Summer, come back!

So it’s official, winter has arrived like the unwanted house guest it is, with my corresponding bad mood riding pillion. The nose-diving temperature has brought with it stinging sideways rain and obnoxious winds that are scaring my stoic little seedlings into surrender. I’ve unpacked my woollies, started making curries,  pondered my new beanie friendly winter ‘do’, and am now busy moping around wishing for a transfer to Hawaii. Whilst I sulk for a little longer, I thought I’d have a go at this great meme I’ve been seeing around of late.

1) What author do you own the most books by?

After consulting my various bookcases, its turns out that I have an equal number of Edmund White, Haruki Murakami, Francoise Sagan and David Malouf; with five books each.

2) What book do you own the most copies of?

Dracula. I have an old Penguin classic edition with a tacky 1970’s cover; a Norton critical edition I used at University; and a more recent graphic novel version.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?

To have bothered me I would first have had to notice, which I didn’t, so no.

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?

I’ve just finished reading Sense & Sensibility, so this week I’m going to say Colonel Brandon.  I have quite the thing for unruffled yet passionate men, who are as good with their hands as they are with their heads. If he looked and sounded like Alan Rickman in Emma Thompson’s fantastic adaptation, well that would be fine too!

5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children)?

Probably Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. I’m completely in love with this pretentious fantasy land of academia, with its cultish mysterious professor and his band of eccentric scholars. I would love to dive into this book and wax philosophical with Henry, speculate about the twins relationship with Richard, get drunk with Francis, and while away a morning trading laughs with Bunny; all in between indulging my intellect in the kind of obscure study that wealth affords.

6) What was your favourite book when you were ten years old?

Probably something by John Marsden, Robyn Klein or perhaps Judy Blume.

7) What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?

In the last year I read Anne Tyler’s Digging to America and was bored rigid. Feeling that I needed to give this author another chance to impress, I then read Ladder of Years, but I was still completely unimpressed. I don’t know if that makes these books bad, its just they weren’t my cup of tea.

What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?

Patrick White’s The Tree of Man, or maybe Richard Flanagan’s Wanting.

9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?

That’s a lot of pressure for one book to live up to! To be honest I have enough trouble recommending books to friends whose tastes I’m familiar with, let alone force a book into a strangers hands and demand they read it.

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?

I have no idea! I think I’ll leave such decisions up to those people at Nobel Prize HQ and continue to float along on my cloud of ignorance!

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?

I’m one of those people that tends to initially resist film adaptations of books. I have to hear good things from several reliable sources before I can bring myself to go see it. I guess this is my way of guarding against the images of the book that I’ve constructed in my head, because they tend to get muddied after seeing the film. So I guess that’s a long-winded way of saying that I don’t have any books I want to see made into films!

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?

Well I’ve always said The Secret History, but with the films right having been sold long ago, and constant rumours of people being attached to the film, I suspect it’s only a matter of time.

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.

I once had a dream in which T.S. Eliot was sipping tea in my living room and telling me off about something, the subject of which I cannot for the life of me recall. All I can remember is his stern, unwavering gaze shrinking me with every minute that passed.

14) What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?

Well I did read The DaVinci Code once to see what all the fuss was about, and I have also read several of Jodi Picoult’s books in my short time as an ‘adult’!

15) What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?

Michel Foucault’s The History of Western Sexuality in three volumes. Parts of it were as impenetrable as a Bob Dylan lyric, and I think I went a little bit crazy trying to get a full grasp of what he was saying. It’s was like trying to swim in treacle.

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve seen?

The Bell Shakespeare Company puts on two Shakespeare plays a year here in Australia, but they are usually the better known ones, so I can’t say I’ve seen any of his more obscure stuff.

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?

No idea. I’ve not read widely enough of either to have an opinion.

18 ) Roth or Updike?

I like both for different reasons.

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?

I like both, but if I had to choose one it would be Sedaris.

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?

But I want to play with them all!

21) Austen or Eliot?

See above

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?

Oh pick a time, style or location and I’ll have a huge yawning gap! The only two areas of reading that I’d consider myself comfortable with would be late 19^th Century -early 20^th Century English Literature, and Australian Literature. Outside of that I’m quite illiterate, but I’m working on it!

23) What is your favourite novel?

You know I tend to have favourite writers rather than favourite books. Some of my favourite writers at this point in my life would be: Edmund White, Patrick White, Janet Frame, Evelyn Waugh, T.S. Eliot, Cormac McCarthy, Jane Austen, Haruki Murakami, and Douglas Coupland. I wonder how different this list will be in ten years time!

24) Play?

At the moment, it’s Louis Nowra’s Radiance

25) Poem?

At the moment it’s The Thought-Fox by Ted Hughes

26) Essay?

I enjoy pilfering through the essays found at Arts & Letters daily.

27) Short story?

Anything from David Malouf’s Every Move you Make.

28) Work of nonfiction?

John Vincent’s The Intelligent Person’s Guide to History.

29) Who is your favourite writer?

See Q23

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?

You know I’d have no idea really. What is the definition of an overrated writer? Overrated according to whom? It all seems so subjective to me. There are a lot of writers out there whose ability according to literary taste-makers falls short of some ill-defined benchmark, but you know at the end of the day people are buying their books in droves and connecting with their stories, so I don’t know. I think the short answer is, as I’ve just demonstrated, I’m completely lost when it comes to these kind of arguments!

31) What is your desert island book?

The complete Lyrics of Bob Dylan. That would keep me interested, frustrated, ponderous and imaginative for quite some time!

32) And… what are you reading right now?

Sonya Hartnett’s Of a Boy, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, The collected Poems of Ted Hughes, and a biography of Hughes written by Elaine Feinstein.

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