20 Questions

I want to talk about what sort of books I like best, and why I like them as a segue into the rest of the post:

I guess a lot of the fiction I read falls under the category of literature, as opposed to genre-fiction. I like stories that are not "romances" but have a romance as their focus, fiction that features time as a prominent theme, and literature set in a place that is not what I know (that would be outside of the United States, or before the 2000s) especially if it is written by a non-American.

I know that I like to read stories that feature romances because I find human relationships compelling and there's something vicarious about it, and literature from other places as a substitute for the traveling that I wish I could afford but can't, broke college student that I am. Alternately: different time periods, especially times of war. I don't know quite yet why I am so obsessed with the concept of time, but I have a hunch it has to do with my favorite genre: science fiction. Anything that has time-travel is automatically 75% more awesome to me. But interestingly, it's sci-fi television and films, especially the more recent ones that feel like less of the all-boy's club the pre 80s stuff is, that I prefer and not science-fiction genre novels. I never liked chemistry or physics in high school and I don't care about technological jargon, I just like the strange and the fantastic. Which is why young adult fantasy and horror are my other favorite genres.

I will always read a good ghost story. I loved telling ghost stories when I was little and I had a reputation for coming up with good ones. I also loved the Narnia books and the Chronicles of Prydain- any kind of fantasy I could get my hands on, and I continue to have a soft spot for such books, even now. Fantasy not geared for teenagers just doesn't affect me the same way so I don't think it's a waste of money to pick up new YA titles that catch my eye. I just guiltily splurged and picked up the first three Percy Jackson books (though they're more kiddish than YA if we're being honest) and I have White Teeth waiting for me to read as well (a YA book in poetry as opposed to prose? I am sold on that gimmick alone).

Keeping all this in mind, my favorites. There's a rule: no two answers can be the same book.

Book next to my bed right now: Good Omens, Love and Obstacles, Emma, Hopscotch by Cortazar. Books I have not read get the stack by the bed.
Favorite series: His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Favorite book: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
The one book you would have with you if stranded on a desert island: Love in the Time of Cholera
Book/series you would take with you on a long flight: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle or maybe The Complete Persepolis if I'm in a graphic novel mood
Worst book you were made to read in school: A Tale of Two Cities, maybe. Great Expectations is vastly superior.
Book that everyone should be made to read in school: The Great Gatsby to appreciate prose, and Catch-22 to know that not everything you read in school is humorless. Oh and The Catcher in the Rye because everyone can relate to it, I think.
Book that everyone should read, period: The Diary of Anne Frank
Favorite character now: Perhaps Briony from Atonement
Favorite character as a kid: I'm not supposed to repeat but honestly it was Lyra from The Golden Compass
Best villain: Dracula
Favorite concept series: I don't remember
Favorite invented world: Lewis Carroll's Wonderland.
Most beautifully written book: I don't know but Nabokov surely wrote it.
Funniest book: Don Quixote