You have received this questionnaire because you are a literary geek (it’s a badge of honour, honestly) If you feel so inclined, answer the questions, and send it to any friends who would appreciate the quiz, including the person who sent you this. Otherwise, go back to what you were doing.
1. What author do you own the most books by?
Technically, I think J.K. Rowling wins out but that is only because I have merged libraries with David and combined we have .. an awful lot of Harry Potter books. However, I own an obscene amount of Alasdair Gray books – I try to have both hardback and paperback editions of all his books plus later editions of key works. A.S. Byatt and E.M. Forster are also well-represented as i own pretty much everything they have written.
2. What book do you own the most copies of?
I’m quite good at not keeping multiple copies around (due to space constrictions). I have two copies of several Alasdair Gray books, but seeing as they are various editions and/or hardbacks/paperbacks, that does not count.
3. Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
A bit, but you get the Royal Family doing it frequently.
4. What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
I’ve harboured a lifelong crush on Sorenson Carlisle from Margaret Mahy’s The Changeover. Then I fell in love with Lord Peter Wimsey. It was inevitable really: a John Donne-quoting, incunabula-collecting, monocled Oxbridge dectective? I bet he wears tweed all.the.time. Phwroar!
4a. What fictional character would you most like to be?
During primary school, I quite fancied myself as Laura Chant (again, Margaret Mahy’s The Changeover. I swear it must’ve been my generation’s Twillight except nobody’s read it, it does not feature sparkly vampires, has not been made into a film and takes place in lovely New Zealand).
4b. What fictional character do you think most resembles you?
I maintain that the only authors capable of writing a female character with whom I can identify are Jonathan Coe and Michael Cunningham. Hmm. No particular character, though.
5. What book have you read the most times in your life?
I have personally read two copies of “Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot, 1909-1962″ to shreds. Seriously. I also keep revisiting A.S. Byatt’s Possession and if I’m in a really, really fluffy mood, I’m picking up Georgette Heyer’s Venetia. Thank heavens this isn’t a question about which film I’ve seen most often. That would have led to all sorts of embarrassing questions.
6. What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
I remember loving anything stocked in my library’s children’s science fiction shelf (yes, singular). I really, really liked Helen M. Hoover’s The Lost Star. I also loved the German The Little Vampire series but I’m not sure I still loved them when I was ten. I do know that I devoured a lot of Barbara Cartland books which accounts for my youthful infactuation with Lord Byron.
7. What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?
Lucy Eyre’s If Minds Had Toes: a pseudo-self-help-philosophical piece of drivel disguising itself as a “feisty” and “youthful” novel trying to introduce philosophy to a mainstream crowd. It was awful.
8. What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?
There have been a few. Andrew Crumey’s Moebius Dick and Sputnik Caledonia (hugely ambitious and intelligent novels with scientific and postmodern science fiction strands). Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (devastating post-apocalyptic literary fiction). Michel Faber’s Under the Skin (a genre-defying nasty little book which blew my mind).
9. If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
I like to champion Alasdair Gray who’s not as well-known outside Scotland as he should be. He’s easily on par with Julian Barnes or John Fowles, but rarely gets a look-in. I tend to recommend Poor Things as it’s a cracking good read and the most accessible of his novels.
10. Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for literature?
I used to say Jacques Derrida, but then he died. Margaret Atwood, Les Murray (Australian poet who I’d recommend), Milan Kundera and .. hmm .. is Thomas Tranströmer still alive? I would have loved to have seen Inger Christensen get it, but, alas, she has passed away ..
11. What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay except it’d be difficult to condense into a 120 min. film.
12. What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
All of my favourite books because they never seem to capture what I love about them. Also, Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell because they’d miss out the footnotes and the complexity of the plot.
13. Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
Cannot think of anything, sorry.
14. What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?
Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (it was for work). Honestly. People sneer at Young Adult fiction but then read Dan Brown? Pfffft.
15. What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?
This is being written whilst I’m gritting my teeth: Ben Marcus’ The Age of Wire and String. It’s a very, very short novel. I spent a month reading it. Then Stupid Boyfriend said: “Oh. Did you try to make sense of it? I didn’t. I just read it for the beautiful words.” &/#”/! The book was excellent, actually, and said really interesting things about ritual language and how language acquires meaning. I am never going to read it again.
16. What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve seen?
I’ll echo other people here: there are obscure ones?
17. Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
Russians. Because I have read Tolstoy in Russian and can pretend that I might someday read one of the others in Russian (except I’ve forgotten everything). Also? Mikhail Bulgakov is an amazing, amazing writer.
18. Roth or Updike?
John Kennedy Toole.
19. David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
Both are very, very overrated, although Eggers does interesting things with the book as an object.
20. Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
I have to follow my head here and not my heart: Chaucer. Because I just freaking love that point when English starts emerging as a literary language. It started with Chaucer.
21. Austen or Eliot?
T.S. Eliot, always. I know he wasn’t the implied Eliot, but who cares.
22. What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
I’m awfully Anglo-centric and should really expand my horizons somewhat .. but there are still so many books I’m yet to read. I also haven’t finished Tristram Shandy, although I loved reading it.
23. What is your favourite novel?
I have many. In random order and straight from my head: Margaret Atwood: Oryx & Crake, A.S. Byatt: Possession, Jonathan Coe: What a Carve Up!, Patricia Duncker: Hallucinating Foucault .. I’ll stop with the alphabetical rundown. There are many. I have been a keen reader all my life.
24. Play?
The Importance of Being Earnest has personal significance for me.
25. Poem?
There are so many, so many.. an unusual choice, then. T.S. Eliot wrote this little uncharacteristic poem, “La Figlia Che Piange” (can be found in “Prufrock & Other Observations”). It’s so, so lovely and awkward.
26. Essay?
Again, one of personal significance to me: John Milton’s Areopagitica. It’s all about intellectual ownership and copyright and was so ground-breaking when it was first written. I love my book history.
27. Short story?
I’m not a huge fan of short stories, but there is no getting away from the genius of Joyce’s Dubliners, and in particular “The Dead”, is there now?
28. Work of nonfiction?
I always feel like a pretentious git when I say this, but Vernonica Forrest-Thompson’s Poetic Artifice: A Theory of Twentieth-Century Poetry really changed the way I read literature. It changed everything.
29. Who is your favorite writer?
Many, but current (and contemporary) favourite include David Mitchell, Andrew Crumey, Alasdair Gray, Jonathan Coe and Margaret Atwood.
30. Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
Ian McEwan always makes my blood boil.
31. What is your desert island book?
Hopefully a guide to how to survive on a desert island as I’m woefully underequipped/underqualified for that sort of venture.
32. And … what are you reading right now?
Iain Banks’ Transition, AS Byatt’s The Children’s Book and R.L. Stevenson’s Treasure Island.
