Somethings About Books

1. The Best Book You Read Last Year- 2666 
2. A Book That You’ve Read More Than Three Times- Tons. Practically everything by Alistair Maclean and Frederick Forsyth
3. Your Favorite Series- The Philip Marlowe Novels/Chaos Walking Trilogy. Everyone knows everything about the Marlowe novels, so I will only talk about the Chaos Walking Trilogy. The hero of the novel is the last boy of a planet populated exclusively by males on a strange planet where everyone can hear everyone’s thoughts. What is there not to like.
4. Favorite Book of Your Favorite Series-  The Long Goodbye/The Knife of Never Letting Go (The first book of the Chaos Walking Trilogy. See above)
5. A Book That Makes You Happy- Yes Minister/The Harry Potter Books. Yes Minister is pretty much obvious. I have also spent many a happy afternoon at home with the Harry Potter books, it wasn’t until the sixth, I felt, that the series went to the dogs.
6. A Book That Makes You Sad- The Great Gatsby. I have read Gatsby only once, and it is a sad, sad book. But while, in isolation, I might have treated it as a kind of gentler, brighter version of Wuthering Heights, I have read a lot of Fitzgerald recently, and am halfway through Tender Is the Night, and occasionally read a few pages of Gatsby again.
7. Most Underrated Book- Tree of Smoke. I know Denis Johnson is a heavyweight, but somehow, no one I talk to seems to have read this great novel.
8. Most Overrated Book- The White Tiger
9. A Book You Thought You Wouldn’t Like But Ended Up Loving- A series, the Septimus Heap series. I read the books in a phase where I was very disappointed with the current fantasy fiction I was getting. With the simple language and engaging storytelling, I breezed through the first one in six hours odd and I do not think any of the books took more than a night to read. Fun filled, engaging novels.
10. Favorite Classic Book- Wuthering Heights. Enough said, really, no?
11. A Book You Hated- Almost everything by Arthur Hailey (also filed under books you liked when you read, but came later to regret). I ran through Arthur Hailey and Sidney Sheldon and Robert Ludlum like a thresher running through so much dry wheat when in high school. During grad school, chanced on a Hailey novel, tried to read it, and almost puked. Archer and Sheldon I can still read, though.
12. A Book You Used To Love But Don’t Anymore- The Godfather. Read it many times while still in school. Read it later, and it is not the same. While the story is still great, the prose is pedestrian, the sentences clunky, the characters seem artificial, and the book simply pales into insignificance after having seen the movie.
13. Your Favorite Writer- David Foster Wallace/Raymond Chandler. Or Ray Carver’s poems.  If I had to choose only three books I could spend my life with, I would pick one of each. If I had to pick only one, I would draw straws and lose either way.
14. Favorite Book Of Your Favorite Writer- All of Us, The Collected Poems of Raymond Carver.
15. Favorite Male Character-Philip Marlowe. What is not to love about a cynical, alcoholic gumshoe who is still not half as bent as the world around him?
16. Favorite Female Character- Lenore Beadsman. (Provisionally- cannot remember any other right now, except for the titular character in G B Shaw’s Candida)
17. A Book That Disappointed You- Ratner’s Star
18. Favorite Book Turned Into A Movie- LOTR.
19. Favorite Romance Book- Wonderboys, I guess, counts as a romance.
20. A Book You Wanted To Read For A Long Time But Still Haven’t- V, Strange Interlude, Poetry of Philip Larkin. At least I have read V halfway through.
21. A Book That You Wish More People Would’ve Read- Wizard of The Crow
22. A Character Who You Can Relate To The Most- Philip Pirrip
23. A Book That Changed Your Opinion about Something- A Fine Balance. Never had the idea of the horror which is also hidden in the history of this country stricken me as hard.
24. Favorite Title- Red Earth and Pouring Rain
25. A Book Everyone Hated But You Liked- The Percy Jackson books.
26. Most Eagerly Anticipated Books: Telegraph Avenue (Michael Chabon), and the sequels to Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey.

If you think this excercise was a narcisstic waste of time, send your brickbats to Anne.

P.S. Of course, everything on this list is dynamic. If you ask me to answer these 26 questions tomorrow, you might get different answers to many of the items.