My Book Habits

This questionnaire was created by The Literary Lollipop but I got it from Liberty Falls Down and thought it looked like a good thing to do on a Saturday afternoon

1. Favourite childhood book: I, Houdini by Lynne Reid-Banks

2. What are you reading right now? Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

3. What books do you have on request at the library? None at the moment.

4. Bad book habit: Starting more than one at once and then leaving them lying around to either fall over or get mauled by my one-year old.

5. What do you currently have checked out at the library? Nothing – my TBR pile got so massive I thought I should read a few of those before getting another library book out.

6. Do you have an e-reader? Nope. I like paper and pages.

7. Do you prefer to read one book at a time, or several at once? Usually have at least 2 on the go.

8. Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog? Not particularly.

9. Least favourite book you read this year: I haven’t finished it yet, so it may be too early to judge, but I’d say Dark Space by Marianne de Pierres. Excluding that, I’d go for the short story collection called Poe which is by a variety of authors. I’d probably have enjoyed it more had my knowledge of Poe’s original work been a bit wider.

10. Favorite book I’ve read this year: Such a hard question! Um, I think I will have to go for The Adamantine Palace by Stephen Deas – it had been a while since I had a decent dragon romp of a book 🙂

11. How often do you read out of your comfort zone? Reasonably often.

12. What is your reading comfort zone? YA/Urban Fantasy

13. Can you read on the bus? No, I get travel sick in buses and cars. I can read on trains though.

14. Favourite place to read: Either in bed or curled up on the sofa in the front room.

15. What’s your policy on book lending? Family & my best friend are the only people I trust them to…

16. Do you dog ear your books? Very rarely. Usually I have a bookmark to hand or create a makeshift one out of a train ticket/receipt/clean tissue.

17. Do you write notes in the margins of your books? Noooo! The only book I have like that is my copy of Catcher In The Rye because I studied it at school and we had to annotate it. It’s really hard to read now because I get distracted by all my day-glo orange and purple notes dotted around it.

18. Do you break/crack the spine of your books? Usually. I once did my best not to when I had a First Edition Hardback copy of one of the Harry Potter books but my Mum broke it when she read it so I’ve never bothered since – it’s too much faff and books are meant to be read.

19. What is your favourite language to read? English. I could possibly manage a children’s early reading book in German but that’s about as far as my linguistic skills stretch.

20. What makes you love a book? Characters you can believe in and/or care about, a decent plot and an interesting world for it all to happen in. All three is ideal but sometimes just one or two of those elements can be enough.

21. What will inspire you to recommend a book? If I enjoyed it enough to want to share it or if I thought someone I knew would be interested in it. Or, sometimes, I lend books to my friend to just confirm that they were as bad as I thought and it wasn’t just me missing some major plot-point that made it an amazing read…

22. Favourite genre: YA Fantasy

23. Genre you rarely read (but wish you did): Crime fiction. I went through a phase when I was 15 or so of demolishing all my sisters crime novels and I loved them. It’s been a while since I read one though and I’d love to get back into them.

24. Favourite Biography: I’ve read very few but I think my favourite was Richard Hammond’s On The Edge because it was incredibly raw and touching and made me appreciate my happy little life a bit more.

25. Have you ever read a self-help book? (And, was it actually helpful?) Not unless you include my textbook for PAD at uni which I never really read all the way through and appeared to be as utterly useless as the ‘incredibly useful and interesting’ module it was for…

30 How often do you agree with the critics about a book? Fairly often. But sometimes I really disagree because at the end of the day everyone is different and some things just don’t float my boat the same as everyone else’s…

31. How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews? I always feel a bit bad about it. I try and put something good down every time though. Almost everything has some kind of redeeming feature that you can pick out to soften the unavoidable blow that comes when you admit that you just really didn’t like it.

32. If you could read in a foreign language, which language would you choose? Russian. Just because I like their alphabet.

33. Most intimidating book I’ve read: Les Miserables. Just because it was just a hefty classic.

34. Most intimidating book I’m too nervous to begin: Haven’t really got one.

35. Favourite Poet: I don’t know. I’m patchy with poetry. I generally like Spike Milligan’s work though 😀 and Walt Whitman (on a slightly more mature level).

36. How many books do you usually have checked out from the library at any given time? Depends on how many books the library has that I want!

37. How often do you return books to the library unread? Rarely. If I haven’t had time to finish something I usually re-check it out.

38. Favourite fictional character: Jenks from Kim Harrison’s The Hollows series.

39. Favourite fictional villain: Lee Tourneau from Joe Hill’s Horns. I really, truly despised him by the end of the novel – a brilliant bit of characterisation.

40. Books I’m most likely to bring on vacation: Either one of my random girly chick-lit ones or an urban fantasy romp.

41. The longest I’ve gone without reading: About three weeks. Not because I didn’t want to, because I couldn’t.

42. Name a book you could/would not finish: Gerald’s Game by Stephen King. The only King novel I couldn’t finish.

43. What distracts you easily when you’re reading? My baby. I’m usually quite good at blocking out people when I read (much to my partner’s annoyance) but I can’t ignore her at all.

44. Favourite film adaptation of a novel: The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy. I’m sure I’ll get shot down in flames for saying that but ho hum. I never did finish the last book – only a few chapters from the end, but still. The films for me made it much more of an adventure and far easier to swallow.

45. Most disappointing film adaptation: I’m with Liberty on this one: The Golden Compass. The book was brilliant. I don’t think the film producers ever read it.

46. Most money I’ve ever spent in a bookstore at one time: Probably about £30.

47. How often do you skim a book before reading it? Almost never.

48. What would cause you to stop reading a book halfway through? If the writing style disagreed with me or if there was really nothing good going for it in any department, like Katy Price’s novels. Which I did try and read. And failed. Miserably.

49. Do you like to keep your books organized? About every six months I get an unavoidable urge to put my books into alphabetical order. But other than that, no not really.

50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once they’ve been read? I keep most, getting rid of books is like abandoning a pet. But sometimes I run out of space and have to charity shop a few.

51. Are there any books that you’ve been avoiding? Wolf Totem. It was an impulse buy that I’ve never really worked out what it was that impulsed me. I’ll get round to it.

52. Name a book that made you angry: How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff. USE SPEECH MARKS, YOU SILLY WOMAN!

53. A book I didn’t expect to like but did: Again, I’m with Liberty: Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma.

54. A book I expected to like but didn’t: The Twilight Saga. They were okay, but a lot of it was either silly or a tiny bit creepy…

55. Favourite guilt-free guilty pleasure reading: Urban Fantasy, definitely. Some of it is sheer brilliance and some of it is pretty rubbish but I’m not fussy – I love almost all of it regardless!