Book quiz

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snow_leopard posted some interesting questions about reading in bibliotheca. While I'm not sure about cross-posting entries from my journal to a community, I don't see why I shouldn't cross-post relevant stuff from a community to here. So here's my answers:

1) What is your favourite book? Boringly, The Lord of the Rings, I'm afraid. There are a couple of other books that come close, notably AS Byatt's Babel Tower, but LotR has been my favourite just about all my life, so it has a special significance that nothing I've discovered more recently can quite match.

2) What is the book that has most affected/changed you? Ooh, what a good question! Excluding certain parts of the Bible (which affect me because I read the Bible in a completely different way from any other book), I think probably Simone de Beauvoir's Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée. It puts into words certain ideas that have always been part of who I am, but until I read it I didn't know how to articulate them.

3) Your favourite character from a novel? Ebenezer le Page, the eponymous hero of a really obscure book by GB Edwards. He's this sort of semi-recluse, who lives out all his life on Guernsey. He says the most cynical things but has a real genuine spirit behind it all. I had a crush for ages on Toby Coleman from Lynne Reid Banks' The L-Shaped Room, and in fact my first bf bears quite a strong resemblance to him. And Treebeard from LotR has to get a mention.

4) The best villain from a novel? No-one particularly comes to mind. I tend to like villains that are a bit three-dimensional, not just evil incarnate. Hmm. Glenin Ambrai from Melanie Rawn's Exiles series is pretty good.

5) What was the last book you read? The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov

6) What are you reading now? Renegade or Halo² by Timothy Mo

7) What was the last non-fiction book you read? The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs