Do You Read? How about a Question Extravaganza!

I got this 50-question book survey from a group on Goodreads and thought I’d share my answers here. I pasted the 50 questions at the end of my responses in case you want to copy them and answer them yourself. Feel free to answer them in a comment or if you post them on your own blog please come back here and add a link in the comments so I can go and read yours.

1. What book are you reading right now?
Moby Dick (Herman Melville) and The Nightingale (Kristin Hannah).

2. What will you read next?
Don’t know yet. Bossypants (Tina Fey) or Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell). Or then again maybe something else.

3. What was your favourite childhood book?
That was a long time ago… I remember liking Harold and the Purple Crayon (Crockett Johnson), The Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum), Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson), Mad Magazine and Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery comic books.

4. What were your reading habits like as a kid?
Outside of opening the book and reading, I don’t remember any particular habits.

5. How many books do you have checked out from the library?
None.

6. What books do you have on hold at the library?
None.

7. Do you have a bad book habit?
I don’t think so. Is marking your page with a booger considered a bad habit?

8. Do you read one book at a time, or several?
More often than not two. I think more than that would be too confusing for me.

9. What is your favourite book you’ve read this year?
All The Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr)

10. What is your least favourite book you’ve read this year?
The Kingmaking (Helen Hollick) (but that will soon be replaced by Moby Dick)

11. What is your reading comfort zone?
I don’t understand the question. I like laying down (lying down?) when I read. I like reading pretty much anything as long as I find it interesting.

12. How often do you read outside of your comfort zone?
Oh, now I understand question #11! Frequently, because I’m a sucker for those publicity blurbs on the back covers of books, and front cover book art, I’ll pick up something I might not normally read just because I was drawn to some of that cool stuff. Whether or not I finish those books outside of my comfort zone is another story.

13. What is your favourite place to read?
Anywhere without a lot of distractions.

14. Do you lend out books?
No. I pretty much read everything on the Nook now but I didn’t like lending out books before that. I was always sort of driven to never damage a book I was reading so I never dog-eared pages to mark my place in the book or bent the spines back when I was reading. I had this great little horror book that I really liked (Winter Scream, Chris Curry and Lisa Dean who are really Tamara Thorne and L. Dean James) and I loaned it to a guy at work a long time ago and when he returned the book it looked like it’d been read by 100 people. One hundred messy, careless people. The spine was bent, the edges of the cover were frayed and the edges of the pages were dirty. I still have the book because I really liked it but I’ll probably never go back and read it again. If you want it send me an email and I’ll mail it to you. I also loaned out a paperback copy of Lonesome Dove (Larry McMurtry) and when I got it back the cover was falling off the book. I still have that one too.

15. Do you dog-ear books?
No.

16. Do you write in the margins of books?
Seriously? No.

17. What makes you love a book?
No special reason. Books are inherently lovable, aren’t they? A better question might be what makes me not love a book.

18. What will inspire you to recommend a book?
Whether or not I liked it and how much I liked it. Or how much the author is paying me to recommend it. Have a book you want to pay me to recommend? Send me an email! J

19. What is the one book you will always recommend to everyone?
There’s a number of them, but I’ll go with Lonesome Dove.

20. Is there a book you love that nobody else seems to?
I don’t know. I don’t talk to that many people.

21. Do you read while you are: Eating? Taking a bath? Watching TV? Listening to music? On the computer? On the bus?
No. No. During commercials and with difficulty. Yes, but only certain types of music. No. No.

22. What is your favourite genre to read?
I’m more into the subject of the story than any one specific genre. I really like hardboiled crime fiction and some historical fiction.

23. What genre do you rarely read, but wish you read more of?
I can’t think of one. I don’t read romance but then I don’t wish I read more romance.

24. What is your favourite biography?
I don’t do favorites well. I really liked “Yes, I Can” (Sammy Davis, Jr.) and “Me, Alice” (Alice Cooper) and Cagney by Cagney (James Cagney).

25. What is your favourite non-fiction?
I’m not going to pick a favorite. I really liked Death be Not Proud (John Gunther); Mind Over Illness (Norman Cousins); Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (Dee Brown); Travels With Charley (John Steinbeck); Night (Elie Wiesel); For Those I Loved (Martin Gray); Survival in Auschwitz (Primo Levi); Compulsion (Meyer Levin); Animal Liberation (Peter Singer); Rivethead (Ben Hamper); The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’ (Bill Zehme). And on and on . . . I’ve read a bunch of baseball biographies over the years but Ball Four (Jim Bouton) is probably the one book that made me a baseball fan.

26. Have you ever read a self-help book?
Yes.

27. What is your favourite reading snack?
Fingernails, dust bunnies and the unidentified bits of matter stuck in between the pages of a book. (See question #21)

28. What is the most inspirational book you’ve read this year?
I don’t think I’ve read an inspirational book this year. Maybe the 2015 St. Paul Almanac because they published one of my stories (Charlie’s Ride) in it! Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual (Michael Pollan) was fairly inspirational as was Mindfulness in Plain English (Bhante Henepola Gunaratana)

29. Are there any books that have been ruined for you by all the hype?
I can’t think of any. I don’t pay a lot of attention to TV commercials and the hype for books or movies so I guess my answer is no.

30. How often do you agree with critics about a book?
I don’t read reviews other than capsule summaries or the blurbs on the back cover.

31. How do you feel about giving negative reviews?
I’m OK with it. Negative reviews/reviewers don’t have to be cruel to make a point.

