Borrowed from the internet in general and several people I know, a book meme.

1) What author do you own the most books by?

Dunno; John Ashbery, maybe. Though I stopped buying new books by him after Girls on the Run.

2) What book do you own the most copies of?

Shakespeare, if you count various editions and single play paperbacks from when I taught Renaissance seminars at St. Mary’s.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?

Whatevs, dude.

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?

This is where you expect every woman to say Darcy, right? If we’re being honest, Mister Spock. Or Hamlet. But my first love was really Kermit the frog. I like cerebral guys with green tinges to their skin.

5) What book have you read the most times in your life?

Shakespeare and/or the Bible.

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?

Something by C.S. Lewis, probably.

7) What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?

Beautiful Children by Chales Bock. Insanely overhyped.

8. What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?

Oh gosh, I’m up to 40 odd books this year already and nothing’s blown my socks off.

9) If you could force everyone you know to read one book, what would it be?

As a teacher, I resent the idea that I would force anybody not enrolled in one of my courses to read anything.

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?

Bob Dylan.

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?

I haven’t liked a book-into-film adaptation since Wonder Boys, and that’s the odd case where I liked the film better than the book.

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?

Watchmen... oh, wait.

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.

Seeing as that I barely remember my dreams, this is hard to answer. When I worked at a bookstore hosting a pretty prestigious reading series, I met a lot of famous writers and ended up having nightmares about most of them.

14) What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?

I read shitty trash books on vacation, usually chick lit or fluffy YA. Twilight is probably as terrible as I’ve gotten through.

15) What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?

Foucault, maybe? I did manage to get through Finnegan’s Wake. Difficult fiction is easier for me than difficult literary theory, which is boooorrrrring. That’s why I don’t have a PhD.

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve seen?

Two Noble Kinsmen, Berkeley Shakespeare, 1985 and Henry VIII at Ashland sometime in the 80s. Pericles at Cal Shakes a couple of seasons back. I’m still waiting to see live productions of Titus Andronicus, Timon of Athens and the Henry VI plays, ahem, Cal Shakes. And I’d be curious about seeing the disputed plays, too.

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?

Tolstoy, bitches!

18) Roth or Updike?

Ugh, neither.

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?

Ugh, neither. And why are they paired together? Is the next question going to ask me to choose between Jonathan Franzen, Jonathan Lethem, and Jonathan Safran Foer? (for the record: none of ‘em, Franzen had it and imploded)

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?

SHAKESPEARE

21) Austen or Eliot?

Eliot. Again, why are these two paired? They have nothing in common.

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?

French novelists, probably. I’ve never read Flaubert or Proust. A friend of mine was listening to A la Recherche du Temps Perdu (I do speak and read French, very badly) on audiobook and described it as a child laying in bed waiting for his mommy to come in… for three hours of audiobook time. But I do live the Monty Python All England Summarize Proust competition skit.

23) What is your favorite novel?

I’m rather fond of David Lodge’s Changing Places, if only for the nostalgia factor of a time when UC Berkeley had money and prestige instead of just prestige.

24) Play?

Hamlet and Lear. I never, ever need to see Midsummer, Twelfth Night, or Romeo and Juliet again.

25) Poem?

John Donne’s Holy Sonnets and/or the Shakespeare sonnets and/or John Berryman’s Dream Songs.

26) Essay?

I’m a huge advocate of creative nonfiction, a genre I practice, but I don’t have a favorite essay.

27) Short story?

Something by Richard Brautigan. Probably “1/3 1/3 1/3″.

28) Work of nonfiction?

Thomas Merton’s books, at the moment.

29) Who is your favorite writer?

Har dee har har… now you ask?

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?

Someone mentioned above.

31) What is your desert island book?

Shakespeare, I guess. Though I really don’t like desert islands. Why don’t memes ever ask what you’d read in the Nunavut ice fields?

32) And . . . what are you reading right now?

What Happened at Vatican II, John O’Malley; New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton; Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard; The Winter Sun, Fanny Howe.