Questionnaire about books! [high rating, swearing welcome]

If you are interested, fill out this questionnaire. It is really fun!

Diversity In Reading

1. Name the last book by a female author that you’ve read. No Telephone to Heaven by Michelle Cliff.

2. Name the last book by an African or African-American author that you’ve read. Talkin’ and Testifying: the language of black America by Geneva Smitherman. (both this book and the other book were read at about the same time.)

3. Name one from a Latino/a author. Their Dogs Came With Them by Helena Viramontes

4. How about one from an Asian country or Asian-American? We Should Never Meet by Aimee Phan.

5. What about a GLBT writer? Fun House by Alison Bechdel.

6. Why not name an Israeli/Arab/Turk/Persian writer, if you’re feeling lucky? Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.

7. Any other authors from a social subsect or ethnic minority (in literature) that you’ve read lately? Yeah. Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko and her book Ceremony.

8. Do you strive for diversity in your own reading? Or do you not worry about it? Why or why not? I do strive for diversity, but I don’t read for diversity’s sake. It is just important to read a wide variety of books from different cultures. I love the topic of diversity in general, so I minored in it in college and now even read books about diversity in education, politics, etc.

Ten books you became utterly lost in:

1. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky: I got lost in the storyline in a very non-traditional way and couldn’t deal with Dostoevsky’s constant tangents about individual character memories. It took until Fyodor began writing entire essays about his one dimensional characters and how they were the epitome of anger, brains and religion to really hook me to his book. I felt so sorry for Alexi and how he continuously struggled to keep his faith in god. This book gave me my aim username.

2. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky: what can I say? I love this author. Yes, the story is also about morality and sin, but that is a topic I can relate to.

3. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky: same reason as above. This book also gave me my Livejournal username.

4. Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko: one of the main reasons I was so into my nature and gender class in junior year of college. I loved how it introduced me to Native American Literature.

5. The Book of Salt by Monique Truong: I love the use of cooking imagery and metaphors to describe a gay cook’s development as a young man.

6. The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith under the pseudonym Claire Morgan: what can I say? I love lesbian love affairs. This one was particularly telling because both women were discovering their lesbianism while they were in heterosexual relationships.

7. G by John Berger: a regular gigolo who undergoes an amazing transformation into an accidental political dissident. I love how the world in which he is least interested brings about his demise.

8. Chloe and Olivia: anthology of lesbian literature. I loved the work, but then I took verse writing with a professor who no longer teaches at Mount Holyoke who said he didn’t like lesbian literature. He’d basically given this whole speech about lesbian literature and how much he hated it when he saw the cover of Chloe and Olivia, which has two women leaning against each other. His jaw dropped when he asked me what the book was about, and I told him it was an anthology of lesbian literature. He never put down lesbian writing again after that. That is one small reason I like the book.

9. Young, Gifted and Black: Promoting High Achievement Among African American Students by Theresa Perry, Asa Hilliard III, and Claude Steele (A story about African Americans in the American education system. I loved it.)

10. We Should Never Meet by Aimee Phan: Lovely set of short stories by an Asian American author about the Vietnam War and Operation Baby Lift. I loved the class for which I read the book. In fact, I liked almost every book from my modern Asian American fiction class.

11. Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa by Antjie Krog: Best book I read this year. I love literature from the African continent, and this one was really moving. I would have to leave it up here as a tie with my other favorite books.

12. The Cave by Jose Saramango: Great use of sentence structure and language. Needs to be up here.

13. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison: Gave me nightmares for a while, but it was a good book.

Nine books that you would give to an alien civilisation who were curious about human storytelling culture or cultures:

The Cave by Jose Saramango (for its complete analysis of society and innovative use of language); Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko (a good work about Native American storytelling culture); The Maddona of Excelsior by Zakes Mda (makes fun of sensationalism in journalistic writing and the petty laws underlying both apartheid life and storytelling); The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (excellent memoir- like novel with good imagery); Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (great exercise in the use of comic strips to tell a story); Passing by Nella Larson (quintessential novel about passing as a white woman during the Harlem Renaissance); I know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Mya Angelou; Their Dogs Came With Them by Helena Maria Viramontes; A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Wolf (not fully read yet, but highly recommended.)

