The book that’s been on your shelves the longest. I thought it was Bleak House which I acquired freshman year in college but it's Ivanhoe which I acquired freshman year in high school. More years than I care to remember...A book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time). I'll have to say Gravity's Rainbow which reminds me of an old boyfriend. I think when you've been married as long as we have, it's polite to pretend not to remember very much about that kind of thing.
A book you acquired in some interesting way: This isn't that interesting, but when I wrote book jackets at Columbia University Press, I went to the ABA (the American Booksellers Association) meeting. They give away free books and so I acquired The Kitchen God's Wife. The book has a special binding because it was an ABA freebie. I lent it to a friend who lived in San Francisco. She took it to an Amy Tan reading and had her sign it. Tan got all suspicious and asked her how she had gotten that copy. Anyway, the book "returns to me with good wishes from Lauren" and Amy Tan. So that's kind of cool. The book that’s been with you to the most places. A lot of my books flew cross country for grad school and then rode back to the east coast. One of them (that I can remember) also came on vacation with me: White Noise went on a cruise through the Panama Canal.
The most recent addition to your shelves.
Boring, the AP Style Guide.Your current read, your last read and the book you’ll read next.
Current: Inside of a Dog
Last: Hot Time in the Old Town: The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt. I racked up debt at the library because I was trying to get myself through this book. The parts about the heat wave were fascinating; politics not so much. Read it when it was blazing hot this summer.
Next: Wickett's Remedy by Myla Goldberg. I loved Bee Season. Wickett's Remedy has been sitting on the shelf since last year's library book sale.
5 comments:
What a fun Book Meme ... I may have to answer those questions, too.
I have tons and tons of books. Most of them are chick lit - I stopped buying a lot of books when we started using the library. The book I am most proud to own though is written by one of my best friends and the MOH at our wedding, Julie Luongo. You should read her book. It's called The Hard Way.
Also, I kind of dig Amy Tan. I took a class on Post Colonial lit in college, and she was one of the authors. Many of the authors in the class stuck with me, even after all these years.
Writing book jackets is not boring, at least not to me! ;)
I like this post :-)
My oldest book is a Nursery Rhymes book from my first "boyfriends", a pair of twins a couple of months older than me. I think it was my first Christams present!
I'm currently re-reading the Anne McCaffrey dragon books to my son, I can remember reading them myself when I was not much older than him. It's great that my copies are all 35 years old now!
I love this post. And the Amy Tan story. :) And the Wickett's Remedy cover. And because of you, Ivanhoe is on my "maybe" list.
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