I have been spending some time thinking about Julie's book meme and here is what I have come up with.

Hard cover or paperback?
Both, depending on whether it is a favorite author and I will keep the book forever or if I am buying it and releasing it into the wild.

If you owned a bookshop, what would you call it?
Book. Simple and to the point. Although, I might be too possessive to sell anything and would have to make sure the books were going to good homes.

Favorite quote from a book?
"Anything is possible in this most impossible of all possible worlds" Candide by Voltaire

Author, dead or alive, to have lunch with?
No contest. Isaac Asimov. The man wrote over 800 books, many of them text books. He gave us our images of robots and the future and wrote some terrific sci-fi.

If you were on a deserted island and could take only one book, what would you take?
This was harder but I really liked Amy's idea of an Anthology and Norton's is the only one I have ever heard or or owned. I also would like a blank book to write in.

The smell of books reminds me of....
Old books remind me of my high school library and new books make me excited (or is that too much information?)

If you were a lead character, who would you be?
One of my all time favorite books is And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmeyer. It is a novel about 2 women and their friends in a small town in Ohio. It starts shortly after the civil war and goes for 60 years through their friendships and families . I would be Anne. She is the steadfast, calm, sensible wife who just gets things done. She just quietly goes about her life and does what needs doing without fanfare. She is loving and kind and all those good things. I think I am probably a lot like her already. Me and my quiet anonymous life and I like it like that.

What do you think is the most overrated book of all time?
Ulyssees by James Joyce. I hated it. 'nuff said.

I hate it when a book....
ends too quickly. Not like in a short book but in a book where it sounds like the author said, "hmm, I have 25 pages to wrap this story up and tie in all the details".

So, there are my answers. If you asked me tomorrow, I might have different ones. It was hard to choose favorites because I have been a reader all my life. I read the cereal boxes at the table and my grandmother laughed at that and used to buy me Bobbsey Twins books every time she went out. I have an almost complete set of the originals. I tried to read them to my kids but they don't translate well into the modern world. I am a sucker for Hans Christian Anderson tales because he doesn't have happy endings all the time. Ever read the original Little Mermaid? If not, give it a try. Much more satisfying ending. I read predominately fiction at this point because I figure life is tough all day at work and when I come home, I want to be entertained. The last non-fiction book I read, and I highly recommend it, was Letters to Sam by Dan Gottlieb. Dan is a psychologist who became quadraplegic at age 25 from a car accident. Sam is his grandson who has autism. Dan was afraid Sam would not know him as a person so he wrote a series of letters that are wonderful glimpses into what the world looks like when you are different.

And if anyone is interested, Em's friend got his car unstuck using a backhoe. Luckily for him, he knows someone who works with a backhoe and didn't have to pay for it. Will this stop him from trying to drive through standing water in the future? Nope. Em calls it 'testosterone poisoning' and he has it bad.