It has been a while since I've done a meme! (Okay. Not that long. but hey. I am procrastinating!)
Here is the "Book Maven" meme. Repost and answer! (If it amuses you.)
1) What author do you own the most books by?
Charles Dickens. For my grad school orals, I read 9 Dickens novels in a single summer.
2) What book do you own the most copies of?
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I own several beautifully illustrated editions.
3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
No. But I noticed it.
4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
I am NOT in love with Edward Cullen. I can tell you that. I have no interest in any guy who speeds on the freeway when another person asks him to slow down, or watches someone sleep when she tells him not to. That is seriously creepy. Also: my idea of a lover is not someone who is better looking than me, 100 years more experienced than me, better educated and with super powers. My idea of a lover is someone who is genuinely an equal.
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)?
Pride and Prejudice.
6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
I tried to organize a fifth grade production of Peter Pan, from Barrie's original script.
7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?
I didn't finish it and I'm not going to slag it here.
8) What is the best book you've read in the past year?
The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon.
9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
David Copperfield. It is freaking awesome and hilarious and emotional and outrageous. But I am not tagging anyone, specifically. And it is, like 800 pages.
10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
Can dead people win? Iris Murdoch.
11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
I would stand on line for The Alienist. The book is by Caleb Carr.
I wouldn't mind The Secret History, either. Book by Donna Tartt.
But really? They will never make it, ever. But Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn.
12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
Oh, they are doing that all the time. I don't need to tell you.
I am enjoying the posters for the Nora Roberts series on TV. I will tell you that.
Jerry O'Connell. Shirtless and sincere!
(I have never read Nora Roberts. Her books may be awesomeness incarnate. But hello! To the posters!)
13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
I have many but most of them I no longer recall.
Last week, I dreamed I went to a community theater production of Twilight. Edward was played by a replacement actor. He was 35 and balding, but did a good job. The production had been running so long there were only a few people in the theater. I was writing an article on it for some internet magazine.
During pauses in the action, the actors occasionally broke character to chat with the audience. The girl playing Bella was applying to colleges and asked my advice. Afterward, I saw the Edward actor at the bus stop. We chatted a little. It was only then that I saw he was bald. He wore a hat when he was being Edward.
Analyze as you will.
I know you probably have a lot to say....
14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?
Well. I just checked out YUM-O by Rachel Ray from the library.
15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
I have read Moby Dick. I have read most of Gravity's Rainbow. I have read The Waves.
I am glad I am not in graduate school any more.
16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?
Hm. I have seen a fair amount of Shakespeare but nothing particularly obscure, I don't think. I've seen multiple Tempests, multiple Midsummers, a few Macbeths, Hamlet, Merchant, Winter's Tale, -- oh, I know!
I like Chekov. Tolstoy is kinda meh.
18) Roth or Updike?
Men concerned with manly manly things.
Like those in the next several questions (until 21).
But Roth. Because he wrote a book where someone is turned into a GIANT BREAST. And the book is from his (its) point of view!
19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
Sedaris.
I love that guy.
THe essay about the boil in When You are Engulfed in Flames is so brilliant and touching. Also the one about his old lady neighbor. And the one about getting lost in the zoo and being unable to find Hugh.
He is really a master essayist. Not just funny.
20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Shakespeare.
21) Austen or Eliot?
Austen. But I like Eliot, too. I just, you know, SUFFERED through Adam Bede, so I am not sure I forgive her.
Austen never, ever, ever, makes anyone suffer for even a minute. She is sheer joy.
22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
I have a doctorate in English literature and have never read Ulysses.
23) What is your favorite novel?
I can really only answer this moment to moment. I have new favorites all the time. But I will mention a book I haven't mentioned in this Q&A so far, that I loved dearly and wish more people would read: The Spell Book of Listen Taylor, by Jaclyn Moriarty.
24) Play?
I am most influenced by
Dark Ride, by Len Jenkin. 25) Poem?
Stuff by Ogden Nash.
26) Essay?
"A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," by David Foster Wallace. But also see the Eggers/Sedaris answer, above.
27) Short Story?
"Uncle Fred Flits By" by PG Wodehouse is pretty awesome.
28) Work of nonfiction?
I was very influenced by The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf and I think anyone under the age of 40 should read it. But my favorite is An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks.
29) Who is your favorite writer?
I can't pick. All those mentioned above thrill me. Also Michael Chabon. Francesca Lia Block. Edith Wharton. E.M Forster. I could go on and on.
30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
Am I really going to get that snarky? I probably haven't read him.
31) What is your desert island book?
The Jeeves Omnibus, by P.G. Wodehouse.
32) And... what are you reading right now?
Population 485 by Michael Perry. Rumpole Rests His Case by John Mortimer. A couple back issues of Gourmet. The issue of Entertainment Weekly with Paul Rudd on the cover.
Maryrose Wood's new book in manuscript. Dirty Sugar Cookies by
Ayun Halliday. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.
I like to have a lot of things in rotation....
