I've enjoyed reading the answers to this meme that's been going around (here and here) so I thought I'd play too.
1. Which author do you own the most books by?
I had to count and the answer surprised me: Colette! Mystery series and things like that I tend to borrow from the library unless I'm traveling or find them used, so I don't have any nice sets.
2. Which book do you own the most copies of?
Just one of each, though I do have three different collections of Robert Burns.
3. Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
No.
4. Which fictional character are you secretly in love with?
James Fraser.
5. What book have you read the most times in your life? (Excluding picture books read to children.)
Completely against my will- The Great Gatsby. We moved a lot when I was growing up and whenever I landed in a new school system they were inevitably just beginning to study it. Then there was college...
But for pleasure- Wuthering Heights, Gaudy Night, Swann's Way (different translations and I also made an ill-fated attempt with the French), Weetzie-Bat, Practical Magic.
6. What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
The Witch of Blackbird Pond, The Egypt Game
7. What is the worst book you've read in the past year?
Tara Road by Maeve Binchy. I'd never read anything by her and she's so popular so I decided to try it out. It was god-awful and I didn't finish.
8. What is the best book you've read in the past year?
Still thinking.
9. If you could force everyone tagged to read one book, what would it be?
I'm more of a live-and-let-live kind of girl.
10. Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
11. What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
None, they never do them justice it seems.
12. What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
As above.
13. Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book or literary character?
If we expand writer to include songwriter then I once had a lovely dream in which I danced under the stars with Francis Reader.
14. What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?
Learning To Fly by Victoria Beckham. Also lots of nonsensey fashion books with pretty pictures (VB has also written
one of these but I haven't read hers. Yet.)
15 What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvior.
16. What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?
If we change this to 'the most obscure
place you've seen a Shakespeare play' then I have a story to tell because I once saw Romeo and Juliet in the
woods of Wisconsin. Pure magic.
17. Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
The French.
18. Roth or Updike?
I'm not qualified to answer. I've read very little Updike (and haven't liked that) and no Roth.
19. David Sedaris or David Eggers?
Neither.
20. Shakespeare, Milton or Chaucer?
What?
21. Austen or Eliot?
Both.
22. What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
For the biggest gap, see question 20, or my entire blog. But I'm not embarrassed about it, I'm actually pleased I've made it as far as I have.
23. What is your favorite novel?
Wuthering Heights
24. Play?
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
25. Poem?
When I have fears that I may cease to be, A red red rose, Words wide night
26. Essay?
On Keeping a Notebook by Joan Didion, nearly anything by Walter Benjamin. And Judith Thurman's fashion pieces in the New Yorker.
28. Work of nonfiction?
Heloise and Abelard by Gilson, and I think this is more creative nonfiction (which I have no patience with as a rule) but I thought Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje was beautiful.
29. Who is your favorite writer?
It's impossible to answer, I like different writers for different reasons.
30. Who is the most overrated writer today?
Who am I to say?
31. What is your desert island book?
Won't I be too busy listening to my desert island records (and drinking rum from a coconut) to do much reading?
32. And... what are you reading right now?
I can only read in two-minute increments right now so I am still meandering my way through the March issue of Vogue.