Books and Literature Q&A

I was not tagged to do this by anyone, but I saw it on Sarah's blog and despite (or because of?) its great length I thought it'd be a fun thing to do for a Sunday post.

Rules
1. Post these rules.
2. Post a photo of your favorite book cover. - I'm cheating and sharing my favorite title page, as it's signed by one of my favorite authors.

3. Answer the questions below.
4. Tag a few people to pass the Q&A on to:  I tag Nova, Rochelle, Jessica, Deanna, Erin, and Michelle.


What are you reading right now?
"Nicholas and Alexandra" by Robert K. Massie.

Do you have any idea what you’ll read when you’re done with that?
Probably a book on Death's Acre that I bought some time ago, and maybe One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest again.

What 5 books have you always wanted to read but haven’t got round to? 
Good question. I guess I'm one of those people who haven't read a ton of classics but in theory would like to.  Not sure if I do just because I like classics or I just want to be able to say I've read them.  One would definitely be "War and Peace" in the original Russian, but I think that'd take me years.

What magazines do you have in your bathroom/lounge right now?
We have a really old People magazine that our landlords gave us when they went to Mexico along with some others, a really old Week magazine that was delivered to us by mistake, and a lot of random books.

What’s the worst book you’ve ever read?
The Twilight novels were pretty horrific (though admittedly made for good airplane reading because they were a quick read).  I also hated both of the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" books that I read.

What book seems really popular but you actually hated? 
Same as the two above.  Especially the Stieg Larsson books.

What’s the one book you always recommend to just about everyone? 
"In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote and "Skinny Legs and All" by Tom Robbins. It's funny because that last one is definitely not for everybody, but I love it.

What are your 3 favourite poems? 
I'm not a big poetry reader, though I do like Pablo Neruda. I also still have a soft spot in my heart for "The Cremation of Sam McGee" by Robert Service because a friend (hi Katie!) recited it in high school and I always loved it.

Where do you usually get your books?
A real book, Amazon. If it's an eBook, I buy it on Barnes and Noble for my iPad nook app. By the way, maybe I'm the only person that thinks about these things, but isn't it funny that if you showed that previous sentence to someone from, say, 1970, they'd have absolutely no idea what the hell you were talking about?

Where do you usually read your books?
eBooks I read in bed or on the couch, real books I read in the bath.

When you were little, did you have any particular reading habits? 
Hmm, I don't think so. I did read a lot though as I recall, since we were a big literature house.

What’s the last thing you stayed up half the night reading because it was so good you couldn’t put it down?
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" when it came out, and I stayed up the entire night reading it.  Started at 10pm, ended at 6am.

Have you ever “faked” reading a book? 
Once I read an Ann Coulter book (not because I agree with her, mostly because I wanted to have some frame of reference when arguing with idiots) and took the jacket off in the airport so people wouldn't think I was reading it seriously.

Have you ever bought a book just because you liked the cover?
Yep, I think I did that with "Absurdistan." Wasn't a huge fan of the book in the end, though.

What was your favourite book when you were a child?
I loved The Babysitters' Club series, Matilda by Roald Dahl, Harry Potter (they came out when I was 12 or so), and that's all I can remember.

What book changed your life? 
It didn't change my life but it cemented a lot of my beliefs - "Skinny Legs and All" by Tom Robbins. It totally blew my mind, seriously.

What is your favourite passage from a book?
A few:

“When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on--series polygamy--until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.” - Tom Robbins, "Still Life with Woodpecker"

“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.” - Tom Robbins, "Still Life with Woodpecker." I included this quote in my wedding vows!

"...to emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on Heaven is to create hell. In their desperate longing to transcend the disorderliness, friction, and unpredictability that pesters life; in their desire for a fresh start in a tidy habitat, germ-free and secured by angels, religious multitudes are gambling the only life they may ever have on a dark horse in a race that has no finish line." - Tom Robbins, "Skinny Legs and All." See? Not for everyone, haha.

Who are your top five favourite authors? 
Tom Robbins obviously, Christopher Moore, J.K. Rowling (yeah don't judge, Harry Potter is awesome), Dostoyevsky (yeah I'm cerebral), Nikolai Gogol, Anton Chekhov.

What book has no one heard about but should read? 
I guess most books by Tom Robbins if you like his style, and other Russian literature aside from "War and Peace."

What are your favourite books by a first-time author? 
I don't know that I know any books I've read by first-time authors.  I guess "Bossypants" by Tina Fey?

What 3 books are you an “evangelist” for? 
See any of the questions above, haha. Along with Tom Robbins, I love "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote and "Under the Banner of Heaven" by Jon Krakauer. I've read those books over and over.

What is your favourite classic book? 
Probably "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy.