Books: My reading habits, likes & dislikes
Thursday, 26 October 2006 @ 11:58pm by Kathleen
Questions from Booking Through Thursday’s October meme entries.
26 Oct: Do you make notes in books as you read them? Why or why not? If you do, do you make notes only in certain kinds of books or all of them?
Yes, sometimes. Only in pencil and only in books I own. Usually only if the book is not new though - for this reason I much prefer pre-owned/second-hand books to new ones. Yes, I’m odd like that. I make notes in books for my academic course books.
12 Oct: Do you read in bed? For how long? Do you fall asleep reading? Will a good book keep you up all night? Where do you keep your night time reading? Do you have a special table next to the bed? Are there many books there? Do you keep books there that you aren’t reading (finished or unread)?
I do sometimes read in bed, but I tend to fall asleep as soon as I’m tired. (I got in to the habit of talking until I fell asleep and now my body seems to just switch off when it needs to, quite a nifty trick).
I used to read a lot more in bed and would sometimes stay up all night reading. o_O
I keep my night time reading on my bed - I have a double bed, over half of which is covered with stuff. I have tonnes of stuff on my bed, including books I’m not reading.
5 Oct: Do you read short stories? Why or why not? What do you like and dislike about short stories?
I do sometimes read short stories, usually collections. I love stories that are perfectly self-contained. I dislike it when I get to the end of a short story and want to carry on reading. Another thing I like is when the story’s bad, but it’s over soon or you have no chance to get heavily invested in the book and thus can easily abandon it.
So, what are your reading habits?
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>Do you make notes in books as you read them? Why or why not? If you do,
> do you make notes only in certain kinds of books or all of them?
No, I don’t. I just *can’t* bring myself to do that, defacing books in my mam’s house was a terrible crime. Plus, my ego requires me to believe that I can remember any salient points I would make. That’s not true, of course, but that’s ego for you.
>Do you read in bed? For how long? Do you fall asleep reading? Will a good
> book keep you up all night? Where do you keep your night time reading?
> Do you have a special table next to the bed? Are there many books there?
> Do you keep books there that you aren’t reading (finished or unread)?
Yes; usually for a couple of hours each night. I always fall asleep reading, unless I’m talking. Good books can keep me up until I finish them. I have all my books in my bedroom, a lot of which are on the chest of drawers next to my bed. I have a stack of to-be-read books nearest my bed. The chest is very, very full, and there are many boxes of books all around my room.
>Do you read short stories? Why or why not? What do you like and dislike
> about short stories?
I read everything. I almost always want to read more too, so like you, I prefer self-contained stories. Being quite a fast reader, I do tend to prefer longer stories; the tendency to ‘just finish this one’ is less, and I prefer greater characterisation as a general rule.
I also have to read books in the order in which I’ve bought them (very rare exceptions — I think maybe once?) and I not only cannot stop reading a book once I’ve started, even if it’s not a good book or an actively bad book, but I also have to continue to read the rest of the series if I have already bought them. I shudder to think what would happen if I read the first of the Wheel of Time books and didn’t like it; there’re so many volumes in that, it would cost me a fortune…