Laura over at Musings tagged me for this meme. Sorry it took me so long to respond. I had to think about it for awhile because most of my ‘weirdness’ is related to books, and we’re all weird that way! Though, I did think of one book related thing most people don’t do. Anyway….
THE RULES:
Link to the person who tagged you
Post the rules on your blog
Write 6 random things/unspectacular quirks about yourself
Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them
Let each person you have tagged know by leaving a comment on their blog
Let the tagger know when your entry is posted.
6 THINGS
I was in the Middle East when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. My family was a little freaked out about it but I never felt in any danger.
I’ve been to both Alaska and Hawaii and was pregnant both times but with different sons.
I can wiggle my ears, but I can’t curl my tongue.
My husband and I got married after only 3 months of dating. (Not really recommended, but we’re still going after almost 18 years!)
I like to get up in the middle of the night to read and/or check my bookmooch wishlist. I’ve gotten several books that way!
I don’t like change. At all. Even if it’s good, it takes me a long time to adapt.
I’m going to bend the rules a bit and say if you’re reading this and want to play along, consider yourself tagged. Weirdness is fun!
Mrs. S is hosting a challenge to read as many books as possible during July.
Click on the button for more info.
She’s also written a meme to get us started:
1. Describe yourself in one sentence
I’m a wife, a mother to two wonderful teenage boys, and an avid book lover.
2. What book will you start the challenge with?
Undiscovered Country by Lin Enger
3. Where is your favourite place to read?
I like to read outside by the pool, in bed, and on my comfy leather couch.
4. What is your favourite book of all time?
Probably Jane Eyre and/or Persuasion
5. Remind us all of your challenge target
I’m going to say 10 because even though some months I’ve been reading over that, I’m going to be working full-time soon and won’t have as much time to read as I used to.
My books for the challenge (I’m going for 10):
Undiscovered Country by Lin Enger (2008, 320 pp.)
The Bible Salesman by Clyde Edgerton (2008, 256 pp.)
The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle (2007, 336 pp.)
The Photograph by Penelope Lively (2003, 231 pp.)
What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn (2008 in the U.S.)
I’ve seen this movie meme floating around about quoting your favorite movies and letting people guess what they are. Here are mine. The first one is probably the toughest. I’ll post the answers in a few days if no one guesses. Remember, no googling the quote — that’s cheating!
So, your Holiness, now your priests are dead, and I am left alive. But in truth it is I who am dead, and they who live. For as always, your Holiness, the spirit of the dead will survive in the memory of the living. [The Mission guessed by Susan]
Well, technically speaking, the operation is brain damage, but it’s on a par with a night of heavy drinking. Nothing you’ll miss. [Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind guessed by Carrie]
And death shall have no dominion. Dead men naked they shall be one with the man in the wind and the west moon. When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone they shall have stars at elbow and foot. Though they go mad they shall be sane. Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again. Though lovers be lost love shall not. And death shall have no dominion. Another hint: The book it’s based on was originally written in Polish. Another quote: Earth. Even the word sounded strange to me now… unfamiliar. How long had I been gone? How long had I been back? Did it matter? I tried to find the rhythm of the world where I used to live. I followed the current. I was silent, attentive, I made a conscious effort to smile, nod, stand, and perform the millions of gestures that constitute life on earth. I studied these gestures until they became reflexes again. But I was haunted by the idea that I remembered her wrong, and somehow I was wrong about everything. [Solaris guessed by my sister Jamie]
Your life, as you know it… is gone. Never to return. But they learn how to walk, and they learn how to talk… and you want to be with them. And they turn out to be the most delightful people you will ever meet in your life. Another hint: Lip my stockings!! [Lost in Translation guessed by Petunia]
I cannot hear them, but I know they are making a hash of it. What do you think? Music is… a dreadful thing. What is it? I don’t understand it. What does it mean? [Immortal Beloved guessed by Carrie]
My dear young man, don’t take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It’s quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that’s all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect. [Amadeus guessed by MLight]
We’re the sons of peasants. Glory, and riches, and stars are beyond our grasps. But a full stomach, that dream can come true. [A Knight's Tale guessed by Amy]
I like to see a man of advancing years throwing caution to the wind. It’s inspiring in a way. [Groundhog Day guessed by Janiejane]
I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a… fraid. [2001: A Space Odyssey guessed by CJHill]
You all wanna be looking very intently at your own belly buttons. I see a head start to rise, violence is going to ensue. Probably guessed we mean to be thieving here but what we’re after is not yours. So, let’s have no undue fussing. [Serenity, guessed by Bookfool]
a) What issues/topic interests you most–non-fiction, i.e, cooking, knitting, stitching, there are infinite topics that has nothing to do with novels? Christianity, history, computer programming, and science.
