and engaging enough to save me from crying my eyes out all the way home that time. (That would have been inconvenient and embarrassing).
10. Name a book you acquired in some interesting way.
I suppose I inherited a lot of my Granny's books, because I wanted the bookcase. I didn't want most of them, but there was Georgette Heyer and Ngaio Marsh and some lengthy things like The Forsyte Saga and Penmarric I'd never have read otherwise. In that teenage, I'll read nearly anything to hand, way.
11. Have you ever given away a book for a special reason to a special person?
When Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones came back into print, I went into the shop and bought 3 copies - 1 each for 2 friends and my younger sister (for their birthdays). I had been so desperate to give them a copy, but that was the one thing I couldn't spare of mine! The woman serving did think it was odd, but she could hardly complain.
12. Which book has been with you to the most places?
Well, I don't usually take the same book with me, but I never go anywhere much without one. (I suppose, if it counts, I'd have taken my old, now totally fallen-apart NIV Bible with me the most places, but that's not the same. Ditto various incarnations of notebooks.)
13. Any "required reading" you hated in
I think, generally, if they make you read something and you hate it, you're not so likely to read it or anything like it again. I suppose I have come back to Robert Frost, despite the awful slur on his character as a poet of being liked by my Demon English Literature teacher. And I do still admire Tess despite his doing his best to ruin it, along with Chaucer.
14. What is the strangest item you’ve ever found in a book?
I work in a library: a chocolate covered millionaire's crispy cake. I thought the book felt a bit odd when I pulled it off the shelf. Other than that, only bookmarks, receipts, train tickets. I suppose, technically it could count that I found that one of my 10p Target DW books from Oxfam had been signed by Tom Baker in 1979, which I never noticed till years after I bought it. (I just thought it said, To Paul, love Aunty Milly, or something and it was a long time before I looked and went: 8-o Tom Baker?!! 1979?!!)
15. Used or brand new?
Both. New is more tempting, but then finding battered bargains of unlovely hardbacks that turn out to be just what you were after is also a joy in itself.
16. Stephen King: Literary genius or opiate of the masses?
Um. Never read anything by him. Who knows? I'd imagine either is probably unlikely.
17. Have you ever seen a movie you liked better than the book?
I think so. I can't remember what it was, though.
18. Conversely, which book should NEVER have been introduced to celluloid?
Do you want a list? :lol: No, it's usually interesting to see what has been made of a book. Usually, the chances are far better if it is a BBC TV drama (but not always: cf. The Woman in White.)
19. Have you ever read a book that's made you hungry, cookbooks being excluded from this question?
Reversely, in A Tale of Time City by Diana Wynne Jones there's this particular food they have in it, that's supposed to be amazing, but the copy in the library (that I borrowed about ten times) smelled really odd and I associated the smell and the fictional food and got put off rather than made hungry.
20. Who is the person whose book advice you'll always take?
*Shame* I am terrible about taking book advice. Although a recommendation by anyone I like / respect will make me look twice at a book I might have ignored.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-22 07:58 pm (UTC)Teen novel Shadowmancer. I read the reviews, wondering if anyone else actually read the same book as me. I find it awful in so many ways.
Is that the GP Taylor one that I positively refuse to go anywhere near because the author's a git?
no subject
Date: 2010-01-22 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-22 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 10:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 10:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-22 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 10:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 10:17 am (UTC)I know! It was the Web of Fear, so not even a Fourth Doctor one - I only spotted it in time before I put the book in for the car boot sale. :-D
no subject
Date: 2010-01-24 01:12 pm (UTC)Oh, well, in that case, I do that all the time, too! (for me, though, it;s been going to the index and search for "topic" lately. :) )
Also, I'm excited! I just borrowed a book called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. This is bound to be good.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-24 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-24 04:38 pm (UTC)Mrs. Bennett talks about Mr. Bingly while her man is busy sharpening daggers. Bliss.