(no subject)
1. Which book has been on your shelves the longest?
Depends whether it's my shelves or the family shelves. Though it's not exactly 'long', we've got some pretty old books in general, especially some encyclopaedias from the 30s or so... On my shelves specifically, Doctor Dolittle in The Moon is the oldest, an edition from 1948.
2. What is your current read, your last read and the book you'll read next?
I'm... actually not in the middle of anything at the moment. Damn school. Last read, embarrassingly, The Elvenbane by Andre Norton and Mercedes Lackey. Junk food readingggg... Next ...I want to see if we have Always Coming Home by Ursula Le Guin. If not. Um Idk.
3. What book did everyone like and you hated?
Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak. Though I wasn't alone in that - I know at least two others who also dislike it.
4. Which book do you keep telling yourself you'll read, but you probably won't?
...A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin... though I really should... maybe... at some point... I got stuck the last two times I tried and that's off-putting. I will have to make an effort one of these days.
5. Which book are you saving for "retirement?"
I'm not. Don't really see the point in "saving" some book for some hypothetical and years-off retirement.
6. Last page: read it first or wait till the end?
Depends. Generally not, especially if it's a book by an author I know and like. Sometimes I will skip to the end when I'm part way through and it's being clunky, or boring. Or occasionally if I am struck with a sudden premonition - someone in this story is not making it out alive - to check if I am right.
7. Acknowledgments: waste of ink and paper or interesting aside?
They’re interesting when the author makes them interesting. But that is rare, sadly.
8. Which book character would you switch places with?
Tricksy, very tricksy.
Once I would have said Tris from Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic. Now I'm not so sure.
Yes, this is a cop out.
9. Do you have a book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time)?
Inda, Sherwood Smith. The first time reading it, at the Stansborough cottage on a sunny late morning. The bedroom I was in had four beds but it was just me and my sister in there. All browns and golds and floral prints. Lace curtains. The sun was coming through them and making patterns on the floor, which was bare wood except for a few rugs.
10. Name a book you acquired in some interesting way.
...I don't think I have any more interesting that 'won in some competition'. This is sad.
11. Have you ever given away a book for a special reason to a special person?
Not that I know of. I have lent books, but never under extraordinary circumstances. And I've gotten most of them back. This is also sad. One thing I want to do some time is buy a couple of copies of some really good books and leave them in public places with a little note on the inside front cover saying something like "This book is for you to read, but once you have read it please put it somewhere where someone else will find it." Only put more elegantly. I saw an article about someone doing this several years ago but cannot find it now; it is on my list of things to do, like spontaneous balloon giving on a weekday lunchtime and Chloe's cupcake flash mob.
12. Which book has been with you to the most places?
If that's in the case of being taken in the car on errands that involve waiting time, probably something by Tamora Pierce. Or in the case of being carried around in my schoolbag (which doesn't really go to that many places), Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones or The Beginning Place (which has also been to Taupo) or A Very Long Way From Anywhere Else (which has been to a couple of friend's houses (which I have never visited, so that doesn't really count) as well) by Ursula Le Guin.
If you're going for sheer distance it would be one of the ones that made the journey to the USA on some occasion.
13. Any "required reading" you hated in high school that wasn’t so bad ten years later?
Mister Pip's the only required reading I've had in high school. It's not so bad.
14. What is the strangest item you’ve ever found in a book?
...I do not know. I have found library receipts, and bookmarks, but nothing particularly remarkable.
15. Used or brand new?
I like libraries and secondhand book stores. My house's shelves are covered in books other people have read. My main objection to new books is that in NZ they are hideously expensive. So mostly the new books I have are gifts.
16. Stephen King: Literary genius or opiate of the masses?
I cannot comment. I have never read his writing.
17. Have you ever seen a movie you liked better than the book?
Harry Potter five :/ Neither was brilliant, but at least the movie left out most of the sludge.
18. Conversely, which book should NEVER have been introduced to celluloid?
Mostly the ones I would pick I have never seen the adaptation... but I guess A Wizard of Earthsea, and The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper.
19. Have you ever read a book that's made you hungry, cookbooks being excluded from this question?
Nnnnno? Though when I have had stomach bugs I have sometimes needed to read books that did not mention food, or have had to skip descriptions of food.
20. Who is the person whose book advice you'll always take?
Um... Chloe, T. No, that's a lie, there are several books T's recommended that I have never read and am not planning to any time soon.