32. What book are you most intimidated to begin?
Anything in a foreign language because I don’t speak any foreign languages.

33. What book are you most likely to take on vacation with you?
The one I’m reading as I pack. But I don’t know that I care very much for reading while on vacation because there’s too much other stuff to do. Even when the day is done and you’re back at the hotel there’s different radio and TV stations to check out. Also, I don’t really go on vacation anyway.

34. What is the longest you have gone without reading?
I don’t know. Probably not very long.

35. What is a book that you just couldn’t finish?
There have been a lot of them and as I get older I’m quicker on the “Dump this Book” button.

36. What is the most money you have spent on books at one time?
I don’t remember.

37. How often do you skim through a book before reading it?
Never. What would be the point of reading something before it happened?

38. Do you keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?
I used to keep them all. Then I moved into a smaller place and I sold just about everything.

39. Are there any books that you’ve been avoiding, or refuse to read?
See question #32. Just books in languages that I don’t read. Do you have any recommendations to offer me?

40. What is a book you didn’t expect to like, but did?
Miss Buncle’s Book (D.E. Stevenson)

41. What is your favourite guilt-free pleasure reading?
I have an overly developed sense of guilt so there’s no such thing as guilt-free anything for me.

42. What reading materials are in your bathroom right now?
I don’t read in the bathroom. Really, why does anyone do this? This is one of the reasons I was so quick to dump library books and used books. And I try to not be in a position where I have to spend so much time on the toilet that I need a book to keep me company. Also, I’m not sure that sitting on the toilet for a long time is such a good thing. My grandparents kept a book in the bathroom titled Jokes for the John.

43. What book do you most remember reading for school?
None I remember liking. That’s not fair because I’m sure there was something I liked, a short story compilation or something, but it’s been so long since I was in school that it’s difficult to remember.

44. What was the last book that you couldn’t put down until you finished it?
Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck) and The Exorcist (William Peter Blatty) are two that come to mind.

45. What book is (physically) closest to you right now?
Strengthsfinder 2.0. (Yawn)

46. What is your favourite book series?
Favorites again… I really liked Bernard Cornwell’s Arthur Trilogy (The Winter King, The Enemy of God, Excalibur). I also liked the Harry Dresden series by Jim Butcher until about the 10th book where I got bored. I also liked the Matthew Scudder series by Lawrence Block but stopped reading around the 11th or 12th (?) entry because the main character used an anti-Semitic slur that I thought was out of character and odd since the author is Jewish. James Ellroy has written a couple of trilogies and quartets and all of them were excellent. The Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald but I haven’t read all of them yet. Oh, and the Matt Helm books, the ones that I read, by Donald Hamilton, were all good. Charlie Huston’s Henry Thompson trilogy and his Joe Pitt Casebooks, and Josh Stallings’ Moses McGuire trilogy get the highest recommendations I can give.

47. What is the longest book you’ve ever read? Shortest?
I think Moby Dick might be the longest (and most boring) and it’s possible that Food Rules might be the shortest.

48. Who is your favourite book character?
Tom Joad is up at the top. Ignatius J. Reilly, Callie Stephanides are also on a long list.

49. Who is favourite author?
John Steinbeck is up at the top.

50. What is your favourite book?
Too long to list.

Here are the 50 questions. Please remember to come back with a link to your blog/answers.

1. What book are you reading right now?

2. What will you read next?

3. What was your favourite childhood book?

4. What were your reading habits like as a kid?

5. How many books do you have checked out from the library?

6. What books do you have on hold at the library?

7. Do you have a bad book habit?

8. Do you read one book at a time, or several?

9. What is your favourite book you’ve read this year?

10. What is your least favourite book you’ve read this year?

11. What is your reading comfort zone?

12. How often do you read outside of your comfort zone?

13. What is your favourite place to read?

14. Do you lend out books?

15. Do you dog-ear books?

16. Do you write in the margins of books?

17. What makes you love a book?

18. What will inspire you to recommend a book?

19. What is the one book you will always recommend to everyone?

20. Is there a book you love that nobody else seems to?

21. Do you read while you are: Eating? Taking a bath? Watching TV? Listening to music? On the computer? On the bus?

22. What is your favourite genre to read?

23. What genre do you rarely read, but wish you read more of?

24. What is your favourite biography?

25. What is your favourite non-fiction?

26. Have you ever read a self-help book?

27. What is your favourite reading snack?

28. What is the most inspirational book you’ve read this year?

29. Are there any books that have been ruined for you by all the hype?

30. How often do you agree with critics about a book?

31. How do you feel about giving negative reviews?

32. What book are you most intimidated to begin?

33. What book are you most likely to take on vacation with you?

34. What is the longest you have gone without reading?

35. What is a book that you just couldn’t finish?

36. What is the most money you have spent on books at one time?

37. How often do you skim through a book before reading it?

38. Do you keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?

39. Are there any books that you’ve been avoiding, or refuse to read?

40. What is a book you didn’t expect to like, but did?

41. What is your favourite guilt-free pleasure reading?

42. What reading materials are in your bathroom right now?

43. What book do you most remember reading for school?

44. What was the last book that you couldn’t put down until you finished it?

45. What book is (physically) closest to you right now?

46. What is your favourite book series?

47. What is the longest book you’ve ever read? Shortest?

48. Who is your favourite book character?

49. Who is favourite author?

50. What is your favourite book?