from 250 conversation starters
101. What was the last book you read? I am nearly through Tomboyland by Melissa Faliveno, which I picked up free from Amazon Prime
103. Do you prefer physical books or ebooks? each has its place. I like having a new book in my hands, flipping through the pages, and feeling the weight shift from right to left as it gets closer to the end. I love seeing collections and series on my shelves, and being able to lend - very rarely - my favorites.
There is so much convenience in ebooks, though. Acquiring the next book in a series instantaneously, at the press of a button. Using the touch-screen features to learn more about terms and people named in what I read. Being able to carry a bookshelf in a tablet that weighs less than my bedside journal.
104. What is the longest book you've read? the first one I thought of, I read in hardcover: Samuel Park's This Burns My Heart. It was big and heavy, with 322 pages of tiny print. It made me cry. I loved it.
And then I remembered the Song of Ice and Fire books, George R.R. Martin's epic fantasy series. Each of those books was well over a thousand pages (in mass market paperback). The winners!
106. How fast do you read? is that a question that most people can even answer? in my first job out of college, I worked with a couple of guys who were proponents of speed-reading. One was a medical doctor who was also teaching, and the other had a graduate degree and was working on another. They both swore that their success hinged on their ability to fly through course material far faster than the average student.
I thought that was crap.
My serious answer to this: I typically read 100-150 books per year.
107. How often do you go to the library? I have not been back since they closed during the lockdown. I had been going every couple of weeks (maybe once a week) for movies and poetry. Since then I have read some of my own books that I'd not gotten to yet, and reread several.
109. Do you prefer fiction or nonfiction books? I read more fiction than non-, though that depends how you classify poetry. There are periods where all I want is more poetry, and others where I could eat three novels in a day. (I'm in fiction mode now - read one each day this weekend, Friday/Saturday/Sunday!)
110. What book has changed one of your long-held opinions? The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. It was not the first fantasy novel I read, but it was the one that 'broke my heart and kicked my ass...', as any love affair would. I adored it, and am on tenterhooks to think that the third entry in the series may actually be published relatively soon!
112. What was the worst book you had to read for school? How about the best book you had to read for school?
• worst: I don't recall the name of the book, but we read it for "Aristotle and Late Classical Philosophy," a class in one of my minors in which I got a C+. The prof was hyperactive, scattered, and very hard to follow. That was a waste of credit hours.
• best: David McCullough's The Path Between the Seas, about the building of the Panama Canal
113. Do you think people read more or fewer books now than 50 years ago?
I think that readers consume more books now than ever before. It is so much easier to find them, and we have more disposable income to acquire them. Those of us who are voracious can feed that hunger with new books, more cheaply and easily than ever before.
On the other hand, I think that fewer of us are readers than ever before. There is a celebration now of anti-intellectualism. People who "know things" without ever having learned anything. Suspicion of those who have.
114. Now that indie publishing has become easier, have books gotten better or worse? so much worse! Easy vanity publishing heralded the death of editing across the board. And it is far too easy to find a terrible book now. They are everywhere.
115. What was the last song you listened to? "I Never Cared for You" by Willie Nelson
116. What is your favorite movie soundtrack? I've written plenty about a different one, so I will share another that I have enjoyed: 10 Things I Hate About You
117. Do you like classical music? love it, though I don't listen to it as a rule. When the mood strikes, it's usually Vivaldi's The Four Seasons or some of Rachmaninov's impossibly difficult piano pieces.
119. What's the best way to discover new music? suggestions from friends, which I like best as youtube links, mix CDs, or listening to their collections while we spend time together
121. Are there any songs that always bring a tear to your eye? My Immortal from Evanescence punched me in the heart yesterday. It was - in retrospect - the theme song to the summer and fall when my marriage finally broke up. We struggled to put impossible feelings into words that year, things that had been simmering for God knows how long. Though it seems sort of melodramatic now, the lyrics summed up my emotions from that time as well as anything could. "...though you're still with me, I've been alone all along."
122. What bands or types of music do you listen to when you exercise? I don't usually exercise to music, though the song Adrenaline by Gavin Rossdale always makes me think of it!
123. Which do you prefer: popular music or relatively unknown music? my favorites are usually the b-sides of the really big singles. So popular-ish musicians/bands (but maybe not the newest) - but their relatively unknown tracks.
124. Do you like going to concerts? Why or why not? What was the last concert you went to? in and of itself, live music is a great thing. A few things have conspired to make it tough for me to enjoy it as I get older, though: my particular brand of migraines is triggered and/or made worse by loud sounds and/or bright or flashing lights; my fear of heights has gotten much worse, so any seating that isn't pretty much flat on the ground makes me gag; and my introversion makes me cringey around loads of people.
My last concert was Incubus at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in The Woodlands, Texas.
125. Who was the first band or musician you were really into? Do you still like them? I loved Duran Duran during that time between childhood and my early teen years. I do still like their early stuff, the boppy songs and albums that made them famous.
[from here; the title quotation is from "Adrenaline" by Gavin Rossdale]
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