b) Would you like to review books concerning those? Not really, though I did review a few last year. I much prefer fiction.
c) Would you like to be paid or do it as interest or hobby? Tell reasons for what ever you choose. I’m not a good enough reviewer to be paid, but no, I wouldn’t be interested at this time of my life anyway. I have too many other commitments.
d) Would you recommend those to your friends and how? Yes, with caution. Only if I know someone is interested in those topics.
e) If you have already done something like this, link it to your post. My best non-fiction titles from last year were the following:
1. Wild Swans ****1/2 by Jung Chang (2007 #1 Best Non-Fiction)
2. The Bookseller of Kabul **** by Seierstad (2007 #2 Best Non-Fiction)
f) Please don’t forget to link to whoever tags you. I linked to the two people who tagged me above.
If you haven’t done this meme yet and want to, consider yourself tagged!
I’ve been so late in recognizing these awards I’ve received. Thank you so much, everyone! Caribousmom, Framed, Suey, Amy, and Julie gave me the Make My Day Award, and Raidergirl3 and Teddy gave me the Mwah Award. I hope I didn’t leave anyone out. Let me know if I did.
I’m going to give all 7 of you both awards. I love reading your blogs, and I love our little (but growing!) book blogging community. It’s so great to find kinship with like minds.
I am also going to give a special shout out to Raidergirl3 for helping me moderate The Pulitzer Project, 888, and Book Awards Challenge blogs. Thank you so much for all your help. It has blessed me tremendously!
Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews? Any Stephen King novel. I just can’t take horror anymore. Maybe that’s not irrational, though. It used to be the Harry Potter series, but I’ve resolved to read them all this year. So far I’ve enjoyed the first two.
If you could bring three characters to life for a social event (afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would they be and what would the event be? I would bring the two main characters from Everyman by Philip Roth and The Sea by John Banville to life to be grilled and skewered (verbally, not literally) by the strongest feminist character available. Who would that be? Give me some ideas.
(Borrowing shamelessly from the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde): you are told you can’t die until you read the most boring novel on the planet. While this immortality is great for awhile, eventually you realise it’s past time to die. Which book would you expect to get you a nice grave? A book on housekeeping or maybe party planning? Hee hee. Maybe that’s why I didn’t like Mrs. Dalloway.
Come on, we’ve all been there. Which book have you pretended, or at least hinted, that you’ve read, when in fact you’ve been nowhere near it? The Hobbit. I’ve only seen the cartoon version a bazillion times.
As an addition to the last question, has there been a book that you really thought you had read, only to realise when you read a review about it/go to ‘reread’ it that you haven’t? Which book? I don’t think I’ve done that, but I HAVE forgotten that I’ve read some books when I thought I hadn’t. I forgot that I had already read Emma and Sense and Sensibility. I had seen the movies so many times that I guess I just forgot. I never used to forget things like that. It must be a sign of age. Sigh.
You’re interviewing for the post of Official Book Advisor to some VIP (who’s not a big reader). What’s the first book you’d recommend and why? (if you feel like you’d have to know the person, go ahead of personalise the VIP) To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s just a classic that everyone should read and almost everyone loves. If the VIP wanted something humorous instead, I’d go with Tom Sawyer. I loved this book when I was a kid, and my kids got the biggest kick out of it a few months ago. Even adults can appreciate it-at least I do.
A good fairy comes and grants you one wish: you will have perfect reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which language do you go with? Russian! I love Russian literature.
A mischievous fairy comes and says that you must choose one book that you will reread once a year for the rest of your life (you can read other books as well). Which book would you pick? To Kill a Mockingbird,The Book Thief, Persuasion, or Jane Eyre. I can’t decide, any of the four would do.
I know that the book blogging community, and its various challenges, have pushed my reading borders. What’s one bookish thing you ‘discovered’ from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new appreciation for cover art-anything)? Margaret Atwood and/or Carol Shields. I’d never even heard of them until last year. Now I want to read everything they’ve written.
