Bookish Questionnaire courtesy of So Many Books

1. Hardcover or paperback, and why?
   Matters not a whit; I’ll take any I can get.J
2. If I were to own a book shop, I would call it…
   Hmmm…The Red Room Library of course!!!
3. My favorite quote from a book (mention the title) is…
   Gatsby – “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
4. The author (alive or dead) I would love to have lunch with would be…
   Oscar Wilde. He was reputed to be the most brilliant conversationalist of his age, and the art of conversation is dead these days. Second runner up is Winston Churchill for the similar reason.
5. If I was going to a deserted island and could only bring one book, except for the SAS survival guide, it would be…
   Um, leaving me on a deserted island with just one book is absolute cruelty, but if I were forced, I would say the collected works for Shakespeare.
6. I would love someone to invent a bookish gadget that…
   would help me read while in the car. I actually do read at stoplights, but I really need to stop doing that.
7. The smell of an old book reminds me of…
   Ideas, history, all the people who read this book with tea/coffee slouched at a café or curled up on a couch.
8. If I could be the lead character in a book (mention the title), it would be…
   Obviously, Elizabeth Bennett.
9. The most overestimated book of all time is…
   Not to sound like a goody-two shoes, but I can’t think of a book that I completely detest. I can usually find something good about it. The ones that I dislike are usually the ones everyone else hates, too. Danielle Steele, anyone?
10. I hate when a book… starts off brilliantly, the characters are vivid, the setting is clearly drawn, but then ends with the let down of the century; The Crimson Petal and the White comes to mind.

A question my own:

11. Which two characters from which two different works of literature do you think should meet? Why? Anna Karenina and Hester Prynne (Scarlet Letter). They have the same plight at root, don’t they? Loving someone outside their marriage who ultimately rejects them? I think they would find a few things to talk about, and I think Hester Prynne would dig Russia, and Anna would buy her handiwork.