Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Literary Survey


I love a questionnaire and I love a survey. I also love books and reading and anything literary. So, in a break from our regular programming of politics, disability, parenting and poetry, I've taken Maggie May's lead and answered the following questions. I'd love to know what your answers are, so feel free to leave long comments or answer one or two!

Authors of whom you've read the most books:

Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison and Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Best Sequel Ever:

I can't think of one. Do books have good sequels?

Currently Reading: 

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

Drink of Choice While Reading: 

I don't drink while reading. Oh, maybe water sitting by my bed.

E-reader or Physical Book? 

I love my Kindle for memoirs and "quick" reads. If it's an author I love or a book that I've anticipated, then a physical book is necessary. I'm finding that when I read fiction, I become more engrossed with a physical book and that the e-reader is distracting -- something about how fast I read and how weird it is to turn pages on the Kindle. The Kindle, though, has saved my budget AND enabled me to live in a house that isn't completely over-run by books or at least only partially so --

Fictional Character You Probably Would Have Actually Dated In High School:

Good lord, what kind of question is this? I think I had a crush on Dickon the rosy-cheeked moor boy in The Secret Garden. A bit later, though, and I would have gone for the main character in The English Patient -- what's his name, again?

Glad You Gave This Book A Chance: 

I finally read a Don Delillo novel about a million years after I should have. It was Falling Man, and it blew me right out to sea. I had thought until I picked it up in the store that I would have to die never having read a DeLillo. It was a weird kind of blockage. I'm glad I broke through the intimidation and read his perfectly crafted sentences. Given how much I've read, I was also late to Updike, and when I read the Rabbit series in my forties, I felt incredible pleasure -- the writing, the vulgarity -- even the misanthropy -- appealed to me. 

Hidden Gem Book: 

Heaven's Coast by Mark Doty

Important Moment in your Reading Life: 

Every moment of reading has been important, from the Big Red Book in Mrs. Semel's first grade class to the stack on my bedside table right this instant

Just Finished: 

Remainder by Tom McCarthy -- sort of strange and creepy and interminable, really

Kinds of Books You Won’t Read: 

Trash and popular fiction; anything by Dan Brown because he brings me 

D
O
W'
N

Longest Book You've Read: 

The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope when I was pregnant with Sophie. God, it was good. I was depressed when I finished it, so I cheered myself up by clomping down the six flights of stairs in my walk-up apartment in my big brown and beige checked flannel maternity dress, to the Haagen Daz on the corner where I ordered a hot fudge sundae with whipped cream and nuts every single day before hauling my nine month plus two weeks extra pregnant self back up. 

Major book hangover because of: 

anything by Cormac McCarthy. Those books are dark. Oh, and I felt like I needed to take a shower after reading Gillian Flynn's trash novel Gone Girl. Generally, "easy" reads that are wildly popular give me hangovers because I'm so depressed that they're so successful. Go ahead. Confirm that I'm a snob.



Number of Bookcases You Own: 

8

One Book You Have Read Multiple Times: 

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (just one, though? How about The Brothers Karamazov? Or Half Magic? To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway --

Preferred Place To Read: 

In my bed.

Quote that inspires you/gives you all the feels from a book you’ve read: 

So hope for a great sea-change/On the far side of revenge./Believe that a further shore/Is reachable from here./Believe in miracles/And cures and healing wells from The Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney

Reading Regret: 

That I tried to read War and Peace multiple times. I also regret all those horrible French books I read in college -- in French.

Series You Started And Need To Finish (all books are out in series): 
I read the first Harry Potter and enjoyed it, but I admit to not really caring about reading the rest of them. Do I need to finish them?

Three of your All-Time Favorite Books: 

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

Unapologetic Fangirl For

David Sedaris

Very Excited For This Release More Than All The Others: 
I'm always disappointed by new releases of contemporary authors I love the first time around, but I am looking forward to the new Jayne Ann Philips and to anything that Lorrie Moore decides to write --

Worst Bookish Habit: 
I'd rather read than talk to you.

