Guilty literary pleasure????

Oh, right - I have to admit to this one Vanessa? Hmm...I don't suppose the comic strips in the paper are quite what you meant? And, I don't always read them now that they don't always appear on the same page. Mind you, they haven't been the same since you removed Broomhilda in favour of something I don't consider at all funny.
So, I suppose it will have to be the "detective yarns". I sneak those in last thing at night. 
I am sure you know the sort of thing I mean....impossible murder mysteries with equally impossible sort of heroes and heroines. I rather like those impossibly romantic individuals who get themselves involved in murder and mayhem. 
My love affair with these things started when I was very young. I read my way through Agatha Christie and then Patricia Wentworth and JJ Marric and more. I am not sure that they really count as "literary" but I read them.
And I went on from there to reading about detectives like Patrick Petrella, Inspector Wexford, Superintendent Wycliffe, and then Charlie Resnick (what's not to love about a man who has cats) and Adam Dalgliesh (who writes poetry for goodness' sake). Richard Jury has that wonderful collection of friends - who wouldn't want to meet someone called Melrose Plant? 
I am not in the least bit interested in horse racing but I enjoyed Dick Francis - not so  sure about his son Felix but Dick always had something besides the horse race in there.
And there are those historical detectives who work without the benefit  of modern day forensics. Falco, Brother Athelstan, Matthew Bartholomew,  and of course Cadfael.
Then there is Morse. The setting was Oxford. He was an interesting one - opera, crosswords, drank too much.
Rebus drinks too much too. He's a troubled man but there's that  underlying sense that he actually cares about people.
And Lynley - yes, a slightly ridiculous character I suppose but there's something rather nice about his uncertainties. His side kick, Havers, is an excellent irritation. 
There are plenty of others but they will do for a start...I am not sure how "literary" any of them are but they are my guilty reading pleasure. 
But there are three I am particularly fond of - Morse, Rebus and Lynley. 

What I am reading now????

Well Vanessa, I suppose this one is a little easier - but of course I read more than one book at any time.There's my reading for work, my non-fiction and my fiction.
Oh let's start with the non-fiction because I am nearly at the end of that one.
I have been reading a book which someone asked me to read. It was the result of a conversation we had - one of many - about the many and varied roles of women. R... had been looking through her bookshelves and finding it impossible to throw anything out when she came across something she thought I "ought" to read. I was cautious about this. The book is called "When God was a Woman" by Merlin Stone. She passed it over with, "You will find this interesting."
I have now read most of it. At times it has irritated me because the person who wrote it is not an academic and her style switches from personal to academic and back again. She makes a lot of claims without having the endless references an academic would have to back them up. But, the book has some very interesting ideas about the apparent shift from the dominant status of women and the worship of "the Goddess" to the reverse.
The Senior Cat and I have discussed parts of it over the meal table. (He takes a keen interest in such things even now.) I will discuss it further with R...
But I will also be glad to go back and finish reading the utterly fascinating "Landmarks" by Robert Macfarlane and then "Language Play" - a David Crystal I have not yet read.
Work reading...I am about to embark on Larissa Fast's "Aid in Danger" - something I should have read some time ago but don't really want to read because it will both depress and anger me that people who go to help in disasters all too often risk their lives as well.
As for the fiction...I have just finished Peter James, "You are dead" and just begun, "A Banquet of Consequences" - Elizabeth George. 
Right at the moment anything more "literary" than that is too much to handle. 
Yes, I endeavour to read widely but sometimes.... 

The book I always give as a gift???

