Ian Daniel Stewart

My first blog meme, via Classical Bookworm. I guess I’m an official blogger now…

Hardback or trade paperback or mass market paperback?
Whatever I can get. I prefer the trade paperback, though. It’s easier to handle.

Amazon or brick and mortar?
Definitely brick and mortar – with a sign that says used or bargain out front.

Barnes & Noble or Borders?
Not where I’m from, eh.

Bookmark or dogear?
Dogear the good stuff for future civilizations, use a bookmark for my general use.

Alphabetize by author or alphabetize by title or random?
By author in theory, random in practice.

Keep, throw away, or sell?
Keep, God help me, keep.

Keep dustjacket or toss it?
What? Keep.

Read with dustjacket or remove it?
Read with. It makes sense to remove it and I do with my son’s books, but not with my own. Weird. I think I do it for looks. As if someone’s going to come in and say,”My! look at that handsomely designed volume Ian’s reading. What taste he has!”

Short story or novel?
Novel. Short story. Novella. Screenplay. Stageplay. Magazine article. Whatever. Does it have words? I’m reading it.

Collection (short stories by same author) or anthology (short stories by different authors)?
Anthologies usually win at Upper Fort Stewart. Preferably old ones.

Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket?
Who?

Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks?
I always try for the chapter break but rarely make it.

“It was a dark and stormy night” or “Once upon a time”?
Once upon a time.

Buy or Borrow?
Buy.

New or used?
Used.

Buying choice: book reviews, recommendation or browse?
Insanely embarrassing research.

Tidy ending or cliffhanger?
Tidy ending with a bit of a bump.

Morning reading, afternoon reading or nighttime reading?
I only read on days ending in “Y”.

Standalone or series?
Good grief. Standalone. Who has the time? [looks anxiously at The Stack] Um, both.

Favorite series?
Fantastic Four. What? It’s kind of a book.

Favorite book of which nobody else has heard?
Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann

Favorite books read last year?
See above.

Favorite books of all time?
What should I say today? For some reason I always end up rereading a terrible collection of essays by Vonnegut called Fates Worse than Death. The sheer number of times I’ve read it must mean it’s my favorite, right? What else? Heinlein’s Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, Moses’ Genesis, Sun Tzu’s Art of War, Homer’s Odyssey, Wallace’s Infinite Jest, etc.

Huh, I did alright with this Either-Or thing. Surprising. Now what?