I’ve always responded something to the effect of “Shakespeare. And F. Scott Fitzgerald. And Jane Austen. And Haruki Murakami. And Virginia Woolf. And…”

The “favorite author” question always has presented a sort of quandary to me, as I have very specific things I love about many, many authors, but there isn’t just one I would say is “The Best Ever.”

Sure, Shakespeare probably is the best writer to ever have lived. Thousands of scholars and “Best Of” lists throughout history will agree with me on that. But, there are things about Shakespeare that I’m not always fond of, and those dozens of other authors on my list fill those voids.

I think it’s kind of funny how people expect, just because book-lovers read a lot, that we know everything about books and can have a very specific opinion on them. Well, we do, but opinions aren’t always so clear-cut that everyone can choose just one favorite.

As book-lovers, we know how to read well and appreciate the differences amongst different authors. We develop our own sets of likes and dislikes, our own criteria for evaluating “greatness.”

There isn’t just one “great” or “favorite.” And yet, it’s a little difficult to list every single author we consider “great” in casual conversation.

If we are asked our favorite author and proceed to list off three dozen names, many which the listener doesn’t recognize, it’s akin to asking someone how they are and getting a full description of his or her health and well-being.

Does anyone else run into this problem?

There are very few books I have read more than once.

I revisit “The Great Gatsby” once every couple of years just because I love being swept away into the Roaring ’20s. There was a period of time where I read “The Exorcist” at least once a summer. Don’t ask me why, but I just thought it was good break-from-school fare.

Other than that,  I can’t really recall any books I’ve read more than once. Sure, there are plenty I mean to read again, but new ones always displace the old.

Maybe I’m just too afraid that reading something again will break the magic of the first time. I’m not sure what it is, but I want to know what you guys think.

Do you re-read books? Do you not because the second time around can never compare to that first time?

What’s your stance?

I’m still working on Dr. Zhivago, Brideshead Revisited and Uglies. Eek.

This upcoming move, though, has me thinking a lot about my possessions. I love my books, but they are such a huge pain to move, along with all my other stuff.

The last time I moved, from my first apartment to a city 50 miles away, we used a big U-Haul truck for everything and moving took several hours. I’m not sure I want to deal with all of that again, not to mention the fact that my belongings will no longer be the only things in the house. Someone else’s stuff will also be taking up residence.

So, I’ve been considering purging some of my books. I know I can get rid of most of the anthologies I bought while in college “just in case.” I can probably do away with some of the books I only half-liked and probably will never read again. But, when it really comes down to it, I know I won’t give away the vast majority of my books.

To me, a book is like an old friend. You meet that book for the first time, and maybe you love it. Sometimes, you aren’t quite sure, but want to give it a second chance. Occasionally, you downright hate it and can’t stand to see it again.

After reading through that book once, though, I find myself thinking about it. I compare other books to it. I see references all over the place. That makes me want to go back and read that book again. If it’s a book I loved the first time through, I just love it more. If it’s a book about which I was lukewarm, I may grow to love it (this was the case with Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Lord of the Flies and A Tale of Two Cities). Giving that book away would be like turning my back on an old friend. It’s comforting to know that that book, if I should ever want to read it again, is right there, safe and sound, on one of my bookshelves.

Do you have the same problems purging your books?

I stayed away from as many spoilers (Except for the article from Meyer early last week where she reveals that Bella and Edward’s wedding happens early in the novel) as possible and tried to critically think what could possibly happen. Unlike Harry Potter, in my mind, Meyer could have taken the series pretty much any way.

Rachel and I get back to her house around 12:20 a.m. and take up residence on the couch, diving right into the book.

It just felt … different …

Sure, the first book felt pretty much the same as the other three novels, mostly because it was from Bella’s perspective. Bella felt a little different, less obsessive, I guess, but it still felt fairly normal.

Then Jacob took over, and all the weird stuff started happening.

I’m not going to go into detail here because I know I wouldn’t appreciate finding spoilers so soon after the book comes out, but I’ll just say that I feel as if one thing I said to a friend pretty much summed up my reaction to the book.

Um, I was reading through the book (which I like, but not sure if I like it more than Twilight yet), and wondered who had abducted Stephenie Meyer and written it under her name

I knew that, if certain things happened, the tone would change. But, I didn’t expect some of the things that happened.

It all seemed to wrap up a little too neatly, too. Everyone was all happy and alive and the bad guys backed down.

Bo-ring!

But still, it was decent. Not as good, in my mind, as the first three, but still good nonetheless.

What are your thoughts?

However, big news of the week: Breaking Dawn is just a little over 48 hours away!!!!!!

