Book Meme, Adapted by Yrs Truly

I found a Q&A book meme at Electronic Cerebrectomy.  It’s composed of headings one is supposed to respond to (I say “headings” rather than “questions” because the questions are formatted in title case . . . incorrectly so, in many cases).

The meme hasn’t been stupidified by Facebook, as far as I can tell . . . the questions are reasonably intelligent and on point.  But it is a meme, and I have to assume previous respondents have altered it.

So I don’t feel bad about tinkering with it myself.  As found, many of the questions didn’t apply to me, and some simply rephrased questions that had already been asked.  I threw those questions out, then added new ones.  If you’re a stickler for meme integrity and want to see the questions as I found them, look below the fold.

Either way, if you’re a fellow book lover, I hope you’ll take a crack at it and pass it on.  Here’s my version of the book meme:

  • Worst Books Ever
    • Worst that I’ve read recently: Spy by Ted Bell; Trojan Odyessy by Clive Cussler; The Book of the Dead by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
  • Books I Have Lied About Reading
    • I don’t lie about books I’ve read; if I haven’t read them I’ll admit it (okay, okay, so I lied about reading War and Peace, but doesn’t everyone?)
  • Books I Have Lied About Liking
    • I don’t do that either
  • Book-to-Movie Adaptations Where, Frankly, the Movie Was Better
    • The Harry Potter and James Bond books (especially the new Casino Royale); War of the Worlds (Tom Cruise version)
  • Books I Used to Love, of Which I Am Now Ashamed
    • Ashamed isn’t the right word. . . it’s just that what filled me with wonder and a sense of the possibilities of life at 14 doesn’t do the trick now that I’m grown up: On the Road by Jack Kerouac; everything by Ayn Rand; Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series
  • Best Book Titles of All Time
    • Love in the Time of Cholera, To Kill a Mockingbird, What Is the What
  • My Guilty-Pleasure Reads
    • The Ruins by Scott Smith; Impact by Douglas Preston
  • Books I Read Only After Seeing the Movie
    • The Color Purple by Alice Waters
  • Books I Most Often Try to Persuade Other People to Read
    • The Aubrey-Maturin novels of Patrick O’Brian; Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell; The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher
  • Authors I Wish Had Written More Books Already
    • David Mitchell, William Gibson, Roberto Bolaño (he can’t, unfortunately)
  • Overused Plot Points That Drive Me Nuts
    • Not a plot point, but magical realism, as in the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie, turns me right off
  • Books in Which I Liked the Secondary Characters Better Than the Main Character
    • Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
  • Books in Which I Wanted to Beat the Main Character Senseless with a Tire Iron
    • A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius & You Shall Know Our Velocity, both by Dave Eggers; Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  • Books I Read after Oprah Recommended Them
    • The Road by Cormac McCarthy
  • Books I Will Never Read Precisely Because Oprah Recommends Them
    • That’s just silly . . . what if it turns out Hitler liked Tom Sawyer?
  • Literary Characters I’ve Developed Crushes On
    • Lisbeth Salander in Stieg Larsson’s Millenium novels; the female protagonists in William Gibson’s sci-fi novels (Chia, Marley, Kumiko . . . but especially Chevette)
  • Best Bathroom Books
    • The Calvin & Hobbes cartoon collections; David Sedaris’ story collections
  • Books that Made Me Cry
    • The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
  • Books I Re-Read When I Have Nothing Else to Read
    • Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels
  • Books People Keep Recommending That, Frankly, Sucked Ass
    • Dave Egger’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius & You Shall Know Our Velocity
  • Books I’ve Read Aloud
    • The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
  • Books I’ve Read Because I Liked Their Cover Design/Font
    • I fall for this every time when it comes to science fiction
  • Books Which, When It Comes Right Down to It, I Would Have No Problem Burning
    • Books advocating book burning; racist texts; also the Bible, the Koran, and the Torah
  • Books Which I Read Only for the Sex Scenes
    • When I was a kid, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and the Henry Miller novels (Tropic of Capricorn & Tropic of Cancer), but I wound up reading them all the way through because they turned out to be interesting
  • Books with Covers So Embarrassing You Can’t Read Them in Public
    • Not exactly on point, but I mistakenly checked out a large-print version of a book I wanted to read and didn’t notice until I cracked it open in public . . . the thought that others might think I couldn’t read a small-print book embarrassed me
  • Books You Are Sorry You Didn’t Read Decades Ago

Questions I added:

