Monday, July 22, 2002 Stolen from Mike's blog:-A Book Survey:

1. What book has most influenced your outlook on life?
Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

2. What was the hardest book to get through?
Anything by Jacques Derrida is a difficult read.

3. If you could only read one genre of books, what will it be?
Continental Philosophy

4. What book seems simple, but isn't?
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

5. Do you carry any books with you?
All the time. Right now it's Franz Kafka's The Castle

6. What book do you like (or think you like) but shamefully have not finished?
Walden by Thoreau (what a coincidence, Mike!)

7. What novel have you read the most times?
Catcher in the Rye, Life After God (actually all of Coupland's earlier stuff), High Fidelity, Fountainhead

8. What books do you remember from being a kid?
Richard Scarry, Enid Blyton.

9. Who have you read the most books by?
Douglas Coupland, JD Salinger, and Jacques Derrida.

Granted it is a very selective survey. But it sets me wondering about how the kinds/ types of books one reads actually tells alot about the reader. I remember something from Catcher in the Rye very well. In it, Mr Antonin (Caulfield's ex-teacher) says that one should read to "dress up one's mind," but he must first understand the "size" of his mind. I think the analogy works very well. God I love that book.

posted by Sharon K at 5:32 am