books meme
Jan. 22nd, 2010 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitI've been posting about books a lot lately, in part because at the moment the only TV show I'm watching is QI. (I'll watch Doctor Who when it returns, but I've given up on Merlin and I doubt I'll watch a new season of Torchwood if there is one. *sigh* I wish there were more things on TV that interested me.)
Anyway, since I've been talking about books, I thought I'd do that meme that's going around.
1. Which book has been on your shelves the longest?
Technically it's not on my shelves at the moment (it's in a box) but I have an anthology of poetry that I acquired when I was 13 or 14, from a box full of random books brought home by my stepfather (who was illiterate--and that's not, by the way, a joke or a way of saying I didn't like his taste; he literally could not read) . The anthology was a 1940-something hardcover edition of A Little Treasury of Modern Poetry, edited by Oscar Williams, and it was my first introduction to Great Literature. But fortunately no one told me that, or tried to explain anything or substitute more age-appropriate reading or any other such shenanigans. To me it was just a book, and I was hungry for books, even though I'd always thought poetry was the stuff on greeting cards.
That's how I came to fall in love with Auden's poetry, because the language was simple enough that I could unpick most of the meaning after a while, at least the superficial meaning, and I was amazed that poetry could be about the world instead of just expressing personal emotions.
That's how I read The Waste Land as a teenager, without any explanatory notes except the ones Eliot himself included (with their passages of untranslated Greek, Latin, etc.). I didn't understand it at all, but the words made me shiver, and I wanted to understand it. I decided that my ambition was to be as smart as T. S. Eliot someday (at least, if I failed at becoming a rock star).
People who grew up middle class and always had access to books may find this whole story a bit odd, but we were dirt poor and rural and the nearest library was 50 miles away (and in any case it only served people who lived in that town, which obviously we didn't). I used to read my school textbooks over and over again.
2. What is your last read, your current read, and the book you'll read next?
Last finished: Mo Hayder's mystery/thriller The Treatment, which is very page-turny but also full of torture porn, and has some appalling sexual politics (especially for a book written by a woman).
Currently reading: three books. I often have more than one on the go at once. The end of Sayers's The Five Red Herrings is in sight at last, hurrah! I'm a bit bogged down in Michelle West's Hunter's Oath, which unfortunately killed off the characters I found most interesting about fifty pages ago. And today I got Jeff VanderMeer's Finch from the library after being in the queue for it for ages. I'm liking it a lot so far--the tone is really different (with good reason) from both previous Ambergris books, which is not a problem because the new tone is also good. I think one could place the book into the category that China Miéville named Noird, for Weird Noir. As I think this is a completely awesome category that deserves to be more popular than the ubiquitous paranormal romance, I'm happy that there are real books to place in it and it's not just something Miéville made up.
Up next: probably Truth, by Robert Morales, which is a comics miniseries about the black Captain America (whose superhero powers were accidentally created during the Tuskegee experiment.
3. What book did everyone like and you hated?
Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. I actually stopped reading it about a hundred pages from the end because I was so thoroughly creeped out by the skeevy stuff about gender and sexuality.
4. Which book do you keep telling yourself you'll read, but you probably won't?
Hmm. I've always vaguely had in mind that I will someday read all of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu. I've read the first part! But the trouble is, I hate reading translations, and my French even at its best wasn't quite good enough for Proust. And in the end, I'm not sure I actually care enough to read umpteen volumes of philosophical novel.
Also, some day I'm going to read Wittgenstein. Really. *strikes pose of determination*
5. Which book are you saving for retirement?
I don't need to. Except for the hardest years of graduate school, I've always had time to read for pleasure.
6. Last page: read it first or wait till the end?
I only skip ahead to the end if I'm in some way unhappy about how the book is going and want to see if I should bother to keep on. (Often this involves "Is this queer character going to be dead or otherwise tragic at the end?")
7. Acknowledgements: waste of ink and paper or interesting aside?
I don't really care one way or the other.
8. Which book character would you switch places with?
Some guy in a really trashy gay romance, maybe, who has a few chapters of utterly ridiculous angst and then lives happily ever after with his awesome boyfriend and his mansion and his yacht and his private plane.
Okay, I wouldn't actually want to be as shallow as that guy probably is, but I'd quite like the accoutrements, thanks. And if I limit the field to non-trashy novels it's much harder to find someone who doesn't suffer horribly.
