The Book Blogger Confessions Tag

I saw this on another blog and thought it would be a fun thing to do.

1. Which book, most recently, did you not finish?

The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky, English translation. His novels are ultimately rewarding, but my can they be hard work; I made it to half-point and then just quietly gave up.

2. Which book is your guilty pleasure?

Nothing I can think of currently. In terms of, a book I once loved but which in retrospect is rather embarrassing, I’d probably go with a Buffy novelisation I read back when I was obsessed with the show and shipped Buffy and Angel big time. It was very bad fanfiction, but at the time it fulfilled my wishful shipper thinking.

3. Which book do you love to hate?

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus by John Gray. A good example of one single idea repeated over and over and over and over and over and over.

4. Which book would you throw into the sea?

I’ve read some shitty books which would all make an easy target (hello Twilight: Breaking Dawn), but what I hate the most is a book which starts off brilliantly only to screw you over later. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres is probably the most recent example: loved it until the last 50 pages where it went spectacularly off the rails and, among other things, committed one of my most hated sins in fiction: characters acting in an inexplicably moronic way in order for the story to go where the author wants it to go.

5. Which book have you read the most?

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing, The Twelve Chairs by Ilf and Petrov, and too many of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels to mention.

6. Which book would you hate to receive as a present?

Probably an autobiography of an Australian football player, or any sport-related autobiography for that matter.

7. Which book could you not live without?

Not one particular book, but I definitely couldn’t imagine a life without reading.

8. Which book made you the angriest?

Again, the books that pissed me off the most are the ones that made me angry unexpectedly. If, for instance, you’re reading a book dealing with racism, social injustices, war etc., you expect to get worked up. You don’t really expect a Jodi Picoult novel to make you angry. I can’t remember its name now, but it had a main character who I absolutely hated and who at one point impulsively kills a man she suspects of abusing her son. Apparently it was totally ok for her to kill an innocent man because, don’t you know, she’s a mother and it’s her sacred right to practice vengeance.

9. Which book made you cry the most?

Without a doubt, The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas. The Three Musketeers was probably my favourite book in my teens, and this was the final in the series in which all but one of my beloved characters die. I think I’ve spent a whole sleepless night crying on and off, and could never bear to read the book again.

10. Which book cover do you hate the most?

Not any particular cover, but I hate hate hate popular fiction covers with ugly giant fonts and tacky Photoshop effects. Bevel effect in particular. Bleh.