My First Meme

From Musings from the Sofa comes my first meme, Eva’s Reading Meme. Here goes:

Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews? Oh, so many. Anything by Jodi Picoult, anything by Alexander McCall Smith . . . essentially the New York Times bestseller list. In my defense, the times I’ve overcome my reluctance to read books like this (The Kite Runner, The Da Vinci Code, The Alienist, and Running with Scissors come immediately to mind) have usually ended in confirming my original assessment.

If you could bring three characters to life for a social event (afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would they be and what would the event be? Jo March, Danny Deck, and Rhett Butler for a long night of dinner and drinks. Jo and Danny would tell us stories, and Rhett would make sure we all had a good time.

(Borrowing shamelessly from the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde): you are told you can’t die until you read the most boring novel on the planet. While this immortality is great for awhile, eventually you realise it’s past time to die. Which book would you expect to get you a nice grave? I’ve read excerpts but haven’t been able to face the actual book, so it could surprise me, but Pilgrim’s Progress looks deadly.

Come on, we’ve all been there. Which book have you pretended, or at least hinted, that you’ve read, when in fact you’ve been nowhere near it? I think I’m usually pretty honest about this. There are wide gaps in my readings of the classics, and I’ve been trying to fill them in. But I will say that I claim I’ve read War and Peace when I haven’t read the essay at the end, and I’ve only read half of Don Quixote (I just couldn’t face book two).

As an addition to the last question, has there been a book that you really thought you had read, only to realise when you read a review about it/go to ‘reread’ it that you haven’t? Which book? Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. I was positive I’d read it before, only to discover when we read it for my book group that I was reading it for the first time. (Either that or I’m even more forgetful than I think I am.)

You’re interviewing for the post of Official Book Advisor to some VIP (who’s not a big reader). What’s the first book you’d recommend and why? (If you feel like you’d have to know the person, go ahead and personalise the VIP) Although I hesitate to recommend a classic, for fear of scaring off someone who’s not a big reader, I would recommend The Count of Monte Cristo, since it’s such a thrilling adventure and should be an opening to further reading.

A good fairy comes and grants you one wish: you will have perfect reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which language do you go with? I have to go with French on this one, since I’ve been saying for several years now that I want to learn to read French so I can read Dumas in the original language.

A mischievious fairy comes and says that you must choose one book that you will reread once a year for the rest of your life (you can read other books as well). Which book would you pick? I thought about picking Pride and Prejudice or Persuasion, but I think I’ll have to go for Little Women, since it’s probably the book I go back to most often. As I get older, I can see where Alcott gets sanctimonious, but I still love the story, and start sobbing from the moment Beth gets introduced.

I know that the book blogging community, and its various challenges, have pushed my reading borders. What’s one bookish thing you ‘discovered’ from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new appreciation for cover art-anything)? I’m really new to book blogging, so this is a hard question for me. I’m going to open it to the larger online book community and say that while I discovered quite a few wonderful books on LibraryThing that I wouldn’t necessarily have found otherwise, the best of them is probably Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Achidie, which was a wonderful book and had the bonus of teaching me about Biafra.

That good fairy is back for one final visit. Now, she’s granting you your dream library! Describe it. Is everything leatherbound? Is it full of first edition hardcovers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a few favourite authors have inscribed their works? Go ahead-let your imagination run free. My dream library has floor-to-ceiling shelves, with lovely woodwork and a beautiful set of stairs. It has large windows with curtains so I can protect the books from the sun, a stone fireplace with comfy chairs and ottomans before it, and a well-cushioned chaise longue. There are soft, comfortable blankets to snuggle into, and although there are hardwood floors, there are also bright, soft throw rugs scattered throughout. There is also a wooden table well-stocked with paper and pens and a laptop computer. As for the books, they are primarily pristine trade paperbacks, with some signed first-edition hard covers. Classics and contemporary literature coexist comfortably, with a robust nonfiction section including (but not limited to) biography, history (especially science history), and sociology, and a strong reference section. The children’s section has enticing cushions for them to sit on, and the YA section contains all my old favorites, packaged in such a way as to make them irresistably appealing to my children.

Eva‘s rule is that everyone who does this meme has to tag four people, but most of the bloggers I know have already done the meme, so I’m only tagging Laura at Musings.