TTT: The Literary Confessional

Photo Credit: Mark S. Abeln

I’m not Roman Catholic, but for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, the folks at The Broke and the Bookish want us to take a seat in the booth and pour out our bookish sins… well, ten of them anyway. I’m not sure I can come up with ten, but we’ll give it a try. Here goes (in no particular order):

Colin D. Smith’s Top Ten Bookish Confessions

1. When I first read TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, I called it “boring.” Okay, so I was fourteen, and I really only read the first page or two. But really, those are not excuses. This is one of the best novels ever written (IMHO), and I should have been given a detention for such a comment!
2. I used to fold page corners to mark my place in a book. Again, this was a crime of youth and I later learned the value of book marks. Nevertheless…
3. There was a period in my life where I eschewed fiction–well nearly all fiction. And not just because I preferred non-fiction, but because of some really stupid, and frankly egotistical reasons that I’ve discussed before, and find truly embarrassing now.
4. As a result of #3, I’m playing catch-up with a lot of fiction I should have read (e.g., I have yet to read most of Shakespeare’s plays, any John Steinbeck, any Tolstoy, most of Jane Austen’s works, most of Dickens’s works, and the list could go on I’m sure).
5. As a result of #4, while I’m probably better read than average, I’m not nearly as well-read as I ought to be.
6. It grates my nerves if I’m collecting a series and the publisher changes the cover design mid series so they no longer match (e.g., the SHATTER ME series, and the ACROSS THE UNIVERSE series). And if I start a series in hardcover, I feel the need to complete the series in hardcover. Likewise, if I start in paperback.
7. I don’t like buying books used that aren’t in nearly new condition. I try to tell myself that it shouldn’t matter–it’s about the words, after all, and as long as it’s legible, who cares? I could probably afford to buy more books if I could convince myself of this.
8. I’m hesitant about reading books in translation (which might account for why I haven’t read any Tolstoy, and only one book by Dostoyevsky). Something’s always lost in translation, and when I read an author, I want to read that author’s words, not his words as interpreted by someone else. I want to be able to appreciate the author’s style, not the translator’s. This is one of the reasons why I learned New Testament Greek and Biblical Hebrew at university, but doesn’t explain why my French isn’t as good as it should be, and I don’t know any Russian, and very little German.
9. I have an iPad, but I don’t read much electronically. I’m still getting used to it. In fact, right now, I’m trying to decide whether to buy a certain book in electronic or paper form. The ebook is much cheaper, but I’m not sure which I’d prefer to read.
10. I rarely ever throw away or give away books. There are books on my shelf that I’ve read once and will probably never read again. But I’d be very reluctant to part with them. The main reason for this is because I’m building a library for my kids, not just for me. But also I just like knowing those books are still there if I should ever need to refer to them.

How about you? Any bookish confessions you want to get off your chest? You can comment here, or join in the blog fun at The Broke and the Bookish–just add your confession to the Linky List.