I spotted this short meme over at Byzantium’s Shores a few days ago…

• What was the last book you bought?
  Kerouac’s On the Road. I bought it at City Lights in San Francisco, just like every other semi-literary tourist who happens to wander through North Beach. Forgive me my lameness…
  (For what it’s worth, the proprietors of City Lights seem quite happy to capitalize on the store’s appeal to tourists, i.e., its fame as ground zero of the Beat movement. Copies of Kerouac’s and Ginsberg’s major works are plentiful, and the clerk who took my money assured me lots of people buy On the Road there and I wasn’t uncool at all. Well… he would say that, wouldn’t he? Have to keep the tourists happy after all…)
• Name a book you have read MORE than once.
  There are lots of those. Off the top of my head, the novelization of Star Wars, ostensibly by George Lucas but really ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster. The Han Solo books by Brian Daley. Most of Robert Heinlein’s “juveniles.” The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers.
• Has a book ever fundamentally changed the way you see life? If yes, what was it?
  Yes, an academic book I ran across in college called The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure by Juliet Schor. The book’s thesis is, essentially, that Americans work too damn much to acquire possessions we don’t need and don’t have time to enjoy anyway because we’re always working, and that our society didn’t have to turn out this way (the change came, Schor says, after World War II) and doesn’t have to remain this way. I’d never known before reading this that Europeans generally work far fewer hours than Americans, never considered that one’s quality of life could be measured in something other than money, i.e., in available time. That’s a realization I still feel very keenly; I’m very concerned with what the corporate overlords like to call “work-life balance,” and while I don’t think of myself as particularly lazy, I do think that balance is far too heavily weighted on the work side of the scale for most people. Especially me.
• How do you choose a book? (E.g. by cover design and summary, recommendations or reviews?)
  All of the above. If a friend tells me they really liked something or think I would really like it, I seek it out. If I happen to read a glowing review of something that sounds intriguing, I’ll seek it out. If I’m browsing and something has a particularly cool cover, I’ll pick it up. You get the idea…
• Do you prefer Fiction or Non-Fiction?
  Depends on my mood. I read plenty of both. While few things are as satisfying as a good novel, I find a lot of pleasure in a well-written history or science book, or a biography, too. The best examples of those categories read much like novels anyhow.
• What’s more important in a novel, beautiful writing or a gripping plot?
  My sarcastic first thought is, “Can’t I have both?” Seriously, can’t I? But if you really pushed me, I’d probably have to concede that I prefer a really well-plotted yarn to exquisite words. I like to be told a story, and if the story is compelling enough, I can overlook even the clunkiest writing. (For example, Clive Cussler is an abysmal writer in terms of style, but he tells a cracking good adventure tale.) Conversely, I have struggled with books that feature some heartbreakingly precise and elegant craftsmanship but are boring as hell. That describes much of the “literary fiction” genre, in my opinion.
  Can’t these two extremes meet in the middle somewhere?
• Most loved/memorable character (character/book)
  Hm. I’m somewhat ashamed to admit this, since I fancy myself a fairly literary guy, but my most beloved characters tend to come from movies or television, not books. However, Roland, the last gunslinger of Gilead in Stephen King’s epic Dark Tower series, lives and breathes in my mind in a way that few literary characters ever have…
• Which book or books can be found on your nightstand at the moment?
  Significant Others by Armistead Maupin, volume 5 in his Tales of the City series.
• What was the last book you’ve read, and when was it?
  Armistead Maupin’s Babycakes, volume 4 of the series I mentioned above, which I finished last week sometime.
• Have you ever given up on a book half way in?
  Not very often — I’m one of those who grapple valiantly to the end, even as I’m thinking that life’s too short for this sort of torture and I should just hurl the damn thing across the room and be done with it. For example, I read an astoundingly dull biography of Ian Fleming a few years ago that I really should’ve put down, but somehow I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. It took me months to get through it, but I finally did. And in the end, my reward was… well, I’m still working on that one. I honestly don’t know what the big deal about finishing that book was.
  However, I simply could not penetrate Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. I think I made it to page 75 or so and still hadn’t discerned anything resembling a plot, so I just had to surrender. I felt very bad about that one, because I don’t like to think I wasn’t up to the challenge, and because my friend Cranky Robert had spoken so very highly of it — in fact, now that I think about it, he bought me the copy I was trying to read — but I just couldn’t see the point of the thing. It stands out as one of the few genuinely painful reading experiences of my life.

And now, I think I’m going to go read a few chapters before bed… I suggest you all do the same…