Book Quiz

From my younger daughter who got it from older daughter:

Hardback, trade paperback or mass market paperback?
Almost always hardcover. I just love books!

Barnes & Noble or Borders? It used to be Barnes and Noble, but a smallish Borders opened about 1 ½ miles from my house, and they keep e-mailing me 40% off coupons, so I go there to use them.

Book mark or dog-ear? Book marks! Remember? I love books - wouldn’t think of dog-earing them.

Amazon or brick-and-mortar? Well…..both? I love looking through books, looking at what the staff recommends, but lately I’ve been reading the book review section of the Sunday New York Times and ordering books via Amazon from that. So - why not both???

Alphabetize by author, or alphabetize by title, or random? Not alphabetized at all and not random (oh, the horror!). I group by author, and then by category – history, Irish literature, French-related literature, British, current, etc. I always know where every book I own is in my bookshelves.

Throw away, or sell? Keep, unless I hated it. I lend books, and ones I don’t want I take to a used book store for credit, but I never get books from there. Go figure…

Keep dust jacket or toss it? Keep it. Always. But I might let younger daughter have the jacket from my War and Peace, since she lost hers and loves the book. I can’t get past the first 70 pages.

Short story or novel? Both. I really love short stories. They are such perfect little worlds if written well.

Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket? HARRY POTTER! I read the first Lemony Snicket and flat out didn’t like it at all.

Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks? At chapter breaks.

“It was a dark and stormy night” or “Once upon a time”? “It was a dark and stormy night.”

Buy or borrow? Both, but usually buy, because I might well read any book more than once.

Buying choice: book reviews, recommendations, or browse? All three.

Tidy ending or cliffhanger? Tidy can be sort of too tidy sometimes. So cliffhangers are good too; the reader gets to think about what might happen.

Morning reading, afternoon reading, or nighttime reading? All. But I might have to think about more books on tape, since reading and knitting compete. It would be really difficult to switch to books on tape. I like re-reading really good sentences and passages, making notes in the margins, and underlining things that jump out at me.

Stand-alone or series? Stand alone, except for Harry Potter and John Updike, although I don’t know if his Rabbit books can really be called a series. Maybe….

Favorite series? I really haven’t read that many. When I was young, I loved The Little House on the Prairie series. One of my elementary teachers read aloud from them daily and that got me hooked.

Favorite children’s book? I don’t think I have one.

Favorite YA book? Probably Gone With The Wind.

Favorite book of which nobody else has heard? Well, maybe A Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier. It’s a weird book and it fascinated me.

Favorite books read last year? Wow. I can’t choose.

Favorite books of all time? Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. There are passages in this book that are so beautiful that they are poetry. I’ve read it several times. Another favorite is Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. I’ve read that several times too. And of course, there is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It’s in the top three on most Best Books lists, and everyone in my family but me hates it. I used to read it once a year. Now just every few years.

What are you reading right now? The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed. It’s really a history book, not a gossipy Entertainment Tonight sort of story. It’s really a very interesting social and legal history of slavery before and during the life of Thomas Jefferson.

What are you reading next? Probably Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

Favorite book to recommend to an 11-year-old? A Brief History of the Dead? No, just joking. I don’t really know. The Harry Potter series? But I think all 11-year olds may have read it already.

Favorite book to re-read? See the answer to Favorite Books of all times. But I do re-read many others. My favorites are listed above though.

Do you ever smell books? Huh? Although I suppose a store of used books smells different from a Barnes and Noble, I’ve never really thought about smelling books…weird question.

Do you ever read primary source documents like letters or diaries? Well, if they are part of a book, although I once read a book of letters written by Mary Todd Lincoln, and then found out years later that they had been written by someone else, supposing what MTL might have written. I felt cheated, although it was sort of my fault for not paying enough attention to the sourcing.

And that’s all folks!