X Marks The Spot: Start at the top left of your shelf and pick the 27th book: 

The Great Fires by Jack Gilbert

Your latest book purchase: 

Quiet Dell: A Novel by Jayne Ann Phillips

ZZZ-snatcher book (last book that kept you up WAY late): 

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

11 comments:

  1. All of Updike's Rabbit sequels are wonderful. WONDERFUL!
    As for the rest, girl...those questions remind me too much of being asked to name my favorite child.
    Favorite place to read though- in Cozumel. Haha! (No, seriously.) But bed is my second choice.

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    1. Silly me. The Rabbit sequels ARE terrific! Or should I say, "silly rabbit?"

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  2. Authors of whom you've read the most books:

    Tana French, J.K. Rowling, Louise Erdrich

    Best Sequel Ever:

    I can't think of one. Do books have good sequels?

    Currently Reading:

    Cartwheel by Jennifer Dubois




    Fictional Character You Probably Would Have Actually Dated In High School:

    I was young enough when I read the 5th Harry Potter to develop a crush on . . . Harry Potter. Frank Mackey from Tana French's "Faithful Place" comes to mind.

    Glad You Gave This Book A Chance:

    I guess now I should read Don Delillo.

    Hidden Gem Book:
    True Grit by Charles Portis, and The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell

    Important Moment in your Reading Life:

    When my dad read The Hobbit aloud to our whole family. I was 9 or 10.

    Kinds of Books You Won’t Read:
    Christian fiction might be the only thing I won't read. Christian non-fiction, too.



    Longest Book You've Read:
    Anna Karenina in college. I enjoyed it but don't think I'll ever read it again.

    Major book hangover because of:
    Harry Potter. I can't read anything else for awhile after I read an HP.



    Number of Bookcases You Own:

    1

    One Book You Have Read Multiple Times:
    Good Lord. The Harry Potter books are the only books I've ever read more than once. I think ultimately, I read for plot.


    Quote that inspires you/gives you all the feels from a book you’ve read:

    “Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” --Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

    Reading Regret:

    I bought "Paris I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down" by Rosencrans Baldwin. It portrayed Parisians as incredibly sexist and misogynistic, and the book itself was so male-gazey and icky. At one point he complains about how difficult it is to find a young and pretty prostitute whose looks aren't too depressing for some video they're trying to shoot. It's the only book I've ever actually thrown at a wall. I didn't finish it.


    Three of your All-Time Favorite Books:

    The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
    Contents May Have Shifted, Pam Houston
    In The Woods, Tana French

    Unapologetic Fangirl For:

    I'm going to go with Pam Houston. I feel her sentences in my veins. But I really look forward to a new Tana French. I don't read mysteries but hers are so beautifully written and haunting.


    Worst Bookish Habit:
    Checking out massive stacks from the library, getting overwhelmed, finishing none of them.

    X Marks The Spot: Start at the top left of your shelf and pick the 27th book:

    Writing Down The Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, by Natalie Goldberg

    Your latest book purchase:
    A Room of One's Own.

    ZZZ-snatcher book (last book that kept you up WAY late):

    Where'd You Go Bernadette, by Maria Semple


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    1. Oh, I love Pam Houston, and you've made me want to re-read her! I don't think I ever read "Contents May Have Shifted," so I'll start with that. And I love that your father read "The Hobbit" aloud to your family.

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  3. Oh Dickon - he is such a lovely character and worthy of your crush. The contrast between him and sallow little Mary, I can see them so clearly in my mind's eye. Mine would have been Dan from 'Little Men' but it would have been an unrequited love, we would never have dated in high school.

    I read the Rabbit series in my twenties - I loved your description of revelling in the vulgarity and misanthropy. I could never quite articulate quite WHY I love Updike in general (and the Rabbit series in particular) but you've just nailed it for me.

