11.18.2010

Thursday Book Questions: Part 10

Five questions a week. Eleven weeks. Post your answers in the comments (or on your own blog if you prefer, just link back in the comments) and I'll do the same thing.

Last week we covered how long we'd gone without reading (not very, with a few exceptions for things like giving birth and having West Nile virus), books we could not/would not finish (everybody had something different, but reasons usually included disgust and/or boredom. And new commenter Masha told me to give Lolita another try), distractions (we all have them), and movie adaptations, for which our responses were so diverse that you'll have to go and read them.

To my amusement, just days after I read Farmer's City Wife's comment about dreadful Jane Eyre adaptations—and oh, are Jane Eyre adaptations ever dreadful—I read on Dr. Amy Sturgis' blog that a new one is being made. I watched the trailer, and supposedly they are playing up the Gothic elements of the story instead of just focusing on the romance. Which means that I am going to have to see it. Maybe I'll hate it, but I go as if compelled to the Harry Potter movies, and might as well do the same for Jane Eyre. Less than 24 hours till I see Deathly Hallows! :D

46. The most money I’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time?
(answer here)
47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?
(answer here)
48. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?
(answer here)
49. Do you like to keep your books organized?
(answer here)
50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?
(answer here)

12 comments:

  1. 46. The most money I’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time?
    I'm kind of cheap--I think it was around $80.

    47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?
    If it's a novel with any sort of suspense: every time.

    48. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?
    I almost never finish a non-fiction book. Shameful, but true.

    49. Do you like to keep your books organized?
    Yes. They are beautifully arranged according to how they look on the shelf. Hey, I know where they all are...

    50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?
    Keep them. If you really need it, I'll buy you a copy. :)

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  2. 46. The most money I’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time?
    I'm going to exclude buying college textbooks. With that exclusion, I'm going to say somewhere between $500-$1000 in a huge used/new bookstore down in Tucson, AZ. But that figure includes both my wife & myself. How much I by myself have spent in a bookstore, well, it's still close to $300.

    47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?
    Not very much but I often skip to the end to find out what's happened.

    48. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?
    If it got boring or seemed to be going nowhere or started off good but then jumped the rails & went off in some other direction or if it got too preachy (and I'm not just talking in a religious context).

    49. Do you like to keep your books organized?
    Organized? Is that a real word, & if so, what does it mean? :)

    50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?
    Keep. Especially since most of the books I buy nowadays are eBooks. If I want someone to have a book, I'll buy a copy & give it to them.

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  3. 46. The most money I’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time?
    In undergrad I had some advanced music classes. This meant textbooks in highly niche subjects that I had no choice but to buy. Result, over $200 for four books. Normally I tend to be a bargain hunter, so that was painful. On the plus side, I still use three of them as references regularly, and would use the fourth if I had a pipe organ.

    47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?
    I'm not a skimmer (I read too fast to make it worthwhile), but I'll always perform the perfunctory "pull it off the library/bookstore shelf and read a random page or two to see if I'm likely to be interested."

    48. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?
    In fiction, usually by the time I make it halfway through I'm committed; if I've lost interest it will be around chapter 4 because nothing's happened or the characters are flat. In nonfiction, stodgy writing that isn't redeemed by the topic.

    49. Do you like to keep your books organized?
    Depends on what you mean "organized." If I ever started to alphabetize or Dewey Decimalize them, I'd succumb to my latent OCD tendencies and go stark raving mad. But authors I have a lot of tend to stay together on the shelves, and my wife likes similar sized books to be together. We just got new shelves in our living room so we've rearranged by topic. It's a start.

    50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?
    The only books I buy are the ones I think I'm going to read more than once. The only books I give away are the ones I know I'm never going to read again. This makes my benevolence seem somewhat limited. Really books make wonderful gifts; you just buy another copy for your friend.

