meem
1. What is your favorite passage/line from a book?
I would have to say either that thing Wally says to Angel in The Cider House Rules: "You can't protect people, kiddo," he said. "All you can do is love them."
Or when Jim says to Antonia in My Antonia: "Do you know, Antonia, since I've been away, I think of you more often than of anyone else in this part of the world. I'd have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister--anything that a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don't realize it. You really are a part of me."
2. What do you consider the best film adaptation from a book? What do you think is the worst film adaptation?
Uhhh. Sometimes I avoid movies if I've already read the book because I'm like NOOOO THEY'RE GOING TO RUIN IT and also I often either forget that something was previously a book or I didn't know in the first place. Or like I know a movie I really like was a book first but I haven't read the book yet, like "Breakfast at Tiffany's." So the answer is: idk. I like stuff like "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" because it's fun and clever, and "10 Things I Hate About You" is historically speaking my favorite movie of all time, but I don't know if that stuff counts.
Unlike Lid, "Adaptation" is one of my favorite movies, because it says some stuff about writing that I really identify with and also I have never read The Orchid Thief. As an adaptation of that book, though, I imagine it is probably not very good.
3. What is the first book you remember reading?
Hmm. I had a lot of Dr. Seuss stuff and that book with the bunnies hiding in the grass or whatever and also Are You My Mother? I remember when I was first learning to read in school the teacher would record us reading aloud and play it back for us to help us understand what our problem areas were or something and the book I read was about a tug boat. A lot of the books I remember as a wee child are probably things that were read to me first, though, so it's hard for me to remember which I actually read by myself first.
4. Did you have a favorite kids’ book as a child?
I really really loved And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street because I really identified with that kid. Why shouldn't crazy awesome stuff happen every day, even if it's in your own head? Relatedly, my favorite kids' book ever is Goodnight Opus, which is about Goodnight Moon being so unbearably boring that you go insane and make a lot of crazy shit up about going swimming with Abe Lincoln and flying to outer space on a bicycle. It's also about being a totally awesome penguin.
5. What book did you hate reading for a school assignment?
I don't know if I would feel better about it now, but I was assigned The Shipping News my senior year of high school and seriously got like maybe four pages into it before I said, "Probably not!" and did not read another page. I can't even remember what I hated so much about it. It must have been stylistic if I only got four pages, but I've read other Annie Proulx stuff and been able to handle it so idk. Mystery.
6. What is the most recent book you read (or are currently reading)?
I am currently reading Dhalgren because Delicious told me to. It is pretty crazy. I am also reading The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. because I feel like it. Ian is making me read An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England because he thinks it was pretty good. I haven't really started it yet, though. I really need to finish Dhalgren, but it is so massive.
7. What book would you most like to see turned into a movie?
Like Lid, the prospect of this usually makes me more than a little nervous. I really love movies, I just think that there are different things that books and movies require to be good, and that there are different things that books and movies do well. I remember thinking when I read Cloud Atlas that if someone did it right, it would be an incredible movie, but it would also have to be like 12 hours long or like 6 different movies, or like a series of some kind, but breaking it up the right way would be tricky. But a lot of things about that book are really visual, I thought, and the bit about the journalist and the future dystopia and post-apocalyptic bits could be really awesome.
Speaking of Cloud Atlas, there is a passage from that book that might make it into my favorite passages, but I actually had to look it up and it's a bit spoiler-y, so if you are planning on reading it, don't read the following quote:
"Cloud Atlas Sextet holds my life, is my life, now I'm a spent firework; but at least I've been a firework.
People are obscenities. Would rather be music than be a mass of tubes squeezing semisolids around itself for a few decades before becoming so dribblesome it'll no longer function.
Luger here. Thirteen minutes to go. Feel trepidation, naturally, but my love of this coda is stronger. An electrical thrill that, like Adrian, I know I am to die. Pride, that I shall see it through. Certainties. Strip back the beliefs pasted on by governesses, schools, and states, you find indelible truths at one's core. Rome'll decline and fall again, Cortes'll lay Tenochtitlan to waste again, and later, Ewing will sail again, Adrian'll be blown to pieces again, you and I'll sleep under Corsican stars again, I'll come to Bruges again, fall in and out of love with Eva again, you'll read this letter again, the sun'll grow cold again. Nietzsche's gramophone record. When it ends, the Old One plays it again, for an eternity of eternities.
Time cannot permeate this sabbatical. We do not stay dead long. Once my Luger lets me go, my birth, next time around, will be upon me in a heartbeat. Thirteen years from now we'll meet again at Gresham, ten years later I'll be back in this same room, holding this same gun, composing this same letter, my resolution as perfect as my many-headed sextet. Such elegant certainties comfort me at this quiet hour.
Sunt lacrimae rerum.
R.F."
8. What book did you cheat and read the "Cliff Notes" version?
So many things, usually because I needed to be familiar with them for class and just did not have the time to actually read them. I'm a pretty slow reader, to tell you the truth. Like, not slow slow, but if I'm reading fiction I read every word. So a lot of it is stuff that I really wanted to read but couldn't find the time. I probably kept most of it, so I'll read it someday.
9. What book would you never read again, no matter how much someone was going to pay you?
Lol, keeping with the Dan Brown theme: Angels & Demons. Don't ask me why I read this. Usually if I really hate something I don't keep reading it, unless it's for school, in which case I... don't keep reading it. Hmm.
10. Are you more of a library or book store person?
I love libraries and I spend a lot of time in the library for obvious reasons. I like to spend time in libraries better, I guess. But I also really enjoy shiny new books, and I enjoy taking books home to love and cherish forever and ever, so I guess I am both.
11. Have you tried audio books? Do you like them?
I haven't, but I've thought about it. Aren't they more expensive? I don't know if I'd like them or not. I think it would depend entirely on whether or not I liked the person's voice. I might be a better reader than a listener, though. Maybe I should pick one up sometime and see if I like listening to it before bed, since I always want to read before bed but then I get five pages and get too sleepy to continue. I feel like audio books would be worse for that, though.
12. Has any movie ever inspired you to then read the book on which it was based?
Me too, with Fight Club. I keep saying that I want to read this or that book because I liked the movie but for the most part I haven't gotten around to it. I'm trying to think but nothing is coming to mind.
13. Describe a passage from a book that made you cry.
Like the entire second half of The Time Traveler's Wife. I bawled. I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff, though. Watch out when the movie comes out, I'm going to be a mess. If they do it right, that is.
14. What is your favorite book series?
I haven't read a series in a long time. When I was a kid I was so into David Eddings, though. I seriously loved everything that dude wrote. So all you guys talk about LoTR or Narnia and I'm like "Bros idk nothin bout that, I was in an entirely different world."
15. Describe your favorite place to read.
I like to read outside when it's nice, or in the library, because it requires like actively muting what's going on around you but it's still kind of there, and then I have that wonderful sensation when I finally stop reading and look up of like, coming up from underwater or something. I enjoy that feeling. I like reading in my living room but then I'm always thinking that I want a snack or some tea or my roommate comes home and is doing her thing. And when I read in bed sometimes I get bored with my position options or I fall asleep.
Andddd off to read I go.