The Bookworm Tag

Samantha at Bookshire did this tag recently, and she invited anyone who wanted to do it to consider themselves tagged, so I am!

The (very simple) Rules:

-answer the questions 

-make up new ones 

-tag people

Samantha's Questions and My Answers:

1. Hardback or paperback? 

I tend to prefer paperbacks.  They're cheaper, they take up less space on my shelves, and I can pack more of them when I go on trips.

2. Did you have a favorite comic book or graphic novel as a kid, and if so, what was it? 

As a kid, I loved this fairly odd comic book:

I got it for free from the grocery store, and I read it over and over and over and over.  And, it made me a Spider-man fan!  

3. What is your favorite devotional or inspirational book, and why? 

I really liked Pew Sisters by Katie Schuermann.  It was relatable, made for great discussions at our women's Bible study, and helped me realize that many of the things I struggle with are fairly common and not unique to me.  

4. Would you rather have to read only one book for the rest of your life, or never get to reread a book? 

I hate this question.  It has no good answer.  I love to reread books, but rereading just one book forever also doesn't sound like a great time.  

5. Least favorite literary villain? 

Like, the one I despise the most?  Um.  Hmm.  I don't know.  I dislike most villains, as that's sort of their job, so it's hard to pick just one I dislike the most.  Hmm.  Well, I really hate Cain in The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum, so let's just go with him, huh?

6. What is your favorite romance trope? 

I love friends-to-lovers.  Give me people who like each other as people, and then start to develop deeper feelings for each other, and I am going to be a happy little reader.

But I also love a lot of books where it's more annoyed-with-each-other-to-lovers, which can be very fun too.

7. If you could spend a day with your favorite author, what would you do with them? 

Okay, so, my favorite author is Raymond Chandler, and he was a crabby alcoholic.  Whereas I don't enjoy alcohol much, and I'm not generally a crabby person.  So I would probably spend the day just quietly letting him get on with his drinking and writing.  

Unless it could be a day he was spending on the set of either The Blue Dahlia (1946) or And Now Tomorrow (1944), which he wrote the screenplays for, in which case, I would spend the day quietly stalking Alan Ladd everywhere he went in the least-creepy way I could possibly manage.  I'm not sure if Chandler ever visited either of those sets, but if he did, that's what I would pick.  Which sounds like it's less about loving Chandler and more about loving Alan Ladd, but oh well.  Not everyone is lucky enough to have their favorite author write screenplays for their second-favorite actor, but I am, so there we are.

8. What is the longest book you've ever read, and did you like it? 

That would be The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, and I liked it so much, I have read it nine times.

(From my Instagram account)

9. Do you have a favorite poet, and if so, who is it? When did you learn about them? 

I do!  I love Kenneth Koch because so much of his poetry makes me laugh.  I first learned about him in a lit class during my freshman year of college, and I've been a fan ever since.  I also really love his books on how to teach kids to write poetry, such as Wishes, Lies, and Dreams.

10. Have you ever cried over a fictional death scene, and if so, which one(s)?

SPOILER ALERTS!!!!  I cry over Boromir's death every time I read The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.  And also over Matthew Cuthbert's death in Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery.  On a whole, though, I am way more likely to cry over something going unexpectedly, gloriously right in a book than I am over a character death.

END of SPOILER ALERT

Okay!  Those were lots of fun :-)  Time to tag people!  I hereby tag:

Bookshire

Classical Carousel

Classics Considered

Cimharas

Holds Upon Happiness

More 2 Discover

The Once Lost Wanderer

The Rustic Reading Gal

With Freedom, Books, Flowers, and the Moon

And here are my questions for you:

1.  If you had to go into the witness protection program, and they gave you the option of moving inside a book, where would you like to go?

2.  Have you ever claimed to have read a book you actually hadn't read?

3.  What author have you read the most books by?

4.  Do you ever buy fun bookish merch like mugs, shirts, artwork, etc?

5.  Do you usually read only one book at a time, or do you have several going at once?

6.  Are you a mood reader, or do you plan out your reads?

7.  If you could meet the author of your favorite book and ask them one question, what would you ask them?

8.  Have you ever tried a new food or drink because you read about it in a book or story?

9.  Have you ever named a pet after a book character?

10.  What book are you reading right now?

Play if you want to!