Eight books that left you wondering if you were missing the point:

Moby Dick by Herman Melville; The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles (the constant switch between the past and the present was nothing but confusing); A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (totally left me clueless from the first sentence, as was completely apparent when my class began analyzing the book); The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (I eventually understood the book and now love it, but it was initially long, confusing, and highly tragic;) David’s Story by Zoe Wicomb (really difficult time lapses and it took forever for me to understand. It is a great book and I love it, but I couldn’t always understand what the author was saying); The Squire’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer (incomplete and entirely frustrating to read. After all, Chaucer never completed this tale); Pride and Prejudice By Jane Austin (I like the book now, but I couldn’t finish it when I first read it. At the time, I was too young to understand what was going on.)

Seven non-fiction books that engaged you as much as really good fiction might:

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen; “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”: A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity By Beverly Tatum; Young, Gifted and Black: Promoting High Achievement Among African American Students by Theresa Perry, Asa Hilliard III, and Claude Steele; A New English For a New South Africa? Language Attitudes, Language Planning and Education by Ute Smit; Chloe and Olivia (anthology of lesbian works and essays); The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman; Mouse by Art Spiegelman.

Six fictional (or non-fictional because I read too many autobiographies that straddle the line between fiction and non-fiction) characters you wouldn't kick out of bed:

Therese Belivet and Carol from The Price of Salt, Anna Karenina from Anna Karenina (breathtakingly beautiful in a simple way, but I’m afraid she’d kick herself out of my bed because it would be too immoral to sleep with another woman); Rahel from The God of Small Things; Mick Kelly from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter; Alison Bechdel from Fun House (yes, this author is the main character of her own book and I love her to pieces.)

Five heavy / cerebral works of literature that are worth the effort:

The Brothers Karamazov; War and Peace (although I lost the book before I finished it); The Cave; The Bluest Eye (I couldn’t sleep properly the first night after I started reading it, but it was such a good read); The Book of Salt (Hands down my favorite book ever. Yay gay cooks!)

Four short stories you think everyone should read:

The Nose by Nikolai Gogol and I hate to admit this, but I hardly read short stories. So yeah. Everyone, recommend some short stories I should read that aren’t Russian. I read a lot of Russian literature.

Three things from books (images, ideas, characters) that really snagged your imagination:

The use of Native American song and culture in Ceremony to paint the eventual recovery of a mentally ill world war II veteran; Thin Bin in The Book of Salt and his use of cooking to express his life as a gay man; the lack of proper punctuation in The Cave (Best use of run on sentences ever!)

Two genres that are in danger of taking over your shelves:

Lesbian literature/feminine writing, and there is currently a tie between African writing (both from Africa and from America) and Russian literature.

One literary series that was completely satisfying from page one to page done: Lord of the Rings.

Characters
Name three characters that…
1. you wish were real so you could meet them: Mick Kelly from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carol from The Price of Salt, and Thin Bin from The Book of Salt.

2. you would like to be: John Singer from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (not because he gets depressed and dies, because I hate that about him. But he knows how to love freely and with passion regardless of how everyone else around him feels, which I admire); Rahel from The God of Small Things; Aleksey Karamazov from The Brothers Karamazov (I am a fan of all things spiritual, but I could never have a deep discussion about the merits of all religions or a particular religion like Aleksey. I respect him for constantly questioning his faith and looking for ways to strengthen his beliefs.)

3. who scare you: Simms from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (sidewalk preacher shouting about blasphemy and wrongness according to God. Enough said); The Man on the Bridge from The Book of Salt (He was compared to Ho Chi Minh and is thought to be one of his many fictional representations. Creepy); G from G (fictional gigolo who dies just as he is developing political consciousness in, of all things, a political rally he accidentally involves himself in.

Writing Habits
1) What’s the last thing you wrote? Guns and Roses: a series of thoughts from the perspective of a man tired of fighting a war he severely dislikes.

2) Was it any good? As far as fanfiction goes, it got rave reviews. I think it is okay.

3) What’s the first thing you wrote that you still have? A story about Zelda, an old video game I used to play. My sister gave the only printed copy to her middle school teacher and I never got it back. It died when my super old computer crashed and there is only one copy left that I don't have. Someone else has it though, so I still count it as alive and well.

4) Write poetry? Yeah.

5) Angsty poetry? Definitely. I write all kinds of poetry, too.

6) Favorite genre of writing? Extended metaphor writing, especially memoirs and auto-biographical novels.

7) Most fun character you’ve ever created? Dark Ray. I don’t know why, but he frightens people. And I love the tattoo on his back.

