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
  • Most of the banned books I recently caught up with (and wrote about on my blog)

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