That good fairy is back for one final visit. Now, she’s granting you your dream library! Describe it. Is everything leatherbound? Is it full of first edition hardcovers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a few favourite authors have inscribed their works? Go ahead-let your imagination run free. It would be a library as big as a house with gorgeous wood bookcases. It would have comfortable leather chairs and a fireplace or two. A few tables would be needed, as well as some lamps. It would be in the ‘Arts and Crafts’ architectural style. All the classics and newer ‘keepers’ that I’ve read would be leatherbound, while new titles I haven’t read would be brand new trade paperbacks.
These are the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. Bold what you have read, italicize books you’ve started but couldn’t finish, and strike through books you hated. Add an asterisk* to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your tbr list.
Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell
Anna Karenina Crime and Punishment (I didn’t finish, but it’s not because I didn’t want to. I plan on reading it in ‘08)
Catch-22 One hundred years of solitude Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion Life of Pi: a novel (tbr in ‘08)
The Name of the Rose Don Quixote Moby Dick
Ulysses Madame Bovary The Odyssey Pride and Prejudice*
Jane Eyre* A Tale of Two Cities The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies War and Peace (tbr in ‘08)
Vanity Fair The Time Traveller’s Wife (can’t wait for the movie) The Iliad
Emma (tbr in ‘08) The Blind Assassin (love Atwood, but didn’t care for this)
The Kite Runner (tbr in ‘07) Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
Atlas shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran Memoirs of a Geisha Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West The Canterbury tales
The Historian A portrait of the artist as a young man
Love in the time of cholera Brave new world
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum Middlemarch (tbr in ‘08) Frankenstein The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A clockwork orange Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King The Grapes of Wrath The Poisonwood Bible (tbr in ‘08) 1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses Sense and sensibility (tbr in ‘08) The Picture of Dorian Gray (tbr in ‘07) Mansfield Park (tbr in ‘08) One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles (tbr in ‘08) Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les misérables The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time (tbr in ‘08)
Dune The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes The God of Small Things
A people’s history of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon Neverwhere A confederacy of dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners The unbearable lightness of being (tbr in ‘07) Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The mists of Avalon Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed Cloud Atlas
The Confusion Lolita Persuasion Northanger Abbey (tbr in ‘08) The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White teeth Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers
What are you reading right now? I am reading The Known World by Edward P. Jones and desperately trying to finish it before midnight Friday so I can complete the Southern Reading Challenge.
Do you have any idea what you’ll read when you’re done with that? I have a reading schedule that I’m following for the rest of this year. My next reading selections will be (not necessarily in this order):
Middlesex (Pulitzer, BAC)
Blue Like Jazz (NF5)
The Travels of Marco Polo (NF5)
Bookseller of Kabul (NF5, RAB)
Half of a Yellow Sun (NYT, BookAwards)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (FC, RIP)
Lisey’s Story (NYT, BAC, RIP)
Never Let Me Go (DC)
What magazines do you have in your bathroom right now? I don’t read in the bathroom; I just think it’s gross. But the magazines I do subscribe to are Bookmarks, National Geographic, and Smithsonian.
What’s the worst thing you were ever forced to read? I usually like almost anything, but in high school I really didn’t care for The Red Badge of Courage.
What’s the one book you always recommend to just about everyone?To Kill a Mockingbird
Admit it, the librarians at your library know you on a first name basis, don’t they? I know they recognize my face, but it’s a big library. I’m not sure they know my name or not.
Is there a book you absolutely love, but for some reason, people never think it sounds interesting, or maybe they read it and don’t like it at all? I really loved Gilead, which some people love, but others are bored to tears by it. I think it has truly magnificent writing.
Do you read books while you do other things? Not really. Of course I listen to audiobooks while I’m driving. I usually bring a book to the doctor’s office or anywhere else I might be kept waiting.
When you were little, did other children tease you about your reading habits?I don’t think so; I know my family and friends used to call me Bookworm or Bookgeek, though.
What’s the last thing you stayed up half the night reading because it was so good you couldn’t put it down? Sometimes I read late just so I can finish a challenge! I actually do this quite frequently, sad to say. The last two books I read almost straight through were The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler and We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.
I’ve seen this movie meme floating around about quoting your favorite movies and letting people guess what they are. Here are mine. The first one is probably the toughest. I’ll post the answers in a few days if no one guesses. Remember, no googling the quote — that’s cheating!