  • Books by a friend you started reading out of loyalty but which turned out to be pretty good and that you now read for pleasure
    • The novels of Richard Herman, Jr
  • Books in a series that started out good but got lame over time
    • The Dan Lenson novels by David Poyer
  • Books in a series that stay good all the way through
    • Alan Furst’s spy novels about WWII-era Europe; Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels; Boris Akunin’s Erast Fandorin mysteries
  • Book that was great but never equaled in subsequent books by the same author
    • The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
  • Books for young readers you didn’t discover until you were an adult and now can’t get enough of
    • Michael de Larrabeiti’s Borrible trilogy; Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy; M.T. Anderson’s The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing series
  • Books where you think the author gets away with murder
    • Anything by J.K. Rowling, Clive Cussler, or Ted Bell, plus a lot of Stephen King
  • Books you didn’t like but kept reading because everybody said the author was a genius and you keep hoping to find evidence of it
    • The novels of Martin Amis
  • Books you loved reading that also taught you a lot
    • The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon; The Mulberry Empire by Philip Hensher
  • Books with the best dialog ever
    • The novels of Elmore Leonard and George V. Higgins
  • Books with slightly-off or wooden dialog you’re willing to forgive
    • The novels of James Ellroy
  • Books with dialog so bad you trip over it
    • Night Train by Martin Amis (“I am a police”)
  • Books you start skipping ahead in because they’re needlessly repetitive, perhaps because the author was being paid by the word
    • Every Stephen King novel with the possible exceptions of Christine and Cujo; Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader by Bradley Martin; Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer
  • Books that would have been better if written as non-fiction or journalism
    • Pretty much anything by Tom Wolfe or Christopher Buckley
  • Books that made me remember those 50-page Ayn Rand speeches, and not in a good way
    • Makers by Cory Doctorow, Directive 51 by John Barnes
  • Books I want to see the movie version of
    • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
  • Books that need to be made into movies, but only if the movies are faithful to the books
    • The rest of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy (also The Golden Compass, which was filmed with important elements left out); M.T. Anderson’s Octavian Nothing series
  • Books that are so ethnically in-your-face you worry people will think you’re some sort of politically-correct drone just for reading them
    • The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz
  • Books you can’t stand by an author you used to love
    • Everything from The Book of the New Sun on, by Gene Wolfe
  • Books you couldn’t finish because you couldn’t get past the author committing suicide
    • Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
  • Books you just can’t get into, in spite of trying
    • The Hitchhiker series by Douglas Adams
  • Books you thought were pretty good in spite of being overly pretentious
    • Life of Pi by Yann Martel; Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen
  • Books you loved but won’t read again because you’re afraid you won’t love them now
    • J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Ring trilogy (and The Hobbit); Watership Down by Richard Adams; The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  • Books that are actually in your bathroom, right now
    • Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; Kidder & Oppenheim’s Intellectual Devotional and Intellectual Devotional: American History; The Rinehart Handbook for Writers
  • Books you think are kind of lowbrow but which you always really enjoy
    • John Grisham’s legal thrillers
  • Staggeringly good books you really should buy in hardcover and read again and again
    • The novels of Vladimir Nabokov

The original meme, below the fold:

The Meme as Found

  • Worst Books Ever, or Five Hours of My Life I’ll Never Get Back
  • Books I Have Lied About Reading
  • Books I Have Lied About Liking
  • Book-to-Movie Adaptations Where, Frankly, the Movie Was Better
  • Books I Used to Love, of Which I Am Now Ashamed
  • Best Book Titles of All Time
  • Books That I Expected to Be Dirtier
  • My Real Guilty-Pleasure Reads, and Not the Decoys I Talk About Openly
  • Books You Must Read Before You Die, but Would Rather Die Than Read
  • Books I Refused to Read for a Long Time Because too Many (or the Wrong) People Recommended Them
  • Books I Read Only After Seeing the Movie
  • Books I Most Often Try to Persuade Other People to Read
  • Authors I Wish Had Written More Books Already
  • Overused Plot Points That Drive Me Nuts
  • Books in Which I Liked the Secondary Characters Better Than the Main Character, or Books in Which I Wanted to Beat the Main Character Senseless with a Tire Iron
  • Books I Lied About Reading and Then Wrote an A+ Term Paper On
  • Books I Lied About Reading/Liking Solely to Look Smart/Pretentious
  • Books I Wish I Hadn’t Finished, or Worst. Ending. Ever.
  • Books I Read after Oprah Recommended Them
  • Books I Will Never Read Precisely Because Oprah Recommends Them
  • Literary Characters I’ve Developed Crushes On
  • Books I Only Read to Impress Other People
  • Best Books Not to Read from Start to Finish, or Best Bathroom Books
  • Books I Shouldn’t Admit Made Me Cry Like a Baby
  • Books I Only Read for the Title
  • Books I Re-Read When I Have Nothing Else to Read
  • Books People Keep Recommending That, Frankly, Sucked Ass
  • Books My Teacher Made Me Read That I Really, Really Liked
  • Books My Teacher Made Me read That Made Me Question the Value of My Education
  • Books That Made Me Want to Have Sex with at Least One Character
  • Books I Actually Read but Got a Poorer Grade on the Paper I Wrote on the Subject Than My Best Friend Who Did Not Read the Book
  • Books I Read Because the Author Looked Hot
  • Books I’ve Read Aloud
  • Books I Love Even Though the Last Twenty Pages Made No Damn Sense
  • Books I Have Written a Prequel/Sequel to in My Own Head
  • Books I Keep Meaning to Read, but Then I See Something Shiny
  • Books I Will Go to the Mattresses for, Even Though I Hate the Writer
  • Books You Must Read Because You Must Mock
  • Worst How-To Books Ever
  • Books That Were on the ‘To Be Read’ List the Longest
  • Books I Hated Having to Read in School, But Love Now
  • Books Whose References Have Worked Their Way into My Household Lexicon
  • Books I’ve Read Because I Liked Their Cover Design/Font
  • Books Which, When It Comes Right Down to It, I Would Have No Problem Burning
  • Books Which I Read Only for the Sex Scenes
  • Books I Pretend to Like So People Won’t Think I’m a Snob, or Books I Pretend to Like So I Won’t Hurt Your Feelings
  • Books with Covers So Embarrassing You Can’t Read Them in Public
  • Books You Are Sorry You Didn’t Read Decades Ago

2 thoughts on “Book Meme, Adapted by Yrs Truly

  • Paul,
    Thanks for the kind words. My favorite book is “Crossing to Safety” by Wallace Stegner. You also might want to try “Angle of Repose.”

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