eruthros

1. What is the first book you remember reading?

By myself, darned if I can remember. (The first book my sister read was Hop on Pop.) With my dad, I read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, Hound of the Baskervilles, and Danny the Champion of the World in the first grade, but I can't remember the order.

2. What is your favorite book?

Owch. The one I reread most is probably either Gaudy Night by DLS or one of the Guards books by PTerry.

3. Who is your favorite author?

At this exact and precise moment in time, Emma Bull. Ask me again tomorrow.

4. Pick up the nearest book (magazine or any available printed material will do). Turn to page 24 (or the closest to it). Go to the 7th line. What is it?

"That you will be shortly in for tea." [Dragons in the Waters, Madeleine L'Engle, still on my bedside table from my last visit home, when I was doing Childrens Book Comfort Reading]

5. If you could be any character in literature, who would you be?

Archie Goodwin, because that I could go swing dancing, be generally cool, and irritate policemen in fedoras. Or Vetinari -- I did always used to want to be Vetinari. I would like to meet LPW but not be him (I'm anti-PTSD, personally), and I would like to be Harriet Vane if I felt I could do a competent job, but somehow that seems impossible.

And additions to the Friday Five by gurdonark:

6. Name ten novelists who come to your mind right off the bat as folks you love to read--no snobbery permitted:

1. Terry Pratchett
2. P.G. Wodehouse
3. Emma Bull
4. Ursula K. LeGuin
5. Rex Stout
6. Gabriel Garcia Marquez
7. J.R.R. Tolkien
8. Laurie King
9. DLS
10. Eric Ambler

I thought of GK Chesterton, but mostly I only like his short stories, and of Oscar Wile and GBS, but mostly I only like their plays, and MFK Fisher, but mostly I only like her food writing, so.

7. Name three poets that come to mind that matter to you, no "grad seminar mugging" permitted:

1. e.e. cummings
2. Dorothy Parker
3. Gary Snyder

7a. From friede: three POEMS:

1. Gary Snyder, ( How Poetry Comes to Me )
2. Dana Gioia, (though his politics make me wince, I adore this poem) ( California Hills in August )
3. Adrienne Rich, ( For the Dead )

8. What three non-fiction books made a deep impression on you?

1. James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century
2. Christensens, eds. Discovery of America and Other Myths
3. MFK Fisher, With Bold Knife and Fork

9. What three science fiction authors intrigue you this moment?

1. Larry Niven, which is shameful and embarrassing but I really like his short stories
2. Lois McMaster Bujold
3. Carol Emshwiller, if she counts as sf

10. What is the last mystery novel you read?

Either Rex Stout's Not Quite Dead Enough (a pair of novelas) or Laurie King's A Letter of Mary, looking for the Lord Peter bit.

Also, ( the first sentence of the first post of each month of 2004 as a paragraph: )