Wednesday 2 November 2011

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

One of my favorite bloggers, the full-of-grace Elizabeth over at A moon, worn as if it had been a shell  blogged her version of the following literary faves today and as I have been rather blog-blocked of late, I thought I'd plagiarize her idea and share the same.

1) What authors do you own the most books by?
J.R.R. Tolkien, Cornelius Ryan, Pierre Burton, Stephen Ambrose, Ernest Hemingway, Winston Churchill, J.K. Rowling, Thomas Friedman, Jon Krakauer

2) What book do you own the most copies of?
Does the complete and dog-eared Harry Potter series count?

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
It kind of did

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
The Scarlett Pimpernel or Aragorn (Lord of the Rings), I'm a sucker for a man with a noble heart

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)?
And the Band Played On

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
Anything by Enid Blyton

7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?
The Shack

8) What is the best book you've read in the past year?
The Book Thief

9) If you could force everyone here to read one book, what would it be?
The Old Man and the Sea

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
To quote Elizabeth "Good Lord, who knows? Who cares?"

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
Life of Pi

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
Aragorn and it wasn't weird and I'm not describing it...

14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?
All by Dan Brown and dang it, I've read them all

15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
Freedom at Midnight - Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?
Pass but I've been inside his reconstructed Globe theatre in London and that was pretty cool

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
Let's go with the French if you're counting Sainte-Exupery

18) Roth or Updike?
Neither

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
Easy - David Sedaris

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Milton

21) Austen or Eliot?
Austen

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
The French and the Russians

23) What is your favorite novel?
The Sun Also Rises

24) Play?
Pass

25) Poem?
Ozymandias - Shelley
The Road Not Taken - Frost 
W.H. Auden

26) Essay?
I'm not fussed so anything in Atlantic Monthly or Vanity Fair

27) Short Story?
The Snows of Kilimanjaro

28) Work of nonfiction?
Ambrose's Band of Brothers or anything by Jon Krakauer

29) Who is your favorite writer?
Ernest Hemingway

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
Jodi PicoultI HATE derivative writing and contrived plots

31) What is your desert island book?
A Farewell to Arms
A Moveable Feast

32) And... what are you reading right now?
Worst of Days - Karen Kissane
The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
Picnic at Hanging Rock - Joan Lindsay

3 comments:

Jen said...

Ok, you have now succeeded in drivin home just how paltry my literary knowledge is.....

But you have given me something to strive for!

Sheila Cook said...

VERY impressive! Way, way, WAY beyond my literary knowledge too. But interestingly, I've got to know more about a part of you that I didn't really know. As you would say - "Go figure." BTW I saw a play about "Life of Pi" - very good. Love ya, Sx

Anonymous said...

No.13 Ha ha (I apologise if the two of you were off doing noble things together like working on a soup kitchen or saving the rainforests).

Sher