Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: If you were to write your own autobiography, what would the title be?

Tangled in Things That Don’t Exist.

That was a line I wrote in a writing exercise I did in college that asked a similar question to this, and it still seems right.  As a storyteller and lover of fiction, I spend a lot of time thinking about things that don’t exist, be they my stories or someone else’s.  A good many of my friendships have been built around a shared passion for things that don’t exist–people, planets, future events, dragons…

I’m also an overthinker, something I came to terms with when I realized most of my novels came from overthinking (what happens to other people asleep in Sleeping Beauty’s castle?  Why did Christine flee to the rooftop to escape the Phantom of the Opera? And so on.)  And I’m a worrier, so, there’s that too.

I sometimes title volumes of my journal, and I title trip photo albums.  Which, so far, are the closest I’ve come to writing an autobiography–and might be the closest I ever do!  Maybe if one of these novels I’m tangled up in takes off as a bestseller… 😉

What would you title your hypothetical autobiography?

Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: What’s the oldest work (by publication date) you’ve read?

I took a Greco-Roman class in college where we read a number of ancient Greek and Roman works.  I can’t name most of them from memory, so let’s give it to Homer (8th to 7th century BC) with The Illiad and The Odyssey.

The Bible is an ancient text I read daily–I’m currently reading the Gospel of John, which dates to around 100 AD, one of the later books.

Setting religious texts into its own category, the oldest author on my shelf I read on a semi-regular basis is probably William Shakespeare (lived 1564 to 1616).  Hamlet (1602) and Much Ado About Nothing (1600) are my favorites.

After Shakespeare, I think it would be Jane Austen, who lived  slightly before Charlotte Bronte.  My favorite Austen is Northanger Abbey (1818), my favorite Bronte Jane Eyre (1847).  And once you’re into the second half of the 1800s, I’ve read lots of books from that time.

Hmm, there’s a big jump in time from Homer to Shakespeare–about 2,300 years!  Makes me feel that I’m actually ignoring most of human history.  Anyone got a recommendation for a good book from around 600? 🙂

Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: Do you read books over 400 pages?

Yes…and that actually feels like a pretty normal length for a book.  I’d guess most books I read fall somewhere between 300 and 450 pages.  A YA book might be shorter, but I read less of those than I did in the past.

500 pages is a longish book which might give me a little pause, 600 pages is long and gives me a definite pause, and 1,000 pages is a LONG book that I need a compelling reason to pick up.  Reading very, very long books feels like a bigger commitment than shorter books–it has to be one I really want to live with for weeks, to the exclusion of others.  But I’ve read a number of books up there in the LONG range, and wouldn’t completely rule a book out because of its length.

Though I do seem to have a block about picking up the very long Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell that I can’t seem to get past…

Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: Do you continue with a book even though you aren’t liking it?

Mostly yes, but for a few different reasons.  I think I’ve mostly given up the idea that a book that isn’t good on page 100 might yet turn it around, but still I keep reading most of the times.  Sometimes it’s a commitment for some special reason–there were a lot of not great Newbery Medal winners, and I’ve finished some book club picks mostly so I could talk about them (and be decently informed if I wanted to argue why they were terrible).

Some books that go darker than I want to read I’ll finish anyway, because that actually gives them less power…it’s like I can close the book in my head that way.  That said, I have started dropping books occasionally if I can tell they’re heading a direction I don’t want to read.  I recently stopped one where a girl was being sexually exploited by her boyfriend, and while she hadn’t been badly hurt yet, I felt very, very sure it was coming, and so I stopped reading before we got there.

Some books I stop because they make me angry.  I’ve never got over the Abandon trilogy, so perhaps I should have finished that one and closed the book, as noted above!  It’s hard to get to that point of disgust with a book though, and most I stay with.

The biggest reason I’ve stopped books is when I realize I just don’t care–if there’s no compelling reason to keep going, like a challenge goal.  But barring that, if I realize 60 or 100 pages in that I’m not emotionally invested at all?  Not worth continuing.

But none of the reasons for quitting come up very often.  I probably don’t quit more than 1 or 2 books a year, so that’s something like 1% of the books I read.  Most are a lot better than that–or at least good enough to see through.

Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: Which author would you most like to interview, and why?

Limiting myself to living authors…I’d like to interview Brene Brown, whose work on vulnerability has been amazing and life-changing…though I’m a little afraid I’d inadvertently try to turn it into a therapy session, wanting her insights on everything in my life!

I’d also like to interview Catherynne Valente, partially because I love her Fairyland series so much, and partially to see if I could somehow (discreetly, politely) puzzle out the question of why that series is SO DIFFERENT from the rest of her books.

I’d love to interview Geraldine McCaughrean, who wrote the wonderful White Darkness, and wrote me a wonderful letter back when I wrote to her about it.  So I think she’d be just lovely to meet.

Do you have an author you’d like to interview?  Purely because they’re awesome, or do you have questions you really want answered?