I stole this from Reed, who stole it from Charlotte…
1. Do you remember learning to read? How old were you?
No, I don’t remember learning to read, but then again I don’t remember much about my early childhood. I think I vaguely remember my mum reading stories to me at bedtime and I remember that at my second primary school the reading scheme was based on characters called Johnny Red Hat and Billy Blue Hat and some other people wearing coloured hats, possibly.
2. What do you find most challenging to read?
I must admit that I am still intimidated by very long books. I find it harder to motivate myself to read them, for some reason, whether or not the language is particularly difficult. Books that I haven’t chosen to read, such as recommended reading for a course or books that have been on the 800s trolley that I would never have chosen to read otherwise.
3. What are your library habits?
I work in one! I occasionally borrow books from libraries other than the one that I work in, but mainly I borrow books from the Library of Doom. It’s convenient, what can I say? I am not a very good borrower and often incur fines, which I pay. Sometimes. My classic moment as a Bad Borrower was when I borrowed a book on How To Improve Your Memory and forgot to take it back!
4. Have your library habits changed since you were younger?
Yes, I suppose so, especially in that I didn’t work in one when I was younger! My mum made sure that both I and my brother became members of our local library as soon as we were old enough to do so, so we used to borrow books regularly, as far as I can recall. We used to take part in the summer reading schemes at the library. I remember one that was to do with the Aztecs, which I found quite exciting at the time!
5. How has blogging changed your reading life?
Well, I suppose once I told people about reading things on the 800s trolley I committed myself to that, so blogging has changed my reading habits in that way.
6. What percentage of your books do you get from new book stores, second hand book stores, the library, online exchange sites, online retailers, other?
Oh, dear, a maths question. Erm…New book stores, 25%, second hand book stores, 10%, the library 80%, online exchange, 0%, online retailers, 30%. Oops, that adds up to more than 100% doesn’t it? Well, you get the idea and I’m too tired to work it out properly.
7. How often do you read a book and not review it on your blog? What are your reasons for not blogging about a book?
Quite a lot.
I don’t always have very much to say about a book I’ve read and even if I do I find it difficult to express my opinions in a way that means that other people will actually understand what I’m trying to say. I’m not very good at giving my opinion about anything like that (films, books, music), really. If you ask me about something and I liked it I’ll usually say it was good. This could mean anything from ‘I thought it was wonderful’ to ‘I thought it was OK’. Not very helpful, I’m sure you’ll agree. In some ways, I find it easier to say why I didn’t like something, but I don’t really like to talk about things I don’t like in my blog because I think I whinge about things too much anyway and I’m afraid of hurting other people’s feelings. Yes, I am oversensitive. Or something.
8. What are your pet peeves about the way people treat books?
Leaving them face down and open is a very bad thing to do. Sometimes I can almost hear the poor book squealing with pain as its spine breaks. Sticking things inside them that should never go anywhere near a book is also a cardinal sin. Bending down the corners, writing in them (although I did this to a great extent during my A Levels), I could go on…
9. Do you ever read for pleasure at work?
In my first library job I did. It was a lovely, quiet, graduate library, a librarian’s heaven. I (and the other library assistants) used to read at the issue desk. We were eventually discovered and given some work to do, but never mind. Now I do not read for pleasure at work unless during my lunch hour or before 9.00am.
10. When you give people books as gifts, how do you decide what to give them?
I think that I somehow feel that, as a librarian, it is my duty to buy people books. This could be seen as a contradiction, I suppose, but I’m too tired to go into that now. Anyway, I buy people books quite often. Sometimes it’s because I don’t know what else to buy them, but even if this is the case I always take care to buy them a book that I think they will enjoy.
In order to decide on the book, I will consider other books I know they have read it the past and see if I can find any similar offerings. I might try and find out which books that do and don’t already have. Sometimes I buy people books that I think they should read, and just hope that they like them, which might be a bit selfish of me. At other times, when I’ve just read a book and really loved it I feel the need to share it with someone immediately, so I will give it away to someone else. Sometimes I give people books that remind me of them or of some shared experience.
It does depend a lot on the person. There’s obviously no point in buying someone a book that I know they would never read, even if I think it’s worth reading. For example, I would never buy my dad a fiction book. He claims to have only ever read one fiction book in his life, King Solomon’s Mines, which he had to read at school. However, he would enjoy a non-fiction book about trains, ships or film-making.
Mum, on the other hand, will devour anything in a book jacket, within reason. She is open to trying new authors and new subjects, but I will still try to buy her books whose subjects fall within her favourite categories of reading matter.
Erm…have I gone on too long? Better stop now. I suppose the short answer to question 10 is: it varies.
