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sereneIt's short, but not very fluffy. I'll put my answers in a comment so that you can cut and paste this if you want to use it for your own answers:
1. Describe the first (or an early) phrase/idiom you remember figuring out the meaning to.
2. What is the first thing you remember reading for pleasure?
3. (Especially for
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porcinea) Do you consider yourself "a reader"? If not, how would you describe your relationship to books and literature at the current time?4. What's the book (story/play/whatever) you've re-read the most often? What is it about that piece of literature that excites you the most?
5. If you suddenly woke up tomorrow with the writing talent and motivation to write anything you put your hand to, what kind of work would you start churning out?
6. Tell about the person in your life, if any, who most influenced your feelings about language and reading.
7. What are you reading right now? And do you recommend it/them?
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no subject
Date: 2003-01-31 09:31 am (UTC)There are two I can think of. One is when my mom's friend was washing my hair and I told her that I usually started rinsing at the bottom (I was around twelve years old), and she told me "That defeats the purpose" and suddenly I knew what that meant. The other time is when I read the phrase "cafe au lait" in a book and realized that what I had been hearing as "cafe olé" was really this French thing.
2. What is the first thing you remember reading for pleasure?
The Childcraft Encyclopedia, chiefly the fairy tales and the Make & Do craft volume.
3. (Especially for porcinea) Do you consider yourself "a reader"? If not, how would you describe your relationship to books and literature at the current time?
I am a lapsed reader. I used to read a lot more before I found Usenet. Now I converse a lot in text, but I don't think of that as the same thing.
4. What's the book (story/play/whatever) you've re-read the most often? What is it about that piece of literature that excites you the most?
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It's got this simple language, and yet I feel every time I read it as though I'm skating the edge of my ability to understand the precepts he's talking about. I really love the feeling of being at my limit of understanding, and trying really hard to push past that border.
5. If you suddenly woke up tomorrow with the writing talent and motivation to write anything you put your hand to, what kind of work would you start churning out?
A piece of literary fiction that examines gender and sexuality and family.
6. Tell about the person in your life, if any, who most influenced your feelings about language and reading.
My parents *always* read. We sat around in the evenings reading, and my mother had books in my hands before I could talk, much less read. I taught myself to read, she says, because she was too busy with my younger siblings to read to me as much as I wanted.
7. What are you reading right now? And do you recommend it/them?
I'm reading Geek Love and Ecstasia, neither of which I'm far enough into to decide whether or not I would recommend them.
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Date: 2003-01-31 09:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-31 09:39 am (UTC)*smooch*
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Date: 2003-01-31 12:19 pm (UTC)although if it's the book i think it is, i read it in 1996 or thereabouts, so maybe i don't.
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Date: 2003-01-31 12:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-31 12:26 pm (UTC)maybe i should reread it if i'm going to try to have an intelligent conversation about it. otoh, do i really want to set a precedent by having an intelligent conversation? won't you want one every time if i engage in one?
btw, congrats on your earworm giving. i'm so proud!
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Date: 2003-01-31 10:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-31 10:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-31 06:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-02-02 06:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-02-02 10:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-31 10:27 am (UTC)I don't remember any early ones. I remember in high school being embarrassed when I wrote "for all intensive purposes" in an essay and was corrected "for all intents and purposes." (I still think my version works.)
2. What is the first thing you remember reading for pleasure?
Goodnight Moon, Winnie the Pooh
3. (Especially for porcinea) Do you consider yourself "a reader"? If not, how would you describe your relationship to books and literature at the current time?
I tend not to describe myself that way ("I am a [verb]er"); I tend to describe what I do, rather than what I am. I read a fair number of books. Currently I'm reading my way through all the Hugo and Nebula award winners (except for Heinlein, whom I've already decided I don't care for reading). I also listen to books on tape in my car, and I consider that equivalent to reading, but some books work better on tape and some books work better in print. I used to read a lot more nonfiction than fiction and was slightly afraid of reading fiction at times. I think because it made me feel things I didn't want to feel.
4. What's the book (story/play/whatever) you've re-read the most often? What is it about that piece of literature that excites you the most?
I don't know which I read "the most" often, but some of the candidates are Kipling's The Jungle Book (though I haven't read that since I was a kid), Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and (on tape) John Le Carre's The Night Manager. The last excites me because it is a complexly told story about the redemptive power of romantic love, and it's read by my favorite reader, David Case.
5. If you suddenly woke up tomorrow with the writing talent and motivation to write anything you put your hand to, what kind of work would you start churning out?
Complexly told stories about the redemptive power of romantic love, I expect. :-)
6. Tell about the person in your life, if any, who most influenced your feelings about language and reading.
Probably my father. He loves language and reading, he read aloud to me endlessly when I was a kid. He taught me my enjoyment of language as sound/music.
7. What are you reading right now? And do you recommend it/them?
I'm reading Jo Walton's The King's Peace, which I recommend; and (on tape) Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, which I'd only recommend to people with a strong interest in hard SF and terraforming who don't mind somewhat inelegant writing.
Good Survey
Date: 2003-01-31 10:27 am (UTC)1. Describe the first (or an early) phrase/idiom you remember figuring out the meaning to.
Figuring out that a clock being "fast" or "slow" really meant that it was ahead or behind, not that it that the hour hand went around in less or more than twelve hours.
