Thanks, TH. No surprise that I like this week's topic. Several of my answers are what comes to mind this morning and could easily be swapped out for something different tomorrow.
1. Who is/are your favourite author(s)?*
Paul Theroux, Aldous Huxley, Tom Wolfe, William Trevor, Jon Krakauer, E M Forster
2. And your least favourite?
Like adidasss, some authors I decline to explore. Authors I spent time on because a friend insisted, but it turned out, imo, to be time wasted: Gunter Grass, Stephen King, and Tolkien.
3. What is your preferred genre to read?
Biographies, novels, travel literature, various non-fiction
4. What is/are the best book(s) you ever read?*
Books I've read multiple times include:-
Eyeless in Gaza (A Huxley, novel), The Solid Mandala (P White, novel), The Passover Plot (H Schonfield, history), The Painted Word (T Wolfe, journalism)... list could continue.
7. What determines, generally, if you stop reading/lose interest in a book? One thing I have little patience for: you're reading a novel, and the author starts describing a dream that one of the characters has. It's a fiction of a fiction and my instinctive reaction is, "Why am I reading this?"
8. Do you have a Kindle/reader and if not, do you ever intend to get one? Currently considering this as it might give me better access to books of my choice.
9. How large (approximately) is your book collection (to the nearest hundred, say) This was an intriguing question for me: by measuring the shelf-space needed for ten books, it turns out that I have something like 350 in my house, probably the same number again in storage boxes in England.
10. What is the best line you ever read in a book?
I don't usually remember individual lines, which can lose their impact taken out of context. It's a little different with opening sentences, a couple of which have stuck in my mind, mainly for their spot-on exquisiteness of style - so first up is the Lolita one that Marie mentions. Then:-
"I am a camera." Christopher Isherwood
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man, in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." Jane Austen
"Gormenghast, that is the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality, were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls." Meryvn Peake
12. What book(s) have you never read, but would like to?
I didn't have an answer ready, but now I have 2, thanks to adidasss:-
Quote:
Originally Posted by adidasss
4. What is/are the best book(s) you ever read?*
I guess my No. 1 book is The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric. It is so beautifully written I had to pause quite often just to soak up the sentences. And aside from beautiful prose, it has loads of wisdom and the plot is lovely too.
11. What is/are your favourite non-fiction book(s)? *
I liked Just kids by Patti Smith .
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