In which our intrepid adventuress succumbs to a meme, and backpedaling ensues

I've sort of held my nose at the thought of memes. First off, I'm never sure how it's pronounced. Then, there's the fact that I don't know that I really get what they are. They're viral, that I get. And they're usually uninteresting. I don't care which Care Bear you are, or the reason why you prefer Burger King to Wendy's, or any of the other really insipidly awful questions that get asked in those things. Mostly, though, when I've come across the word outside of an internet setting, it's in some fancy-pants grad school paper, and the person is trying to sound like he's worth all the money he's spent on his education.

And yet, here I am, about to participate in a meme. Because I'm a hypocrite. And I have no moral code other than, if someone cool asks me to do something, I'll do it.

That someone cool is Doppleganger: a woman who represents all that's right with the world, coupled with the silkiest elbows known to humankind. I think the world of Doppleganger; she's a reader among readers. And since the meme she tagged me with is book related, I don't feel like a total sell-out. I mean, I am a total sell-out; I just don't feel it.

So, here are the questions:

1) Name five of your favourite books.
2) What was the last book you bought?
3) What was the last book you read?
4) List five books that have been particularly meaningful to you (in no particular order).
5) Name three books you've been dying to read but just haven't gotten around to it?
6) Tag five people and have them fill this quiz out on their own.

And here are my answers:

1) Name five of your favourite books.

First off, this is how it must be: Are you from Britain? Canada? Somewhere European? Then that "u" in "favourite" is fine. Are you from Ohio? Denver? Never been out of the United States? Than that "u" in "favourite" is pretentious. It's also pretentious in the words "colour" and "neighbour." Also, it's g-r-a-y. Not g-r-e-y. Unless, again, you have a European exception. In this case, since Doppleganger is Canadian, all she does linguistically with her extra u's is fine and good and natural and the way God intended. The rest of you, though? Totally on notice.

Moving on.

My five favorite books, in no particular order:

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy -- First off, yeah: it makes me sound like a pretentious, over-read asshat. I get that. But that's not my fault. The book, because it's Russian and eleventy-million pages long, has received this bad rep as some kind of behemoth that cannot be tackled.

They're wrong.

You can totally read and finish this book.

War and Peace will break your heart and kick your ass and make you gasp and make you cry. It's one of those flannel-and-couch-time books where you'll sit down to read and 3 hours will fly by. You'll accidentally learn things about Napoleon and Russia. You'll see why Tolstoy kicks Dostoevsky's ass every. single. time. But only read the Constance Garnett translation. The Maude sucks.

Villette by Charlotte Brontë -- Lucy Snowe knows what loneliness is all about. By the time you get to the end of this book, you will too.

Once upon a time, Fametracker had some message boards that almost became my entire reason for visiting the Internet. Someone in one of the reading threads mentioned Villette, and how odd it was, and how they couldn't reconcile the end with the beginning. Since I'd only read Charlotte's Jane Eyre at that point, I figured I'd give Villette a try and see if I could figure out the answer to that beginning/ending question. And I hated it. "Fuck you, Charlotte Brontë," I remember muttering. "I'm too old for this shit."

I don't know why, after muttering obscenities at Charlotte, I found myself picking the novel back up and reading it again. And maybe I was having a low blood-sugar day the day I flung the book aside all "never again!"-ly because that second (and third, and fourth) time through I absolutely loved it. I don't have a clear reason why it's on this Top 5 list over other books. All I know is that if I think about scenarios where I never get to read Villette again, I get real sad in my reading places.

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen -- I am madly in love with Mary Crawford. I also think that, out of all the Austen, this is the one that gives the reader the most to do. There are characters, like Fanny Price, that make the reading uncomfortable sometimes. And yet, there you are, rooting for her a little, and feeling a little hit in the stomach every time she's taken advantage of again and again. I think of Mansfield Park as a companion piece with Villette; and if my world of delicious ever comes true and I'm in a position to teach students about books, I'd probably assign them together. Lucy Snowe and Fanny Price are mirror girls.

The Annotated Alice by Lewis Carroll -- This was, and has continued to be, my favorite kids' book. I read it for the first time when I was 10-years-old, and I remember laughing until I (literally) peed in my pants a little at the scene where Alice is imagining walking arm in arm with her cat Dinah, and Alice asks her, "Now, Dinah, tell me the truth: did you ever eat a bat?"

