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Mar 05, 2011 21:44

Because the BBC is doing loads of booky things (mostly featuring Superkins and her glasses apparently), here is a book meme.

1. What author do you own the most books by? Hm... Alison Uttley (I have about two feet of Little Grey Rabbits, however many that is) and Henning Mankell (12) and Roald Dahl (11)

2. What book do you own the most copies of? I can't think of any that I own more than two of, and only a couple that I own two of, and they're accidental.

3. Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions? Ha! I hadn't noticed, so no.

4. What fictional character are you secretly in love with?  Secretly?  I can't think of any. But non-secretly, Flora Poste, Atticus Finch, Bill Masen from Day of the Triffids, Strider, Owain from Dawn Wind, and Matthew Shardlake.

5. What book have you read the most times in your life? Probably childhood ones like Winnie the Pooh, and Rosemary Sutcliff ones like Dawn Wind and The Armourer's House.

6. Favorite book as a ten year old? At ten, still mostly Malory Towers and Enid Blyton's Adventure series, and the Little House books.

7. What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?  In the last year, I'm not sure, but in recent memory, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which may have been just over a year ago.

8. What is the best book you’ve read in the past year? I can't choose a 'best'!  That's not fair.  But most enjoyable recently have been the latest Shardlake (Heartstone), John Christopher's The Death of Grass, and currently Peter Hoeg's Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, which I haven't finished yet. Ooh, and Tove Jansson's The Summer Book, which is completley perfect.

9. If you could force everyone you know to read one book, what would it be? Hm... I remember writing in a book review when I was about 13 that I wanted to send a copy of Brother in the Land to Mrs Thatcher and Mr Reagan, so I will say that. And also Cold Comfort Farm, because, you know, Flora Poste!

10. What book would you most like to see made into a movie? The Shardlake books!  Why have they not been filmed?? They're SO perfect for filming. And I'd LOVE to see a film of Rosemary Sutcliff's Dawn Wind, which is about a Roman British boy and the Saxon invasion in the 6th century. It's fabulous.

11. What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read? I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I suppose it means literary and clever and unintelligible. I'm not really sure I've read many like that, but I find Dickens practically impossible to read as there is just nothing there that I like or enjoy, so reading them really is a nasty chore. Or rather, was, as I don't bother trying any more.

12. What is your favorite book? Well clearly you don't expect me to choose one!  It's an impossible thing. But my list would include most of the books I've already mentioned (minus The Road of course), plus Sandra Cisneros's Caramelo (novel about a Chicago-Mexican woman and her childhood), Anthony Sher's The Year of the King (autobiog of the year he played Richard III at Stratford), Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter (a close-run thing between that and her other novels), Persuasion, The Chrysalids, Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes for Anna, Michelle de Kretser's The Rose Grower (novel set in revolutionary France, with sisters and a doctor and an American balloonist), Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things (novel set in India, about twins and flashbacks to a terrible death in their childhood.)

13. What is your favorite play? Hamlet. Much Ado About Nothing. Alan Ayckbourn's Norman Conquests. And a Japanese play I saw in London in the 90s with Alan Rickman, called Tango at the End of Winter.

14. Poem? Miles ahead of all the others is T S Eliot's The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock.

15. Essay? I have only ever read about 5 that weren't mine and about to be handed in, but I love Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own.

16. Who is the most overrated writer alive today? Possibly JK Rowling. I think she is a poor writer who has not been edited nearly heavily enough.

17. What is your desert island book? If Ray Mears has written one about how to build huts and spear fish and make string out of palm fronds, I'll take that. Otherwise, I'll take an atlas, because I love them.

18. What are you reading right now? In book form, Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow (it's beautiful. It's set in Denmark, with flashbacks to Greenland, and it's very atmospheric and odd and mysterious) and on my phone Diary of  Nobody (reread, I love Pooter very much indeed.)

19.  What books make you laugh?  Oh goodness!  Jane Austen (except Mansfield Park), Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Cold Comfort Farm, I Capture the Castle, Big Woo, The Liar, any Roald Dahl, any PG Wodehouse...

20. What books make you cry? Almost any Rosemary Sutcliff, especially The Armourer's House, many of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, the Diary of Anne Frank, Lord of the Rings, Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust, and anything else that catches me in the right mood.

reading, meme, books

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