Sunday, February 10, 2019

Sunday Stealing

#10: I'd like to be greeted by books in every room.



1. Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews? It's a three-way tie: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and The Hunger Games.

2. If you could bring three characters to life for a social event (afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would they be and what would the event be? I like the idea of just hanging out over a beer or two with Spenser, Kinsey Milhone and Archie Goodwin. I can see Archie and Kinsey pairing off, leaving Spenser and me to compare/contrast baseball's two great cathedrals: Wrigley Field and Fenway.

3. You are told you can't die until you read the most boring novel on the planet. While this immortality is great for awhile, eventually you realize it's past time to die. Which book would you expect to get you a nice grave? Moby fucking Dick


4. Which book have you pretended, or at least hinted, that you've read, when in fact you've been nowhere near it? The Handmaid's Tale

5. As an addition to the last question, has there been a book that you really thought you had read, only to realize when you read a review about it/go to 'reread' it that you haven't? Which book? I can't think of any.

6. You've been appointed Book Advisor to a VIP (who's not a big reader). What's the first book you'd recommend and why? The Princess Bride. Because it is funny, unique yet familiar, and really is about something if you choose to give it additional thought.

7. A good fairy comes and grants you one wish: you will have perfect reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which language do you go with? Spanish.

8. A mischievous fairy comes and says that you must choose one book that you will reread once a year for the rest of your life (you can read other books as well). Which book would you pick? Gone with the Wind. I used to read it every summer. The last time I picked it up, I found the insensitive racial attitudes painful and intolerable. I like to believe that I'll be able to get past that next time. I'd hate to think that I will no longer spend time with Scarlett, Melanie, Rhett and Will (who isn't in the movie). Ashley is far more attractive in the book than he is the movie.

9. What's one bookish thing you 'discovered' from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new appreciation for cover art-anything)? Kwizgiver introduced me to the Spellman mysteries. They're a delight! Thanks, Kwiz! (If I could have a fourth, I'd invite Rae Spellman to join us in #2.)

10. That good fairy is back for one final visit. Now, she's granting you your dream library!

Describe it. Is everything leatherbound? Is it full of first edition hardcovers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a few favourite authors have inscribed their works? Go ahead-let your imagination run free. I'd like built-in bookshelves in every room of my house, so I could have a biography room and a mystery room and fiction room and a coffee table book room. And I'd like to rescue used books. There's such romance to holding a book in your hands and wondering who held it before.


 

Saturday's equation

Heavy meal + heavy conversation = long nap. Caught up with Nancy today at a burger joint. Had two delicious sliders, a side of mac and cheese, washed down with a margarita. Quite possibly the least nutritious meal ever, but it was all good.

Nancy's life is complicated right now. She is beginning work on a website and starting to network to launch her own business. Her children are in a state of flux for different reasons -- her daughter is having trouble adjusting to college life, her son is struggling with sobriety. And the issues with her kids have put her int he path of her ex-husband an awful lot lately, and that's not a good thing.

I enjoyed talking to her. She is smart, informed about the world and has a good heart. But different people play different roles in your life. And Nancy is never gonna just be light and laughter. That's not who she is.

So when I got home, I took a nice long nap.

I missed my movie group again tonight. I just couldn't make the suburb-to-city logistics work. But I had one of those "path not taken" moments. As I was closing my eyes, I wondered how different my Saturday would have been if I'd sat in the dark with other movie lovers, watching a Ginger Rogers comedy from 1943.