Book Reading Questionnaire

I don't know where I found this questionnaire--I've saved it for some months.
I always answer questions about books the same.
I'm going to try to turn off my automatic responses and open my brain up to answer afresh--or at least to choose more recent books.

I'd love to hear your answers!

1. The Book(s) That Transitioned Your Reading From Childhood to Adulthood

I arrived at full adult reading comprehension when I could fairly easily understand John Donne's poetry on first reading.
I was thirty five.

Okay, but as a child?
Hard to say.
I read a lot of books that were beyond me when I was little. I even remember wondering why I could read the words of something off my parents' bookshelf but not understand the meaning.

But maybe this marks a transition:
When I was twelve, I wrote a book report on John Steinbeck's Cannery Row (my choice), about a bunch of bums who lead what is presented as a good, free life in Monterey, California.
The teacher wrote on my report that I had a sophisticated understanding of the book.

I haven't read Cannery Row since, so I don't know how romanticized it is, but I know it influenced me a lot. The life of a bum sounded good to me. It slotted right into the romanticized movie version of that bum Saint Francis, Brother Sun, Sister Moon, which I saw three years later.
And that explains a lot about me.

[Here are 5 transition-to-adult books that people list, from the Guardian.]

2. A Book That Made You Laugh Out Loud

When I was eleven, with my family taking turns reading out loud My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell.

The scene in Lucky Jim (by Kingsley Amis) when Jim is staying at the home of wealthy people he's trying to impress, and he burns a cigarette hole in his blanket.

There must be a more current one, but I can't think of it.

3. A Favorite Sci-Fi Book

Three from the past couple years:

Mockingbird (1980), by Walter Tevis
A man liberates himself and others, including an AI, from their drug-stupified society by learning--and teaching others--to read.

Devolution:: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre (2020), by Max Brooks (author of World War Z, another favorite)

Horror story about the wisdom of believing that what's happening is, in fact, happening, and responding as well as you can.
The high cost if you don't?
Big Foot will come down from the mountain and eat you.

(Climate change, as a big picture example--but small, intimate things on a personal level-- believing, for instance, that yes, I am stressed out.)

The Murderbot Diaries, a series of six books (2017––), so far, by Martha Wells.

The first one is the best, and stand-alone: All Systems Red.
It's like a lot of novels about orphans coming-of-age––David Copperfield, Jane Eyre, Huckleberry Finn––except this orphan, who thinks of itself as Murderbot (it has no gender) is an artificial construct--a sentient humanoid made of machine and human parts. Murderbot escapes its owners and must determine who it is and what it wants.

4. The Author You've Read the Most Books By

Probably someone whose works I read all of in childhood, such as Hergé, creator of Tintin books.

I've read most or all of the novels by these British women writers who are often concerned with the minor events of small lives: Jane Gardam, Penelope Lively, Barbara Pym

I've also read a lot of John Le Carré.

5. A Book That Shocked You

I can only think of one, but it's a doozy:

Crash (1973), by J. G. Ballard.
The weirdest book I have ever read and liked, Crash is about people who stage car crashes for sexual fulfillment. I don't think I'll read it again, but it was shocking, and shockingly well written.

It's interesting to link the book with the young Ballard's internement during WWII in a Japanese camp in Shanghai (the basis of his novel Empire of the Sun).

Ballard said of the experience:

"I don't think you can go through the experience of war without one's perceptions of the world being forever changed. The reassuring stage set that everyday reality in the suburban west presents to us is torn down;
you see the ragged scaffolding, and then you see the truth beyond that, and it can be a frightening experience."

6. A Childhood Favourite

The Griffin and the Minor Canon, by Frank R. Stockton:
The minor canon, a young man in religious orders, falls in love, basically, with a beautiful, dangerous monster he cannot have.

7. A Book That Deserves More Attention

Fluffy, (2007) a graphic novel by Simone Lia
One of my favorite books, but it wasn't published in the USA, and it's little known here.
Fluffy is a child bunny with an anxious, depressed human father. They have some problems but they come to a happy resolution in this book.
(I'm sad that I haven't liked anything else Lia has published though.)

8. An Author You Would Grant Immortality To

Immortality? I'd ask instead, authors who died too soon, authors you wish wrote a few more books...

Jane Austen, who died at 41, having written six novels.
Barbara Pym who died at 66, having written six novels.

9. A Book You've Re-Read Often

Fluffy! (see above)

10. A Book That Challenged Your Thinking

"Three Version of Judas",  a short story/essay by Jorge Luis Borges, included in his collection Ficciones (1944).
It is a (fictional) review of three scholarly books about Jesus & Judas--three books that do not actually exist.

Summary from Wikipedia:

The [fictitious] author Runeberg comes up with the argument that as God in human shape would be "made totally man, but man to the point of iniquity", committing a sin would also not be beyond Him.

More importantly, Runeberg states that a sacrifice limited to only one afternoon on the cross does not compare with the sacrifice of accepting shame and revulsion for the rest of history.
Thereby, Runeberg concludes finally that He, God, chose Judas as his incarnation.

Recently, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (2010), by Isabel Wilkerson.
It opened my eyes to the American Experience of my Black coworkers who came from or have roots in the South––and to how widely shared that experience is.
I kinda had no idea...

11. A Book You Recommend to Everyone

I don't know. Not Crash!

I've recommended The Murderbot Diaries to all sorts of people--including my sister who doesn't like sci-fi or share my taste in general. She liked it.
Come to think of it, the book was recommended to me in the first place, by Marz.

12. Your Favourite Literary Hero & Heroine

In this case, the main two from childhood still stand:
David Copperfield and Jane Eyre, for being the heroes––the authors!–– of their own lives.

I could add Murderbot now.

Fluffy!
Fluffy is not a hero for creating an adult life, Fluffy is an innocent child who reminds me of my Orphan Red girlettes (also orphans, though they never had parents). These are heroes for being authentic, even though they haven't been tested by adulthood.

(What's a hero?)