    'The Way We Live Now' is one of my favourite novels (love Trollope and that, in my humble opinion, is his best) and I read it whilst pregnant with the twins and, again, after they were born and J was in ICU. Ditto Vanity Fair. Can't beat a real door stop novel. I also read, very nearly, the complete works of Jilly Cooper whilst J was in ICU but I won't dwell on that here! Or you will need to take a gazillion showers as somebody with all that tripe in her head has commented on your blog ;)

    Also love David Sedaris. Am now inspired to go and give Virginia Woolf another try, Don DeLillo a first try and to finally crack the spine of 'A Gate at the Stairs' that has been sitting on my shelf for an age. Am also inspired to delete 'Gone Girl' from my kindle (bought in a moment of madness for 99 pence!)

    The books I have read the most are Robertson Davies' three trilogies. I don't think I will ever get fed up of reading them. And wish I had not waited so long to read Nabokov (he is my mother's absolute favourite author and I was terrified that I would not like or understand his novels) I think I read 'Laughter in the Dark' first but it was 'Lolita' that absolutely blew my tiny mind. I remember reading it outside on my lunch break from work and having to put it down in wonder.

    Thank you for posting your answers to these questions. I'm often here quietly reading away. Hope you don't mind.

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    1. We have so much in common -- at least in our reading material! I, too, loved the Robertson Davies trilogy and "Lolita" is one of the greatest novels I've ever read --

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  4. I love so many of these- Sedaris is one of the maybe five authors I've ever read who makes me laugh out loud, tears streaming down my face, multiple times during the same read. He's brilliant. I think the first Harry Potter is the least of all of them, so yes, I think you could try a few more. The last two are so, so good.
    I haven't read either of your 'gem' books so am adding them to my Amazon used book list!

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  6. Just finished Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout for my new book club next month. I loved Olive Kitteridge (also by Strout) and this book though emotionally challenging was worth sticking it out to the end. My life changing book was Charlotte's Web in third grade. I wasn't a reader until third grade and Mrs. Tummerman came along. She introduced me to that Great Book and it's Great Author. Ever since then I have had more favorite authors than favorite books. Tolkien, Hugo, Tan, L'Engle, Hardy, McCall Smith, Bradbury, Lewis ... My favorite books transport me to other places and other people. I can't stand romance novels or crappy mysteries. There are some amazing Scandinavian mystery writers though. The bleakness of the landscape maybe. Anyhow .... Good questions. You are a well read woman Elizabeth.

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  7. I've read all of Richard Yates, over and over, novels and stories. Barbara Pym is a favorite. I read her books over and over too, either in the middle of one of the Pacific Northwest's rainy winters or after a bout of Richard Yates - in other words, when I need some cheering up. I also reread Wuthering Heights once a year. So I guess Yates, E. Bronte, and Pym are my favorites.

    Favorite place to read: On the sofa with my dog beside me.

    Kind of books I won't read: Not much of a fan of memoirs, though I did like Truth and Beauty, by Anne Patchett.

    Currently reading: The Woman Upstairs, by Claire Massud and Moominpapa at Sea by Tove Jansson. Rereading Ursula LeGuin's Orsinian Tales.

    Very excited for the release of: Palmerino, by Melissa Pritchard

    Life changing moment in my reading life: Reading "Eleven Kinds of Loneliness" by Richard Yates when I was twenty or twenty-one. I read it for the next few years until the covers came off and the pages fell out. I learned what a short story could be reading that book.

    Bookshelves: Like you, Elizabeth, I have 8. I just culled, which was hard to do, but it means my shelves are finally looking neat and tidy.

    Hidden gem: Several - The Summer Book, by Tove Jansson; also Wild Life, by Molly Gloss; The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, an older one by Sherman Alexie, and Prairie Reunion, by Barbara Scot.

    Worst bookish habit: I don't give many contemporary authors much of a chance. I dislike the modern world. I'd rather reread Wuthering Heights than some limp modern love story.

    Longest book: Probably The Brontes (biography) by Juliet Barker (It so fascinated me after a trip to their home in Haworth that I read it twice within a year.)