9. Do you have a book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time)?
Tons of them. For example, Mary Renault's The Charioteer will always remind me of being a 15-year-old combing bookstores for anything that might be about male homoeroticism (this was back in 1984/85 when there was a lot fewer gay characters around, and no internets either), and finding this paperback with a red-haired young soldier on the cover and a portentous, but unspecific, back cover blurb, and paging through it and discovering that yes, there was actual gay love and not just unspoken pining! And then being too scared to buy it, and coming back and back again to the bookstore until I finally worked up my courage.
10. Name a book you acquired in some interesting way.
Well, I've told my best story already in answering the first question.
11. Have you ever given away a book for a special reason to a special person?
Yes, of course.
12. Which book has been with you to the most places?
The poetry anthology from question 1, I suppose, as I've lugged it around ever since. I don't think I ever took it overseas, though, and I do have books I bought in England, Ireland, and France that may have traveled more miles.
13. Any "required reading" you hated in high school that wasn't so bad ten years later?
I re-read The Scarlet Letter in graduate school and discovered it's an awesome book. Then, alas, I tried to teach it and made my students hate me.
14. What is the strangest item you've ever found in a book?
The previous owner's shopping list used as a bookmark is about as exotic as it gets. And about as exotic as I'd ever want it to.
15. Used or brand new?
At the moment, mostly library. Even when I was employed, I tended to buy a lot of secondhand books--especially by authors who were new to me, or popcorny books like most mysteries, or things that are out of print, or just those fortuitous secondhand finds. But when possible I do buy new books from authors I trust and want to support.
16. Stephen King: Literary genius or opiate of the masses?
I've only read a few short stories. Oh, and I read The Dead Zone years ago. I think Stephen King is probably neither as bad as his detractors say nor as good as his more ardent proponents say.
17. Have you ever seen a movie you liked better than the book?
Lord of the Rings. Sorry, but I can't bear Tolkien's prose except in the Shire sections.
18. Conversely, which book should NEVER have been introduced to celluloid?
That awful 2008 film of Brideshead Revisited comes to mind. I liked the 1980s TV miniseries, but the book is too complicated to compress into two hours. And I will never forgive that film for implying that Charles was 100% Straighty McHetero and didn't return Sebastian's love.
19. Have you ever read a book that's made you hungry, cookbooks being excluded from this question?
This is another "yes, of course" question.
20. Who is the person whose book advice you'll always take?
My tastes are idiosyncratic enough that I don't think there's anyone I'm always going to agree with.
Anyway, since I've been talking about books, I thought I'd do that meme that's going around.
1. Which book has been on your shelves the longest?
Technically it's not on my shelves at the moment (it's in a box) but I have an anthology of poetry that I acquired when I was 13 or 14, from a box full of random books brought home by my stepfather (who was illiterate--and that's not, by the way, a joke or a way of saying I didn't like his taste; he literally could not read) . The anthology was a 1940-something hardcover edition of A Little Treasury of Modern Poetry, edited by Oscar Williams, and it was my first introduction to Great Literature. But fortunately no one told me that, or tried to explain anything or substitute more age-appropriate reading or any other such shenanigans. To me it was just a book, and I was hungry for books, even though I'd always thought poetry was the stuff on greeting cards.
That's how I came to fall in love with Auden's poetry, because the language was simple enough that I could unpick most of the meaning after a while, at least the superficial meaning, and I was amazed that poetry could be about the world instead of just expressing personal emotions.
That's how I read The Waste Land as a teenager, without any explanatory notes except the ones Eliot himself included (with their passages of untranslated Greek, Latin, etc.). I didn't understand it at all, but the words made me shiver, and I wanted to understand it. I decided that my ambition was to be as smart as T. S. Eliot someday (at least, if I failed at becoming a rock star).
People who grew up middle class and always had access to books may find this whole story a bit odd, but we were dirt poor and rural and the nearest library was 50 miles away (and in any case it only served people who lived in that town, which obviously we didn't). I used to read my school textbooks over and over again.
2. What is your last read, your current read, and the book you'll read next?
Last finished: Mo Hayder's mystery/thriller The Treatment, which is very page-turny but also full of torture porn, and has some appalling sexual politics (especially for a book written by a woman).
Currently reading: three books. I often have more than one on the go at once. The end of Sayers's The Five Red Herrings is in sight at last, hurrah! I'm a bit bogged down in Michelle West's Hunter's Oath, which unfortunately killed off the characters I found most interesting about fifty pages ago. And today I got Jeff VanderMeer's Finch from the library after being in the queue for it for ages. I'm liking it a lot so far--the tone is really different (with good reason) from both previous Ambergris books, which is not a problem because the new tone is also good. I think one could place the book into the category that China Miéville named Noird, for Weird Noir. As I think this is a completely awesome category that deserves to be more popular than the ubiquitous paranormal romance, I'm happy that there are real books to place in it and it's not just something Miéville made up.
