These are the rules:
1. Post these rules
2. Post a photo of your favourite book cover
3. Answer the questions below
4. Tag a few people to pass the Q&A on to:I'm thinking Kay and Jenna.
So, number one! Favorite book cover!
I adore this cover of one of my favorite books, The Alchemist. It's full of color and whimsy and mystery. Gorgeous.
What are you reading right now? You mean, in addition to Avant-Garde Course Pack Part II, Early Modern English Drama and Material Culture Coursepack, and a variety of plays for my seminars (you read a lot in grad school-- just usually not full books in one sitting, as professors pick and choose chapters and articles that fit with the subject of the week, rather than a whole book). All right then, you caught me. My guilty pleasure reading right now is A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. She's a professor of history at USC, so the book sort of reminds me why I'm in academia-- days spent reading in the Bodleian at Oxford, with a healthy dose of the occult on the side :).
What will you read when you're done with that?
Anything I want! It will be summertime! I'm looking to read some more books by Catherynne Valente and a book called Sophia Goddess of Wisdom, Bride of God.
What five books have you wanted to read, but never got around to?
Jane Eyre
Emma
Evelina
Lord of the Flies
Slaughterhouse-5
... there are many more that I could list...
What magazines do you have in your bathroom/lounge right now?
Uhhh, none in the bathroom. I have an Entertainment Weekly on my desk right now, and for Christmas my mom got me a subscription to Southern Living. Zan subscribes to The New Yorker. So that about does us for magazines.
What's the worst book you've ever read?
Probably Twilight. I could feel my IQ dropping with every page I turned. I made it through the first one as I was reading in a depressed haze, but once I came back to my senses I couldn't make it through the rest of the series. Worked out well, though, because I got to write a great paper about the dangers of Twilight to its teenage fan-base based on the theories of Janice Radway.
What book seemed really popular but you actually hated?
See above.
What's the one book you recommend to just about everyone?
Just one? Ok... The Alchemist. And The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. Sorry, that was two.
What are your three favorite poems?
Come to the Orchard in Spring by Rumi
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S Eliot
My True Love Has My Heart by Sir Philip Sydney
Where do you usually get your books?
Depends on if they are academic books or for fun books. Academic, at the library. For fun, at either the Campus Bookstore or Amazon. I love going to bookstores so much more than I love buying off of Amazon though. Bookstores are amazing.
Where do you usually read your books?
Academic: at my desk, on my couch, on the balcony. For fun: in bed, on the balcony.
When you were little did you have any particular reading habits?
Uhh... no? When I was really little, before I could read, I would memorize the books my mom read to me down to when to turn the page and I made it look like I knew how to read when I didn't actually. Otherwise, after I could read, no particular habits except that I read ALL THE TIME.
What's the last thing you stayed up half the night reading because it was so good you couldn't put it down?
Haha if we had stopped at "stayed up half the night reading" it would have been Shakespeare After Theory by David Kasten (which, actually IS really good, btw). I would have to say the last book that sucked me in, though, and that I couldn't put down because it was so compelling was The Hunger Games. I also really liked Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman.
Have you ever faked reading a book?
Sometimes in grad school there is just so much reading that you have to kind of... skim or read reviews of a book and hope that will float you through the discussion.
Have you ever bought a book just because you liked the cover?
Yes, A Great and Terrible Beauty. I also really liked the cover of The Tower, The Zoo, and the Tortoise, although I think I bought it because it took place at the Tower of London.
What was your favorite book as a child?
... Baby-sitters On Board in The Baby-Sitters Club Series. Don't laugh. I was pretty little.
What book changed your life?
The Alchemist.
Le Petit Prince.
The Awakening.
The Sun Also Rises.
Eat Pray Love.
What is your favorite passage from a book?
Too many to list. Basically just read any of the books I listed above. I also really love the short vignettes of "Sally" and "Rafaela Who Drinks Coconut and Papaya Juice on Tuesdays" from the book The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.
Five favorite authors?
Ernest Hemingway
Maud Hart Lovelace
Neil Gaiman
... lots of others
What book has no one heard about but should?
The Betsy-Tacy Series by Maud Hart Lovelace
The Chrestomanci Series by Dianna Wynne Jones
Shadow Spinner by Susan Fletcher
What is your favorite classic book?
What exactly constitutes a classic, I ask? I suppose The Sun Also Rises. But I dislike creating a canon that excludes books from "classic" status. It feels elitist and limiting. Then again, I'm in a textual studies course right now where we are discussing the processes of culture that create that limited canon, so I'm pretty jaded.
Five other notable mentions?
Oh wow. Just five? I love all books. Go read!
(I'll think about these five notable mentions).
Ok-- off to hit the books for school now! Two weeks and five days til freedom!... gulp. I have A LOT to do in two weeks and five days!
I can't believe I forgot to put Gaiman in as one of my fave novelists!! Shame on me.
ReplyDeleteI will have to check out Ruby in the Smoke by Pullman as I LOVED his Golden Compass series. Although I have a feeling I've read it... but since I can't remember what happened- it's like a new book all over again! :)
And I am the same with the Twilight books as in "I could feel my IQ dropping with every turn of the page". I read the first one, and it was honestly ok. The second one, I started skimming just so I could see what was happening in the story but then I gave up because I just wasn't interested. I don't really like bashing Twilight as fairplay to Stephanie Meyers, she's got a book series published and they are enormously popular... but it's just not the best book ever.
OH and Discovery of Witches came in for me from the library. Didn't have a chance to pick it up over the weekend and won't now til Thursday. I'm looking forward to seeing what you and Jenna were going on about!
ReplyDeleteYou should totally read Jane Eyre and Emma, they're delightful.
ReplyDeleteAnd I love Dianna Wynne Jones too! Of course. Because we're the same person.