Head over to A Shelf Life for a chance to win a book that is too scary-sounding for me–not in a Stephen King kind of way, but in an environmental catastrophe kind of way.
And don’t forget to enter the Auralia’s Colors giveaway contest–entries will be accepted until Thursday night at midnight EST (GMT -4).
I’m doing the latest litblog meme (HT Ted at bookeywookey) in honor of the book I got to read for work last night–the latest galley by one of my favorite authors. I’m so, so, so lucky to have my job sometimes. Other times, it makes me despair of the future of the written word.
1. Hardcover or paperback, and why?
I prefer paperbacks, because I do a lot of reading on the subway and always like to have a book in my bag just in case. I don’t really beat up on books as I read them–dogearing is my only destructive habit–so I can make a paperback last a long time. And for small apartment living, well, you can fit more paperbacks on a bookshelf than hardbacks.
2. If I were to own a book shop I would call it…
YARNS. And it would also be a knitting shop. Not that I’ve given this any thought or anything.
3. My favorite quote from a book (mention the title) is…
There are so many passages in books that I love, so I’m loath to call this my favorite, but it is one of a handful I’ve memorized and I once posted it at the video store where I worked back in grad school:
I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie. Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives: the time one climbed the Parthenon at sunrise, the summer night one met a lonely girl in Central Park and achieved with her a sweet and natural relationship, as they say in books. I too once met a girl in Central Park, but it is not much to remember. What I remember is the time John Wayne killed three men with a carbine as he was falling to the dusty street in Stagecoach, and the time the kitten found Orson Welles in the doorway in The Third Man.
From The Moviegoer by Walker Percy.
4. The author (alive or deceased) I would love to have lunch with would be ….
Madeleine L’Engle.
5. If I was going to a deserted island and could only bring one book, except from the SAS survival guide, it would be…
It would have to be the Bible, because it’s the only book that I truly can’t live without, especially if I’m going to be alone on a desert island.
6. I would love someone to invent a bookish gadget that…
Let me read flat on my back while pregnant.
7. The smell of an old book reminds me of….
Gosh, I don’t know that I have an answer to this question. Smell is my least refined sense, thanks to a lifetime of hayfever. If anything, the smell of an old book reminds me of all the books waiting to be read.
8. If I could be the lead character in a book (mention the title), it would be….
I grew up wanting to be Meg in A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle or Jill Pole in CS Lewis’s The Silver Chair.
9. The most overestimated book of all time is….
Of all time? That’s quite a challenge! I would say for our times, on the commercial side it’s The Da Vinci Code, and on the literary side it’s Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem. I’ve yet to find a classic that I don’t think worthy of the moniker.
10. I hate it when a book….
GREAT name for a book store and knitting shope! I love it!
What would your bookshop be called? Ever thought about it?
I’ve always liked the sound of The Book Nook… but it’s not at all creative and there’s probably hundreds of shops out there already with that name!
I like it, though–