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Referencing S.C.'s quiz from Facebook :)

) What author do you own the most books by?

Barbara Cartland

2) What book do you own the most copies of?

I don't have more than one copy of anything.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?

Even though I read someone else's answers first, I still didn't notice.

4) What fictional character most fascinates you?

Quentin Compson, from The Sound and the Fury and other works by Faulkner.

5) What book have you read the most times in your life?

Gothic Tales, ed. Chris Baldick.

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?

Wait till Helen Comes, by Mary Downing Hahn. I still really love it.

7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?

The Vision of Desire, by Margaret Pedlar.

8) What is the best book you've read in the past year?

Villette, by Charlotte Bronte.

9) Brits or Americans?

I love British literature up to the 1850's, and then after that I mostly prefer American.

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for literature?

I really don't know. I wish I read more high-minded stuff, but I don't.

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?

The Last Man, by Mary Shelley. (They are saying that Will Smith movie is based on The Last Man, but no, I mean really based on that book with those characters.)

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, seriously. The book is disturbing enough.

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.

Oy, I recently dreamed I was a prostitute in that Allende book mentioned above. I was the very best prostitute in the brothel, but I took too long getting changed, and when I came downstairs my pimp said I was wearing the wrong dress, so they gave my very high-dollar customer to someone else. Somehow this has to do with my real life, but I haven't worked it out yet. My dress was white and lacy and should have been black and slinky, BTW.

14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?

Something about a cowboy and a baby published by Harlequin.

15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read?

Homer's Odyssey.

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?

I saw the Henry V movie with Kenneth Brannagh. I really liked it.

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?

I probably like the French better.

18) Roth or Updike?

Uh...

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?

Dur...

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?

Shakespeare.

21) Austen or Eliot?

Austen.

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?

According to others, my failure to read the Harry Potter books.

However I have a really hard time bringing myself to read modern and post-modern work. It's so degrading to women.

23) What is your favorite novel?

Villette, by Charlotte Bronte.

24) Play?

Richard III, by Shakespeare

25) Poem/Poets?

Christina Rossetti.

26) Essay?

Escape from Hungary: Three Dark, Cold Days in 1956 by Joseph Nagyvary. (this is online)

27) Short story?

Ligeia, by Edgar Allan Poe.

28) Work of non-fiction?

Beginner's Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki

29) Who is your favorite writer?

Victoria Holt.

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?

J. K. Rowling and/or Stephanie Meyer. I haven't read their books, but I can just tell.

31) What is your desert island book?
Anthology of American Literature vol. I.

32) And ... what are you reading right now?

- The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende
- Christina Rossetti, Selected Poems
- The Cenci, by P. B. Shelley
- The Fourth Turning, by Strauss and Howe

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