This week’s edition of Weekly Geeks asks participants to “tell us ten things about you with regard to books and reading.”
Here are mine:
- When I moved South, I brought a box of my favorites with me at the same time as we brought the cats and our sleeping bags. We didn’t even have a bed down here, but I had two dozen of my favorite books to keep me company. Nearly every one of them was a children’s or young adult title.
- I have probably a dozen boxes of books still in my parents’ attic.
- I usually have several books going at once. I don’t understand why people find that odd.
- When I’m not reading at all, it’s not a great sign for my mental health.
- Books are my favorite presents to give — and to receive. I take my choices seriously of what to give people and only very rarely give novels that I haven’t yet read. Likewise, I will give a gifted book much longer than a normal novel if I’m having a hard time getting into it because I know a friend has thought enough of it to share it with me.
- I can read and walk at the same time. This freaks people out.
- If I’m caught up in a book, you can talk to me, and even though I might answer you, I am not processing what you’ve said and will likely not remember the conversation. (This used to frustrate my parents tremendously, who were sure I was intentionally ignoring their reminders about chores.)
- I own two books that used to belong to my paternal grandmother’s sister Dot when she was a girl — one is a Nancy Drew mystery and the other is called Miss Billy by Eleanor Porter, the same woman who wrote Pollyanna.
- Although I enjoy buying both new and used books, I am an avid library user and make liberal use of the D.C. Library’s online hold system. Periodically I also end up making a sizable contribution to the library through overdue fines. I like to consider it my annual dues.
- I am indiscriminate about hardcover vs. softcover, and the issue usually comes down to a) is it a new book by a favorite author (such as that Jasper Fforde novel waiting for me to collect it from Politics and Prose) and b) cost (which means unless I can’t stand waiting to own it (Harry Potter novels 5-7, anyone?), I’m going to hold out for the paperback). Paperbacks are easier to carry in my bag and hold while standing on the metro (or while walking home from work), but I can manage with either if it’s a good book.
Completely with you on 7, 9, and 10.
Right down to owning the 5-7 hardcovers of HP. How did you know?
I have a really old Bobbsey Twins book, before they actually solved mysteries, and containing some uncomfortable references to their black housekeeper.
Comment by raidergirl3 03.24.11 @ 8:22 amI love #1, because my plan for our move is to pack a box of books to take in the car, that the movers cannot touch and possibly lose!
It took DH awhile to catch onto #7 w/ me – luckily he doesn’t try to use it to his advantage and get me to agree to strange things! 😉
I much prefer paperbacks, because of space issues, but, yup, I have all the HP in hardcover, and any new Stephen King, Carol Goodman, or Alice Hoffman, I can’t wait for the paperback.
Basically, I am with you on all of these! Well, other than 8.
And can some people really not walk and read at the same time? I mean, I can’t walk and talk, but walk and read? Of course!
Comment by Jenn 03.24.11 @ 8:33 am#6 – first off, that’s pretty amazing. if you can do so without WALKING INTO PEOPLE, please show #$(holes with their phones walking on the streets of DC how to do it. if one more person walks INTO me because they can’t be bothered to look up….
Comment by Laura 03.24.11 @ 2:34 pmI used to read and walk all the time when I was a teen. I don’t do that so much anymore.
When I am reading, I don’t even hear a person talking to me. My husband used to get really annoyed by this because he thought I was ignoring him. He brought it up one day, and I told him, I really can’t hear you or anyone when I am reading. I am that into my book. Now when he wants my attention he will poke me in a gentle but firm manner. It’s funny because sometimes it takes a few pokes before I register them and look up.
Comment by jehara 03.24.11 @ 10:58 pm1. I can read and play piano at the same time.
2. When I’m in a really low mood, I sometimes want to escape to a particular fantasy world and stay there, so I’ll read the same book multiple times. For example, I once read Elizabeth Goudge’s “The Little White Horse” four times in a row.
3. When I was a child, I hid a twenty dollar bill in a book, but I don’t remember which one. Though I’m pretty sure I’ve since read all of the books in which I could have hidden it, I still hope to find that bill again someday.
4. I’ve never read “Winnie-the-Pooh.”
5. I prefer hardcover books because softcovers don’t stand up as well to repeated readings.
6. Over the last few years, I have probably given away as many books as I currently own.
7. If I’ve read one book from a series, I want to read the entire series. The quality has to get very bad before I’ll abandon it. Having been burned many times, I am now leery of series.
8. I own three copies of “The Hobbit.” One is annotated, one is illustrated by Alan Lee, and one is in French (“Bilbo le hobbit”).
9. Only the Children’s/YA section of my personal library is in order (alphabetically by author). The rest of my books are randomly placed. Some seem strange standing together, like this sequence: Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five,” Jane Austen’s “Emma,” Johanna Lindsey’s “Gentle Rogue,” Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and Stephen King’s “The Shining.”
10. And yes, I am embarrassed to own “Gentle Rogue,” but I don’t think I could ever part with it.
@Karen: Nice list! You really should read Winnie-the-Pooh, though.
@jehara: I didn’t do as much walking as a teen, but I do quite a bit now and sometimes you just can’t put your book down when you’re ready to go, y’know?
@Laura: I have good peripheral vision and really don’t like touching strangers, so I make a point of not running into people. However, I have been done in once or twice by those sidewalk blocks that teeter, although that’s also true without having a book in my hand.
Comment by soe 03.29.11 @ 1:38 am@Jenn: Oh, yeah, I totally wouldn’t trust anyone I didn’t know with that box of books. And while we don’t have the first three HP in hardcover, I’ve re-read them so many times my paperbacks are starting to feel a little delicate (just to reinforce Karen’s note about hardcovers being more durable).
@raidergirl3: I’ve read a few of those first BT books that my mother had from when she was a girl. They were okay, but never as interesting as Nancy Drew (or Trixie Belden, who was superior to all other young sleuths, in my opinion), even after they took up mystery-solving. That said, I did have a couple of their later books — one where they went to Japan and one set in Hawaii — that I recall enjoying quite a bit.
Comment by soe 03.29.11 @ 1:43 am