20 Questions Book Tag

For those of us still in some form of education, welcome back to the school year! (If you need a little encouragement for the new year, check out this old post of mine of 10 Things to Be Grateful for as You Start a New School Year. At the risk of sounding less than humble, there is wise advice offered therein.) If you find once you’ve finished that you still need something to distract yourself from what you should be doing, I’m doing a fun tag today – namely (as you may have guessed from the post title) the 20 Questions Book Tag. I came across it on Once Upon an Ordinary, and Katie offered the tag to anyone who wanted it…and I did, so here goes.

1. How Many Books Is Too Many in a Series?

If it’s a series which isn’t really building up to any climax and in which each story is separate, it really doesn’t matter. If otherwise, however, the author must be persuaded to stop once the climax has been reached. The DragonKeeper Chronicles by Donita K. Paul, for instance, should probably have stopped at four books. The fifth felt a little contrived and like it was tacked on, while the fourth felt very climactic and heartfelt.

2. How Do You Feel About Cliffhangers?

I’m all for them!

3. Hardback or Paperback?

My aesthetic sense says hardcover, but my wallet says paperback.

4. Favorite Book?

Every book-lover knows that it’s impossible to give one definitive answer to this question, but I’ll do my best and say The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis.

5. Least Favorite Book?

Good heavens, I don’t know. There was this really depressing short story by L.M. Montgomery that I remember strongly disliking…it was about this old woman dying in her room while her bored family hung around downstairs, and her reminiscing about her horrible life in which she did horrible things, and then shaking her fist and saying “But at least I lived!” and dying. I don’t remember it’s name, but I’m not exactly recommending it, so I won’t bother trying to find what its name was.

6. Love Triangles? Yes or No?

Either way. What I really love is a love triangle in which the overlooked member of the triangle acts nobly, like Les Misérables or David Copperfield.

7. The Most Recent Book You Couldn’t Finish?

Oh dear, I didn’t mean this to be a bashing-L.M. Montgomery-post, but the truth is that the last book I began and didn’t bother finishing was The Golden Road by L.M. Montgomery. I had read it and quite liked it many years ago, but sadly, there were a couple things that bothered me about it now, and I stopped fifty pages or so in.

8. A Book You’re Currently Reading?

The Hidden Power of Kindness by Lawrence G. Lovasik.

9. The Last Book You Recommended to Someone?

Probably Middlemarch by George Eliot, because I’ve been recommending it to everyone I have the slightest excuse to ever since I finished it in June. (You can now consider it recommended to you too ;))

10. Oldest Book You’ve Read by Publication Date?

Does this refer to when the physical copy I read was published, or the publication of the book itself, no matter the copy? If the first, that might be Fish Preferred by P.G. Wodehouse – we have a first edition copy of it from 1929 (though I’ll probably think of an older book I’ve read the moment I hit the publish button). If the second, I don’t even know…do books that were written before publishing became an industry count? If so (if we’re not counting Scripture), maybe Beowulf. If not…I don’t know.

11. Newest Book You’ve Read by Publication Date?

I shall assume, again, that this refers to when the book as a whole was published, and not the specific edition I read. This would be Holiness for Everyone: The Practical Spirituality of St. Josemaría Escrivá by Eric Sammons, which was published in November of 2022.

12. Favorite author?

Hmm. Not funny.

Again, this is unanswerable, but if you twist my arm I’ll say C.S. Lewis.

13. Buying Books or Borrowing Books?

If borrowing includes library books, definitely borrowing. I usually only buy books if I really, really like them or else if I find them at the thrift store or library sale.

14. A Book You Dislike that Everyone Else Seems to Love?

I don’t know if there’s a book I dislike that everyone else loves, but perhaps the closest would be Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. The eponymous main character annoys me (both Rebecca and Rowena deserved better), I don’t find the book as a whole as interesting as many written in the same era, and the evident distaste for the clergy throughout the story bugged me. I absolutely acknowledge that the issues the author had with the clergy were valid ones and I’m sure he sadly drew these characters from real-life examples, but I don’t think he made enough differentiation between the fact that many men in this office are corrupt from the office itself being bad, or stressed enough that not every clergyman is a horrible hypocrite. And that Annoyed me.

15. Bookmarks or Dogears?

Bookmarks. Dogearing goes against my principles.

16. A Book You Can Always Re-read?

I don’t know if there’s any one book that I could put in this category…P.G. Wodehouse, and especially Jeeves and Wooster, is something of escapist comfort reading for me, so maybe that?

17. Can You Read While Listening to Music?

That depends on how interesting the music is…if the music has words, it makes it a lot harder to focus on what I’m reading, especially if it’s a song I haven’t heard before. And some instrumental/classical music is too interesting to read to, as well. But if the book is engrossing enough or the music is inconspicuous enough, I usually don’t have a problem.

18. One or Multiple Points of View?

Like most things, it depends, but usually one point of view. I think it can be harder (though certainly not impossible) for multiple points of view to be written well.

19. Do You Read a Book in One Sitting or Over Multiple Days?

Almost always over multiple days. I will on occasion get so sucked into my book that I’ll keep reading it for much longer than I should, but it’s been quite a while since I read an entire book all in one sitting.

20. A Book You’ve Read Because of the Cover?

Truth be told, I can’t think of a single book I’ve read solely due to its cover…I guess I’m just a wary reader!

Please don’t be shy to do the 20 Questions Book Tag yourself if you’d like, either in your own post or in the comments! I’d love to see your answers 🙂