{"id":4164,"date":"2010-07-16T14:21:34","date_gmt":"2010-07-16T21:21:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=4164"},"modified":"2010-07-16T14:23:51","modified_gmt":"2010-07-16T21:23:51","slug":"book-meme-adapted-by-yrs-truly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=4164","title":{"rendered":"Book Meme, Adapted by Yrs Truly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I found a Q&amp;A book meme at <a href=\"http:\/\/samuraifrog.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Electronic Cerebrectomy<\/a>.\u00a0 It&#8217;s composed of headings one is supposed to respond to (I say &#8220;headings&#8221; rather than &#8220;questions&#8221; because the questions are formatted in title case . . . incorrectly so, in many cases).<\/p>\n<p>The meme hasn&#8217;t been stupidified by Facebook, as far as I can tell . . . the questions  are reasonably intelligent and on point.\u00a0 But it is a meme, and I have to assume previous respondents have altered it.<\/p>\n<p>So I don&#8217;t feel bad about tinkering with it myself.\u00a0 As found, many of the questions didn&#8217;t apply to me, and some simply rephrased questions that had already been asked.\u00a0 I threw those questions out, then added new ones.\u00a0 If you&#8217;re a stickler for meme integrity and want to see the questions as I found them, look below the fold.<\/p>\n<p>Either way, if you&#8217;re a fellow book lover, I hope you&#8217;ll take a crack at it and pass it on.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s my version of the book meme:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Worst Books Ever\n<ul>\n<li>Worst that I&#8217;ve read recently: Spy by Ted Bell; Trojan Odyessy by Clive Cussler; The Book of the Dead by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books I Have Lied About Reading\n<ul>\n<li>I don&#8217;t lie about books I&#8217;ve read; if I haven&#8217;t read them I&#8217;ll admit it (okay, okay, so I lied about reading War and Peace, but doesn&#8217;t everyone?)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books I Have Lied About Liking\n<ul>\n<li>I don&#8217;t do that either<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Book-to-Movie Adaptations Where, Frankly, the Movie Was Better\n<ul>\n<li>The Harry Potter and James Bond books (especially the new Casino Royale); War of the Worlds (Tom Cruise version)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books I Used to Love, of Which I Am Now Ashamed\n<ul>\n<li>Ashamed isn&#8217;t the right word. . . it&#8217;s just that what filled me with wonder and a sense of the  possibilities of life at 14 doesn&#8217;t do the trick now that I&#8217;m grown up: On the Road by Jack Kerouac; everything by Ayn Rand; Isaac Asimov&#8217;s Foundation series<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Best Book Titles of All Time\n<ul>\n<li>Love in the Time of Cholera, To Kill a Mockingbird, What Is the What<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>My Guilty-Pleasure Reads\n<ul>\n<li>The Ruins by Scott Smith; Impact by Douglas Preston<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books I Read Only After Seeing the Movie\n<ul>\n<li>The Color Purple by Alice Waters<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books I Most Often Try to Persuade Other People to Read\n<ul>\n<li>The Aubrey-Maturin novels of Patrick O&#8217;Brian; Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell; The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Authors I Wish Had Written More Books Already\n<ul>\n<li>David Mitchell, William Gibson, Roberto Bola\u00f1o (he can&#8217;t, unfortunately)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Overused Plot Points That Drive Me Nuts\n<ul>\n<li>Not a plot point, but magical realism, as in the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie, turns me right off<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books in Which I Liked the Secondary Characters Better Than the Main Character\n<ul>\n<li>Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books in Which I Wanted to Beat the Main Character Senseless with a Tire Iron\n<ul>\n<li>A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius &amp; You Shall Know Our Velocity, both by Dave Eggers; Crime &amp; Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books I Read after Oprah Recommended Them\n<ul>\n<li>The Road by Cormac McCarthy<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books I Will Never Read Precisely Because Oprah Recommends Them\n<ul>\n<li>That&#8217;s just silly . . . what if it turns out Hitler liked Tom Sawyer?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Literary Characters I\u2019ve Developed Crushes On\n<ul>\n<li>Lisbeth Salander in Stieg Larsson&#8217;s Millenium novels; the female protagonists in William Gibson&#8217;s sci-fi novels (Chia, Marley, Kumiko . . . but especially Chevette)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Best Bathroom Books\n<ul>\n<li>The Calvin &amp; Hobbes cartoon collections; David Sedaris&#8217; story collections<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books that Made Me Cry\n<ul>\n<li>The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books I Re-Read When I Have Nothing Else to Read\n<ul>\n<li>Patrick O&#8217;Brian&#8217;s Aubrey-Maturin novels<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books People Keep Recommending That, Frankly, Sucked Ass\n<ul>\n<li>Dave Egger&#8217;s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius &amp; You Shall  Know Our Velocity<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books I\u2019ve Read Aloud\n<ul>\n<li>The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books I\u2019ve Read Because I Liked Their Cover Design\/Font\n<ul>\n<li>I fall for this every time when it comes to science fiction<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books Which, When It Comes Right Down to It, I Would Have No Problem Burning\n<ul>\n<li>Books advocating book burning; racist texts; also the Bible, the Koran, and the Torah<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books Which I Read Only for the Sex Scenes\n<ul>\n<li>When I was a kid, Lady Chatterley&#8217;s Lover and the Henry Miller novels (Tropic of Capricorn &amp; Tropic of Cancer), but I wound up reading them all the way through because they turned out to be interesting<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books with Covers So Embarrassing You Can\u2019t Read Them in Public\n<ul>\n<li>Not exactly on point, but I mistakenly checked out a large-print version of a book I wanted to read and didn&#8217;t notice until I cracked it open in public . . . the thought that others might think I couldn&#8217;t read a small-print book embarrassed me<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books You Are Sorry You Didn\u2019t Read Decades Ago\n<ul>\n<li>Most of the banned books I recently caught up with (and <a href=\"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?cat=47\">wrote about on my blog<\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Questions I added:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>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\n<ul>\n<li>The novels of Richard Herman, Jr<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books in a series that started out good but got lame over time\n<ul>\n<li>The Dan Lenson novels by David Poyer<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books in a series that stay good all the way through\n<ul>\n<li>Alan Furst&#8217;s spy novels about WWII-era Europe; Patrick O&#8217;Brian&#8217;s Aubrey-Maturin novels; Boris Akunin&#8217;s Erast Fandorin mysteries<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Book that was great but never equaled in subsequent books by the same author\n<ul>\n<li>The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books for young readers you didn&#8217;t discover until you were an adult and now can&#8217;t get enough of\n<ul>\n<li>Michael de Larrabeiti&#8217;s Borrible trilogy; Philip Pullman&#8217;s His Dark Materials Trilogy; M.T. Anderson&#8217;s The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing series<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books where you think the author gets away with murder\n<ul>\n<li>Anything by J.K. Rowling, Clive Cussler, or Ted Bell, plus a lot of Stephen King<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books you didn&#8217;t like but kept reading because everybody said the author was a genius and you keep hoping to find evidence of it\n<ul>\n<li>The novels of Martin Amis<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books you loved reading that also taught you a lot\n<ul>\n<li>The Yiddish Policemen&#8217;s Union and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier &amp; Clay, by Michael Chabon; The Mulberry Empire by Philip Hensher<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books with the best dialog ever\n<ul>\n<li>The novels of Elmore Leonard and George V. Higgins<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books with slightly-off or wooden dialog you&#8217;re willing to forgive\n<ul>\n<li>The novels of James Ellroy<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books with dialog so bad you trip over it\n<ul>\n<li>Night Train by Martin Amis (&#8220;I am a police&#8221;)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books you start skipping ahead in because they&#8217;re needlessly repetitive, perhaps because the author was being paid by the word\n<ul>\n<li>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<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books that would have been better if written as non-fiction or journalism\n<ul>\n<li>Pretty much anything by Tom Wolfe or Christopher Buckley<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books that made me remember those 50-page Ayn Rand speeches, and not in a good way\n<ul>\n<li>Makers by Cory Doctorow, Directive 51 by John Barnes<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books I want to see the movie version of\n<ul>\n<li>The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet&#8217;s Nest<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books that need to be made into movies, but only if the movies are faithful to the books\n<ul>\n<li>The rest of Philip Pullman&#8217;s His Dark Materials Trilogy (also The Golden Compass, which was filmed with important elements left out); M.T. Anderson&#8217;s Octavian Nothing series<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books that are so ethnically in-your-face you worry people will think you&#8217;re some sort of politically-correct drone just for reading them\n<ul>\n<li>The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books you can&#8217;t stand by an author you used to love\n<ul>\n<li>Everything from The Book of the New Sun on, by Gene Wolfe<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books you couldn&#8217;t finish because you couldn&#8217;t get