Friday, August 9, 2013

Bookshelf Scavenger Hunt

This was posted on a forum, so I thought I might post it here to see if anyone else wanted to play along.



1) Name a book you own that is written by someone with a Z in their name
Howard Zinn's A Power No Government Can Suppress.

2) Name the oldest book in your bookshelf
I have a history of German music that dates to the 1880s, written in German. My German-language professor presented our class with a box of books and said "Pick one!".  I chose that one because it was in the old Gothic script.

Oh, and I have several Bibles, including a King James Version translation. That could technically date to the 17th century.

3) Do you have a book that is a diary (real or fictional)? If so name it. 
I have Anne Frank's diary, naturally, but have also held on to a favorite series from middle- and high- school, California Diaries, featuring journals from four teenage authors -- Dawn, Sunny, Maggie, Amalia, and Ducky, all of whom had separate issues, ranging from suicidal friends to alcoholic and abusive parents.

4) Name the fictional book on your shelf which takes part in the earliest time period
That would probably be Roma, by Steven Saylor...which follows one patrician family in Rome, from prehistorical days to the rise of the Empire.

5) The five commonest surnames in the USA are Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown and Jones. Name a book you own that is written by someone with one of these surnames.
Bitterly Divided: the South's Inner Civil War, by David Williams.

6) Name the book that you own that you have read the most times.
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, by Max Shulman.

7) Do you own a book that is written by an author you have a love-hate relationship with? If so, name the author/book.

I own one book by Harry Turtledove, who I can't seem to stop reading despite the fact that I haven't really enjoyed anything I've read by him in recent years. That book is the first I ever read by him, Guns of the South. It has Robert E. Lee on the cover, holding an AK-47.

8) Name an author who you own more than 10 books by. 
I have an entire bookcase, five shelves worth, of nothing but Isaac Asimov. That includes the Robots, Empire, and Foundation books,  numerous essay and short story collections, science and history texts, and a few odd novels like A Whiff of Death.

9) Excluding textbooks, what book on your bookshelves did you pay the most for? 
I don't think any item in my collection was purchased for more than $30, though my Deep Space Nine companion may have been $35 or so.

10) Name the latest book you purchased.
Either The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, or Religion for Atheists, by Alain de Botton.

11) Name a book you own that is set in your state, province, county etc
I don't believe I own any southern fiction. Shame, shame...

12) If your house was on fire and you could only save one book, which book would it be?
Glimpses of World History, Jawaharlal Nehru. I checked ebay and amazon on a regular basis for three years to find a copy of that book that wasn't selling for $80 or more.  I might mention The Complete William Shakespeare, but I keep it in my automobile, so it doesn't exactly apply..

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