Bookish Q&A

Came across this fun set of bookish Q&A to wile away the day until I can post my vacation posts. I found it on Worms for Words, where Katie posted her own answers, so stop by and take a look at what she thinks too!

Book Q&A Rules

1. Post these rules

2. Post a photo of your favorite book cover

3. Answer the questions below

4. Tag a few people to answer them too

5. Go to their blog/twitter and tell them you’ve tagged them

6. Make sure you tell the person who tagged you that you’ve taken part!

Your Favorite Book Cover: The England edition of The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak. One year I had 9th grade honors read it for summer reading and we did a discussion on the various book covers. I found this one and bought it even though I already had the American copy!

What are you reading right now? MWF Seeking BFF, by Rachel Bertsche. I started it, then interrupted it to read another, so now back to it again.

Do you have any idea what you’ll read when you’re done with that? The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson is next. It's the last of my vacation books that I won't get to, since vacation is winding down.

What five books have you always wanted to read but haven’t got round to? 

1. The Memory Keeper's Daughter, by Kim Edwards.

2. The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

3. Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson

4. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet - Jamie Ford

5. The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien

What magazines do you have in your bathroom/ lounge right now? None! I don't generally read magazines and my bathroom is kinda small to keep any...besides the fact that I don't like the idea of my books in a bathroom! Yucky.

What’s the worst book you’ve ever read? I'm not sure. I can think of books I was disappointed in, like Ursula Hegi's The Worst Thing I've Done. I read her other stuff first and this one didn't measure up for me.

What book seemed really popular but you didn’t like? Books in the style of David Sedaris and Sloane Crosley. I usually find them okay, but not enough to recommend or rave about. And I guess that's a fine line because I love memoirs..so I'm not sure if it's the writing style or what.

What’s the one book you always recommend to just about everyone? I feel safe recommending anything Jodi Picoult because they're usually good and I'm familiar with how her storylines work. Sometimes I get wary of recommending to people whose reading preferences I don't know because there isn't much that offends me in books.

What are your three favorite poems?

1. I had been hungry, all the years - by Emily Dickinson. (After relating it to a real life person, I grew to love this one. See post here.)

2. The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost. Cliche maybe, but it holds such truth.

3. Bits and pieces of Walt Whitman. His poems are so long that you can easily like one part and not another.

Where do you usually get your books? Barnes and Noble, Amazon, NetGalley (which are technically prepublication files, not even the final ebook version) and paperbackswap.com (PBS). PBS allows you to request books from people across the nation for the cost of media mail postage (roughly $3). When someone receives a book from you, you get a credit to request a book from anyone else. If you look into PBS and decide to sign up, put my user name, LuvReading79, in the form so I can receive credit! 

When you were little, did you have any particular reading habits? Not that I can recall. I was just always reading and often two books at once, which I don't like to do any more.

What’s the last thing you stayed up half the night reading because it was too good to put down? The first one that comes to mind is Driving With Dead People, by Monica Holloway. It's a memoir about her growing up and the things she realizes about her childhood as an adult.

Have you ever “faked” reading a book? No, but I have forgotten if I've read a book or not. My memory doesn't hold the details of a story for very long, just the feeling I had about it usually.

Have you ever bought a book just because you liked the cover? Yes. I am going to get The Flame Alphabet because of the cover. And as mentioned above, I bought a second copy of The Book Thief because of the England cover.

What was your favourite book when you were a child? I liked Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie books. I still have an original set that I read too many times to count growing up.

What book changed your life? Most recent was One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp and a few years ago Crazy Love by Francis Chan started me down a different path in life. 

What is your favorite passage from a book? I never remember these after the fact, so I will go with the few from The Book Thief that I always recall with a question like this. (I know, seems to be a trend, but once you teach a book, it sticks with you!) Here they are:

1. Death as narrator says, "I do not carry a sickle or scythe. I only wear a hooded black robe when it's cold. And I don't have those skull-like facial features you seem to enjoy pinning on me from a distance. You want to know what I truly look like? I'll help you out. Find yourself a mirror while I continue." The idea that death doesn't take people, but other people do...book is set in WWII.

2. Death again, saying, "I am haunted by humans." Wow, talk about turning a paradigm on its head.

3. The main character Liesel Meminger closing the book with "I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right."

Who are your top five favorite authors? (First to come to mind...)

1. Jodi Picoult

2. Ursula Hegi

3. Harper Lee

4. Lysa TerKeurst and Ann Voskamp (they're kind of alike, so counting them as one)

5. William Shakespeare

What book has no one heard about but should read? Interruptions by Ursula Hegi. It's a story where the characters start talking back to the author and the author's family members butt in, giving her a hard time writing her story. I had a big time editor pick it from a list of recommendations last year and send me three free books because she picked mine!

What books are you an ‘evangelist’ for? To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. The more I reread it, the more I see each time. I call it the Literary Bible.

What are your favorite books by a first time author? Not sure about this one.

What is your favourite classic book? Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. 

Five other notable mentions? (Classics I presume?)

1. Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy, which I found paralleled Les Mis in some ways, namely the characters and their development.

2. The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas

3. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

4. A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens

5. The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne