Book List Potpourri

I am alive.

I have been working and eating wild mushroom risotto. Some random book blogging, from here via here:

1. Worst Books Ever, or Five Hours of My Life I'll Never Get Back: no contest, it's this.
2. Books I Have Lied About Reading: I may have strongly implied at some points that I worked my way through more than the first two chapters of Wheelock's Latin. That was false.
   
3. Books I Have Lied About Liking: I may have given this book a better review than it strictly deserved.
   
4. Book-to-Movie Adaptations Where, Frankly, the Movie Was Better: L.A. Confidential. James Ellroy is one of the worst writers working today.
5. Books I Used to Love, of Which I Am Now Ashamed: Re: the preceding question: I should know, as I owned every Anne McCaffrey novel in high school.
6. Best Book Titles of All Time: Love in the Time of Cholera.
   
7. Books That I Expected to Be Dirtier: Pretty much any "controversial" title from the first half of the 20th c. is a let-down.
   
8. My Real Guilty-Pleasure Reads, and Not the Decoys I Talk About Openly: Stephen King.
9. Books You Must Read Before You Die, but Would Rather Die Than Read: Ada.
10. Books I Most Often Try to Persuade Other People to Read: Neal Stephenson's stuff, generally.
11. Authors I Wish Had Written More Books Already: Jane Austen. I'm running out of them, and I'm saving one for when I am old and alone.
12. Overused Plot Points That Drive Me Nuts: A tie between "middle-aged man meets late-teens girl and falls in lust" and "boy of uncertain lineage finds out he is really noble."
13. Books in Which I Liked the Secondary Characters Better Than the Main Character, or Books in Which I Wanted to Beat the Main Character Senseless with a Tire Iron: A House for Mr. Biswas.
14. Books I Lied About Reading and Then Wrote an A+ Term Paper On: Crime & Punishment. I made an A+ book jacket, because in my suburban high school AP English class, that was how we rolled.
15. Literary Characters I've Developed Crushes On: Tyrion Lannister. Severus Snape. Richard III, from The Sunne in Splendor.
16. Books I Only Read to Impress Other People: most of the Nabokov I've read was instrumental to romance. Not that I didn't enjoy it. But see No. 9.
    
17. Books I Read Because the Author Looked Hot: Iron Council. I knew I wouldn't like it as much as Perdido Street Station or The Scar, but . . . .
    
18. Books Which I Read Only for the Sex Scenes: Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel books.
19. Books a Man Has Given Me That Made Me Swear to NEVER Go on Another Date with Him EVER Again: I should have done this with the guy who gave me a copy of "In Defense of Elitism" as a birthday present. But I didn't, because I am an idiot.
    
20. Books That Are Better Read While Travelling and/or Away from Home: Anything from before 1900 is better in a train. Attention spans were longer then, and an enforced lack of competing distractions lends the required focus so such books may be savored.