Book meme

[pedanther]

(via swordznsorcery)

1. Can you remember the first book you read?

I find this question utterly bemusing. Apart from people who had deprived childhoods and didn't become literate until they were grown up, can anybody remember the first book they read?


2. What was the last book (electronic or otherwise) you read?

Hellspark by Janet Kagan, for the umptieth time, to celebrate it being released as an ebook. (Complete with a few exciting new typographical errors, as seems to be inevitable with ebooks.) It's still just as good.


3. Do you read for enjoyment, work or both?

Enjoyment.


4. What is your favorite genre of book to read?

My fiction reading is almost entirely science fiction, fantasy, and detective novels. Occasionally historical novels, possibly because there's a similar sense of visiting a strange and different world. You'll have gathered that I'm not much interested by fiction set in an unmodified version of the real world; I'm not sure why -- possibly on Marvin's principle that reality is bad enough without people inventing more of it.

My non-fiction reading tends toward popular history and biography, with occasional diversions into things that look like they might expand my understanding of acting and/or directing. (It probably says something that I'll read for self-improvement when it comes to my hobby, but not when it comes to the work that actually earns my living. Not sure what, though.) I recently finished Jung Chang's biography of Empress Dowager Cixi (which was amazing, and I'd be telling everybody they should read it if I were the kind of person who told people things like that), and currently I'm reading Adrian Goldsworthy's biography of Caesar Augustus.


5. If you could visit your younger self, what book would you tell yourself to steer clear of?

There aren't many books that I'm prepared to state without qualification that I'd have been better off not having read; usually I get something out of even really bad books.

But there is one, and it's in Piers Anthony's "Space Tyrant" series. Really, best just to skip the whole series, to be on the safe side.

Comments

[swordznsorcery.livejournal.com]

That was my feeling about question one as well. Unless you're young enough to remember learning to read, I don't think you stand a chance with that one! Or maybe it means your first "proper", thick book? Even then I'd imagine that it's impossible for most people.

I had never heard of the Space Tyrant series, so I looked it up. For the first book, Wiki says: "...most of the adults are raped, killed, or kidnapped by the end of the story."

Yeah. Think I can do without that! :D

[thisbluespirit]

As a teen, I managed to read the Space Tyrant series in complete naivety. I'm still not sure, looking back on happily extremely vague memories, how I managed that. (I also read a lot of Xanth, before I got thoroughly fed up with them, and only at that point was I beginning to even slightly wonder about them.)

I recently finished Jung Chang's biography of Empress Dowager Cixi (which was amazing, and I'd be telling everybody they should read it

Oh, I shall have to add that to my list for when I'm better(er), because that should be interesting indeed!