Spring Cleaning Book Tag

Holy CRAP, is it already July?!?

Because I’m so well-loved by my followers, y’all, I was fortunate to have not one but two of my friends tag me with this challenge today.  Sophski at Sophia Ismaa Writes and Britchy at Bitchin’ In the Kitchen somehow sensed that I finally have a bit of free time to waste on blogging.  Please reward their prescience by visiting their blogs.  From the bottom of my boundless heart, dears, I thank you for the love!

What is this awesome-sounding new challenge, you ask?  Let me tell you about it!  The rules:  1) Link back to challenge creator Daniel Peralta’s blog at Page to Page. Check out his awesome blog & give him some love, too!  2) Respond to the given scenarios.  3) Tag 5 bloggers (or however many you’d like).

If you’re interested in seeing my fuller thoughts about any of the books below, you can read what I wrote about them on Goodreads by clicking the hyperlinked titles.

Scenario 1:  It’s time to make your bed, but you’re going to have some friends over later and want to pick the perfect book to place on your nightstand for them all to see that you’re “reading”. Which book do you choose?

Any of Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County collections, really.  Not because I care what my friends think about what I’m reading, though, hell, I wouldn’t even let any of my friends into my cluttered bedroom, but because I must have a good laugh to blot out the day’s absurdities before going to sleep with a smile on my face.

Scenario 2:  Oh no! The house needs dusting, but you just can’t put that book you’re reading down! What book would you buy on audio just so you could continue the story while cleaning?

Neil Gaiman’s American Gods because it’s one of my all-time favorite, most unputdownable books, and both the single-narrator and full cast versions of the audiobook are AWESOME!

Scenario 3:  Darn it! The ceiling is leaking! Turns out mass market paperbacks are the best things to soak water up! Which popular book do you use to soak up the water?

I won’t deign to sully my beloved blog with the cover images of the filth-purveyors whose hated names follow.  I can’t list them without crossing them out.  I wouldn’t even spend money on these sick, twisted hacks.  I would go to McKay’s Used Books and expend some of my accumulated store credit to get as many copies of the rags written by Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O’Reilly as I could carry.  If I were to come up with the money to fix the leak before they were all ruined, I’d stack the rest of them up beneath my toilet and save money on toilet paper ’til I’d used them all up.  In my judgment, that’s about all they’re good for.

Scenario 4:  (Speaking of toilets) Bathrooms need a good scrubbing, and your 2007 Cosmos are a little outdated and need replacing. What book do you place in the bathroom for some light reading for when people need to take care of business?

Justin Halpern’s Sh*t My Dad Says because it’s one of the funniest books I’ve read in I don’t know how long, and who doesn’t want a good laugh while they’re pooping?  Seriously, though, on a hilarity scale of 1 to 10, this one’s a 20!

Scenario 5:  Family is coming over, but you have no idea what to make for dinner! You read somewhere that tearing up the last chapter of a book whose ending you hated and sprinkling it in a casserole dish makes for the perfect meal! Which book do you choose?

Kent Haruf’s Our Souls At Night because the ending almost made me wish I hadn’t wasted my time on the book.

Scenario 6:  Organization is key, right? When it comes time to organize your bookshelf, you realize you have enough room (and money) to get three new books! Which books do you buy?

David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas because it blew my mind when I read it and has been sitting unpurchased on my Amazon wish list for years.  Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and Steven Waldman’s Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America because they are the best fiction and nonfiction books, respectively, that I’ve read in recent years and which I don’t already own.

Scenario 7:  Finally, some peace and quiet! But, before you can relax, you realize you forgot to send your Aunt a thank-you gift for the lovely Adult Life for Dummies book she gave you for Christmas (maybe she’s trying to tell you something?). What book do you send to her to show her how much you appreciate her gift? 

 

Super Aunt knows me very well and is highly unlikely to commit such an egregious error.  But if in her dotage she should someday do so, I would return the favor with Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, one of the most shamefully bad books I’ve ever read.  Super Aunt is deeply into her Catholic spirituality, and almost all of her reading is associated with it.  She would get the joke and laugh long and loud.

There’s my two cents on this very interesting and entertaining challenge.  I’d love to hear y’all’s thoughts in the comments down below.  Oh, before I go, I tag:

Liz at Liz Charnes just ’cause she rocks.

Victoria at Raynotbradbury ’cause she tags me all the time and ’cause I know she has nothing better to do Ha haha ha ha ha HHHAAAHHH!

Viola Bleu at IdeasBecomeWords ’cause I haven’t bugged her in a while.

Michael at Afterwards ’cause I bet he won’t do it and I wanna see him prove me wrong.

Melissa at FingersToSky ’cause I think she’d really dig this one.

Via: FOWC, Judgment

Via: RDP #31, Scale