Book Meme - Stolen from FB

[teddy_radiator]

Like many of you, I adore books and love to read. If I love a book I will read it over and over - I have been known to read 'The End', then turn back to page one and start again. If I love a book, I read the hell out of it. But I am a bibliophile's nightmare. I am no respecter of books - I treat them like whores at a gang bang. I crack spines, I dogear pages, I read while eating and spatter them with food; I take them into baths and expand them to twice their size. I highlight important or pertinent sentences and write in the margins. I am jealous and rarely loan books; I also caution friends to never loan me a book - if I really like it, you may not get it back.

You have only to look at my book collection to see my favourite, most loved books - they are the ones that look like they've been run over by a bus. The pristine books are either copies of my favourites (I often buy two and keep one safe - like my HP books, and kmhmd gave me two copies of Oldest Living Confederate etc as a gift, and one's autographed, so it never gets opened) or they are books that never get read past the first reading. I thank the book gods for Kindles - now I can read to my heart's content and no books are harmed in the process.

Meme Rules: Books (in no particular order) that have stayed with you in some way. Don't take more than few minutes and don't try to list the "right" or "great" works. These are books that I have read all throughout my life (I read Island of the Blue Dolphins as a pre-teen and it's still one of my favourites).

It also strikes me as interesting how many are told as biographies (*) and in first person.

Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All - Allan Gurganus*
Island of the Blue Dolphins - Scott O'Dell*
Alas, Babylon - Pat Frank
The Godfather - Mario Puzo
Shogun - James Clavell
The Stand - Stephen King
The Thorn Birds - Colleen McCollough
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden*
Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
A Song of Ice and Fire - GRR Martin
The Hiding Place - Corrie Ten Boom*
Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee - Dee Brown
Smilla's Sense of Snow - Peter Høeg (the Tiina Nunnally translation)*
Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

Comments

[toblass.livejournal.com]

You know, I think how you treat books the way you do doesn't show disrespect at all. Rather, you love the hell out of a book, and for that, I think that's even better than having a pristine/never read book. Your duplicates are the exception, of course. That's the problem with Kindles and eReaders though...you can't lovingly fondle the actual book.

[lemonade8.livejournal.com]

LOL,for some reason I like that you think of your books as your whores. In a gang-bang no less!

I take the ones that belong to me into the shower. Well, first I put them on the back of the toilet. Then when I'm waiting for my conditioner to do its magic, I dry my hands off with my folded towel that waits for me on the toilet seat, grab that book and read it away from the main stream of the water. I'm a tad gentler with my whores- I mean books- but I still use them whenever and wherever I want.

So what were your CHILDHOOD book favorites? I know you said one was 'Island of the Blue Dolphins', but what were the other ones that shaped your impressive little vulnerable mind?

Also, what are the contemporary ones that you just don't enjoy?

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

LOL Gosh, I'm having to give it a good think - my memory's crap at the best of times. There were several biographies I really liked in my local library - I don't know the publisher, but all of them were illustrated with silhouettes, which pleased me for some odd reason. The first book I ever checked out of the library was a biography of Louisa May Alcott, and Little Women became a favourite of mine. I still have my childhood copy of it. I remember reading the Geraldine Quimby books. My mother bought me lots of YA books, one on dancer's biographies (I sense a pattern here), and the typical ones about young people in school having moments of conflict involving their best friends or going to summer camp.

I loved Du Maurier's Rebecca(in high school).

The ones I don't like is a much stranger list. I got into a disagreement with an FB friend over Stephen King's Dark Tower series, which to me was an exercise in masochism, and I couldn't get into JKR's Casual Vacancy.

I do love JR Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood books. I really should have included them on my list. They made a big difference to me a couple of years ago.

I have to really feel led to read a book - if someone tells me a book MUST be read, I get very bloody-minded and avoid it. I'm such a stubborn git that way.

[akatnamedeaster.livejournal.com]

I do the same thing with my much loved books, which is why I routinely have to go buy new copies of the things I love. I love taking them into the bath with me too, in fact I went through a time where I couldn't have a bath without a book. So all of my favorites tend to have a bit of water damage and sometimes I drop them.

[lemonade8.livejournal.com]

Actually, those biographies sound really interesting. Silhouettes are cool.

Didn't try Dark Tower series. I believe you. I either LOVE LOVE LOVE his stuff or absolutely hate it. 'Pet Semetary' and 'Christine' are books that I disliked, but I loved 'The Shining', 'The Stand', Different Seasons' and others.

I had the JD Robb 'In Death' series recc'd to me by people who loved Harry Potter, so I went out and bought one thinking it would be an instant hit. I couldn't get into it because I thought that Roarke was a first class asshole. He wasn't a Snape asshole, he was just a character I disliked immediately and completely. So I don't begrudge you not jumping on books quickly. I had to learn the hard way.

Nora Roberts is a class act, though. I really REALLY wanted to like that series. *sigh*

[dragoon811.livejournal.com]

I do the same to books, minus the writing. I usually only write in cookbooks. But I dogear, I mark, I read them until their spines fall apart. I've actually had to replace books more than once.

And I must say - I LOVED Island of the Blue Dolphins and need to buy a new copy!! (that and the giver and the wrinkle in time series and 'and both were young' since I seem to be missing books despite bringing home my storage unit's contents...oops.)

[delphipsmith]

I really must get to posting my list -- perhaps tomorrow will be the day. You and I have about 80% overlap :)

I LOVE Shogun -- such a huge epic sweep. Ditto GWTW. Island of the Blue Dolphins I've read several times over the years, and each time it touches a different part of me.

The Godfather, wow. I remember pulling this off our bookshelves at home when I was about 12 and my mom taking it from me saying, "No, honey, not just yet. Maybe when you're older." Good choice, all things considered. The last scene still gives me chills, it's so medieval with Michael like a lord accepting the fealty of his vassals.

The Stand -- how do I love this book, let me count the ways lol! Another epic, but with such amazing, complicated characters. I love them all, even the bad ones who miss redemption by justthismuch, and yet manage to salvage something at the very end. I still waffle as to whether it leaves me uplifted or depressed, though. You?

[delphipsmith]

That's the problem with Kindles and eReaders though...you can't lovingly fondle the actual book.

Yes!! The books I love, I want to really love them: read them over and over and watch them become tattered and beloved. Like the Velveteen Rabbit says, "Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

[rangerishot.livejournal.com]

A few books there I'd like to read one day... :-)

[toblass.livejournal.com]

Yes!!!!!

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

YES! YES, this! A million times this!!! Thank you.

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

The Godfather had so many axioms that I appreciated.

The Stand - wow, what a story. I live that story every time I read it, and yes, all of the characters are so well-rounded that you feel for them. Lloyd is one in particular - and so is Harold - if only - The if onlys of these two characters!

The Stand leaves me with such mixed feelings. You know the whole sorry mess will eventually start up again, but not in 'your' lifetime. But the loss is so sickening, you can never really feel uplifted in the end. But I do love reading it.

[teddyradiator.livejournal.com]

I highly recommend them ;)

[delphipsmith]

Oh, poor Harold. I have known people like him, who cling to their grudges and injuries and can't let them go. Usually they only hurt themselves but in Harold's case...

And the sad thing is that he comes so very close to letting it all go, moving on, becoming a new person in this new world. *sigh*

So when you're reading it do you become hypersensitive to people coughing in public places lol?! I know I do!!