A single book? No, not possible Vanessa. You see, it depends on the age and the interests of the recipient - or the purpose of the gift. Well, you know that don't you?
But...babies tend to get Peter Rabbit. All children should own a copy of Peter Rabbit.  It should be the proper little Peter Rabbit with the proper little water colour pictures please.
They should also own AA Milne's poetry "When We Were Very Young" is actually 91 but it is still an excellent introduction to verse and "Now We Are Six" is equally good. Then yes, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" comes somewhere in between and "The Tiger Who Came To Tea" comes around about then too.
As they head into school and reading for themselves then Paddington is still a favourite for me, along with Pippi Longstocking and the Moomin Books and then, a little later, comic strip type "Asterix" and Tin Tin books.
After that I try Joan Aiken, Eoin Colfer, Roald Dahl and Eva Ibbotson and, for Australian children Colin Thiele and Ivan Southall if they are available. Other people can give them the likes of Paul Jennings.
And for older children still I have offered Neil Gaiman's "The Graveyard Book" - if I think they might be that way inclined. 
I give my godson, who doesn't much care for fiction, books about the human body (preferably funny books), and aircraft. (His mother was not impressed with  him making paper aircraft out of the pew bulletins and launching them in church on Christmas Day - my fault because I gave him the book.)
I give the "how to live on a student budget and still eat" type cook books to teens moving out of home to study. 
I have, with great caution, given Ronald Searle's wonderful "Les Tres Riches Heures de Mrs Mole" to people I have felt needed it.
I have given Dag Hammarskjold's "Markings" to others. 
And, for many children, I have at some point given them a large, hard covered completely blank book and some pencils and told them "This is your book to write or draw or both exactly as you wish."
Everyone should have one of those.
 

Favourite move adaptation????

Now really Vanessa you know I don't watch many films. I don't go to the pictures very often. The last film I saw was "The King's Speech". I meant to go and see some others but, somehow, I didn't get around to it. I have the DVD of "Theory of Everything" sitting there and the Senior Cat and I still haven't watched it - and we were given it months ago. 
But yes, I suppose I have watched a few films "Breakfast at Tiffany's", "Dr Zhivago", "One flew over the cuckoo's nest", "Fried green tomatoes", "To kill a mockingbird", "Lord of the flies", "Charlie and the chocolate factory", and "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", "The Snowman", "Heidi", "The Hundred and One Dalmations", "Bedknobs and Broomsticks", "Goodnight Mr Tom", "Matilda", "The Golden Compass", "Peter Pan", "The Secret Garden", and a few more I suppose.
Does a play count Vanessa? What about Alfred Uhry's "Driving Miss Daisy"? No, maybe not. I have to think again?
Yes, rather a lot of them were films for children - watched with The Whirlwind who wanted to watch them but not watch them by herself, "in case they are scary or sad". 
I didn't see "2001: A space odyssey" when it came out - and when I did eventually watch it about fifteen years later I wondered what the fuss was about. I have never seen a Star Wars movie. I haven't seen Jurassic Park or some of the other  "cult" movies - like the Hunger Games. I don't want to. I don't want to see war movies. I hear too much about violence in my day job.
There was some brilliant acting in "My left foot" - which is also an autobiography of course. Daniel Day Lewis deserved that Oscar. It might be a toss up between that and "Goodnight Mr Tom". I could probably watch both of those again if I had to. 

The book that made me cry....

Oh right Vanessa...the book that made me cry? My "Statistical Analysis in Psychology and Education : Fourth Edition" by George A Ferguson, 1976 (McGraw Hill). And, does a manual count? If so then it would have to be the SPSS manual - Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. I loathed them. I wept tears over the trouble they caused me.
Now, what else do you need to know?
I hated statistics - I still hate statistics. I recognise they have their place. My doctor nephew is currently doing some research in which statistics very definitely have their place. We discussed what he was doing over the weekend and, between us, explained to the Senior Cat what ANOVA meant and why it was important.
That's fine. I can handle that.
What I couldn't handle was the reliance on statistics in so much of psychology. I kept being told how important it was. I kept being told I had to be able to "prove" something - and I couldn't. My doctorate turned a psychological theory upside down or perhaps inside  or perhaps back to front - simply because I asked the same question in a different way. I kept being told that I "must be doing something wrong" because I could not get the results from my control group that psychological theory said I should be getting. Right.
I sat there for hours trying to work out what I was doing wrong. I read Professor Ferguson again and again. In those days he was the standard text for the likes of me - and the SPSS manual was supposed to help me apply the necessary tests.
In the end I didn't do a neat piece of straightforward research. I had to argue something quite different. I suppose it was good for me. It has made me wary of all research in the social sciences. Human beings are just too complicated. Statistics have their uses but please keep your mind open because, if you ask the same question in a different way, then you might get a different answer.
It is timely I should think of this because yesterday a complete stranger butted in on a Twitter exchange between myself and a senior journalist. This individual was irate because a piece of research had "proven" the ABC was not biased. It had said so in the papers.
I tried gently pointing out that the research had not "proven" anything. It had been based on the number of questions asked and those they had been asked of and the time allotted. It had not looked at what sort of questions had been asked, whether people were allowed to answer, whether people fronted the camera, what was said about them and much more. As a piece of "research" it was so full of holes as to be meaningless. It would in fact be very difficult to conduct such a pieces of research. The question of "bias" has not been resolved at all - and is unlikely to be resolved.
But the individual who butted in was upset - so upset s/he blocked me. Perhaps that is just as well. They can keep their prejudices. I don't need to be bothered by them.
But, it brought back floods of memories of a small, stressed out Cat sitting there in tears because of that wretched book and that equally wretched manual.