The future sister-in-law and I are heading to Borders and wearing nifty T-shirts we’ve made which say “I’m betting on Alice.”

I don’t know if I’m more, equally or less excited than I was for the Harry Potter releases. Hmm…

It all began Thursday night, when a co-worker and I went to cover the premiere of “The Dark Knight”  for Friday’s paper. We stood around and talked to people who love Batman, and it made my girly, comic book character-loving heart happy. I hoped to stay and see the movie at the midnight showing, but both theaters sold out and I was super-tired.

Fast-forward to Friday night. I was all anxious for the boyfriend to get here in town so we could go see the movie. Sadly, he got stuck in traffic on the way here and we missed both the 7 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. showings. So, 10 p.m. it was.

I’m not going to go into an all-out review of the movie, but this was probably the best superhero movie I’ve seen. Bar-none. And Heath Ledger’s Joker … All I can say is I wouldn’t want that guy to be loose in my city. Yikes.

Saturday, the boyfriend was busy re-wiring his car all day, so I needed something to do. I stole the copy of “Twilight” I had let his sister borrow and spent the afternoon sitting in a camping chair, in the air-conditioned garage (would I have been outside for hours in 90 plus-degree weather and major humidity otherwise?) reading “Twilight” again. I finished the first 400 pages before I decided to go home. Ha!

Yesterday, on my way back home, I stopped in at Barnes & Noble to get some reference books for my new Shakespeare-editing project. I ended up walking out with four books, one of them the “Shakespeare for Idiots” and three different annotated copies of the same play. The sales girl looked at me like I was insane, and I didn’t feel like qualifying my purchases by saying, “I’m working on a project to edit most of Shakespeare’s plays down to about 1 hour and annotate them so high schools and theater companies won’t be so afraid of tackling them,” so I just put up with the weird looks. I tend to get the strange stares in bookstores, anyway, since I normally walk out with several novels, biographies and other pieces of literature from various genres. It’s common for me to purchase Shakespeare, poetry, some really random classics, a modern novel or two and some YPL in the same trip.

Schmeh. At least I’m not a finicky reader!

If the werewolves can imprint, why can’t the vampires? Is this why Edward and Bella are drawn to one another like magnets?

And, the relationships between Carlisle and Esme, Rosalie and Emmett and Jasper and Alice work out far too well to be coincidental. I mean, if Carlisle saw Esme and immediately imprinted, then he’d save her. Same goes for Rosalie with Emmett. She saw him and immediately knew, therefore she dragged him 100 miles to beg Carlisle to change him.

Any thoughts?

Also, I was discussing (well, listening because I had my reporter’s hat on at the time) with some other Twilight readers at a library book discussion the other day Bella’s strange “powers” and how we hope we find out what they are in “Breaking Dawn.” She’s immune to Edward, Jane and Aro’s powers, but not to Alice and Jasper’s powers. Why is that? She also seems to be a supernatural magnet (I mean, how many people would fall in love with BOTH a  vampire AND a werewolf?), so she’s got to be somewhat supernatural herself, right?

According to The Big Read, the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on this list.

The instructions:
Look at the list and:
Bold those you have read.
Italicize those you intend to read
Underline the books you LOVE.

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte *
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. 1984 – George Orwell *
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman *
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens *
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (I did all three because I’ve read and love some but intend to read the rest) *
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier *
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens *
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy *
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams *
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34. Emma – Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis (Isn’t this repetitive?)
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini *
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden *
40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy *
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens *
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell *
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving *
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan *
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52. Dune – Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov *
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas *
66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy *
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary – Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens *
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker *
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce *
76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath *
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile Zola *
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray *
80. Possession – AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert *
86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92.The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery *
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams *
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas *
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

I took this one step further and put an asterisk (*) next to the books I intend to read which are currently sitting on my shelf, mainly because I think it needs to be fully illustrated how deep the book psychosis runs in my brain.

I’m a certifiable book nerd!

I gave up on the Shakespeare biography and picked up “Doctor Zhivago.” I haven’t read a ton of Russian literature in my life (there’s tons on my list which I need to get around to reading), but I’m often struck by the grace with which many Russian authors handle their prose. Pasternak, Chekov and Dostoevsky spring to mind.

I’ve also begun “Brideshead Revisited.” This one’s been on my list for three years, ever since I spent time at Oxford. I decided to pull it off the bottom shelf (long story I still haven’t gotten to about my book organizational system) and begin to read it because the newest film incarnation will be released in a couple of weeks.

What are you reading?