Kerry's comments (member since Mar 05, 2009)

Kerry's comments from the fiction files redux group.

Like Mo, I had already done this survey. Here's mine from a while ago. I updated what's the best and worst you've read in the past year and what are you reading now questions.

1) What author do you own the most books by? All my books are currently in boxes so I can’t just glance at my bookshelf and determine that. With all the Absolute Sandmans and now Absolute Death I'm pretty sure it's Neil Gaiman?

2) What book do you own the most copies of? Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I buy copies of it in used bookstores all the time. Whenever I find an interesting cover. I also have several copies of The Portable Dorothy Parker.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions? Blurgh.

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with? Ponyboy Curtis, Frederick Wentworth, Maxim De Winter, Edward Rochester, George Emerson, I could go on and on.

5) What book have you read the most times in your life? The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old? The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year? Mort by Terry Pratchett. This was my first foray into his Discworld series, and it was just ok. I'm not sure I would read more.

8) What is the best book you've read in the past year? I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. This is going to be one of my new rereadable books.

9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be? Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne, because everyone could use some Pooh in their life.

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature? I haven’t the faintest idea.

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie? The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare. You would have to cast someone very dashing to play Nat and I don’t want to see Dakota Fanning cast as Kit. Hannah Tupper is easy though, she would be played by Meryl Streep.

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie? Anything where babies die.

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character: I recently had a dream where I was in a used bookstore and came upon a collection of mystery books called The Ms. Clifton Mysteries which were written by the actress Katherine Hepburn. The heroine of the books, Ms. Clifton, lived in a seaside village where she solved local mysteries while waiting for her lover to finally leave his wife. I learned that in my dream from reading the back covers of the books but I was so amazed that Katherine Hepburn had written novels that I bought the entire set!

14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult? I don’t know about this term “lowbrow.” I will say that the books I am the most embarrassed to admit that I’ve read are the Twilight series.

15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read? Absalom! Absalom! was a tough one for me. I didn’t finish it.

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen? A Midsummer Night’s Dream which isn’t obscure at all. We don’t get a lot of Shakespeare in Vegas and when we do it’s always the popular ones.

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians? I haven’t read enough of either to have a preference.

18) Roth or Updike? I’ve never read either of them.

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers? Sedaris, he is hilarious.

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer? Shakespeare please!

21) Austen or Eliot? Do you even have to ask? Austen of course.

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading? Oh there are huge gaps in my reading. Especially when I compare myself to most members of Fiction Files, I am really not well read. I think I would say the biggest gap for me is mythology. I don’t know my myths at all.

23) What is your favorite novel? Persuasion by Jane Austen

24) Play? Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard

25) Poem? Suicide Note by Anne Sexton or George Sand, Healed or On Being a Woman all by Dorothy Parker. I like my poetry dark. I also love Boo, Forever by Richard Brautigan.

26) Essay? I haven’t read a lot of essays. I like Thoreau’s stuff like Civil Disobedience and A Winter Walk.

27) Short story? I haven’t read enough short stories either, but I’ve always loved Big Blonde by Dorothy Parker.

28) Work of nonfiction? Minor Characters by Joyce Johnson is a splendid memoir about her coming of age in NYC and her brief relationship with Jack Kerouac right before On the Road was published.

29) Who is your favorite writer? Jane Austen

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today? Stephanie Meyer

31) What is your desert island book? I need a desert island library. But if you make me choose only one I’ll cheat and take a Complete Works of Jane Austen to get me by.

32) And... what are you reading right now? Totally Killer by Greg Olear and A Room With a View by E.M. Forster (again).

Well, firstly, I like your use of the word "whinge."

Secondly, I don't know if it's just something for critics to harp on, but I'm with you in that I find nothing wrong with a historical context. What is that saying? Those that ignore history are doomed to repeat it? There is a lot to learn from examining the world's history, so I say to all those historical fiction writers out there: write on!

Dorkapalooza is when folks in this group actually meet in the real world for several days of drinking, talking, eating, laughing, carousing, and just plain reveling in each other's company. Basically we "dork" out about books so we called it Dorkapalooza. Which incidentally is also now the name of Jonathan's RV.

So far there have been three of them all in the Pacific Northwest near where Jonathan Evison lives.

I was there in 2008 and 2009 and it was pretty freaking awesome.

I haven't read Perfume, but I hated the film. I found the ending to be completely ridiculous. Maybe it "reads" better than it filmed??

I heard about this book on NPR and I totally want it:

The Contact Sheet by Steve Crist

Here's the blurb on it:

"The Contact Sheet offers an insightful look into the most iconic photographs of our times, revealing the rarely seen contact sheets from the original photo sessions. This compilation book showcases some of the most seminal photographers of our time, from Andre Kertesz to Andre Serrano, this collection shows the depth and breadth of their photographic process."

http://www.amazon.com/Contact-Sheet-Stev...

If I had any kind of plan this year, it definitely went to hell in a handbasket. I've been woefully neglecting my reading this year. . .

WHERE CAN WE SEE IT????

I remember that 90s remake because the media tried to make it appealing to tweens (who at that time were not called tweens) like me and put Balthazar Getty and that blonde kid in all the Teen Beat and Tiger Beat and Bop magazines! Seriously, they were trying to set up the boys in Lord of the Flies as teen heartthrobs!!! It's so wrong. . .

When I was in school Lord of the Flies was absolutely required reading. I'm sure it still is. I've only read it the one time and I think it was 9th grade? I was about 14? I remember it being quite powerful as well. I remember being very upset when they killed Simon's lizard. Other than reading Lord of the Flies for school I don't know anything about William Golding.

Neil! That is crazy insane! I saw the pictures. I am so terribly sorry for you!

Was it just random? What is happening???

Today is our very own (quite successful, I may add) James P. Othmer's birthday!

Happy Happy JPO!

I've never read his travel journals. I'll bet they are a fun read!

Today is Oscar Wilde's 155th Birthday. I myself am thankful that Oscar Wilde was born so he could give us so much snarky wit and wisdom. He is so eminently quotable that I think often people feel that they've read all of Wilde, but in truth they are just familiar with him through popular culture.

Here is just a sampling of his quotableness:

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."

"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."

"A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."

"I am not young enough to know everything."

"A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her."

"The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."

"America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up."

"One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation."

"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination."

"Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing."

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."

"At twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets."

"Biography lends to death a new terror."

"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."

"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter."

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."

"Genius is born--not paid."

"I am not young enough to know everything."

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

"I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability."

"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again."

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."

"Illusion is the first of all pleasures."

"It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information."

"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious."

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."

"Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace."

"Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event."

"It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is fatal."

"Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays."

"One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards."

Happy Birthday dear sir!

Weep No More, My Lady by Mary Higgins Clark

Personally I love How I Met Your Mother. Neil Patrick Harris and Jason Segal are hysterical and Alyson Hannigan is adorable.

So there.

Not a lot of titles with meridian in them Jennifer! Let's try to get some new words in here:

The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy

Martyn, does that mean we can crash on your floor?

;)

I'm sorry to say that I don't believe I will make the Dork next year wherever it may be held. Phillip and I want to do try to do some European traveling perhaps and I'll need to save up all my time off!

It doesn't mean I don't love you all.

The House on Fortune Street by Margot Livesey

Little House on the Prairie - Laura Ingalls Wilder