past the author committing suicide\n<ul>\n<li>Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books you just can&#8217;t get into, in spite of trying\n<ul>\n<li>The Hitchhiker series by Douglas Adams<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books you thought were pretty good in spite of being overly pretentious\n<ul>\n<li>Life of Pi by Yann Martel; Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books you loved but won&#8217;t read again because you&#8217;re afraid you won&#8217;t love them now\n<ul>\n<li>J.R.R. Tolkien&#8217;s The Lord of the Ring trilogy (and The Hobbit); Watership Down by Richard Adams; The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books that are actually in your bathroom, right now\n<ul>\n<li>Shirer&#8217;s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; Kidder &amp; Oppenheim&#8217;s Intellectual Devotional and Intellectual Devotional: American History; The Rinehart Handbook for Writers<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Books you think are kind of lowbrow but which you always really enjoy\n<ul>\n<li>John Grisham&#8217;s legal thrillers<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Staggeringly good books you really should buy in hardcover and read again and again\n<ul>\n<li>The novels of Vladimir Nabokov<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The original meme, below the fold:<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nThe Meme as Found<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Worst Books Ever, or Five Hours of My Life I\u2019ll Never Get Back<\/li>\n<li>Books I Have Lied About Reading<\/li>\n<li>Books I Have Lied About Liking<\/li>\n<li>Book-to-Movie Adaptations Where, Frankly, the Movie Was Better<\/li>\n<li>Books I Used to Love, of Which I Am Now Ashamed<\/li>\n<li>Best Book Titles of All Time<\/li>\n<li>Books That I Expected to Be Dirtier<\/li>\n<li>My Real Guilty-Pleasure Reads, and Not the Decoys I Talk About  Openly<\/li>\n<li>Books You Must Read Before You Die, but Would Rather Die Than Read<\/li>\n<li>Books I Refused to Read for a Long Time Because too Many (or the  Wrong) People Recommended Them<\/li>\n<li>Books I Read Only After Seeing the Movie<\/li>\n<li>Books I Most Often Try to Persuade Other People to Read<\/li>\n<li>Authors I Wish Had Written More Books Already<\/li>\n<li>Overused Plot Points That Drive Me Nuts<\/li>\n<li>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<\/li>\n<li>Books I Lied About Reading and Then Wrote an A+ Term Paper On<\/li>\n<li>Books I Lied About Reading\/Liking Solely to Look Smart\/Pretentious<\/li>\n<li>Books I Wish I Hadn\u2019t Finished, or Worst. Ending. Ever.<\/li>\n<li>Books I Read after Oprah Recommended Them<\/li>\n<li>Books I Will Never Read Precisely Because Oprah Recommends Them<\/li>\n<li>Literary Characters I\u2019ve Developed Crushes On<\/li>\n<li>Books I Only Read to Impress Other People<\/li>\n<li>Best Books Not to Read from Start to Finish, or Best Bathroom  Books<\/li>\n<li>Books I Shouldn\u2019t Admit Made Me Cry Like a Baby<\/li>\n<li>Books I Only Read for the Title<\/li>\n<li>Books I Re-Read When I Have Nothing Else to Read<\/li>\n<li>Books People Keep Recommending That, Frankly, Sucked Ass<\/li>\n<li>Books My Teacher Made Me Read That I Really, Really Liked<\/li>\n<li>Books My Teacher Made Me read That Made Me Question the Value of  My Education<\/li>\n<li>Books That Made Me Want to Have Sex with at Least One Character<\/li>\n<li>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<\/li>\n<li>Books I Read Because the Author Looked Hot<\/li>\n<li>Books I\u2019ve Read Aloud<\/li>\n<li>Books I Love Even Though the Last Twenty Pages Made No Damn Sense<\/li>\n<li>Books I Have Written a Prequel\/Sequel to in My Own Head<\/li>\n<li>Books I Keep Meaning to Read, but Then I See Something Shiny<\/li>\n<li>Books I Will Go to the Mattresses for, Even Though I Hate the  Writer<\/li>\n<li>Books You Must Read Because You Must Mock<\/li>\n<li>Worst How-To Books Ever<\/li>\n<li>Books That Were on the \u2018To Be Read\u2019 List the Longest<\/li>\n<li>Books I Hated Having to Read in School, But Love Now<\/li>\n<li>Books Whose References Have Worked Their Way into My Household  Lexicon<\/li>\n<li>Books I\u2019ve Read Because I Liked Their Cover Design\/Font<\/li>\n<li>Books Which, When It Comes Right Down to It, I Would Have No  Problem Burning<\/li>\n<li>Books Which I Read Only for the Sex Scenes<\/li>\n<li>Books I Pretend to Like So People Won\u2019t Think I\u2019m a Snob, or Books  I Pretend to Like So I Won\u2019t Hurt Your Feelings<\/li>\n<li>Books with Covers So Embarrassing You Can\u2019t Read Them in Public<\/li>\n<li>Books You Are Sorry You Didn\u2019t Read Decades Ago<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I found a Q&amp;A book meme at Electronic Cerebrectomy.\u00a0 It&#8217;s composed of headings one is supposed to respond to (I say &#8220;headings&#8221; rather than &#8220;questions&#8221; because the questions are formatted in title case . . . incorrectly so, in many cases). The meme hasn&#8217;t been stupidified by Facebook, as far as I can tell . [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,2,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memes","category-personal","category-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4164"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4177,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4164\/revisions\/4177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}