My first meme

reading
Originally uploaded by Scroobious.

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451 - which book do you want to be?
Complicated question, this. As explained by her via her, it's got to be a novel that I care passionately about, and can memorise and recite out loud constantly. Huh. There are many books I love to read out loud, but over and over again? And are they good enough to be the book I'd choose to save? And there are many books I love, and would want to save, but that don't sound so good out loud. This is hard. (Could be I'm just over-thinking it.) Okay, I'm going to go with Kalki, by Gore Vidal. Not really a musical reading-out-loud kind of book, but it's never boring, it's short enough to memorise, and most importantly, it's one of the few books I'm completely evangelical about*.

Next question.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Good goddess, yes. Starting with Gilbert from Anne of Green Gables, progressing nicely through Mr Knightley and Aragorn... oh, plenty, plenty.

PS: I can't believe I forgot to mention Sam, from Benny and Joon. If we count movies as fiction. Which they are, so we do. So there. And Errol Flynn in some pirate movie had a very, very potent effect on my 5-year-old imagination, and later fantasy life. Although I only worked out recently that it must have been Errol Flynn. Mmm, pirates. *sigh*

The last book you bought is:
Good question. [Runs to to-be-read shelf to refresh memory] Right, three at once from Oxfam: Bill Bryson, Down Under; Fay Weldon, Worst Fears; and Kate Atkinson, Human Croquet. The last two are books I have previously read and am lovingly restoring (in hardback) to my library**. Worst Fears is especially, darkly, magnificent.

What are you currently reading?
Handbag: The 158-pound Marriage, by John Irving (a very early novel, full of 1970s "liberated" sex).
Bedside: Wonder Tales, edited by Marina Warner - translations of French fairytales, "for grown-ups".
Kitchen***: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. Utterly fabulous, and great to read aloud. (Haven't finished it yet, or it might have edged out Kalki in answer #1.)
Bathroom (oh, like you don't): Emily Dickinson, and The Superior Person's Book of Words.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:
Depends. Am I stranded, or do I know when I'm going home? And can I bring my knitting? Never mind. Let's say:
Robinson Crusoe - for survival inspiration, and because I've never read the damn thing and if I'm not entirely deprived of other options, I probably never will.
Finnegan's Wake and a commentary - because, again, I've never read it, and because it is complicated enough to keep me interested for a long, long time. Or not at all. I haven't found out yet.
Complete Jane Austen - tricksy, eh? Six and a half books for the price of one. (Love and Freindship, alas, will have to stay, unless I can find an astonishingly good combined works edition.)
And lastly, 1001 Nacht, because I may as well work on my Deutsch while I'm out there; and because its 1950s domestic logic is so incredibly funny. I gotta blog about that some time. Definitely.

And we're done.
_____
* And I think I may have lost my copy to someone who doesn't understand heavy hints about "So you've got my Kalki, right? Hm. Still got it? Hm. Finished it ages ago, didn't you? Hm." So I might have to rely on my memory of the damn thing after all.
** Significantly diminished on leaving shores of SA. I relinquished my entire Weldon collection, following the self-devised rule that if it was replaceable, it must go. (Left me with a rather unbalanced collection.) Now I'm replacing.
*** Beloved requires a soundtrack to wash up to.