01: best book you read last year:
Ian McEwan, Enduring Love.
02: a book you’ve read more than three times:
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre.
03: your favourite series:
Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, Scott Westerfield’s Uglies books, & L.M. Montgomery’s Emily novels.
04: favourite book of your favourite series:
The Girl Who Played With Fire, Uglies, & Emily Climbs.
05: a book that makes you happy:
John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley in Search of America.
06: a book that makes you sad:
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go.
07: most underrated book:
I can’t think of any. I think there are many books that aren’t massively popular on a mainstream scale (and, in some ways, thank God for it), but I can’t think of anything I would consider underrated.
08: most overrated book:
Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice.
09: a book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving:
Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
10: favourite classic book:
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenin.
11: a book you hated:
Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead.
12: a book you used to love but don’t anymore:
Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha [I loved this when I first read it in high school, and I picked it up some time during university thinking I’d revisit something from those awful years, read a few pages, and thought, What the hell was wrong with me in high school???]
13: your favourite writer:
Leo Tolstoy.
14: favourite book of your favourite writer:
Anna Karenin.
15: favourite male character:
You know, I don’t know. I think one would be Heathcliff from Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.
16: favourite female character:
I don’t know this, either; one might be Lisbeth Salander from Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy.
17: favourite a quote from your a favourite book:
[Because “favourite quote” is an impossibility; I collect quotes like some people collect stamps.]
"I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind."
- Catherine in Wuthering Heights
18: a book that disappointed you:
Here are two: Sheila Kohler, Cracks, and Marcus Zuzak, The Book Thief.
19: favourite book turned into a movie:
[Thus far,] Ian McEwan, Atonement.
20: favourite romance book:
Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca.
[… did I just label this a “romance book?”]
21: favourite book from your childhood:
[Honestly and not in an attempt to sound priggish,] Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
22: favourite book you own:
This is a ridiculous question to ask a book lover.
23: a book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven’t:
Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore[, because, once I read it, I’m out of Murakami until 1Q84].
24: a book you wish more people would’ve read:
You know what? I don’t know. A lot!
25: a character who you can relate to the most:
Here’s a cheat of an answer: Sylvia Plath.
26: a book that changed your opinion about something:
… none?
27: the most surprising plot twist or ending:
Ian McEwan, The Comfort of Strangers and Enduring Love.
28: favourite title:
[Off the top of my head, without second thought,] Italo Calvino, If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller and Invisible Cities.
29: a book everyone hated but you liked:
I can think of plenty going the other way but not this particular way …
30: your favourite book of all time:
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenin.