Get It All Down: the mere brute pleasure of reading - the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing

August 27: vouchsafe

I know that it's sometimes better to be left with doubt than to have all the answers, even the bad ones, but I still sort of wish he could have tried to vouchsafe his reasons for leaving—rather than just leaving.

7 deadly sins of reading...

GREED: What is your most expensive book?
good question. There are nearly 900 books in my collection now (down from almost 3000 at one point, but still way more than the average person needs...or needs to move on a semi-regular basis). Believe it or not, I don't have them arranged by price. My guess is that it would be either a law book (booo!) or an art book, which would be much more "honorable".
WRATH: What author do you have a love/hate relationship with?
is this limited to authors that I read, or just authors in general? There are those, encountered as part of my job, that I don't particularly enjoy. In fact, that I sort of wish would fall off the side of the planet. But those same folks are absolutely vital to the continued existence of my place of work. You know the ones. Their craptastic writing is matched only by their unbelievably stratospheric sales figures, bestseller after bestseller. It's disheartening. I would love to burn their books—just because they suck!—but we'd never survive without them.
But if we're talking about love/hate in a more visceral way, I guess I'll go with Karen Robards. She writes "romantic suspense" which is more suspense-y than romance-y, often truly scary enough that I can't read it when I'm alone at night because it freaks me out badly; I will get goosebumps, literally, and end up having idiotic nightmares. That's not a reason to hate anything except my own foolishness, though, so it's not that about which I complain. It's the fact that some of her books are flat-out stupid. Unappealing, strident, unsympathetic female characters, matched with blockheaded, macho, ham-handed males—it's as if she pulled some of her books straight out of the Mad-Libs file drawers. Some of her books are absolutely phenomenal, but every once in a while, she just mails it in.
GLUTTONY: What book have you deliciously devoured over and over with no shame whatsoever?
this question leaves me puzzled. I don't feel shame about the books that I read, ever. Am I supposed to? Sometimes I read "high quality literature" for which other people share great appreciation; other times I read entertainment that seems to have no redeeming social value. It's kind of like my diet: I generally eat pretty well (meaning, sticking reasonably close to the nutritional guidelines that my doctor recommends), which makes it that much more fun/appealing/wild & crazy to have nachos or half an apple pie for dinner, now and then. My brain would get tired, bored, or sick if all I ever ate—I mean, read—were nachos, though. I really do love literary fiction, and scholarly history, and poetry, and social science, and all the other entrees that I eat more often.
SLOTH: What book have you neglected reading due to laziness?
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss left me utterly perplexed when I started reading it, at a time of my life that happened to be very complicated, when I was under the weather but hadn't yet realized it, and when I was too close to having finished the fifth book of George R.R. Martin's The Song of Ice and Fire series, A Dance with Dragons. I just need a half-day or so with zero distractions to start it fresh and I'll be into it, but for now it's got me too intimidated.
And I'm also slogging through David James Duncan's God Laughs & Plays like I'm getting paid by the minute. There are obvious reasons why it's not a ripping read, but I seriously should've been able to finish it a couple of years ago.
PRIDE: What books do you most talk about in order to sound like a very intellectual reader?
if I'm going to pull intellectual rank, I'll usually do it in a more petty way, by making fun of the current crap that satisfies brainless peons, rather than talking up the books that only smart people will read. I suppose that I'm snobbish enough to presume that y'all will get the rest by implication.
Every now and then, though, I'll absolutely force a book into the hands of one of my friends, refusing to take No for an answer. It doesn't come from a place of "in order to sound like a very intellectual reader," but it may leave that taste in some peoples' mouths. It's just that, if I know you, and what you read, and if I've read something that fits you, I can't rest until I've made sure that you're aware of the book I have in mind for you.
Obnoxious, yes. Intellectual? Meh.
LUST: What attributes do you find most attractive in male or female characters?
oh, wow—I don't think that way at all. Not at all. That would completely ruin the organics, the art, the nature, the beauty...ugh. No thinking about this, please!
ENVY: What books would you most like to receive as a gift?
how would you like that list arranged? There are almost 50 on my Amazon wishlist right now! I do love buying books. Mmmmmmm!