reading habits meme
It's ironic, that I should be doing this meme at this particular time of my life, because (1) I haven't properly read anything for pleasure in quite some time and (2) I should be reading at this very moment...about the Ricardian approach to budget deficits. However, wanderlight insisted that everyone on her flist steal it, so I am.
1. Do you snack while you read? If so, favourite reading snack?
Generally speaking, I do not, unless it is Sunday morning at home (and, by home, I mean that place to where I go when university is not consuming my existence), in which case I am thumbing through the "Currents" section of The Philadelphia Inquirer over a Chinese breakfast. In circumstances other than those, however, I can be a bit obsessive-compulsive about crumbs or drink stains on my books.
2. Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
When I read for school, I mark all of my books by underlining, starring, and occasionally scribbling remarks in the margins. (There was a time I tried to write a one-sentence summary for every section I read, but that was too much work.) Always, though, there is that moment before I set my pen to the page and realise that I am about to mark up an immaculate, beautiful work of writing. Thus, you can probably infer that I do not mark books that I read simply for my own purposes. The only time I did was when I read Lady Chattery's Lover per the recommendation of my AP English Literature teacher, and I regret that sorely.
3. How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?
Lying the book flat open is a definite no. As are dog-ears. I usually don't have a proper bookmark around, and so I rely on my memory, which, surprisingly, is more often successful than not.
4. Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?
Both, definitely. In the realm of fiction, I love books that take my mind to places it has never travelled, to vaguely paraphrase an e.e. cummings poem, and I am particularly partial to works written in the 20th century and later. My guilty pleasures are historical fiction and Victorian-esque novels, i.e., contemporary novels written in the Victorian style. Vis-à-vis non-fiction, history books easily take the cake: my major might be in economics, but history is my intellectual hobby. I also enjoy reading about politics, international affairs, and economics, unsurprisingly.
5. Hardcopy or audiobooks?
Hardcopy! An exception may be made for Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope, only because it is read by the author himself.
6. Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?
I am more satisfied if I can read to the end of the chapter, but, sometimes, it is three in the morning, I need to be awake in four hours, so Albert Camus can suck it if my stopping in the middle of a paragraph offends him.
7. If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away? Write it down to look it up later?
When I was younger, I used to write words down on an index card as I read. These days, I sort of skip unfamiliar words and admire the overall writing?
8. What are you currently reading?
For fun, I've been reading Albert Camus's The Fall for some time now. For school, that list includes an entire shelf full of books for my Chinese foreign policy seminar, as well as various journal articles of my macroeconomic theory and economics & poltics of development classes. My reading life, like my love life, is not particularly exciting right now.
9. What is the last book you bought?
The Fall and Paul Collier's absolutely necessary The Bottom Billiom: Why the Poorest Countries Are Falling Behind and What Can Be Done About It, both from Amazon. My last purchase from an actual bookstore was Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans, which I cannot wait to read.
10. Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can read more than one at a time?
I can balance what seems like an infinite number of books for school. When reading for fun, though, I tend to only read one at a time, although it is likely that, as I am reading that one book, there are at least five others that I've already started!
11. Do you like re-reading books?
I do! I realise it's a bit of a waste of time, especially with a to-read list as long as mine -- I have this problem where I love accumulating books before realising that I have no time to read, what -- but there is something very comforting about revisiting a story with which I am already familiar or reliving a particular aspect of a book that impressed itself upon me the first (or second or third) time. Books I never tire of re-reading: Atonement (Ian McEwan), Sophie's World (Jostein Gaarder), Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (Tony Judt; note: this book is almost a thousand pages long, and I've now read it three times), and, somewhat disturbingly, 1984 (George Orwell).
Signing off, V.M. Bell
1. Do you snack while you read? If so, favourite reading snack?
Generally speaking, I do not, unless it is Sunday morning at home (and, by home, I mean that place to where I go when university is not consuming my existence), in which case I am thumbing through the "Currents" section of The Philadelphia Inquirer over a Chinese breakfast. In circumstances other than those, however, I can be a bit obsessive-compulsive about crumbs or drink stains on my books.
2. Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
When I read for school, I mark all of my books by underlining, starring, and occasionally scribbling remarks in the margins. (There was a time I tried to write a one-sentence summary for every section I read, but that was too much work.) Always, though, there is that moment before I set my pen to the page and realise that I am about to mark up an immaculate, beautiful work of writing. Thus, you can probably infer that I do not mark books that I read simply for my own purposes. The only time I did was when I read Lady Chattery's Lover per the recommendation of my AP English Literature teacher, and I regret that sorely.
3. How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?
Lying the book flat open is a definite no. As are dog-ears. I usually don't have a proper bookmark around, and so I rely on my memory, which, surprisingly, is more often successful than not.
4. Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?
Both, definitely. In the realm of fiction, I love books that take my mind to places it has never travelled, to vaguely paraphrase an e.e. cummings poem, and I am particularly partial to works written in the 20th century and later. My guilty pleasures are historical fiction and Victorian-esque novels, i.e., contemporary novels written in the Victorian style. Vis-à-vis non-fiction, history books easily take the cake: my major might be in economics, but history is my intellectual hobby. I also enjoy reading about politics, international affairs, and economics, unsurprisingly.
5. Hardcopy or audiobooks?
Hardcopy! An exception may be made for Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope, only because it is read by the author himself.
6. Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?
I am more satisfied if I can read to the end of the chapter, but, sometimes, it is three in the morning, I need to be awake in four hours, so Albert Camus can suck it if my stopping in the middle of a paragraph offends him.
7. If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away? Write it down to look it up later?
When I was younger, I used to write words down on an index card as I read. These days, I sort of skip unfamiliar words and admire the overall writing?
8. What are you currently reading?
For fun, I've been reading Albert Camus's The Fall for some time now. For school, that list includes an entire shelf full of books for my Chinese foreign policy seminar, as well as various journal articles of my macroeconomic theory and economics & poltics of development classes. My reading life, like my love life, is not particularly exciting right now.
9. What is the last book you bought?
The Fall and Paul Collier's absolutely necessary The Bottom Billiom: Why the Poorest Countries Are Falling Behind and What Can Be Done About It, both from Amazon. My last purchase from an actual bookstore was Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans, which I cannot wait to read.
10. Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can read more than one at a time?
I can balance what seems like an infinite number of books for school. When reading for fun, though, I tend to only read one at a time, although it is likely that, as I am reading that one book, there are at least five others that I've already started!
11. Do you like re-reading books?
I do! I realise it's a bit of a waste of time, especially with a to-read list as long as mine -- I have this problem where I love accumulating books before realising that I have no time to read, what -- but there is something very comforting about revisiting a story with which I am already familiar or reliving a particular aspect of a book that impressed itself upon me the first (or second or third) time. Books I never tire of re-reading: Atonement (Ian McEwan), Sophie's World (Jostein Gaarder), Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (Tony Judt; note: this book is almost a thousand pages long, and I've now read it three times), and, somewhat disturbingly, 1984 (George Orwell).
Signing off, V.M. Bell