The book I couldn't finish????

So where do I start on this one Vanessa? 
Life is too short to read things for pleasure if you don't enjoy isn't it? I have to read a lot of non-fiction I don't enjoy so anything else... well that needs to be something I want to read.
I gave up on "War and Peace". Maybe I was just too young when I started trying to read it? In the end I couldn't be bothered. I have tried other Russian literature since then but I have never gone back to Tolstoy and I have to admit "skimming" some other things.
And then there was the Chinese classic, "A Dream of Red Mansions" (Xueqin Cao). Our Chinese neighbours suggested I should read it. I tried but it didn't "grab" me. 
Patrick White - Nobel Prize winner. I have tried several of his and never finished one. I know several highly regarded Downunder authors who have never managed to finish one either. That makes me feel a bit better. 
"Catch 22" (Joseph Heller)- I know, I know...one of the supposed "greats" but I couldn't finish it...I suppose I don't like those sort of stories at all. 
"The Thorn Birds" (Colleen McCullough) - yes, another supposed "great" but I gave up about half way.
"The Narrow Road to the Deep North" (Richard Flanagan) was one of those books I thought I "ought" to read. What is it with books which win the Booker and me? They are supposed to be great works of literature so it must be me...I must be a philistine when it comes to literature. 
But at least I tried to read these things. I barely got started on "Twilight" (Stephanie Meyer). I borrowed it from the library because I was curious. The Senior Cat was curious too. We sat at the table one lunch time and looked at it. Three pages in the Senior Cat handed it back to me and said, "Well, tell me what you think."
I read the same three pages, then - trying to be fair  - I skimmed a little more. I closed the book.
I couldn't finish it.
But those of you who know me as that cat sitting on a stack of books know I still have too much to read.

First literary crush???

Cripes Vanessa! These get more difficult.
My first literary crush would have to be a very long time ago... Milly Molly Mandy perhaps? I was about four when I first came across her. I thought she was pretty good. I mean she did things didn't she? They were pretty ordinary things like going blackberrying but I could relate to them. After all she lived in a village which seemed quite a lot like the small country community I lived in at the time.
And soon after that there was Pippi Longstocking. Now there was a girl! She lived on her own - well, apart from a horse and a monkey. She was immensely strong. She did things too. The only problem was that Pippi did not go to school - and that had to mean she didn't have a supply of books to read. Apart from that I rather liked Pippi although I don't think my mother approved of her in the least. 
On the male side there was Tin Tin - at around six I thought he was pretty good. I didn't mind The Little Prince either - although I thought he was very lonely. 
Then came Nicholas Fetterlock in Cynthia Harnett's "The Woolpack". Oh yes, Nicholas is good looking, intelligent, loyal and he does things despite the restrictions of his place in society and his would-be over-protective mother with ambitions for him. I was always a little envious of Cecily because she is betrothed to him. Does she realise how lucky she is? Perhaps.
I felt the same way about Robin in "The Little White Horse". He gets things done too. Maria is going to marry him. Lucky Maria! Those two are going to have an interesting marriage. Don't be too independent Maria.
But I suppose real literary crushes should begin in adolescence? That's more difficult. You see I didn't fall in love with Heathcliff - or Mr Rochester - or Mr Darcy - or Atticus Finch. I really don't know - mind you I might have fallen for KM Peyton's Pennington - had he been around for me to meet at the time.