Book facts

As long as I'm stuck here at the paper on a Sunday afternoon, waiting for an advertising client to call me back, I might as well respond to my auntie's Book Facts meme. Seven weird, random things about my reading habits.

Only seven? Where to begin?

1. When I grow up, I want to be Harry Turtledove. I've actually started in (barely) on an alternate history novel that at this rate will be finished somewhere around the time the earth crashes into the sun. But ah my foes and oh my friends, the research is fun to do!

2. I have yet to see any part of a Flashman novel that doesn't immediately set my table on a roar. Seriously. I can just pick up the book, turn to a page, and laugh. It doesn't hurt that the author was the most painstaking craftsman of historical fiction ever to draw breath, as well as having a bawdy, curmudgeonly sense of humor. Alas that he had to stop drawing breath last winter.

3. I save my place by dog-earing the page at the bottom. I started doing in grade school that because of a librarian who would skim along the top corner of any book I returned to see if I'd been mistreating it.

4. The only Orson Scott Card book I've ever not enjoyed was Ender's Game. That's the only thing by him that most people have even heard of. Almost everything else he's written, I loved.

5. In high school I discovered Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books and became hooked. I still think they're one of the greatest unknown treasures in sci-fi/fantasy.

6. The only horror author who has ever frightened me is H. P. Lovecraft. The others might as well not even bother.

7. When I re-read How Green was my Valley, the words on the page are in English, but the ones behind my eyes are in Welsh. For a man who didn't actually speak Welsh (at least I don't think so), the author has a perfect feel for the cadences and quirks of the most beautiful language on earth.

I usually don't tag anyone in paticular, but this time I will. Kaci, Ricki and Word Girl, tell us all about it!