Stolen from a cup of tea and a wheat penny, whose answers are so much more…educated than mine, but she’s a very entertaining blogger…go see…

Books you’ve been planning to read for ages:
That damn Darwin biography that I have been carrying around from home to home for something like 20 years now.
Anna Karenina
That John Banneville book…what’s it called? It’s sitting in that stack on the end table…
The Sisters, which is a biography of the Mitford sisters, who were pretty interesting. Jessica wrote my favorite book of last year (The American Way of Death Revisited), Nancy wrote this oddly cold but really entertaining slice of life/love stories. And Unity was friends with Hitler…or something.

Books you’ve been hunting for years without success:
For a long time it was the first few books by Carl Hiaasen that he wrote with a partner. I did eventually find them and read them. Currently, I can’t think of anything that I am looking for but there is always something, isn’t there? For a while it was a used copy of Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh but I have that now. Hmmm…I think I need a new quest. Actually, there are a lot of books I want that I am kind of waiting for someone to sell cheap on half.com

Books dealing with something you’re working on at the moment:
For Christmas, I received a book titled Everything I ate in a Year which is a photographic journal about…well, everything this dude ate in a year. I find it endlessly fascinating and I am trying to figure out a way to take advantage of his concept. Maybe I will do “everything I drew on my computer in a year” or “everything I should have done in a year but didn’t”…I also have recently picked up some nice trade paperbacks of comics I like, which reminds me that I should be working on my comic-con stuff. Oh and I also was given Never Threaten to Eat your Co-workers which is a book of excerpts from blogs, so I guess that is relevant too. AND…We’re Just Like You Only Prettier…which doesn’t apply to me at all actually but it made me laugh anyway.

Meanwhile, there are several books piled up around my desk concerning making books… so…yeah. I should get on that. Oh right, that knitting book…crap I have a lot of things I should be doing.

Books you want to own so they’ll be handy just in case:
Oooh, I like survival guides although the chances of finding me out in the wilderness are pretty slim. I like to know how to do things; so I am thinking some of those worst-case scenario books would be a good idea. And I could really use some books on programming because I might get around to learning that eventually. But see, if I am more specific than that I would actually have to go and find some books and learn things and really, how likely is that?

Books you could put aside maybe to read this summer:
That biography of P.L Travers that has been hanging around for a while. And that complete Bone may wait because that seems like good summer reading.

Books you need to go with other books on your shelves:
I think my Nigella cookbooks are getting lonely and would like to share some space with a few Ina Garten books. And they would look good with that nice copy of the MFK Fisher books I’d like to have…

Books that fill you with a sudden, inexplicable curiosity, not easily justified:
Books on death, forensics and the kind of cooking that people don’t do anymore. Like renaissance recipes or depression era recipes. But not together…although there is a curious similarity there, a “using every last bit” kind of idea.

Books read long ago that it’s now time to re-read:
I think I need to re-read the Mary Poppins books if I am going to read that PL Travers bio. And perhaps something a little quest-y to go with Bone, maybe Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?

Books that if you had more than one life you’d certainly read but unfortunately your days are numbered:
There a bunch of classics that I have never read that I feel like I SHOULD read, but I don’t really want to. A few years ago I tried to read the “100 Most Important American Novels”, I had read a good bunch of them but then I discovered there was a reason I had not read a lot of the others. I try not to be a snob about books. I read a lot of different things and I would never dismiss a mystery or a romance novel out of hand, good books are good books, but apparently, I don’t agree with whoever decided these were the “100 Most Important American Novels”. After three in a row that I really hated, I put the list aside and started reading things that just looked more appealing. Do I feel guilty that I didn’t like some of the MOST IMPORTANT NOVELS? Yep, but a girl only has so much time. So, I feel like, if I had another lifetime, I might try to read those MOST IMPORTANT NOVELS again. But I’d probably get disgusted again and give up again. So I think I’ll just stick with what sounds good to me, not to someone else.

Well, I guess I have that idea that I would like to read more…sophisticated stuff. I have pretty eclectic reading habits and I tend to go from classics, to post modern sort of fiction to non-fiction pretty randomly. But in the end, all that really matters to me is that I appreciate the book on some level. Even if I don’t love the story, I need to love the style, or one character, or at the very least, the cover. I don’t think that’s asking for much.