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Apr. 7th, 2009
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gollumgollum
1) What author do you own the most books by?
Robert Heinlein, but that's due to a number of different factors, including inheriting all of my father's paperbacks.
2) What book do you own the most copies of?
The Collected Works of Shakespeare, but that's because I picked up a number of extras for reading parties and things. I have a couple of paperbacks for books I've got in hardcover, but those I give away when the chance arrises.
3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
Not especially.
4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
Myself.
5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children).
Tai-Pan by James Clavell. I was eleven or twelve the first time I read it, and just starting to get fascinated with the Far East. Likely read it about once a year since, as a kind of comfort book.
6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. My father was a big Heinlein fan, and I'd just finished plowing through the juvies when I hit this. Displaced Lloyd Alexander's The Book of Three
7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?
Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron. Started out promising, and turned out to be an exercise in self-promotion and ego masturbation by the author.
8) What is the best book you've read in the past year?
That's a tie between Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money and Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes.
9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
For writers, Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveller. For literature, Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities, which essentially is the genesis of modern fiction.
10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
Don't really care. I'd personally say that Timothy Findley has been vastly overlooked, but he's Canadian, dead and the Nobel Prizes are completely political in nature.
11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
Nobody's Son by Sean Stewart or The Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells.
12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
Otherland by Tad Williams. I'm going to ignore the hundreds of great books that simply can't be made into a film, and choose this one that could, but only by stripping out and dumbing it down. It would make a fine 100 episode HBO series over five years, but that's not going to happen.
13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
Watching my ex-girlfriend get picked up by Leonard Cohen. It was an odd night.
14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?
I'd say the various Star Wars novels. For franchise books, they are surprisingly decent, but it's essentially official endorsed published fanfiction.
15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
The most difficult book for me at the time I read it was Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. It took me two tries to get through it, and I had a notebook full of references I had to check pre-wiki.
16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?
I don't really consider any Shakespeare that obscure, but I once saw Cymbeline, which is the only time I've seen it offered by a professional company.
17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
Russians. Fyodor Dostoevsky and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn are two of my favourite authors, and Anton Chekhov is one of my favourite playwrights.
18) Roth or Updike?
Updike, by far.
19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
Stuart McLean.
20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
What a silly question. Shakespeare.
21) Austen or Eliot?
I'll have the chicken.
22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
Nothing really. I suppose I'm missing a chunk of the award winning novels of the last ten years, due to finances and disinterest. I find there is a trend to make 'literature' about obscurity or obtuseness, as opposed to communication, and I'm very much against that. I love a sparse, clear lightness of language, or a carefully constructed depth of meaning that requires engagement but not esotaric knowledge. My international reading has been a little thin the last couple of years as well, but that's solely a financial problem.
And yes, I know there is a library, but I hate returning books.
23) What is your favorite novel?
So such thing. I have too many novels that I like for too many different reasons to have an answer that doesn't change daily. I would say that the most recent author to really impress me is William Gibson, who's managed to step up a level from what was already one of the great science fiction writers to another plateau.
24) Play?
Again, no such thing, too many I honour for different reasons.
25) Poem?
Once again, not possible.
26) Essay?
Context, context, context. Someone who can say that they have a clear favourite without having to make all kinds of conditions around it amaze me, because I can't even conceive of being able to do that.
27) And... what are you reading right now?
Azincourt by Bernard Cornwall, Fields of Fire by Terry Copp, A Cook's Tour by Anthony Bourdain and History ofMagic and Experimental Science by Lynn Thorndike.
I never have less than two books going, although the Bourdain is subway/semi-drunk pub reading and the Thorndike is research.
gollumgollum1) What author do you own the most books by?
Robert Heinlein, but that's due to a number of different factors, including inheriting all of my father's paperbacks.
2) What book do you own the most copies of?
The Collected Works of Shakespeare, but that's because I picked up a number of extras for reading parties and things. I have a couple of paperbacks for books I've got in hardcover, but those I give away when the chance arrises.
3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
Not especially.
4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
Myself.
5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children).
Tai-Pan by James Clavell. I was eleven or twelve the first time I read it, and just starting to get fascinated with the Far East. Likely read it about once a year since, as a kind of comfort book.
6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. My father was a big Heinlein fan, and I'd just finished plowing through the juvies when I hit this. Displaced Lloyd Alexander's The Book of Three
7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?
Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron. Started out promising, and turned out to be an exercise in self-promotion and ego masturbation by the author.
8) What is the best book you've read in the past year?
That's a tie between Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money and Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes.
9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
For writers, Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveller. For literature, Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities, which essentially is the genesis of modern fiction.
10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
Don't really care. I'd personally say that Timothy Findley has been vastly overlooked, but he's Canadian, dead and the Nobel Prizes are completely political in nature.
11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
Nobody's Son by Sean Stewart or The Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells.
12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
Otherland by Tad Williams. I'm going to ignore the hundreds of great books that simply can't be made into a film, and choose this one that could, but only by stripping out and dumbing it down. It would make a fine 100 episode HBO series over five years, but that's not going to happen.
13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
Watching my ex-girlfriend get picked up by Leonard Cohen. It was an odd night.
14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?
I'd say the various Star Wars novels. For franchise books, they are surprisingly decent, but it's essentially official endorsed published fanfiction.
15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
The most difficult book for me at the time I read it was Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. It took me two tries to get through it, and I had a notebook full of references I had to check pre-wiki.
16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?
I don't really consider any Shakespeare that obscure, but I once saw Cymbeline, which is the only time I've seen it offered by a professional company.
17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
Russians. Fyodor Dostoevsky and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn are two of my favourite authors, and Anton Chekhov is one of my favourite playwrights.
18) Roth or Updike?
Updike, by far.
19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
Stuart McLean.
20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
What a silly question. Shakespeare.
21) Austen or Eliot?
I'll have the chicken.
22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
Nothing really. I suppose I'm missing a chunk of the award winning novels of the last ten years, due to finances and disinterest. I find there is a trend to make 'literature' about obscurity or obtuseness, as opposed to communication, and I'm very much against that. I love a sparse, clear lightness of language, or a carefully constructed depth of meaning that requires engagement but not esotaric knowledge. My international reading has been a little thin the last couple of years as well, but that's solely a financial problem.
And yes, I know there is a library, but I hate returning books.
23) What is your favorite novel?
So such thing. I have too many novels that I like for too many different reasons to have an answer that doesn't change daily. I would say that the most recent author to really impress me is William Gibson, who's managed to step up a level from what was already one of the great science fiction writers to another plateau.
24) Play?
Again, no such thing, too many I honour for different reasons.
25) Poem?
Once again, not possible.
26) Essay?
Context, context, context. Someone who can say that they have a clear favourite without having to make all kinds of conditions around it amaze me, because I can't even conceive of being able to do that.
27) And... what are you reading right now?
Azincourt by Bernard Cornwall, Fields of Fire by Terry Copp, A Cook's Tour by Anthony Bourdain and History ofMagic and Experimental Science by Lynn Thorndike.
I never have less than two books going, although the Bourdain is subway/semi-drunk pub reading and the Thorndike is research.