"Superman Versus the Ku Klux Klan" by Rich Bowers

The subtitle of this book, "The True Story of How the Iconic Superhero Battled the Men of Hate," led me to believe that this would mostly focus on the time when Superman's writers used him to convince kids that the KKK was bad.  And it's definitely about that.  But it's also a whole history of how Superman was created, and a history of how the KKK was formed and all the different times when it died down and then reemerged.  All in all, it was a thoroughly fascinating book, with so much more history and information than I had expected!

Basically, after WWII, the creative team behind the Superman radio program for kids was looking for a new Big Bad for their hero to battle.  Nazis and the other Axis powers had been disposed of, and they needed something new and evil for Superman to take on.  They wanted their program to be a little educational too, and to help kids learn to be good citizens and good neighbors.  

The KKK had recently resurfaced in many states, fighting primarily against black soldiers who had returned from WWII and were resisting being discriminated against and trodden upon the way they had been before they joined the service.  The radio show created a fictional version called the Clan of the Fiery Cross and taught their listeners how bad and evil these men where, men who hated people only because of their religion or race.  Bowers writes that this series "showed children -- and adults -- all over the country the deep-seated prejudice that fueled the KKK's mission and the greed for money that motivated its leaders.  And the show's use of satire and ridicule set the stage for others to use those weapons against the Klan" (p. 146).

My library had this shelved in the junior non-fiction section, and while I think it would be fine for teens, there was a lot of discussion of KKK activities that involved lynching, burning, branding, and rape, and I personally would not let anyone under the age of 13 read it.  So If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13.

Particularly Good Bits:

Our hero's split personality -- that vast gulf between the milque-toast persona of Clark Kent and the supreme confidence of Superman -- represented the full potential inherent in all human beings.  It made us feel that we too could shed our day-to-day exteriors to reveal the real hero within" (p. 148).

"The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson

Wow.  I'd never read this before, and it was not what I was expecting!  I mean, I knew the basic story (nice Dr. Jekyll creates a potion that turns him into evil Mr. Hyde), but I had no idea how introspective and philosophical it would get about human nature.

Yes.  I'm thirty-three, I've been reading classics since I was a little kid, and I'd never read this novella.  In fact, until a few years ago, I thought it was written by H. G. Wells!  Which is probably why I thought it would be both more sci-fi and more scary than it is.  This is not a scary book.  Well, not today.  I do like imagining what it must have been like to read this when it was first published.  When you didn't know the basic story, and you got to that reveal where Hyde turns into Jekyll before another character's eyes -- how freaky was that?

We're kind of used to the idea now.  The normal, nice, helpful guy with the rage monster inside him.  I've long thought that the whole idea of the Incredible Hulk draws heavily on this story.  Like Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Bruce Banner delves too greedily and too deep into the mysteries of science and medicine.  By so doing, he unleashes a beast from within his own self.  Like Mr. Hyde, the Hulk acts mostly from his primitive instinct to protect himself.  Now, unlike Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Banner can choose to unleash his inner Hulk.  And unlike Dr. Banner and his freak gamma ray accident, Dr. Jekyll chose to transform himself into the loathesome Mr. Hyde.  He enjoyed it, he deliberately transformed over and over -- at first.  And unlike Mr. Hyde, the Hulk isn't a homicidal maniac.  But both Dr. Banner and Dr. Jekyll had that monster within themselves all along.  Dr. Banner is always angry.  Dr. Jekyll has always enjoyed indulging in secret pleasures and vices. 

In fact, that's what I find the most interesting about this book:  the way it explores the idea of original sin.  If you're not familiar with the term, it's the Christian concept that all humans have inherited a sinful nature from their parents.  The Bible says, "Surely I am sinful from birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me" (Psalm 51:5).  We all are capable of evil -- we all sin every day.  Maybe we can hide it, maybe we can fool ourselves into thinking it doesn't matter.  But it's there.  Dr. Jekyll created an elixir that could distill his evil nature, make his "better self" disappear while his "worse self" came to the foreground.  But that worse self had always been there, it had merely been disguised.

Particularly Good Bits:

The inhabitants were all doing well, it seemed, and all emulously hoping to do better still, and laying out the surplus of their gains in coquetry, so that the shop fronts stood along that thoroughfare with an air of invitation, like rows of smiling saleswomen (p. 8).

"If he be Mr. Hyde," he had thought, "I shall be Mr. Seek" (p. 19).

It was a wild, cold seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying on her back as though the wind had tilted her, and a flying wrack of the most diaphanous and lawny texture (p. 48).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for oblique descriptions of sinful behavior and for mildly scary imagery.

This is my seventh book read and reviewed for The Classics Club and my fourth for the Mount TBR Challenge.