8 Most annoying character you’ve ever created? Damian Westley. He was your stereotypical African American man.

9) Best plot you’ve ever created? Again, Dark Ray as a religious renegade without a clue as to why everything he does is some weird form of Zen Buddhism. Although I never got around to writing the story, I love how Dark represents religion at its most fanatical without being religious because he is afraid of attaching himself to one ideology. He is me at my most complex and I love it. Ah, if only I could be Zen Buddhist and not want a reminder of every other religion I’d be giving up to still remain in my life.

10) Coolest plot twist you’ve ever created? Dark receiving his tattoo to announce his attachment to religion and his simultaneous refusal to accept one organized religion. So he just creates his own religion, which is really him just celebrating his own unique individuality through however it manifests religiously and philosophically. He is his own religion, but with a figurehead (his tattoo) to make it all official. Like, his tattoo is how he views the manifestation of his inner self. I tried roleplaying him once, but he died damn fast.

11) How often do you get writer’s block? Often enough to be good at getting rid of it. But I’m lazy too, so it often doesn’t get dealt with until I feel like it.

12) Write fan fiction? Yeah. Not much anymore, though.

13) Do you type or write by hand? Type mostly, although I scribble notes on paper sometimes. It is very disorganized.

14) Do you save everything you write? Usually.

15) Do you ever go back to an idea after you’ve abandoned it? I usually do, but it gets abandoned regularly after that and then picked up again briefly.

16) What’s your favorite thing you’ve written? I don’t write a fair bit of original fiction these days, but it would have to be the five or so pages I wrote about Dark on a spaceship once. I had to kill him off because I went on an unexpected vacation, but he was damn fun to play and broke nearly every rule the story creator had set just from me keeping in character.

17) Do you ever show people your work? Sometimes. Only at writing club and after my mom begs me to see something for a good few days straight.

18) Did you ever write a novel? Yeah. Typical fanfiction though. I do have plans to write either a science fiction one with seven pinnacles of humanity or to continue with Dark and make him more than an outline and five pages of hasty writing.

19) Ever written romance or angsty teen drama? Never. I don’t like romance or angst as a genre.

20) What’s your favorite setting for your characters? Iran/the Middle East. I love that part of the world. Dark is also from Iran.

21) How many writing projects are you working on right now? Maybe one if I start it, two if I count the stupid fanfiction that people keep begging me to continue.

22) Do you want to write for a living? When I get old and can’t teach anymore I might take it up.

23) Have you ever won an award for your writing? Yeah. Just one, though, and it was first place at my school poetry event, which just got one of my least favorite poems horrendously misinterpreted as the downside of war and posted as war poetry in the school paper when it was about long distance relationships via the internet.

24) Ever written anything in script or play format? I had to once for a school project. It still remains my only comedy ever written.

25) What are your five favorite words? Don’t have a favorite word, but I use stereotypical, categorizing and other similar words a lot.

26) Do you ever write based on yourself? Always. And it always deals with humanity too.

27) What character have you created that is most like yourself? Dark. He is me to the nth degree.

28) Where do you get ideas for your characters? From my philosophical beliefs, books, poems, nature, Iran especially (that is why religion factors in so heavily in all my writing.)

29) Do you ever write based on your dreams? I’ve been told that some of my dreams would make excellent novels. But I don’t write based on them.

30) Do you favor happy endings, sad endings or cliff-hangers? A mix of all three, actually.

31) Have you ever written based on an artwork you’ve seen? Yes.

32) Are you concerned with spelling and grammar as you write? Yes.

33) Does music help you write? Sometimes, but usually not.

34) Quote something you’ve written. Whatever pops into your head. “Dark smiled and turned to face the light, trying desperately to hide the sadness he felt at his aide’s death.” (This is from when Dark only had one arm and no other limbs. I was experimenting with different forms of humanity as represented through the human body. I’d posted this as a story line on an RPG so people could help me work through the character concept, and someone on the board walked in and killed my aide. It is too long to describe why that happened, but suffice it to say, sex was involved.)

More Questions
1) What author do you own the most books by? Fyodor Dostoevsky. And he isn’t even my favorite author.

2) What book do you own the most copies of? None, but I’d have to say that I have several versions of biographies on King Henry VIII kicking around, and I’d never read any of them over again.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions? Didn’t notice that until you mentioned it.