Lewis Carroll wrote for children, but not in the way an adult would write to please a child. I think he'd find that too condescending and intentional. And I think that's why the book still works for me now, and why I'll always champion it over the Harry Potters and Lemony Snicketts of the world. They just don't hold a candle as far as I am concerned.

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins -- On dark and stormy nights, when I want to feel delicious chills down my back, and when I really want to root for a hero (especially if that hero is a woman hiding on a roof in a silk dressing gown in the rain), and when I want my villains both seductive and evil -- this is the book I return to again and again. I've lost count of how many times I've read it.

2) What was the last book you bought?

I haven't. We're almost three months into Mike Buys No More Books in 2006, and it's hard I've gotta tell you. I have to think of books as dirty whores when I pass by book stores. I almost broke my rule and purchased this edition of The Forsyte Saga -- a book I already owned just because I like that cover a whole let better than the edition I was reading.

Hence, my resolution to not buy any more books this year until I'd read a good chunk of the books I've already bought and not read.

My final book purchases of 2005, though, were beautiful hardbound editions of both Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of OZ.

3) What was the last book you read?

The Forsyte Saga. And you should, too. It's everything I love in a novel. In fact, if I had to do my Top 5 over again, I'd try to squeeze in The Forsyte Saga.

4) List 5 books that have been particularly meaningful to you.

Hm. This almost seems a repeat of question 1, no? Or maybe this is where I can throw in things like The Forsyte Saga and other books that didn't make the list?

Maia by Richard Adams -- I was in the 6th grade, and I loved any book that was huge. I also wanted to be any profession that had a long name, like "archeologist" or "entomologist" or "sanitation engineer." So, I've checked out Maia from the adult section of the library because I had read, loved, and cried my eyes out over Watership Down and figured that every book by Richard Adams would have talking rabbits.

This one didn't.

The only scene that stands out is when Maia's stepfather makes her reach in his pocket for a piece of sweetmeat, and then the whole thing goes horribly literal and there's some icky rape stuff that happens. I stopped reading it, but continued to carry it around with me because it was hella thick and I wanted people to think I was smart. And apparently it worked, because not long after I began lugging Maia about with me I was moved from the regular reading class to the advanced reading class. "Must be because this book is so thick," I remember thinking. And advanced reading was so much better than regular reading because there weren't many of us in the class, and we got to read cool things like "Jabberwocky" and The Little Prince, and the reading teacher was young and crazy and told us this story once about how a black man had proposed to her in a park -- she told this story because she had tried to act it out for us in a game of charades we were playing, only none of us ever guessed, "Oh! It's that time a black man proposed to you in a park, but you had to say no!" Miss Onjuka? If you ever read this: What the fuck?

Later, as an adult, I realized that it wasn't the fact that I carried around Maia that got me into advanced reading. It was the aptitude test we'd taken the month prior. This might explain why I never advanced very far in math or science.

Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford -- This book was meaningful because I read it when I was 13. I haven't written much of anything at all here about my mom. There's a reason for that. This book helped me realize, though, that no matter how bad I had it, there was another boy out there named Michael who got strapped to his bed every night. Things could always be worse.

Everything you always wanted to know about sex* -- (*but were afraid to ask) by David Reuben, M.D. -- This book taught me, at a very young age, that male homosexuals had sex in department store and gas station restrooms, and that they'd do this by touching each other's shoes with their shoes. I've never been able to pee comfortably in a gas station or a department store restroom since.

The Happy Hooker: My Own Story by Xaviera Hollander -- My mom owned a second-hand store, and books like this were all over the place. This book taught me that we could never have a German Shepherd or a pool -- especially at the same time. I really can't say much more.

5) Name three books you've been dying to read but just haven't gotten around to it?

Doppleganger's answer to this was much better. I'd love for there to be a set of Lost Novels by Jane Austen. I'd also not mind it at all if there were some more sagas involving the Forsytes. But I'll treat this one seriously.

1) A good vampire novel.

2) Clarissa: Or, The History of a Young Lady, because of the glowing review Doppleganger gave it once upon a time.

3) Something like Focault's Pendulum and The Club Dumas that isn't the goddamned Da Vinci Code.

6) Tag five people and have them fill this quiz out on their own.

This isn't a command. I'd totally understand if they didn't. But here's who I'd like to see answer this:

uncle cliffy
amanda mary
desideratum
jenfu
josephnotjoe