A book quiz filched from Sylvia

1. Which book has been on your shelves the longest?

Aside from my old children’s books, “The Brothers Karamazov” by Dostoyevsky. I LOVED it when I finally finished it years later.

2. What is your current read, your last read and the book you’ll read next?

current read: “The Fairy tales of Herman Hesse” and “The Screwtape Letters.” I like to have several books in the works.

last read: “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov

next read: Most likely “Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri. My boss gave it to me for my birthday.

3. What book did everyone like and you hated?

The entire Harry Potter series. Well, that’s a lie. I only read up to Book Four before I lost interest.

4. Which book do you keep telling yourself you’ll read, but you probably won’t?

Hard to say. I eventually read everything.

5. Which book are you saving for “retirement”?

Shaping up to be “The Tale of Genji.”

6. Last page: read it first or wait till the end?

I typically wait until the end. If I skip ahead, it’s because I’m pretty bored with the book and hope it gets more exciting.

7. Acknowledgements: waste of ink and paper or interesting aside?

I tend to find them interesting. After interning with HarperCollins, I also know why they’re necessary!

8. Which book character would you switch places with?

Again, difficult to determine, especially since some of the books I’ve read lately are pretty depressing or a little too… risque for real life. Like, I’d never switch places with Humbert Humbert. But if I had to pick, I’d switch places with Catwoman. Or Huck Finn.

9. Do you have a book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time)?

“The Blind Assassin” by Margaret Atwood. Iris’ life really started to remind me of my own, before I met David.

10. Name a book you acquired in some interesting way.

I’d guess that half the books I get are dropped in my lap by some friend or another. I picked up a few books from random street markets in Ireland too.

11. Have you ever given away a book for a special reason to a special person?

I actually make it a point to find a book for each of my friends.

12. Which book has been with you to the most places?

“The Idiot” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. To Ireland and back.

13. Any “required reading” you hated in high school that wasn’t so bad ten years later?

I can’t think of any. “The Jungle” and “The Grapes of Wrath” were tough reads back then, only because they’re long and fairly heavy material. I enjoyed them, and was probably the only student in class who read them all the way through.

14. What is the strangest item you’ve ever found in a book?

Some sort of pamphlet in Chinese characters. Someone had written stuff about their parents in the margins.

15. Used or brand new?

Doesn’t matter. Only the condition of the book matters, especially if it’s a comic book.

16. Stephen King: Literary genius or opiate of the masses?

I’ve never read any of his stuff, so I can’t judge.

17. Have you ever seen a movie you liked better than the book?

Hum. Not that I can recall. Not a movie, anyway. The Dexter books are terrible, but I love the TV show.

18. Conversely, which book should NEVER have been introduced to celluloid?

Harry Potter and Twilight, only because I am so tired of all the promotional material.

19. Have you ever read a book that’s made you hungry, cookbooks being excluded from this question?

Hum. No?