The Zen Leaf

Way, way back several weeks ago, Trisha from Eclectic/Eccentric listed ten questions and nominated certain bloggers, including me, to answer them. There was a book blogger award associated with this, but I’m not so much worried about that (or coming up with my own questions). Instead, I’m answering Trisha’s questions today because the normal Top Ten Tuesday prompt has a topic today that doesn’t really work for me. Might as well keep up the tradition of a Tuesday list, though! So here goes:

1. What time of day do you typically read/do you prefer to read?
These days, what with all the studying I do, I tend to read in random moments – during meals (when no one else is home), on audio while I cook or clean or exercise, etc. I think I probably read more in the late afternoons/evenings, when the house is too loud to study.

2. What is your strangest book related obsession?
There are certain books that enter my brain in a weird way and then stick there, and the only way to handle it is to read them over and over and over until they get unstuck. I’ve been known to read a book six or seven times in a row before moving to the next, or to read a series ten times over a few months (*coughHarryPottercough*). I call those books multi-reads, and they almost always become favorites.

3. Like which author do you wish you wrote?
As someone who has spent years developing her own style of writing, I actually don’t wish I wrote like any other author. I’d love the bank accounts and publishing history of some, though. Sure.

4. Who do you think is the most over-rated author?
I hesitate to answer this one because readers find all different sorts of things they like/dislike in authors, and there are many I consider overrated that others adore. Then there’s why you consider them overrated. I can, for instance, understand why Gustave Flaubert is an important figure in literature, even though I think he’s an extremely overrated author. So let’s just go with that.

5. What do you think is the most over-rated book?
I know 99% of the planet disagrees with me, but I have to say the Time Traveler’s Wife. I just don’t get the appeal. There was nothing I enjoyed about it.

6. Which two authors would you like to see go head to head in a word-off (like a dance-off)?
Oscar Wilde and Maureen Johnson. With Jane Austen and Neil Gaiman as their seconds, respectively. Yee-haw!

7. I’ve always wanted to read Lord of the Rings in a cabin in the mountains or Nora Roberts in an Irish inn or The Woman in White in an abandoned asylum. What book-location pairing do you wish for?
This is absolutely the most intriguing question! I’ve really had to stretch to think of an answer, because I’ve never thought about reading a book in a setting-related place. I’ve had books that made me want to go places, but not necessarily to go to them in order to read there…hm. Well, I think the best answer I’ve got is that I would love to reread City of Dark Magic in Prague, so I can go to all the places it references.

8. Describe your bookish self in three words.
Long reading moodswings. (Yes, I made that into one word so I could cheat.)

9. Name one of your favorite characters and what you would do with him/her if you had one day together.
*Must. Not. Discuss. Howl.*

10. If you had one extra day in the week, that nobody knew about and didn’t count, what would you with it?
I’ll be honest. I’m so exhausted these days, I’d probably spend the day having a Downton Abbey marathon while eating all the junk food and drinking all the wine I wanted. 😀

Thanks Trisha! These were awesome. 🙂

I don’t really sort my TBR books into priorities, so I can’t really give a top ten additions. Instead, I’ll give the ten most recent additions to my TBR pile, my TBR future pile (books that have yet to be released), and my to-investigate pile (ones I may or may not add to my TBR after trying them out). Starting with the most recent addition:

1. Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver – interesting YA about sisters and disappearances

2. The Birth of the Pill by Jonathan Eig – nonfiction about birth control

3. Paradise Beneath Her Feet by Isobel Coleman – nonfiction about progressive women’s movements in Islam

4. Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story by Mac McClelland – nonfiction PTSD memoir

5. The Secrets She Keeps by Deb Caletti – newest adult novel of a favorite author

6. Lost and Found by Brooke Davis – random comfort-find on Wowbrary

7. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro – an author who’s hit or miss for me

8. Something New by Lucy Knisley – because one can never have too much Knisley

9. A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab – another random Wowbrary find

10. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin – intriguing plot by an author I’ve not yet read

Anyone know these? Any you’d suggest reading first?

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Nine years ago, pre-blogging, I embarked on a personal project to seek out and revisit my favorite childhood books. Many of them I knew only by vague memory, and didn’t even have a title to guide my search. Sometimes, despite reading a book hundreds of time, I could only remember a single scene with enough clarity to google. Imagine trying to find a book solely from a scene where a dog chases a mouse across a pool covered with plastic…yeah. It wasn’t easy.

In the end, though, I eventually found every single one of the childhood books I’d wanted to revisit, and I spent the next few years revisiting almost all of them. In fact, I’ve probably reread 95% of all my favorite books from childhood and adolescence. All but one of the list below were part of that project, and every single one remains a nostalgic favorite.

1. Judge Benjamin: The Superdog Rescue by Judith Whitelock McInerney – This is the book I referenced above, and I’m amazed that I found it because that particular scene I remembered is at the very beginning and only about two pages long… When I went back to read it, though, I remembered nearly every word. I must have read this book several hundred times as a kid.

2. Ghost Cat by Beverly Butler – This was easy to find, because I knew the title and remembered the cover, plus most of the plot. I reread it for RIP a few years back!

3. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle – This book came in a set with four other children’s classics, including the next two in this list. I revisited it a few years back, and while I still have nostalgia attached to it, I didn’t really like it as an adult.

4. The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder – This was probably my very favorite childhood book, and when I reread it as part of this project, I discovered that many of my personal preferences in books plus some of my writing style can be traced back to The Egypt Game. The author is very nice too, and responded to a letter I wrote her!

5. From the Mixed Up Files of Ms. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg – This is the only one on this list I haven’t revisited in adulthood, so I still remember it purely with nostalgia. It’s definitely one I plan to revisit, though.

6. Bridge to Terabithia and The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson – Both of these were beloved children’s books. Ironically, when Terabithia came out on film, I didn’t know I’d read the book. I remembered a scene, but not which book it came from, and I blew off the movie. Then later I looked up the scene, discovered it was this book, and had to both reread and watch the film.

7. Into the Dream and Singularity by William Sleator – I didn’t read a whole lot of science fiction as a kid, but both of these books, read around middle school, had profound effects on me. Images and scenes have stayed with me to this day.

8. Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn – This was the only book I couldn’t find during my project search. All I could remember was a scene with kids trapped in a ruined basement and a fight in a kitchen. Not helpful. I only know it now because in 2009, I participated in a reading challenge that accidentally brought me to this book.

9. Down a Dark Hall by Lois Duncan – I read tons of Lois Duncan as a teenager, and remember many of them fondly. I’ve reread a few in adulthood, too, but this is the one that always stood out (both then and now) as the best of them. It even creeped me out when I reread it as an adult, alone in my house one night…

10. The Eternal Enemy by Christopher Pike – I also read tons of Christopher Pike as a teen, but this is the one I remember most clearly. It took me forever to find it, because I only knew the author and pieces of the plot, and Pike has written so many books!

11. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume – I know, I know, this is more than ten. But I couldn’t leave these last two out. Again, I read a lot of Blume as a kid/teen, but this was the one that made the biggest impression on me. Rereading it as an adult was a very strange experience.

12. Twisted by R.L. Stine – Like the last few, I read lots of Stine’s books (though this was pre-Goosebumps, and I never read those). Most were forgettable, but this particular one about good-twin-bad-twin stuff was fascinating (if cheesy).

What are your childhood favorites?

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.