Megan's Book Meme

Megan tagged me, so here goes. :)

1) I don't usually buy books for the cover, but I probably would if I had the $$. A fab cover WILL make me pick a book up, though, and buy it if it sounds interesting. Does that count as buying it for the cover? I always buy books by friends (only I'm getting way too many darned writing friends), and a few auto-buy authors.
2) I don't crack spines. I like my books to stay nice and new looking. Just picky that way. I also don't loan out books much, except to select, trusted bibliophile friends.
3) Ooooh, there's nothing better than bringing home an anticipated new book! I'm dying to buy Phillipa Gregory's new one, "The Constant Princess". And I have Zadie Smith's new one staring at me from across the room. I could just live at Barnes and Noble if they would let me, roaming the aisles at all hours touching nice, new book spines. :)
4) I read one Nora Roberts. I think it was "Born in Fire." Or maybe "Born in Ice." It was okay, but I was never tempted to try another. Same with Suzanne Brockman.
5) I love covers that use real paintings, like the new Susan Carroll books. I hate those Avon clinch covers, with the women in the faux-Regency shiny satin gowns, their bosoms falling out, and the men with their doofus Halloween vampire capes. Eeek.
6) I don't often re-read. It's that whole "so many books, so little time" thing. But I do go back to Jane Austen, or parts of "Jane Eyre" and "Middlemarch". And bits of "Anna Karenina." I've re-read Loretta Chase's "Lord of Scoundrels" once (yes, it's that good), and Laura Kinsale's "For My Lady's Heart." That's about it.
7) I always have at least 2 books going. One in my bag for work breaks, one on my nightstand for bedtime. Sometimes more, depending on what I just picked up at the library. And I always have to plan my travel books carefully. You can't take just one book on a trip, because what if that one sucked? And it has to be good on a flight. I'm a bad flyer, and need distraction (right, Kay-Kay? I doubt she'll ever fly with me again...)
8) I can read and eat cereal at the same time. Does that count?
9) I read (almost) anything and everything. Romance, of course, though not as much as I used to. In high school, I could read 5 or 6 a week. And my parents wondered why my algebra grades were so bad. I read mysteries, non-fiction, literary fiction, a slew of magazines. Not much sci-fi or horror, though.
10) I do love lush, evocative description and world-building (like Kinsale's "Shadowheart") and wish I could do this sort of thing easily myself. And I appreciate dialogue where all the characters speaking actually sound like individual people, and not all the same. And if an author says her characters are "witty", they'd darn well better sound witty.
11) I don't mind kids in books, if they are neccesary to the plot (but not JUST plot contrivances), and if they really behave like children. Elena Greene writes about interesting, realistic child characters, while there is one Regency author who shall remain nameless whose books I had to give up on because her children were so egregiously obnoxious. I really hate contemp. secret baby books, though. And books where the heroine is heavily pregnant. Who really feels "romantic" then???
12) E-books--I read one once. It was a good story. But I guess I'm a Luddite where they are concerned. I like books, the paper, the ink, the covers, snuggling under a throw blanket with one on a cold afternoon.
13) I like the way trade looks--pretty covers (usually), classy-looking size, stuff like that. I hate the price, though, and don't buy many. Would love to have a book out in trade myself, though. Sigh.
14) I used to think I had to finish every book I started. Every. Single. Book. Now I know life is too short and there are too many books in the world.
15) Pet peeves--the aforementioned thing about when an author SAYS her characters are witty/brilliant/braniac, and then they go off and behave like morons at every possible opportunity. "Tortured" heroes who really have no complexity, they are just whiny. "Feisty" heroines who run off and nearly get killed, and must be rescued by the hero 10 times by page 200.
16) I look forward to the huge Friends of the Library booksale every year, even though I already have at least 10 storage tubs full of books in my garage, as well as all the volumes on shelves and piled on the floor. I can't help myself. It's an addiction.
17) The first book I ever read by myself was a story about a princess whose very long hair grew unwieldy. It tripped her, and wound around stuff in the palace, and caught all her servants and even the hairdresser in its curls. Can't remember the title--it had great pen and ink drawings of all those loops of hair. Is it sad that my first experience of literature was about mishaps in hairstyling? Maybe that's why I cut all my hair off. Some of my favorite books after that were the Eloise stories. I drove my mom crazy asking if I could move into the Plaza.
18) I sometimes read the end first.

And now, I tag Kelli.

And I'm going out of town tomorrow for a few days, but will try to post while I'm gone. Happy reading! :)