The Sunday Salon ~ Survey SAYS!

As I’ve been struggling for the bulk of this past week with a stomach bug, I didn’t get much reading accomplished. However, I did pick up my emails and blogged a bit… very little bit, lol… and in Friday’s Shelf Awareness newsletter, there was a bookie-survey given to Robert Goolrick, author of A Reliable Wife. I love those kinds of things, so I snatched it, filled in my own answers, and made it my Sunday Salon post 🙂

BTW… those of you who’ve asked where us bloggers get out hands on ARCs, Shelf Awareness is one of my favorite sources 😀

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1. What book is on your nightstand now?

lol… I don’t actually have a night stand.  I have one of those high-class, bedside-furnishings found in college dorm rooms everywhere.

The Ubiquitous Milk Crate

But… at any rate… upon said “nightstand” is a copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone that Maggie borrowed from the library and has YET to read, The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, and Great Jewish Short Stories.  They’re not there because I’m working on reading them, however.  Rather, they are there because I was sick and didn’t carry them the three feet around the corner to Mt. TBR shelving unit 2 (as, the original book shelf filled up long ago).

I think the meaning of this question is more, “What are you reading now?” And the answer to that is:   I am currently almost halfway through Brisingr by Christopher Paolini, Custard and Company by Ogden Nash, Neil Zawacki’s How to Be a Villain, and From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz.

From the ARC-alanche on deck pile, I’m also reading Something Wickedly Wierd: The Icy Hand by Chris Mould… OH! and, as I glance over my shoulder, I see this one is actually ON the milk crate, too.  I’m a little over 1/4 the way through it.

2. Favorite book when you were a child?

I was not a very prodigious reader as a child… I didn’t really start becoming a reader until I was about 15… but there are a couple books I read until they fell apart.

One was called Nothing At All by Wanda Fag

another was How Fletcher Was Hatched by Wende and Harry Devlin

and Never Tease a Weasel by Jean Conder Soule

There’s another that I read religiously, but I can’t find the name of it.  It had a girl chipmunk, I think her name was Suzy, and a toy soldier in it, but I can’t find it on the net.  It’s particularly enmeshed with Never Tease a Weasel, and I can only guess I read over and over together.

To this day, I unconsciously quote from Nothing At All when I feel like I’m running around in circles, “I’m busy getting dizzy!” is what Nothing At All, the main character of the book, says.

3. Who’s on your “top five authors” list?

Do I hafta limit it to five?!?! Waaaah! ‘kay, I’ll try:   Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, John Steinbeck, C. S. Lewis and…. Dr. Seuss.

4. What book have you faked reading?

LOL… I’m guessing this means What book did I pretend to read for a grade or book club?  Well, I didn’t exactly “fake” reading it because I admitted to my professor that I didn’t read it but it always sticks out there in my mind as a great “fake”.  In our 20th century American History class we were assigned Eleanor Roosevelt: A Personal and Public Life by J. William T. Youngs.  Try as I might, I was never able to get into the book… I’ve always hated biographies, like I want to know a person’s personal life! blech.

5. What book are you an evangelist for?

okay… those of you who’ve been to Mt. TBR before, say it with me:  The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

6. What book have you bought for the cover?

Erm… None that I can think of, not for the cover art.  I have grabbed a few for the titles, though.  It’s fun to tell people, “What am I reading? Talk to the Hand!”  Actual book title by Lynn Truss, and very funny in that dry brit-wit kind of way.

7. What book has changed your life?

Any book worth the paper it’s printed on cannot fail to leave its mark on the reader’s life, however I’d have to say the book that has had the most effect on who I am would have to be The Bible.  Second to that… I read a book that greatly helped me to stop cutting called Cutting: Understanding and Overcoming Self-Mutilation by Steven Levenkron.

8. What’s a favorite line from a book?

I just came across a line from Brisingr that every book lover will agree with:

Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don’t you agree?

erm… *glances at her shelves full of hoarded books and gulps* yeah… sure! I swear I’m gonna get to them all!! 😀

9. What book would you most want to read again for the first time?

easy, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

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BTT- 5 For Favorites

1. Do you have a favorite author?

I don’t have a specific, single favorite author, how could you narrow all the great authors into one “best author”?

As to my favorites: I love Jane Austen because, besides being an exceptional writer and pulled back the curtain of the social life for women (and the men in their lives), but she was one of the first and greatest women authors, opening up the doors for the rest of us to follow.

Another favorite author is Stephen King, who was for the longest time the only contemporary fiction writer I read (I’ve only just started reading contemporary fiction in the last year, before that I only read classic literature). King’s amazing ability to build a fantastic and often frightening world within the covers of his novels is mind boggling. BTW, I saw he has a new book out when I visited Waldenbooks yesterday (*sigh* like I NEEDED more books!). Just After Sunset is King’s fifth collection of short stories, and I’m looking forward to reading it 🙂 .

Janet Evanovich is also a favorite. Okay, Stephanie Plum is a fun character and I enjoy her exploits, but seriously, Grandma Mazur keeps me coming back for more… lol, if Evanovich ever wants to end the series, IMHO, she only has to kill off Grandma Mazur. Come on, the geriatric matriarch answering the door in biking shorts? And she shoots the chicken “right in the gumpy”? And Plum Lucky was just plum hilarious from one end of the book to the other… the leprechaun, Grandma in Atlantic City, and Lula’s distraction to allow the others to get away. AND, January 6th is the release date for the new Stephanie Plum novel, Plum Spooky. I’ll be waiting for the store to open, even if I’m the only one in line… lol.

I must include Harlan Coben in my list of favorites, because it was his book The Woods that made me give contemporary fiction a chance. Now, I’m trying to catch up to all the great books I’ve missed…

2. Have you read everything he or she has written?

Yer… No, lol.. of course not… I’m working through reading the Austins, but I’m still in Emma, with Northanger Abbey and Persuasionto go. And I’ve only read the first two of the number Plums and Plum Lucky in the Evanovich bibliography. All of Stephen King? Who in the world has, other than King himself, his wife, son and editor? Yikes! He’s up to, what?, 89 books now? And no, haven’t read all the Cobens either.

3. Did you LIKE everything?

I’ve loved all of what I’ve read, of course… Why else would I have kept reading them and named them as my favorites?

4. How about a least favorite author?

LOL… OMG, there are soooo many. I suppose I should stick to one that a lot of other people like. Hmm… I really can’t say that I have one I hate, and I don’t know about a least favorite, either. I have more of a genre aversion: I don’t read, WON’T read, romance novels, i.e. Harlequin, et al.

5. An author you wanted to like, but didn’t?

I don’t know about an author I wanted to like but didn’t, but Julius Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul was a book I really wanted to like but couldn’t force myself through. Eleanor Roosevelt’s biography was another I just couldn’t gag down, even though I took a hit on my college history grade because of it.