4 posts tagged “books”

Nabbed from Kate.

1) What author do you own the most books by?
J.K. Rowling.

2) What book do you own the most copies of?
Copies? I don’t own multiple copies of any book.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
It hurts a little, but I tolerated it.

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
When I was younger I was in love with Ira from the book The Night Room. No one so much anymore, although I’ll always have a soft spot for Mr. Darcy.

5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count)?
Probably An Invisible Sign of my Own by Aimee Bender, or Fishbowl by Sarah Mlynowski, or maybe The Night Room (see above).

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
I loved Tamara Pierce back then.

7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?'
Sadly, it’s been about a year since I left grad school so I can’t put something from that. If I don’t like a book, I wont finish it.

8) What is the best book you've read in the past year?
Special Topics in Calamity Physics

9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
An Invisible Sign of my Own by Aimee Bender, because I

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
Paul Auster or Jhumpa Lahari

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
Fishbowl by Sarah Mlynowski

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
They made a movie of An Invisible Sign of my Own…starring Jessica Alba…and I’m terrified to see it.

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
I can’t remember any off the top of my head.

14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?
I read a romance novel. The man was this lonely woodsman. The sex parts were good, but the plot was awful.

15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man…and I loved it.

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?
I’ve only seen Merchant of Venice, Hamlet…and I forget the other one. It was a comedy.

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
The French, only because I haven’t really read the Russians.

18) Roth or Updike?
Auster…oh, fine, Updike.

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
Sedaris

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Chaucer

21) Austen or Eliot?
I like both, but I’ll say Austen.

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
See number 17. I haven’t read the Russians.

23) What is your favorite novel?
An Invisible Sign of my Own

24) Play?
No idea.  I don't think I've ever read one.

25) Poem?
I can’t remember the name, or the poet, which is sad. (Although I love Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, too, Kate.)

26) Essay?
Not particularly fond of those.

27) Short story?
The Chrysanthemums by Steinbeck

28) Work of nonfiction?
I don’t like to read nonfiction much. Blink was somewhat enjoyable.

29) Who is your favourite writer?
Aimee Bender or Paul Auster

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
Steven King

My 2009 To-Do List
When I was in grad school for speech pathology, we had to create goals for our clients and one of the major issues was that they be measurable.  So instead of doing vague things like "get fit" I've tried to make my goals more specific.
1. Start crafting again.
2. Create a binder for recipes.
3. Get a raise, higher paying job, or a job in Hometown.
4. Create a chore schedule.
5. Read 5 books owned but haven't read yet.
6. Learn to create Wordpress themes.
7. Start blogging again.*
8. Write 3 short stories.
9. Create an exercise schedule.
10. Get my World of Warcraft character to level 80.
(optional) Find the love of my life.

Things I Need from Target
1. Another hanging file folder box.
2. Activia yogurt.
3. A small notebook that wont get beat up in my purse.
4, A new purse.
5. Snack mix for work.
6. Calcium supplements.
7. 2 bulletin boards.
8. New Underwear.
9. Screws.

Qualities That My Next Boyfriend Must Have
1. Intelligence.
2. Silliness.
3. Doesn't make mountains out of molehills.
4. Willing to try and get along with my family--no prejudices.
5. Enjoys cuddling, and has a body that can be cuddlied with (ie, isn't malnourished).
6. Taste in things that doesn't clash.  (We don't have to like all the same things, but he can't only like rap music, reality television, and horror films.)
7. Likes staying in sometimes.

What I'm going to do This Weekend
1. Do dishes.
2. Do laundry.
3. Unpack.
4. Finish Breaking Dawn.
5. Continue reading Gravity's Rainbow which I found at my parents' house.
6. Get started on 2009 list.
7. Prepare for next week.
8. Figure out what I'm going to do for my birthday at the end of the week.
9. Maybe see Pike if he's back. Convince him to take me to the Andrew Bird show for my birthday.

Rants
1. I don't want to go back to work tomorrow. 
2. It's so stupid! 
3. Everyone is working on stuff that I'm not responsible for. 
4. I shouldn't have to be there and I hate that I do.

*Not this one.  I'm referring to a blog written under my real name instead of this pseudonym and more about stuff than my personal...issues.

I'll Pass:

-Missing my family and my friends back home and not being in a position to be able to move back, given the complete non-existent job market.
-Being back at work.
-Not having plans for New Year's Eve because all my friends (all being Pike, Addison, Nikki, and Lacey) are out of town for various reasons.  I may end up staying home, reading Eclipse, and drinking a bottle of champagne by myself.*

Eclipse Special Edition (The Twilight Saga)

Stephenie Meyer

-Having read New Moon in one day.  (I'm a really fast reader and I was procrastinating, but that still doesn't mean I like that I did it.)  I didn't enjoy it as much as Twilight.  Too much moping, and the "twists" were completely predictable.
-My apartment is still a huge mess.

Yes, Please:

-Finally saw Wall-E with my brother at the cheapseats.  I love that Hometown still has cheapseats.  (I hate that Hometown's cheapseats are nicer than The City's regular, expensive theaters.)  The film was very cute, and I enjoyed it, but Finding Nemo is still by far my favorite Pixar film.

Wall-E

-Border's loot: I also picked up a calendar at borders of vintage-looking images of people drinking coffee with phrases like "coffee first...then your mundane bullshit!"  It's for work.  I have one of vintage posters for home.  It's really pretty.  I also grabbed the latest issue of Ready Made magazine, and the Procrastinator's SOS 2009 planner:

Procrastinator's SOS Planner: 2009 Desk Calendar

Susan Cohan Hoffman

1 comment

I love bookstores!
-The knowledge that 2009 is going to be much better than 2008.  No grad school and instead goals for the future I can actually look forward to!
-It's warm outside.  I don't even need my winter coat!

*This actually sounds quite enjoyable.

Stolen from Christina with the rules changed:

"What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Crossed out are the ones you've read, italics are the ones you want to read, bold are the ones you started but didn't finish."

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice (love)
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife (mild hatred)
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway (love)
Great Expectations (love)
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (love)
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo (love)
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath (hate)
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984 (love) 
Angels & Demons (why is this on here?  it's a thriller!)
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces (way overrated)
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners (love)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five (many other Vonnegut's but not this one)
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye (love)
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow (I lost my copy!)
The Hobbit (love, but hate the rest of LOTR)
In Cold Blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

So I like reading!