book meme

[sidleypkhermit]

This looks like a cute one. Send me a letter (or a whole word! god knows I'm not about to get tired of the sound of my own voice) and I'll answer:

A. Author You’ve Read The Most Books From
B. Best Sequel Ever
C. Currently Reading
D. Drink of Choice While Reading
E. E-Reader or Physical Books
F. Fictional Character You Would Have Dated In High School
G. Glad You Gave This Book A Chance
H. Hidden Gem Book
I. Important Moments of Your Reading Life
J. Just Finished
K. Kinds of Books You Won’t Read
L. Longest Book You’ve Read
M. Major Book Hangover Because Of
N. Number of Bookcases You Own
O. One Book That You Have Read Multiple Times
P. Preferred Place to Read
Q. Quote From A Book That Inspires You/Gives You Feels
R. Reading Regret
S. Series You Started and Need to Finish
T. Three Of Your All-Time Favorite Books
U. Unapologetic Fanperson For
W. Worst Bookish Habit
V. Very Excited For This Release More Than Any Other
X. Marks The Spot (Start On Your Bookshelf And Count to the 27th Book)
Y. Your Latest Book Purchase
Z. ZZZ-Snatcher (last book that kept you up WAY late)

Comments

[fmajorhell.livejournal.com]

F, O, Q, W!

[sidleypkhermit.livejournal.com]

F. Fictional Character You Would Have Dated In High School
Oh geez, high school, that was a very long time ago. (I'm taking this to mean "character you were attracted to in fictional books that you read as a teen" and not necessarily "a fictional character who reminds you of the kind of people you were actually dating in high school", which would be a different and probably funnier category.) (*coughKYLORENcough*)

I definitely had a crush on Ford Prefect from the Hitchhiker's Trilogy -- in fact, that probably dates to earlier than high school, since I used to listen to the Hitchhiker's radio series when I was maybe ten or eleven? I know I would retell stories from it to my best friend at Montessori school, so I had to have been well into it before sixth grade. I got exposed to the radio series first -- my incurably Anglophile parents bought it on a set of six audiotapes that I would listen to on my little tape deck in my room, understanding maybe 45% of the jokes -- but also read the books a lot, so I think it counts for the book meme.

[sidleypkhermit.livejournal.com]

O. One Book That You Have Read Multiple Times
At first I was looking around for a backup answer to "F" to avoid duplication because the only books I could think of that I'd definitely re-read were the Hitchhiker's Trilogy. Which, I mean, makes sense, since I think we all do more retreads of the stuff we obsess over as teens than of our grown-up books. But once I started thinking about it, there are a lot of books I've read more than once, from various genres and times in my life. And as the icon suggests, a particularly influential one would be The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes -- or the Holmes canon more generally, but to meet the "one book" stipulation I'll go with the first collection of short stories.

I can't really estimate how many times I've read various chunks of The Canon[tm]; my father started reading to me from the short stories when I was about 8, after my school did a play that was a Holmes adaptation, and I've revisited it over the years, including on an email list where we discussed one story a month (or broke them up into smaller sections for the novels) in the late nineties - early 2000s. Holmesiana was where I learned to fandom -- which was very much ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny cuz Holmesiana is also where fandom as we know it first learned to be fandom -- the place I first encountered the masochistic pastime of trying to make sense of continuity; even the first time I learned about being in a fandom and hating the writer of the fandom, from the time my dad got one of Conan Doyle's other books from the library so we could check that out and it was so sexist I made him stop reading to me about half a chapter in.

And it was the first place I said to myself (around age 11), "that fictional guy is acting like this because he's in love with that other fictional guy and nobody is talking about it," and I tried to explain to one of my friends and they didn't really get it.

[sidleypkhermit.livejournal.com]

W. Worst Bookish Habit
Accumulation, accumulation, accumulation. Isn't that every reader's answer, though?

Okay, I have occasionally been known to recommend things I haven't technically "finished" or in at least one case "read" (the kind of stuff where you have enough familiarity with what the thesis is and how it's supported and the author's other work to want to tell people "none of you know what you're talking about you should go read this person's book" but you maybe actually have not taken your own advice yet?). That one's a true bad habit, albeit also, I bet, a more common one than most of us would like to admit.

[sidleypkhermit.livejournal.com]

Q. Quote From A Book That Inspires You/Gives You Feels

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.

John Milton's Areopagitica. We read it in a class I took in spring 2002; a formative time to be talking about one of the great works on censorship and freedom of thought. Technically it's a speech, but whatever, it's a book too.