To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

Nicked from jerie (am I using the UK slang right?)


1. What books are your comfort reading -- the ones you slink back to in times of stress?

I always go for the Bujold books. Usually Shards of Honor, Barrayar, or A Civil Campaign.

2. What was your favorite book as a child, and why?

Good lord, I read so many books as a child I couldn't remember even a tenth of them. I was really into a lot of series, like Babysitters Club, the Thoroughbred series, Boxcar Children, etc. etc., but didn't have a favorite out of all of them. Maybe Black Beauty? There was also this trilogy about a boy named Calvin, who had some weird effect on electronics that made them break down, a girl friend of his whose name I forget, and an alien cat from outer space that had retractable fingers in his paws which he used to type on a computer keyboard. I think the cat's name was Dandelion. I liked those books a lot.

3. What was your favorite book as an adolescent, and why?

Am I still considered an adolescent? I'm guessing no. My favorite book when I was 12-14 was Contact. I was totally gonna be Ellie when I grew up. (Remember, this was back before I hit serious math classes.) It was nice to see how a real alien contact would probably go, too.

4. What is the most-unread category of books gathering dust on your bookshelf -- the books you've bought but just never got around to reading?

Random SFF books that I buy on a whim and find aren't very good. Usually they're by one-shot authors.

5. What kind of books would you like to say you read, but never do?

If I don't read something, it's because I either haven't gotten there or didn't like it. There aren't any I'd "like to say I read."

6. What's the oddest book you ever read?

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was rather odd. Alice in Wonderland is pretty high up there, too.

7. What book were you never able to get through, despite the recommendations of people you respect?

Anything by Heinlein. I just don't get the appeal.

8. What's the book it took you a couple of tries to get into, but was as good as promised once you finally made it?

LOTR. I tried reading the first book several years ago, and tried again last winter when I had nothing to do near the end of the semester. Blazed through all three of them by the time Christmas vacation was half over.

9. What's your favorite short story . . . or do you even have one?

I guess Bujold's "The Mountains of Mourning" is really more of a novelette, but I don't really read short stories all that often. I did read Adrienne Sharpe's Black Swan, White Swan (a collection of short stories about ballet and the world of professional ballerinas) a few years ago, and liked most of what I read. "The Telltale Heart" and other Poe stories are also good.

10. The desert island. Three books (and collected works don't count; if you want *Lord of the Rings* it'll cost you all three slots).

I physically cannot answer this question. Can. Not. Answer.

11) What is your favorite book of poetry?

Hmmmm. Probably the collected works of W.B. Yeats that I wrote my AP English term paper with, closely followed by my The Selected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay anthology. The school publications that I edited and wrote for are also pretty good, IMO, as are anything that's accepted my stuff and even paid me for it... ;)