Books! Books! Books!

Here’s a little survey about books and reading habits. Feel free to fill it out yourselves!

Hardback, trade paperback or mass market paperback? I like harbacks, but they’re hard to carry around. Trade paperbacks are sturdier than mass market, but if I’m feeling cheap I’ll buy one anyway.

Barnes & Noble or Borders? I feel like Borders is half a percent less corporate, but I have a membership to Barnes & Noble that I never have to pay for (in return, I share it with my immediate family). If there was a great local bookstore for all ages near me, I’d go there. There is an awesome children’s bookstore close by, Reading Reptile. Everyone should check it out!

Bookmark or dog-ear? Bookmark! I HATE my books being dog-earred.

Amazon or brick-and-mortar? It depends on my mood, and my budget. I like the feel of a brick-and-mortar book store, but online is so convenient, and often less expensive. Online, I like to browse Chronicle Books, too.

Alphabetize by author, or alphabetize by title, or random? Right now they’re all thrown onto random shelves in different rooms. I really need to organize them somehow. Other than putting all school books in the office/spare bedroom, I’ll probably try to group by genre and then alphabetize by author.

Keep, throw away, or sell? Keep, but I’m leaning toward donating or selling the ones I won’t reread. But so many of the books I own I haven’t read yet, so I won’t have to deal with that anytime soon.

Keep dust jacket or toss it? I keep them. Now that I am the official library book-mender, I should start putting clear protectors on all my own dust jackets. But that’s a lot of extra work…

Read with dust jacket or remove it? If I’m just reading it at home, the dust jacket can stay on. But if I’m toting the book around, it’ll eventually come off. They tend to get torn up if they get tossed about in my bag.

Short story or novel? It depends on my mood.

Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket? I’ve only read Harry Potter, and the movies are better, so I pick Harry Potter.

Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks? I try to make it to chapter breaks, or at least paragraph breaks, but sometimes the tiredness overwhelms me.

“It was a dark and stormy night” or “Once upon a time”? Lately I’ve been in more of a “Once upon a time” mood, but I’d like to get back to more serious fare. Although, it doesn’t have to be stormy in all serious books, right?

Buy or borrow? I used to primarily buy, but now that I have to pay all my own bills, I read a lot more from the library. But I still buy some, especially my favorite authors.

New or used? New, generally, but I’m not opposed to used.

Buying choice: book reviews, recommendations, or browse? I really enjoy browsing. I like feeling like I’m the first person to discover a wonderful new novel or a heart-wrenching and witty non-fiction. But, I do read things that have been recommended to me from time to time. I don’t read a lot of reviews, but as I trudge forward in my professional life that may have to change.

Tidy ending or cliffhanger? If there isn’t a continuation of the story in another book, then a cliffhanger would be miserable! I generally prefer tidy endings, just to have that sense of closure. But sometimes a messy resolution can prove to be more interesting.

Morning reading, afternoon reading, or nighttime reading? I try to read at night, but I inevitably fall asleep without reading very much. I like reading in the afternoon during my lunch break, but I think that’s more because it means I’m not working than because it’s afternoon. I think I’m at my most comprehensive in the late morning, but the days that I get to read at the time are few and far between.

Stand-alone or series? Probably stand-alone. I don’t mind series, but I don’t read a ton of them. I also like a combo of the two: series novels that can stand on their own as well.

Favorite series? Like I said, I haven’t read a lot of series. When I was a kid, I loved the Encyclopedia Brown books, but that was more serial than series, per se. I do enjoy the Harry Potter novels, which I didn’t start reading until college (maybe late high school).

Favorite children’s book? I really don’t know. I can’t think of one. I haven’t looked at a children’s book (on the inside, anyway) in about 16 years or so.

Favorite YA book? I love The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. It’s amazing.

Favorite book of which nobody else has heard? I really enjoyed Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy. It discusses the over-sexualization of women and how some have now embraced it as a new form of feminsim.

Favorite books read last year? Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. She is an unbelievable author.

What are you reading right now? Q&A by Vikas Swarup (you may know it as the book that inspired Slumdog Millionaire, which is now the name under which the book is being published. blech.). I’m also in the middle of Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin… it’s the second novel in his Detective John Rebus series. And because my attention span is equal to that of a fly, I’m about 1/3 finished with Always Looking Up, Michael J. Fox’s latest book.

What are you reading next? I have a ton of stuff checked out from the library, and about a billion things at home I need to read. I’m thinking about tackling Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver or Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (yes, I’m THAT slow).

Favorite book to recommend to an 11-year-old? Maybe 11 is too old, but I enjoyed Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when I was 19. Pretty much anything by Roald Dahl is good.

Favorite book to re-read? I haven’t really re-read much, but I think I’m going to re-read The Namesake and Interpreter of Maladies sometime this summer.

Do you ever smell books? Sometimes at work, to determine if I need to make a patron pay for it or not.

Do you ever read primary source documents like letters or diaries? Infrequently.