Reading habits

Just for fun! Hat tip to Emma at Digitalist for bringing this meme to my attention:

Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?

I don’t generally snack while reading – there’s nothing worse than getting crumbs in your book!

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?

I will occasionally make margin notes on books I’m reading for my studies. Only if they’re copies I own though (I hate getting out library books that someone has scribbled all over) and only in pencil – no highlighters!

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?

Bookmark. My sister always leaves books flat open, face down, which is the reason I don’t lend her my books any more – doesn’t she realise it destroys them?? I have a couple of bookmarks I use, both of which were presents. If I don’t have a bookmark to hand I’ll use whatever I can find, like a receipt or a piece of scrap paper.

Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?

Both, but more fiction. Partly because I can read fiction faster – it takes me a long time to get through a non-fiction book.

Hard copy or audiobooks?

Hard copy. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to an audiobook.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?

I will avoid stopping halfway through a chapter at any cost!

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?

Only if what I’ve just read really doesn’t make sense without knowing that one word. I find you can usually figure these things out from the context, but I will look up a word I don’t know if I particularly like the shape of it.

What are you currently reading?

“Smoke and Mirrors“, a collection of short stories by Neil Gaiman; and “Here Comes Everybody” by Clay Shirky, which I’ve almost finished.

What is the last book you bought?

“Their eyes were watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston. Impulse buy – I found myself in a bookshop last weekend, and decided I should look at books I’d never heard of. I have a tendency when browsing to pick up books where I already know of the book, or have read other books by the same author, which probably leads me to read a lot of the same type of thing. This was the first book I picked up where the title and the author meant nothing to me, and looked like a good read.

Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time?

I can’t read more than one fiction at a time, but recently I’ve been having one fiction and one non-fiction book on the go at the same time. I tend to read the fiction when I’m at home, and the non-fiction when I’m on the tube on the way to and from work.

Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read?

On the tube, as I mentioned above – anything beats the Metro! Also before I go to bed. I tend to read in bed when I’m at home.

Do you prefer series books or stand alone books?

No real preference – I do have a few series I’ve got really into, and when I’ve started on a good series I like to read them all, but I enjoy stand alone works too.

Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?

Probably Margaret Atwood – I find it difficult to name a favourite author (and impossible to name a favourite book) but she’s certainly among my favourites. I actually recommended one of her books to a guy in a bookshop who came and asked me what he should get his (female) friend for her birthday a couple of weeks ago – he said he didn’t know what women liked to read! I asked him if he knew what other books she liked and he said Dan Brown… I was tempted to suggest he just close his eyes, spin in a circle and then buy the first book he put his hands on, as she obviously wasn’t very discriminating, but I decided I’d try and get the poor deprived girl a decent book instead. I recommended Oryx and Crake.

How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?)

Fiction is by genre and then author – it goes general fiction, sci fi and fantasy, graphic novels, mystery/crime, horror, young adult (they’re pretty loose categories though). Non-fiction is by subject – very loosely based on the main Dewey categories, but modified to be more useful to me.

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