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  4. 46. The most money I’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time?
    I guess we're all in agreement not to count college textbooks here (otherwise it would be $500+...). I don't actually spend much money on books; I usually bum them off of other people or request them at my library. So I'd say not more than $50 (and that "bookstore" includes Amazon).

    47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?
    Cookbooks and non-fiction: all the time. Fiction: never. I read the back cover or go on recommendations, but I hate having the book spoiled.

    48. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?
    If I don't like the main character, mostly, or if I consider it "cheap literature." I stopped reading several books that were "cheap."

    49. Do you like to keep your books organized?
    Um. I used to! Then when I got married I had to leave my beautiful hand-made (by me and my dad!) bookshelf at home, and I haven't had the heart to do it again. Plus, I left most of my books at home :(.

    50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?
    I'm a hoarder. But if I can never envision myself reading the book again, I'll try to pass it along and clear my clutter zone.

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  5. Farmer's City Wife, I'm curious to know what makes a book 'cheap,' since you seem to have thought it through? :)

    46. The most money I’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time?
    I don't even remember what I spent in undergrad, and kept almost none of those books. I'd say probably a couple hundred (USD). But I'm a wee bit of a collector, so the figures are skewed.


    47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?
    'Skim'? I'm not sure what that means here. Skim the whole book? Never. Not enough time in my life. If I can't tell after reading an introduction and a few pages (for non-fiction) that I need to read it or parts of it, reading the whole thing at speed doesn't accomplish anything. For fiction--I'm with FCW. I read the blurb and the beginning to see if it draws me in, and never look ahead.

    Except in the case of the maddeningly good Brian Jacques, where the anxiety gets too much and I will sometimes look ahead just to reassure myself that no, this is not the first Redwall book without a happy ending (of sorts).

    48. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?
    If I only needed to read half of it. :) Or gratuitous smut, poor style I can no longer ignore, arrogant/smug theology, arrogance/smugness in general if the writer doesn't have the excuse of being a Romantic or Rousseau.


    49. Do you like to keep your books organized?
    Alphabetical by author, arbitrarily by subject. I used to arrange them by the colour of the bindings, but that's just not practical when you need to find a book quickly and you move house a lot.

    50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?
    Oh, keep. The library didn't need them anyway. ;)

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  6. 46. The most money I’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time?

    I'm really cheap; I buy a lot of books used on Amazon or at used book stores and use the library a lot so maybe $50 or $60.

    47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?

    The whole thing? I've never done that but I have to admit to skipping ahead if it's REALLY killing me to find out how the story turns out. I am glad I'm not the only one, I always thought that would be like confessing you burned a book or something horrid like that. :)

    48. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?

    If I felt violated in some way by reading it; too much smut or degrading to my morals in some way. Also if it's boring.

    49. Do you like to keep your books organized?

    Yes, I LIKE to, does it happen? No. I have given up and try now to just keep them on the shelf. With 3 kids under 4 this can be harder then it sounds. :)

    50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?

    Keep for sure but I do like telling people about good books I've read and will lend them out in hopes that I will get them back.

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  7. 46. The most money I’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time?
    $200ish, sadly it was on only three books, but one was a beautiful old Imitation of Christ in Polish, in fantastic condition, so I can't really be blamed, can I? Now, as a Responsibly Married Woman, I tend steal books from family members or hoard library books instead, though I can still drop a good amount at a bookstore.

    47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?
    Not anymore, I'd sometimes skim in school, but only if I wasn't at all interested in the subject.

    48. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?
    Boredom or distraction. I can put up with anything else - I actually really enjoy awfully written books sometimes (I read Dan Brown in a fit of disgusted amazement), I love bad theology, pretentious philosophy, and lack of imagination, but if it's boring, it give up.

    49. Do you like to keep your books organized?
    Somewhat, I like to organize my authors based on who might have gotten on with each other - Kierkegaard and Rilke are together, Hemmingway and F. Scott. I also like to put people like Sartre next overly pious authors and imagine the arguments.

