I was tagged for this meme on Facebook (some of you may have already seen it there.)  I love a meme about books, so I thought I’d post it here, too.  I’d love comments about favorite/meaningful books of yours, if you’ve got them.

1) Which book has been on your shelves the longest?
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. (It was my mom’s in college.)

2) What was your favorite book when you were 10 years old?
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett.  Also Charlotte’s Web.  And pretty much all the Judy Blume books. And A Secret Garden.  And a ton of others.

3) What book did everyone like and you hated?
Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.  Also Dune.  Blech!

4) Which book do you keep telling yourself you’ll read, but you probably won’t?
Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

5) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
Given that I was a lit major, there aren’t too many huge gaps.  I’m missing some poetry and literary fiction from mid-20th-century into the 1980’s, I guess.

6) Last page: read it first or wait ‘til the end?
Wait until the end!  Reading the last page first is a terrible thing to do.  Geez, people.

7) What’s one book that made you laugh and one that made you cry?
Laugh: Watermelon by Marian Keyes
Cry: The Cider House Rules by John Irving

8.) Which book character would you switch places with?
Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice.  (Mr. Darcy! Swoon!)

9) Do you have a book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time)?
I have many, many books that remind me of times, people, and places throughout my life.  For example, anything by Steinbeck reminds me of my dad.  Catcher in the Rye reminds me of my angsty teen years (as does Lord of the Flies and a few others.)  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn reminds me of pre-adolescence and my mom.

10) Name a book you acquired in some interesting way.
My dad recently sent me an autographed copy of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind that he’d had since 1958.  I’d never read Ferlinghetti, but loved it.

11) Have you ever given away a book for a special reason to a special person?
I gave my review copy of Lucifer by Phil Memmer to my friend and colleague, Kelly, for the purpose of her reviewing it for the next issue of Los Angeles Review, even though I really wanted to keep it.  I ended up buying my own copy.

12) Name one book that changed your life.
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.  Not sure it would be such a revelation if I read it again now, but at the time — whooo!

13) Any “required reading” you hated in high school that wasn’t so bad ten years later?
Canterbury Tales.  Waaaaay better years later.

14) What book has most made you want to visit a place?
I’ve read many historical fiction books (the titles of most of which I can’t remember) that made me want to visit England and Scotland.  I can’t think of any one book that made me want to visit a place, other than travel guides.

15) What book would you recommend to a teenager reluctant to try “literature”?
Lord of the Flies for a boy. Pride and Prejudice for a girl.

16) Used or brand new?
New.

17) Stephen King: Literary genius or opiate of the masses?
Opiate, but usually enjoyable anyway.

18) Have you ever seen a movie you liked better than the book?
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.  (Sorry, the books were a slog.)

19) Conversely, which book should NEVER have been introduced to celluloid?
Dune.  But, then, I hated the book too. (I was dragged to the movie by the same friend who made me read it.)

20) What is your current read, your last read and the book you’ll read next?
Last read:  Ballistics by Billy Collins  (Didn’t like it. He totally phoned it in.)
Current read:  Having None of It by Adrienne Su & Running for My Life by Ann Gonzalez
Next read: The Crying Tree by Naseem Rakha