Yes, it’s another book meme. At first I said I wouldn’t do it even if Melanie retroactively tagged me because it seemed so long and involved. But then I started thinking about it and came up with some answers so here goes.
Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews?
I think that for me this is “Father Elijah: An Apocalypse” by Michael O’Brien. I know everyone loves it and I even started reading it once, but I just couldn’t get into it. Why? I don’t know, it’s not rational! Maybe it’s the apocalyptic theme, that just doesn’t interest me.
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 think at least two of them would be Gandalf from “The Lord of the Rings” and Astrid from S.M. Stirling’s “Changeverse” trilogy. I would love to see how Gandalf would set that “silly” child straight that she’s not a real Dunedain. Plus, you know, she’d go ga-ga at the sight of him. Talk about crazy stalker fan.
And the third? Maybe Harry Potter just to see how Gandalf would react to him too: “My name is not Albus Dumbledore.”
(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 realize it’s past time to die. Which book would you expect to get you a nice grave?
Melanie will kill me for this but I’d say that James Joyce’s “Ulysses” would do me in very quickly.
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?
Well, there would be all those book in my high school junior year American Literature class like “Moby Dick”. These sad thing is I’d probably enjoy it today. (Got my only failing high school grade for that semester because I’d pretended to read the book when I hadn’t.)
As an addition to the last question, has there been a book that you really thought you had read, only to realize when you read a review about it/go to ‘reread’ it that you haven’t?
Like Melanie, this hasn’t happened to me. But also like Melanie, I’m far more likely to start reading a book only to realize I’d forgotten I’d read it.
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 and personalize the VIP)
This one’s a little too vague for me. Who’s the person? Am I recommending a book to get them to read more or to assist in a particular situation? I don’t want to answer this one.
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?
Easy one: Koine Greek, the ancient dialect of the manuscripts of the New Testament. I’ve enough of an understanding to look words up and get the general gist if I know the verse’s context, but not perfect reading comprehension. That would be so cool.
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?
Another easy one: “The Lord of the Rings”. In fact, I read this once a year every year for about 16 years straight so it’s not that far-fetched.
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)?
Again easy: S.M. Stirling’s books. I would never have discovered them if not for Dale Price’s reviews and that Stirling is a regular in his comboxes. Learning a little about the author like that made me interested in his what his books had to say. One of the best blog-related book discoveries ever.
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.
Easiest answer of all: Go read Melanie’s answer. Yeah, ditto.
“Father Elijiah” is overrated, anyway.
Had some matching answers on this one in regards to Gandalf and LOTR.
And Dale was the same for me introducing me to S.M. Stirling’s works.
As for Father Elijah, I enjoyed that one along with the others in the series. Though all of them have an apocalyptic tone. The Plague Journal and some of the others seem to give a good idea of Canada’s future with such travesties as their Human Rights Council take their logical course.
Agreement on Fr. Elijah, and I *like* the apocalyptic genre, generally. I’ve been raised in the Evangelical South, after all.
At first, the Fr. Elijah books struck me as too “high brow’ for the genre, being published by Ignatius and all.
Secondly, while I *initially* had some interest in reading _Landscape with Dragons_, and having come around to wanting to read it to trounce it, every article I’ve read of Michael O’Brien’s, and everythng i”ve heard him say on EWTN, repulses me. He’s so narrow-minded and Puritanical.
On the one hand, he says that _Harry Potter_—a series whose main theme is the virtue of self-sacrifice and the power of self-sacrificing love—as completely lacking in virtue. THen he holds up the Iliad—a book that even Plato said should be banned for its immorality—as a standard of virtuous literature.
As for _Moby Dick_, C. S. Lewis says taht we can never appreciate the things our teachers tell us to appreciate until we’re middle-aged (though I don’t think I’ll ever read Moby Dick, just for its sheer length but that as more to do with being visually impaired).