A to Z Bookish Survey

I was gonna do a thing, I didn’t do the thing, I ended up without a post idea for today and no books I could finish in time to review. But I found the A to Z Bookish Survey on A Bookish Bi, and I can’t resist a survey! Side note: I’m pretty sure I met Ann Elise Monte from A Bookish Bi during a Twitter writing event back in like April and then did a real bad job of keeping in touch? My reader is a mess, y’all, but she runs a super good blog. (And the survey is originally from Perpetual Page-Turner, the same blog that puts out the yearly book survey I always do).

Answers are mostly from recent reads to avoid driving myself crazy going through ten years of possible books.

Author you’ve read the most books from:

Comic author Geoff Johns with 52! I highly recommend Green Lantern: Secret Origin and The Sinestro Corps War.

Best Sequel Ever:

Without spending ages trying to narrow it down, my first thought is Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake, the sequel to Anna Dressed in Blood. It’s real slow through the middle, but the series is just a duology and together they’re amazing.

Currently Reading:

• Something Missing by Matthew Dicks — a sort of quirky book about a thief with OCD?
• Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson — the first in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, a fantasy cult classic.
• Airborn by Kenneth Oppel — steampunk airships and stuff. Started this one as an audiobook but it was moving too slow so now I’m reading it visually.
• Ruling Passion by Reginald Hill – a mystery. I kinda forgot I’d started this one but it’s a good series.

Drink of Choice While Reading:

Chocolate milk, or the mocha protein smoothies I drink for breakfast. But I do try to match my beverage to my book — tea and cookies for the more literary choices, wine for romance, and so on.

E-reader or Physical Book?

Either. I prefer physical books for comic books (I don’t have any screens big enough to read pleasurably) or for some nonfiction/complicated books that make me want to flip back and forth, but otherwise I don’t much care.

Fictional Character You Probably Would Have Actually Dated In High School:

I didn’t date in high school, but probably like… Batman. I was very into the dark angsty folks.

Glad You Gave This Book A Chance:

Just a few recent ones with reviews: Vulcan (Hidden Universe Travel Guides) (review), The Gunslinger (review), DC Comics Bombshells (review)…

Hidden Gem Book:

Star Trek/Green Lantern: The Spectrum War by Mike Johnson. I guess that’s kind of a niche of potential fans, which is probably why I didn’t hear more about it, but it’s SO GOOD. It’s not like most comic crossovers; it’s not just people punching each other and it doesn’t reset to normal at the end. It’s thoughtful and well-paced, delivers the expected fanservice but in a coherent way, and launches its own awesome crossover continuity.

Important Moment in your Reading Life:

I’ve read plenty of books I consider important, but as far as my reading life, probably deciding to turn this into a full-on book blog? It was just a moment of realizing books are really what I love and want to talk to y’all about the most. ❤

Just Finished:

Space Battle Lunchtime Vol. 1: Lights, Camera, Snacktion! by Natalie Reiss. It’s just as delightful as everyone said, great all-ages comic in sort of the Food Network genre. But in space.

Kinds of Books You Won’t Read:

Books about sports. I just… I just can’t.

Longest Book You’ve Read:

According to Goodreads, it’s Bone: The Complete Edition by Jeff Smith. That’s technically an omnibus, as are the next few, but the biggest single book is Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America by J. Anthony Lukas at 880 pages. I read it in 2009 and remember basically nothing about it.

Major book hangover because of:

Airman by Eoin Colfer (reviewed here). I listened to this as an audiobook back in May, and to this day, every time I get in the car I’m sad I’m not still listening to it. I’m just going to have to re-listen at this point, it’s not going away.

Number of Bookcases You Own:

Technically like four? But they’re in my mom’s house full of my brother’s books, and I’m pretty sure at this point I might as well just buy new ones when I get my permanent apartment rather than try to move them a state over. So, zero.

One Book You Have Read Multiple Times:

Letters from Camp by Kate Klise. It’s an epistolary mystery for kids, but not just epistolary, it’s told in notes and menus and drawings and all kinds of things. It’s a little surreal, but realistic enough. I’ve loved it since I was a kid and it still holds up!

Preferred Place To Read:

Realistically, in bed. Theoretically though, I’d like to have a big squishy chair with blankets in it and a table for my drink.

Quote that inspires you/gives you all the feels from a book you’ve read:

Lately, it’s been this:

You can read merely to pass the time, or you can read with an overt urgency, but eventually you will read against the clock. -Harold Bloom

I found it in How to Read and Why, reading for this post. I recently started my first full-time job, and although it affords me a lot of time to read, I’m reassessing my obligations and trying to make sure I have time for the things I care about the most. I read a LOT of books, but there’s still a finite number I’ll read in my lifetime. A melancholy inspiration, perhaps.

Reading Regret:

I regret that Young Me didn’t know she needed to back up digital files and as a result I only have reading records going back to 2008. You’d be surprised how often this is a problem. Plus I can usually recognize a book I read as a child, but I can’t remember them off the top of my head, so most of them I’ll never recover. You can’t effectively google “that cheap fantasy paperback with the wizard” or “that kids’ mystery with the dogs.”

Series You Started And Need To Finish (all books are out in series):

Um, all of them? I’m real bad about not finishing series. But my current project is the Skulduggery Pleasant middle grade/YA horror/fantasy series (discussed here for a feminist post). I started it as a kid and loved it, and now there’s this whole ten-book series. I’m on book 5, but it’s taking me forever because this series isn’t super well-known (even though it should be) so I’m sharing like one copy of each book with everybody else in the library system.

Three of your All-Time Favorite Books:

• Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville. This was one of the first books I remember making me cry.
• Watchmen by Alan Moore. The book that got me into comics all those years ago. Story here.
• Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner. I think the first queer fantasy book I read, but definitely the best. Discussed here and here.

Unapologetic Fangirl For:

Dragons? Batman? Picture books? C-3PO? I pretty much don’t apologize for anything I like, popular or otherwise…

Very Excited For This Release More Than All The Others:

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker, which comes out next February. His Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined is still one of the most important books in my reading history (and my review has been one of the top two posts on this blog for THREE YEARS, which is probably no coincidence). Super excited for a new book.

Worst Bookish Habit:

I sometimes read books I’m least excited about first, in the name of getting them off my list or off my shelf, and never getting around to the books I really wanna read. I’ve mostly broken this habit in the past couple years though because I just have so little time. See above.

X Marks The Spot: Start at the top left of your shelf and pick the 27th book:

I do have two little tiny shelf things with some books on them, but I forgot to count when I was at home. However, the 27th-most-recent book I’ve added to Goodreads is I, Crocodile by Fred Marcellino, a picture book about a crocodile who meets Napoleon. (Or in this case, a mini audiobook read by Tim Curry).

Your latest book purchase:

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire. It’s the sequel to Every Heart a Doorway (book clubbed here). I bought it in June and I’m still too scared of the feels to read it.

ZZZ-snatcher book (last book that kept you up WAY late):

‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King. Because it was scary.

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I’m tagging a handful of people I think might like to do the tag, but as always, no worries if you’re busy, and feel free to tag yourself!

• Hit or Miss Books
• Musings from Neville’s Navel
• YA and Wine
• A Book. A Thought.
• Bookishness and Tea