These bookish questions were at Red Shoe Ramblings (I couldn’t resist that name) and I’ve decided to carry them on. If you decide to take them to your space, let me know. I’d like to read your answers.

1. Hardcover or paperback? Why?

This is going to sound a bit shallow, but I don’t care if it’s hardcover or paperback as long as it’s got a great cover. I know, I know, a beautiful cover doesn’t mean a stellar book and plenty of stunning books have terrible covers, but I’m a sucker for art and design. Buying a book I want that happens to have an ugly cover bothers me–I have to really want the book. And then for the rest of my days I’ll comment about the cover every time I pick the thing up. I flat out refuse to buy books with movie covers. Hey, if I want to look at the actors, I’ll buy the DVD.

2. If I were to own a bookshop, I would call it…

Well, The Book Gods is probably too grandiose and The Bookshelf a little too…something. Oh, I’d like to take the title of that Kim Novak film–Bell, Book, and Candle. Yeah, that’d capture the spirit of the place.

3. My favorite quote from a book is…

Hey nonny nay,
my white horse is gray,
my gray is a black,
if you look the right way.

from The Black Beast by Nancy Springer.

I don’t know why I like this, or why I remember it from a novel I read in high school and can’t remember anything else about. All I know is that this little rhyme has popped into my head for random reasons for the last twenty years…So, that must make it my favorite since I can’t recall anything else without looking it up.

4. The author (alive or deceased) I’d love to have lunch with would be…

Neil Gaiman or Gregory Maguire? Maguire or Gaiman? Gaiman–Maguire…Maguire–Gaiman…

5. If I were going to a deserted island and could bring only one book (except for the SAS survival guide), it would be…

Okay, I’d put these three books in a bag, shake them up, dumped them on the ground, and the one closest to my feet would be the one. And the three are–The Truth about Unicorns by Bonnie Jones Reynolds, Watership Down by Richard Adams, and The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.

6. I’d love someone to invent a bookish gadget that…

would allow me to read a book hands-free while in the shower, blow drying my hair, and vacuuming.

7. The smell of an old book reminds me of…

childhood.

8. If I could be the lead character in a book, it would be…

Milo in The Phantom Tollbooth.

9. The most overrated book of all time is…

No book is overrated if somebody out there loves it.

10. I hate it when a book…

lets me down at the end.