    50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?
    I keep them - even books I didn't like. Only when I find I have an abundance of the same bad book do I purge. I had 3 copies of Geneology of Morals when I got married, now we have one.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Ah, I'm not the only person uncertain about the word skim. My take was "read as fast as possible, not paying a ton of attention to the details. But that isn't necessarily the primary meaning. There's certainly a difference between, say, the way I skim a suspense novel and the way I skim an article for specific information.

    I'm loving everybody's answers to the organization question.

    Eric, much as a pipe organ might seem wasted in a house, the idea is awesome. :D

    Masha, "I also like to put people like Sartre next overly pious authors and imagine the arguments"--haha!

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  9. 46. The most money I’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time?

    Probably around the $65 mark.

    47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?

    I don't really. I usually just read the back cover or inside flap. If it looks interesting I will give it a go.

    48. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?
    If someone was terrible enough to ruin a suspenseful book by telling me the ending before I got to it, then I would probably stop reading. Oh yeah, and also, apparently, really whiny self-absorbed characters will get me to stop reading a book. :(
    49. Do you like to keep your books organized?

    Well, Jenna, you've seen my bookshelf! I have no organization style really, other than that series must stay together.

    50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?
    Definitely keep...or loan and then have my best friend in the world send me new copies! ;)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Fun answers this week! Here, again, is my 2 weeks' worth of answers, including this week's:

    http://donnarosemary.blogspot.com/2010/11/thursday-book-questions-pts-9-10.html

    It seems I'm one of the few of us that actually attempts some kind of organization of our personal libraries, but being a librarian by trade I guess this makes some sense. Each of my shelves contains books of a different kind: one shelf has my collections of fairy/folk tales, another has my theology books, another has my Tolkien-Lewis-L'Engle collections, and another has my favorite plays, that kind of thing. Though I must say that Masha's way of organizing her books takes the cake over mine! "I like to organize my authors based on who might have gotten on with each other." Love this!

    Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving all!

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  11. Tried to post this the other night and it wouldn't go through for some reason. Hopefully it will this time!

    46. The most money I've ever spent in the bookstore at one time?

    Close to $200, I think. This was at a Borders store, and I think I even had coupons. I know that most of these books were Christian fiction (including at least one Ted Dekker and one Randy Alcorn).

    46b. The most money I've ever WANTED to spend in the bookstore at one time?

    Well, we won't go into that. Even Bill Gates would feel the pinch on that one...

    47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?

    With fiction, if I'm going to read it, I'll just read it. With nonfiction, sometimes I'll skip around to the chapters that look the most interesting and read random passages before I start it from the beginning.

    48. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?

    Mostly, offensive content. But sometimes, I'll just get sidetracked for whatever reason, even if the book is actually good (I loved some of the scenes in Dracula, but it's still sitting on my shelf half-read...I'll finish it one of these days, believe me...it's a surprisingly spiritual book).

    49. Do you like to keep your books organized?

    Loosely. C.S. Lewis and his critics go in one place, classic literature (Austen, Dickens, and the like) generally goes together. It's not a perfect system, but it works well enough most of the time.

    50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you've read them?

    If it's a book I like, I may give my copy away, but I'll buy a new one as soon as possible, even if I don't plan to reread it right away.

    Case in point. I've owned three different copies of "Byzantium" by Stephen R. Lawhead over the years. I gave away the first two, and I can't say it'll be the last time it happens...

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  12. MissPhotographerB, there's nothing wrong with your bookshelf. :D

    Donna, if I had all the time in the world, I'd organize by Dewey Decimal just for the sheer nerdy glory of it.

    John Stanifer, thanks for coming by! I hope you do finish Dracula. Though the book was desperately creepy and I did dream about vampires after reading it, it was a good read and definitely had a lot of interesting spiritual thought to it.

    ReplyDelete

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