    Unapologetic fangirl for: Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island. Laughed out loud on a plane, embarrassed my seatmates, did not care.

    27th book: Absalom, Absalom!

    I can't remember the other questions. But this was fun. Thanks, Elizabeth. And thanks to all who shared their responses. Must get around to Updike, looks like.



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  8. Authors of whom you've read the most books:
    L.M. Montgomery and Laura Ingalls Wilder (to be honest, I've read the spines off these series), Jasper Fforde

    Best Sequel Ever:
    The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde (actually 3 of 8, so far, I believe, in the Thursday Next series)

    Currently Reading:
    The Postmistress by Sarah Blake. I'm a sucker for historical fiction, and I needed something not too gutting whilst I deal with an anxiety flare.

    Drink of Choice While Reading:
    Water or chamomile tea

    E-reader or Physical Book?
    Physical book

    Fictional Character You Probably Would Have Actually Dated In High School:
    Jeff from A Solitary Blue. If he could get over Dicey, which he couldn't, but seriously...love that boy. Especially when I was 16.

    Glad You Gave This Book A Chance:
    Harry Potter--I avoided them for the first four books because they were "a fad", then, on strong recommendation from the dad of the family I was nannying for, I read them. The first two were fun but not engrossing, but the third one hooked me. By the fourth one, I was feeding the children lunch and then letting them run feral until I could finish the chapter.
    Also "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell, and "The Snow Child" by Eowyn Ivey.

    Hidden Gem Book:
    Pure by Julianna Baggott. Damn, what a book.

    Important Moment in your Reading Life:
    When I got old enough to stay up till three reading, if I wanted to.

    Just Finished:
    The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton. I truly enjoy her books--big and fat, and full of lively characters. Engrossing but not gutting. Well written.

    Kinds of Books You Won’t Read:
    Horror, most mysteries, and classics (outside of a lit class). Most pop lit, either.

    Longest Book You've Read:
    Probably "I Know This Much is True" by Wally Lamb. No, wait! I did finally make it through "Far From the Tree" by Andrew Solomon. Didn't much care for the first, but quite liked the second.

    Major book hangover because of:
    Oh, Tana French. I adore you so much, but your books are absolutely gutting. Well done, lady.
    Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, too. Can't get those dogs out of my head.
    And, Happy by Alex Lemon
    Um, I think most of the books I love most give me book hangovers...

    Number of Bookcases You Own:
    1, which was overstuffed before I got it, and would be even if I took my piano sheet music off. My house is 700 sq ft, so I haven't yet found room for another...but I'm on the hunt! The current bookshelf has books stacked vertically instead of horizontally, and they still don't all fit.

    One Book You Have Read Multiple Times:
    ONE?! I read most of my books multiple times!
    but "Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader" by Anne Fadiman gets read a lot.

    Preferred Place To Read:
    Bed

    Quote that inspires you/gives you all the feels from a book you’ve read:
    "Time works so hard for us, if only we can let it."--Tana French, The Likeness

    Reading Regret:
    That I forced myself to finish mediocre books for years. I have now learned to discard if they are not good.

    Series You Started And Need To Finish (all books are out in series):
    Should probably keep reading the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde.

    Three of your All-Time Favorite Books:
    Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, by Anne Fadiman
    In the Woods, by Tana French
    The Guernsey Literary and Potato-Peel Pie Society, by Shaffer & Barrow (I am not ashamed!)

    Unapologetic Fangirl For:
    Tana French, and Bill Bryson

    Very Excited For This Release More Than All The Others:
    Tana French's next book!

    Worst Bookish Habit:
    I take way too many books on vacation, for fear of running out.

    X Marks The Spot: Start at the top left of your shelf and pick the 27th book:
    Changeless, by Gail Carriger. Hey, it was 50 cents at the library sale, and that series is a ridiculous light read.

    Your latest book purchase:
    The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton, from Goodwill

    ZZZ-snatcher book (last book that kept you up WAY late):
    State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

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