“When I have a little money, I buy books. If any is left over, I buy food and clothes.” ~ Erasmus

A meme! A meme! Do you want to play? Tag, you’re it.

1. Which book that’s been on your shelves the longest? Little Women–I got it as a gift for Christmas when I was in 2nd grade.
2. What is your current read, your last read and the book you’ll read next? I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately, but right now I’m re-reading Daring Chloe. I hope to have the nerves to read Astrid and Veronika, which is not the best book to read when you’re in a funk.
3. What book did everyone like and you hated? (Or the other way around?) I loved The Poisonwood Bible. Everyone in my book club hated it.
4. Which book do you keep telling yourself you’ll read, but you probably won’t? Moby Dick.
5. Which book are you saving for “retirement?” Book? You mean books. I’m still compiling the list.
6. Last page: read it first or wait til the end? If the book is a thriller or a John Grisham, I will often flip to the back just to make sure the bad guys got it and the hero survived.
7. Acknowledgements: waste of ink and paper or interesting aside? I like dedications. (“Once again, to Zelda”) I think acknowledgements should be mailed to the folks on the list.
8. Which book character would you switch places with? Wow. That’s a hard one. Mrs. Piggle Wiggle maybe. She was so wise, always had the answer.
9. Do you have a book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time)? Most books have memories atttached to them–for instance, Seventeen against the dealer by Cynthia Voigt reminds me of studying for finals my freshman year of college. Jackaroo (also by C.V.) reminds me of a telephone conversation I once had about snow.
10. Name a book you acquired in some interesting way. I mailed a copy of a Frances book to a blog friend, and she was so grateful, she mailed me the extended audio of Jacob Have I loved, one of my all time favorites.
11. Have you ever given away a book for a special reason to a special person? I once gave away my copy of The Mer-man (which I have never since found) to a friend as a going away present when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade.
12. Which book has been with you to the most places? Besides my Bible (in many versions but mostly my tattered RSV which I got for joining the church in 8th grade), Dicey’s Song by Cynthia Voigt. It feeds me.
13. Any “required reading” you hated in high school that wasn’t so bad ten years later? I haven’t dared to try any.
14. What is the strangest item you’ve ever found in a book? myself.
15. Used or brand new? Both. Any. I’m more interested in the content than the newness, but it can’t smell like a wet basement.
16. Stephen King: Literary genius or opiate of the masses? I don’t think I’ve ever read any of his books. I’ve heard his book on writing is excellent, though.
17. Have you ever seen a movie you liked better than the book? Many many movies are better than the book, and/or illuminate something that can’t be seen on the page. Often I like both.
18. Conversely, which book should NEVER have been introduced to celluloid? I keep a pretty open mind. I can generally find *something* redeeming in the movie version, even if I don’t like it in its entirety.
19. Who is the person whose book advice you’ll always take? I don’t have a fail safe book advisor besides myself at the moment.

I got this from Book Group Buzz.

What are your answers?

Well, they’re not really a trilogy…

So I’ve been “reading” in my car. There’s that whole argument, “is listening to an audio book the same as reading a book?” and while I mostly think YES!, it still is weird to say, “I’m reading this audio book.”

Anyways, the first book of this cycle was Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers.  It is amazing. Two of its big thoughts: you need ten years (or 10,000 hours) to master something, and mentors are crucial. There’s a lot more, of course, so go find a copy, it will blow your mind. The next book I read was our President’s first book, Dreams from my father. Our President is, for intents and purposes, an orphan. Both his parents are dead, his stepfather is dead, his grandparents who raised him are dead…but his book reveals incredible extended family and relationships that nurtured him and encouraged him. It was amazing to listen to Dreams from my father right after listening to Outliers, the two books seemed like a set, one being the theory proving the practice of the next. Like you would buy them in a set on Amazon.com, “Buy this with this.”

So when I dug through the detritus that is my apartment and finally found the two audio books that had been missing for months, I found Next by Michael Lewis. I renewed it for the umpteenth time, and am now listening to it, and it is like the third book in a trilogy: now we are no longer talking about ten years for mastery, or mentors, but how the Internet speeds up everything, and how if you live in “purgatory,” the Internet becomes a place where you can re-invent yourself, much like the Brad Paisley song Online, or the New Yorker cartoon, where the one dog says to the other, “on the internet, no one knows you’re a dog.”

What books have you read recently that got you thinking?

Have you ever read a book that was not a “natural” sequel, but thought, wow, that book really matches this one?