Fifteen Things about Books
Jill has tagged me again, so here goes: fifteen random things about books as they apply to me.

1. I started reading when I was three. When my kindergarten teacher found out that I could sound out "Argentina" from the atlas page with the flags on it, she promptly arranged for me to make weekly trips to the school library. Thus began my life as a singled-out geek.

2. My mom tells a story about my being seven and wanting to go to the library when she was knee-deep in gardening and in no position to take me there any time soon. Stubborn Capricorn me apparently got all huffy and declared that I would just take the bus, then, as I had with Grandma a zillion times before. She swallowed hard, gave me the thirteen cents or whatever it was at the time, and let me go. I don't remember this incident at all, but I think it says as much about my mom as it does about me.

3. Books I've read more than five times, not counting children's books: The Mists of Avalon, The Genesis Code, Pearl, The Dead Zone. There are probably more that I just don't remember.

4. The book that took me the longest to get through (six months!), had me grumbling and ready to give up the whole time, yet has somehow stayed with me and made me proud of the accomplishment of finishing it: Infinite Jest.

5. While The DaVinci Code is not great literature, I liked it and don't think it deserved the stoning it got from the critics. That said, I tend to not like the overhyped book of the year.

6. I used to obsessively collect Stephen King books, but am now in the process of divesting myself of all but my very favorites.

7. I love the idea of Walden, but have never been able to make it past the chapter with the ants.

8. My English classes were always honors classes. I think they figured we would have already read the mainstream classics on our own and so assigned us more offbeat choices. As a result, I've never read Moby Dick (we got Billy Budd instead, which I never actually read) or War and Peace or Pride and Prejudice or A Tale of Two Cities or Anna Karenina or most of those things an educated person is assumed to have read. Every once in a while I go on a tear and try to read some of the stuff I should have read, but never get very far.

9. I worked at Borders on and off for about eight years and watched it turn from a really cool place to work to a corporate nightmare. I've heard worse things about Barnes & Noble, though, so given a choice between the two, I'll buy at Borders.

10. I love libraries. My first job was as a page at the Berea branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library. We got paid really well in comparison to what our friends were making in their more typical after-school jobs.

11. For years, I averaged one to two books per week. Recently, though, with my crazy work and social schedule and my compulsion to read the paper and certain blogs every day, it's been more like one book every other week, if I'm lucky. I have to do something about that.

12. I covet the Calvin & Hobbes boxed set.

13. I collect old etiquette books for their amusement value. The ones from the 1940s and 1950s crack me up.

14. My current library pile:
User I.D., Jenefer Shute (almost done)
My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult (on separate recommendations from Wendy and Daniella)
Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, Elizabeth Royte (I love this kind of nonfiction about everyday things)
Photo Crafts Sourcebook, Laurie Klein and Livia McRee

15. I used to feel compelled to finish a book, even if I wasn't enjoying it, but I've gotten over that.
- posted by Lori @ 11:55:00 AM | permanent link | |