the Dalaverse

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

Tamora Pierce's books, particularly the Song of the Lioness quartet. I've read it so many times I've lost count. Also various stories out of Francesca Lia Block's Girl Goddess #9 (except "Pixie & Pony," because it just makes me depressed),The Golden Compass, A Wrinkle In Time, Speaker for the Dead, One More River, The Giving Tree, A Little Princess, A Ring of Endless Light, Jurassic Park, The Great Gatsby -- I reread books a LOT.

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

Oh God. I'm supposed to choose?

Well, as far as picture books go, it was The Elephant's Child by Rudyard Kipling and The Monster at the End of this Book (starring Grover!)

Others: Bridge to Terebithia, The Giving Tree, Where the Red Fern Grows, A Wrinkle In Time, A Little Princess, Ozma of Oz, Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley (no, I'm not ashamed), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a Hans Christian Anderson treasury, Jurassic Park ... I guess that covers all, or at least most, of it.

Why? Wtf?!! Because I love them?

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

The Little Prince, The Mists of Avalon, all Francesca Lia Block, the His Dark Materials Trilogy, the Ender books, The Poisonwood Bible. Because ... because they made me think, and they were good stories.

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?

Er. Half the impulse buys from the used book store, but they're in scattered categories. Oooh, oooh, I bought the whole Foundation trilogy and never got into it -- does that count?

At least the set matches...

And the rest of my Mitford books -- The Sisters caused me to freak out and buy three Nancy novels, The American Way of Death, and Hons and Rebels, of which I have read one and a half.

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

Hmmm. Biographies, I guess. Oh, and LotR -- I never finished The Two Towers, because I discovered that they were just not for me. I struggled to get that far, believe me.

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

The oddest? Maybe You Must Remember This (incest, yay -- I wrote a fuckin' awesome critical analysis on that, though). Stone Tables was an odd read for me because it's sort of Christian-themed, but hey, Orson Scott Card.

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

Oh wow, LofR again. Though the person who actually personally recommended them, I have zero respect for.

And I hateloathedespise A Farewell to Arms. I downright refused to finish it, AP Lit assignments be damned.

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?

Hmmm. Grendel? Oh, and I hated Catcher in the Rye the first time I read it, about two years ago, and absolutely loved it when I reread it this year. That has to say something profound about me, but I dunno what.

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

Absolutely Bradbury's "All Summer in a Day," also his "The Veldt," and a bunch of other stories in The Illustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles. Some of the stories we've read in school, which I'll be hard pressed to remember the names to ... oh, "Young Goodman Brown," that was good stuff. The Sartre one, about...dude, and...that other dude...(which is ironic, considering how much I disliked The Stranger).

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). Go:

Ahhhhhh.

Ahhhhhh.

Um.

Gatsby.
The Poisonwood Bible.
Either The Golden Compass or House of the Spirits (it's a toss-up, I swear).

Damn, that was painful.