I'm only doing this for Amber, cuz she asked nicely. I think there were questions about books in there somewhere?
Ah, yes...
1. How much do you read?
Define “a lot.” I can read all damn day if I’ve got nothing better to do, which I usually don’t. Now I read probably an hour a day, if I’m lucky – thirty minutes on the bike at the gym, twenty minutes out loud to my kid, I read when I blow dry my hair and when I’m waiting in the car to pick up my son from school. I have a book, or my laptop, with me everywhere I go. I read my son novels for pre-teens and for teenagers, like Harry Potter and Children of the Lamp and the kiddie-novel of the new Star Wars. He has an excellent vocabulary. I’ll read late into the night if I’m too weary to write. I like to read in bed. Eating and reading in bed are just below sex in utter decadence.
2. Favorite genre(s)?
English mysteries. Spy novels. Books with gratuitous, descriptive violence. Limited fantasy-- frankly, some of the genre is painful to read... the story is a good idea but the writing... eh. I pray I’m an exception. Eroticm. I know, I know, you’d never have guessed. I even like the crap that’s in Hustler. Most of my eroticm comes from blogs, which I find interesting because you get to know the people behind the sex. There are more blogs about thirty-something wives who have discovered that being a submissive can be fun. Interior Design magazines –this is something I know a lot about and am quite interested in, but that’s for another day.
3. What qualities must a book have to keep you up reading all night?
I can put down action, but it must have characters that I care about. Or sex. I like reading myself to sleep on sex scenes. It always makes for an interesting tomorrow.
4. How do you find something to read?
I go to the bookstore - I'm terrible with returning things to the library. I had shelves built in my study to accomodate my books, my nightstand is a big old pine desk and it usually has ten to twenty books on it at any given time, and that doesn’t include the kids books. There are currently ten books next to my computer. I don’t watch much tv.
5. Favorite books and why?
Well, mine. Ok, so there it is. I like them. What can I say?
Harry Potter is just fun.
Andy Rooney’s My War --here’s an amusing anectdote about that, I told my mom how great it was and she poo-pooed it (cuz she be remembering WW2 and shit) and never read it. And then someone interviewed him for something and then it was HER idea, so she read it and loved it. See? See how no one respects me?
The Boynton books are fabulous to read to kids.
PD James
Elizabeth George’s Inspector Linley books
Stephen White
Some of King’s works
John Irving
Steinbeck
I like Crichton, but I think he is, or has gotten, formulaic in his prose. Obviously, it’s a formula that works, so who am I to say?
Laurel Hamilton – short on plot, long on rockin’ sex scenes. I always come away from her books horny as all git-out.
Oh, jeez, there’s more, but I can’t remember them all
Oh, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe series. Awesome stories.
John Rosemond - New Parent Power. Anyone who says he is just a strict old coot likely hasn't read a word he's written and they likely also possess obnoxious children.
6. What are you reading right now and is it any good?
Nick Tosches In the Hand of Dante, which has perhaps the best first chapter of any book I’ve ever read. His usage of the word fuck has outdone anything I’ve ever heard or read. I think in one sentence he uses it about five times; in each of its forms.
The Children of the Lamp to my son – very fun.
Finishing (finally!) Tad William’s epic Otherworld.
Greg Cox’s Underworld books, just finished the second one in the weekend at N’awlins – yeah, I had time to read. Clearly, I didn’t party anything like enough.
7. Paperback or hard back?
I like to look at hardbacks on my shelves, I like to read paperbacks.
8. Any great quotes?
I won't presume to know what they mean; just that they speak to me.
“It began in dirt, as many things do.” Tad Williams first line of a four-book series. Quite misleading, since he later describes something as “halicinatory in its gigantism.” He’s, er, rather descriptive. In fact, I’d say his books are 60 percent description, 40 percent story. But the story is generally worth wading through the other.
"You decorate it for a year, finding the four poster bed, assembling it upstairs, draping the mosquito netting to convince yourself that you still wander in dangerous places. At night you mutter in several languages." -- Beth Parton, Microgravity
"His jeans are rumpled, his T-shirt half untucked. I back away, until I'm up against the door. Inches from my face, he cocks his head slightly. Then he moves his lips so close to mine, they just barely touch and he whispers,
"One
more
chance."
--Augusten Burroughs, Dry. All his books are great.
And I guess the following is the single best bit of prose I've ever read in my entire life:
"Shit, there I go again: writing. Fucking writing. Even I got fucking sucked into that one: bringing only a single piece of fruit, or a single flower, and herself.
Fuck that shit. The bitch gave decent head and that's that."
--Nick Tosches In the Hand of Dante
No comments:
Post a Comment