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callmemadam .1) What author do you own the most books by?
It has to be Elinor M. Brent-Dyer because I have all the Chalet School series bar two, and a few of her other titles.
2) What book do you own the most copies of?
The Bible! There are about five Bibles in the house, I think (too lazy to walk down the other end of the house to check).
3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
No.
4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
Alan Banks, but it's not a secret.
5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children)?
The Go-Between by LP Hartley
6) What was your favourite book when you were ten years old?
Eustacia Goes to the Chalet School
7) What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?
Jilly Cooper's Wicked. I stopped reading halfway through. Dire!
8 ) What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?
Actually, it was a book I edited just before Christmas. It was called Eating with Emperors by Jake Smith and it told some of the stories behind the menus at state banquets in Victorian England, the Kaiser's Germany and Imperial Russia as well as in more recent times. Beautifully illustrated with the original menus and photographs, too.
9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
I won't be tagging, and I wouldn't force anyone to do anything. People should read what they want to read!
10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
No idea!
11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
Don't know, but the Alan Banks mysteries would be good on the telly.
12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
Any of those Jasper Forde novels (though they probably are already movies). I just don't get the fuss about Thursday Next.
13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
I have dreamt about my own Louise and Juliet, which was rather weird.
14) What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?
I read a Harold Robbins when I was backpacking. Someone had left it behind at the backpackers hostel and I had nothing else to read at the time. It was better than I expected, actually.
15) What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?
A toss-up between Lord of the Rings and Ulysses, both a hard slog and the latter somewhat incomprehensible to me when I read it age 19.
16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve seen?
I havent seen any obscure Shakespeare.
17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
Russians!
18 ) Roth or Updike?
I haven't read either. *blushes*
19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
Never heard of them!!!!!!
20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Chaucer
21) Austen or Eliot?
Eliot, as I can't stand Austen.
22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
I own all of Dickens's works (inherited from my grandparents) but have only read about five of them.
23) What is your favorite novel?
The Go-Between
24) Play?
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
25) Poem?
The Waste Land by TS Eliot
26) Essay?
I don't read enough essays to have a favourite, but I really enjoyed Robin Bowles's 'Police Line: Do Not Cross' in Outside the Law 2.
27) Short story?
Toss-up between 'Salmonella' by Tim Kennemore and 'Blind Faith' by Roland Vernon
28) Work of nonfiction?
The Complete Book of the Olympics by David Wallechinsky. A very entertaining history of the Games, updated every Olympiad.
29) Who is your favourite writer?
Peter Robinson
30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
Marian Keyes
31) What is your desert island book?
The Go-Between
32) And… what are you reading right now?
I'm about to read Wearing the Poppy by AJ Toledo, which arrived in the post today ...
Comments
Subliminal messaging works every time ;o)
Jasper Fforde has a very quirky sense of humour that I adore (but hubby doesn't), pointing out how random it is that certain things in our culture have become so important. Why is football/soccer such a big deal and not croquet or some other sport?
Also, this passage tickles my fancy. It's where The Council of Genres are discussing problems within the book world.
"Good. Item seven. The had had and that that problem. Lady Cavendish, weren't you working on this?"
Lady Cavendish stood up and gathered her thoughts.
"Indeed. The use of had had and that that has to be strictly controlled; they can interrupt the ImaginoTransference quite dramatically, causing readers to go back over the sentence in confusion, something we try to avoid."
"Go on."
"It's mostly an unlicensed usage problem. At the last count David Copperfield alone had had had had sixty-three times, all but ten unapproved. Pilgrim's Progress may also be a problem owing to its had had / that that ratio."
"So what's the problem in Progress?"
"That that had that that ten times but had had had had only thrice. Increased had had usage had had to be overlooked but not if the number exceeds that that that usage."
"Hmm," said the Bellman. "I thought had had had had TGC's approval for use in Dickens? What's the problem?"
"Take the first had had and that that in the book by way of example," explained Lady Cavendish. "You would have thought that that first had had had had good occasion to be seen as had, had you not? Had had had approval but had had had not; equally it is true to say that that that that had had approval but that that other that that had not."
"So the problem with that other that that was that--?"
"That that other-other that that had had approval."
"Okay," said the Bellman, whose head was in danger of falling apart like a chocolate orange, "let me get this straight: David Copperfield, unlike Pilgrim's Progress, which had had had, had had had had. Had had had had TGC's approval?"
There was a very long pause.
--Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next book 3)
Glad the book arrived safely!
(The v on my laptop isn't working properly... I keep having to go back and forceably add them in. Who knew it was such a common letter?)