SURVEY: Found randomly amid various Internet flotsam.

1. Which book are you currently reading?

JM DeMatteis/Glenn Barr, Brooklyn Dreams.

And Lend Me Your Ears, a collection of speeches edited by William Safire, but you really can’t take that on the bus or in the bath, thus it’s hard for the Book Ape to make progress here.

2. What book did you read last?

The Great Short Works of Franz Kafka, tr. Joachim Neugroschel. “In the Penal Colony” is the best by far. The short-shorts aren’t nearly as hard-hitting or skewed as the ones in Parables and Paradoxes, which I need to reread.

3.What book are you planning on reading next?

Quimby the Mouse, that speeches book, and Plutarch’s Lives if I can find my copy. If I can’t find my copy and get too lazy to schlep to the library, I’ll probably read The Naked Civil Servant to see how it’s (/I’ve) aged. If I do schlep to the library, I’ll probably forget about Plutarch and get sucked into reading The Book Against God.

4. Do you own most of the books you read, or do you borrow them from a library?

Half and half except for comics, which you really can’t find in the DC library system.

5. Who was your favourite author when you were a child?

Diana Wynne Jones for overall achievement; Peter S. Beagle for writing my absolute favorite childhood book, The Last Unicorn.

6. What were some of your favourite books when you were a child?

Find them here… plus Diana Wynne Jones and Michael de Larrabeiti. Oh and Helen Cresswell. Good grief, didn’t I read any red-blooded Amurricans?

7. Which literary character would you least like to be stranded on a desert island with and why?

Hamlet! Talk talk talk! Or, even moreso, the kid from Call It Sleep–I’d feel guilty just looking at that boy.

8. Which character would you most like to be stranded with?

Adrian Healey maybe? That could get a bit tense, though. Let’s go with Donald Trefusis instead.

9. In which literary/fictional location would you most like to live?

Wow, there are just about no books set in the parts of DC I love. Let’s go with the pseudo-Savannah depicted in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

10. Which is the best TV/film adaptation of a book you have seen? why?

“The Last Unicorn.” Script entirely from book, animation beautiful and perfectly captures both the darker tones and the sweet humor of the book. And I grew up with the Journey songs so I don’t mind them.

I guess “Lion in Winter” doesn’t count because it’s originally a play. “Gone With the Wind” is also amazing, though not as good as the book.

11. Which is worst TV/film adaptation of a book you have seen? why?

Again, “Titus” probably doesn’t count (originally a play). And really, it does an excellent job of mimicking the absurdities of the original. (“Enter Lavinia with her hands cut off, her tongue cut out, and ravished.”)

12. What film adaptation do you actually like more than the book?

Hmmm… can’t think of one off the top of my head.

13. What book do you like better than the film adaptation?

Ghost World

14. What is your least favourite book and why?

I doubt this is actually my least-favorite book, but I do remember loathing Silas Marner. All that blonde symbolism. I also deeply resented having to read Things Fall Apart not once but twice for class.