Up next: probably Truth, by Robert Morales, which is a comics miniseries about the black Captain America (whose superhero powers were accidentally created during the Tuskegee experiment.
3. What book did everyone like and you hated?
Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. I actually stopped reading it about a hundred pages from the end because I was so thoroughly creeped out by the skeevy stuff about gender and sexuality.
4. Which book do you keep telling yourself you'll read, but you probably won't?
Hmm. I've always vaguely had in mind that I will someday read all of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu. I've read the first part! But the trouble is, I hate reading translations, and my French even at its best wasn't quite good enough for Proust. And in the end, I'm not sure I actually care enough to read umpteen volumes of philosophical novel.
Also, some day I'm going to read Wittgenstein. Really. *strikes pose of determination*
5. Which book are you saving for retirement?
I don't need to. Except for the hardest years of graduate school, I've always had time to read for pleasure.
6. Last page: read it first or wait till the end?
I only skip ahead to the end if I'm in some way unhappy about how the book is going and want to see if I should bother to keep on. (Often this involves "Is this queer character going to be dead or otherwise tragic at the end?")
7. Acknowledgements: waste of ink and paper or interesting aside?
I don't really care one way or the other.
8. Which book character would you switch places with?
Some guy in a really trashy gay romance, maybe, who has a few chapters of utterly ridiculous angst and then lives happily ever after with his awesome boyfriend and his mansion and his yacht and his private plane.
Okay, I wouldn't actually want to be as shallow as that guy probably is, but I'd quite like the accoutrements, thanks. And if I limit the field to non-trashy novels it's much harder to find someone who doesn't suffer horribly.
9. Do you have a book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time)?
Tons of them. For example, Mary Renault's The Charioteer will always remind me of being a 15-year-old combing bookstores for anything that might be about male homoeroticism (this was back in 1984/85 when there was a lot fewer gay characters around, and no internets either), and finding this paperback with a red-haired young soldier on the cover and a portentous, but unspecific, back cover blurb, and paging through it and discovering that yes, there was actual gay love and not just unspoken pining! And then being too scared to buy it, and coming back and back again to the bookstore until I finally worked up my courage.
10. Name a book you acquired in some interesting way.
Well, I've told my best story already in answering the first question.
11. Have you ever given away a book for a special reason to a special person?
Yes, of course.
12. Which book has been with you to the most places?
The poetry anthology from question 1, I suppose, as I've lugged it around ever since. I don't think I ever took it overseas, though, and I do have books I bought in England, Ireland, and France that may have traveled more miles.
13. Any "required reading" you hated in high school that wasn't so bad ten years later?
I re-read The Scarlet Letter in graduate school and discovered it's an awesome book. Then, alas, I tried to teach it and made my students hate me.
14. What is the strangest item you've ever found in a book?
The previous owner's shopping list used as a bookmark is about as exotic as it gets. And about as exotic as I'd ever want it to.
15. Used or brand new?
At the moment, mostly library. Even when I was employed, I tended to buy a lot of secondhand books--especially by authors who were new to me, or popcorny books like most mysteries, or things that are out of print, or just those fortuitous secondhand finds. But when possible I do buy new books from authors I trust and want to support.
16. Stephen King: Literary genius or opiate of the masses?
I've only read a few short stories. Oh, and I read The Dead Zone years ago. I think Stephen King is probably neither as bad as his detractors say nor as good as his more ardent proponents say.
17. Have you ever seen a movie you liked better than the book?
Lord of the Rings. Sorry, but I can't bear Tolkien's prose except in the Shire sections.
18. Conversely, which book should NEVER have been introduced to celluloid?
That awful 2008 film of Brideshead Revisited comes to mind. I liked the 1980s TV miniseries, but the book is too complicated to compress into two hours. And I will never forgive that film for implying that Charles was 100% Straighty McHetero and didn't return Sebastian's love.
19. Have you ever read a book that's made you hungry, cookbooks being excluded from this question?
This is another "yes, of course" question.
20. Who is the person whose book advice you'll always take?
My tastes are idiosyncratic enough that I don't think there's anyone I'm always going to agree with.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 01:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-23 06:10 pm (UTC)But . . . someday, perhaps.