Meme!

When I first started blogging I was quite unaware of the meme phenomenon on the internet. This is not quite the same as the idea of a meme as coined by Richard Dawkins in that it is something that is almost naturally picked up by everyone, for instance - a catchy tune that everyone picks up from the last person that hummed it!

But anyway, the meme thing on the internet is different, particularly in connection with blogging. Here it starts with someone listing, say, their five favourite animals and then asking five people to list their favourite animals and listing (or linking to) on the original blog that started it all. Some people just open it up to anyone who reads the blog, others ask certain people.

Of course, the memes themselves have grown into something a bit more complex in that some people are asking questions and then sending those questions out into the ether! I think that is it a good way of getting to dig a bit deeper into just who the person behind the blog is!

There are so many memes out there that I think that I will start doing a monthly meme, I will find one I fancy and then jump on the bandwagon!! If nothing else, it will probably fill a gap where I think that I have done absolutely nothing and therefore have absolutely nothing to say!!

This month's meme I found at Melody's Reading Corner and it's all about reading! So, here goes - it is probably going to make this the longest post I have done so far!!

1. Do you remember learning to read? How old were you? I don't actually remember NOT reading! I must have been taught somewhen, but either my early memory is a bit holey or I am just so very much a reader that "not reading" just does not occur to me!!

2. What do you find most challenging to read? I would love to read the classics, but just do not find them at all appealing. I keep thinking that my reading should be a bit more erudite, but give me a novel any day!

3. What are your library habits? It comes and goes, I can go for months without visiting the public library (I would started to say "library" - but that would mean that I don't go to work!! ha ha!) and then I suddenly decide to go to the library and usually end up getting about eight books out at any one time and then eventually get to a point when the stock in the library no longer appeals (it boggles the mind that some days I seem incapable of finding anything to read in a room FULL of books!).

4. Have your library habits changed since you were younger? I don't think so....I remember visiting the library as a child and getting lots of books out, as a teenager it wasn't quite so important, like I said above - it comes and goes!

5. How has blogging changed your reading life? It didn't at first, but the more I blog and the more I search out other blogs, the more I get ideas for reading - just today I joined the "From the Stacks" challenge (see post below!). I have also come across other blogs like Melody's Reading Corner and BooksPlease that give me lots of ideas and impetus to read books that I would not normally read. So, I am hoping that blogging will continue to change my reading life!

6. What percentage of your books do you get from: new book stores, second hand book stores, the library, online exchange sites, online retailers, other? Heck what a question, do you want precise percentages?! ;-) As much as my bank manager would rather not know - I buy most of my books from new book stores (70%) , but I also use charity shops a lot (10%), the library (10%), online retailers (5%) and other (5%) and I have to say that those figures are totally guesstimates, so....shrugs!? I never use online exchange sites - I do have a membership (somewhere) of BookCrossing, but I just can't bring myself to abandon a book of mine! Even when it comes to charity shops, I only tend to give back what I originally bought from there!

7. How often do you read a book and NOT review it in your blog? What are your reasons for not blogging about books? ALWAYS - I never write reviews, if only because it has not occurred to me to do so! If I think about it, what would I say? I have never reviewed a fiction book (have reviewed a couple of non-fiction for my professional journal) and am not quite sure how I'd go about it!

8. What are your pet peeves about ways people abuse books? Dogearing pages? Reading in the bath? I am afraid that I do all of the above (have yet to drop a book in the bath though!) I am terrible - will even crack the spine in order to hold the book and read into the corners, will leave the book facedown! So, I don't think that I can really get snooty about what other people do! I am off the opinion that if they are your books than you can do what you like, however, working in a library as I do, it does annoy me when I find that people have written inside books, particularly when they have filled in answers to revision books!! As we are a lending library, other people need the benefit of those books too!!

9. Do you ever read for pleasure at work? Yes, at lunch time, if, on the rare occasions, I forget to bring a book, I get twitchy and have to go and buy a magazine (the books in my library are not exactly for pleasure!) as I just cannot not have something to read!

10. When you give people books as gifts, how do you decide what to give them? Now that I think about it, I rarely give fiction for gifts, but will often give non-fiction according to what they are interested in. I think that part of the pleasure of reading is choosing what to read, so giving a book seems to me to take some of that away.

So, there you go - ten questions on reading!! And if you would like to do these questions yourself - duly consider yourself tagged and go and do the questions, but do let me know about them so that I can see what your answers are!!