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? 🙂