2. What is the first thing you remember reading for pleasure?
Time / Life nature and science series.
3. (Especially for porcinea) Do you consider yourself "a reader"? If not, how would you describe your relationship to books and literature at the current time?
Yes and no. I'm lucky to get to a book a month.
4. What's the book (story/play/whatever) you've re-read the most often? What is it about that piece of literature that excites you the most?
The collected works of H.P. Lovecraft. There's a certain mood of defiance in the face of an uncaring and incomprehensible universe that I like.
5. If you suddenly woke up tomorrow with the writing talent and motivation to write anything you put your hand to, what kind of work would you start churning out?
Pop philosophy, to bring atheism and humanism to the masses.
6. Tell about the person in your life, if any, who most influenced your feelings about language and reading.
My maternal grandmother, who made books a priority even though she had very little money.
7. What are you reading right now? And do you recommend it/them?
Mostly my email, but also a book on forging (metal working, not counterfeiting). Not sure yet if I could recommend it.
BTW, now the voices in my head keep chanting "fare-thee-well, fare-thee-well, fare-the-well my faerie-fey". Thanks a lot :P
Re: Good Survey
Date: 2003-01-31 10:41 am (UTC)But it gets ahead or behind (chronically, at least) because it *does* move at the wrong pace, right?
BTW, now the voices in my head keep chanting "fare-thee-well, fare-thee-well, fare-the-well my faerie-fey". Thanks a lot :P
*beam*
Re: Good Survey
Date: 2003-01-31 10:56 am (UTC)That's probably the origin. ( Do you remember pre-quartz clocks that had a speed adjustment screw? ) I think the specific context was something like my grandmother saying that the clock was 4 minutes fast, and I couldn't figure out if it would pick up 4 minutes every hour, ever 12 hours, or every day.
I was pretty young at the time, but it really stuck in my mind because it was the first time I really understood how often phrases take on meanings that don't exactly match the literal meanings of their component words.
Re: Good Survey
Date: 2003-01-31 11:00 am (UTC)Yeah! I have a wind-up alarm clock that has one, too.
I think the specific context was something like my grandmother saying that the clock was 4 minutes fast, and I couldn't figure out if it would pick up 4 minutes every hour, ever 12 hours, or every day
I remember being confused by that, too. I asked you about it because I was afraid I had figured it out wrong. :-)
no subject
Date: 2003-01-31 11:34 am (UTC)Well I dunno about that, but the last one was "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good". See, for years and years I thought that it just meant that the wind was bad and it didn't blow anybody any good. It wasn't till I learnt the Swedish "Inget ont som inte har något gott med sig" that I twigged.
2. What is the first thing you remember reading for pleasure?
Probably Enid Blyton's Noddy books, when I was fourish.
3. Do you consider yourself "a reader"? If not, how would you describe your relationship to books and literature at the current time?
No, I'm not a reader. Not of books, anyway. My relationship to literature is that I'm mostly scared of it, except when I'm reading something that I like, and then I'm in love with it, then after that's over I get disillusioned and can't find anything else to read.
4. What's the book (story/play/whatever) you've re-read the most often? What is it about that piece of literature that excites you the most?
Probably Tove Jansson's Moominland midwinter. It just has layer upon layer of humanity and strangeness and a collection of characters that are all fascinating and likable. And, I suppose, nothing very horrible happens and the world is an interesting place.
5. If you suddenly woke up tomorrow with the writing talent and motivation to write anything you put your hand to, what kind of work would you start churning out?
I'd do the queer immigrant geek novel version of the Asta columns a friend of mine writes. (Hey, look, she's translated one of them into English (http://www.algonet.se/~asta/Arkiv99/spring31maj99.htm)!)
6. Tell about the person in your life, if any, who most influenced your feelings about language and reading.
Reading, well, probably my mum. She has a nice attitude to books. As for language, maybe my late granny, who was a terrible one for playing Scrabble, making jokes, finding out the French for things, reusing old Scots words, that sort of thing.
7. What are you reading right now? And do you recommend it/them?
I'm reading Sara Kadefors's Sandor slash Ida, which for a Swedish youth relationships book is quite a riproaring read. It might well not ever get translated. It's okay - though I really have trouble with all these scenes of ghastly teenage parties and young-adult angst. Nevertheless I'm always impressed with myself when I get through any book with this sort of theme. The book's also supposed to be about a guy and a girl who get to know each other by chatting on the net, but it's quite clear that the author has spent a truly minimal amount of time doing that. So there's another novel waiting to be written there.
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Date: 2003-01-31 12:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-31 12:15 pm (UTC)And Childcraft! My mom had a single-volume 1930s edition, and while I got bored with the crafts pretty quickly, I used to love browsing the human physiology and childhood disease entries.
I was a weird kid. (-:
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Date: 2003-01-31 12:18 pm (UTC)Oh, and this should probably go over in
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Date: 2003-01-31 04:40 pm (UTC)*taking a moment to channel my mother's advice about learning to accept compliments*
Why, thank you very much.
(-:
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Date: 2003-02-02 05:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-02-05 03:27 am (UTC)*SCOWL*
Good meme :)
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Date: 2003-02-05 06:45 am (UTC)Eep!
Good meme :)
*grin* Thanks.
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Date: 2003-02-05 06:49 am (UTC)Eep!
The rest of my office don't thank you either *WEG*!!!