To begin my week of guest-blogging for my mother, I’ve decided to cheat and answer a book meme that I found chez Laura. It’s as good a way of introducing myself as anything else, especially since I think you should always judge a man or woman by what he or she reads.

1. A book that made you cry: Well, aside from the obvious choices (Anne of Green Gables, anyone?), I was moved by the middle sequence of To the Lighthouse, the part wherein Woolf narrates the disintegration of a house and a family. The writing itself is completely unemotional, and I think that’s why the passage works.

2. A book that scared you: Usually I don’t read scary stuff, because I don’t enjoy the thrill that comes with being afraid (never liked to ride the roller coaster at Astroworld either). And I’ve never considered classic British murder mysteries scary (think Dame Agatha, Sayers, Tey, etc.), so I’ve gobbled up quite a few in my day – but one that really frightened me was And Then There Were None. Keep in mind that in the book version, as opposed to the play, everyone but the murderer ends up dead. Very creepy. Oh, and I remember being quite scared by the character of Simon Legree in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which I read very late at night around the age of fourteen. One of those can’t-get-out-of-the-bed-because-something-might-grab-me experiences.

3. A book that made you laugh: James Herriot’s animal books are a hoot – start with All Creatures Great and Small.

4. A book that disgusted you: The Grapes of Wrath. My first Baylor roommate loved Steinbeck, but to me he is simply depressing. Maybe I just read it at the wrong time.

5. A book you loved in elementary school: I was really into series reading at the time, but one stand-alone choice I loved was Lark, by Sally Watson. I believe it is out of print, even though it is an enchanting introduction to the British Civil War through the eyes of an independent-minded young girl who must aid a Royalist spy to evade his enemies by means of disguises, play-acting, and even the Gypsies as a last resort.

6. A book you loved in middle school: Jane Eyre. Read it the summer of seventh grade and was inspired to read Wuthering Heights as a follow-up; don’t remember being quite as impressed at the time by Emily as I was by Charlotte.

7. A book you loved in high school: Just one? My favorite was probably either Emily’s Quest, by L.M. Montgomery (confession: during my sophomore and junior years of high school I was heavily addicted to a kindred-spirits listserv, of all things, which aside from your humble servant was mostly made up of librarians) or A Ring of Endless Light, by Madeleine L’Engle – yes, we’re all fans at my house.

8. A book you loved in college: I’m still in college. I discovered Dorothy Dunnett’s Chronicles of Lymond two summers ago and fell in love with the complicated erudite hero – he’s sort of a renaissance Lord Peter Wimsey minus the moral principles. There are six books, all set in the mid-sixteenth century, and they take a little while to get into, but if you have a little patience you’ll soon be hooked. As a side note, Dunnett’s historical research is impeccable, or at least so I’ve read. The Game of Kings comes first.

9. A book that challenged your identity or your faith: Believe it or not, The Westminster Shorter Catechism, which I was assigned to read for school in seventh grade, and which forced me to realize there were other brands of Christianity besides the one affirmed at my Southern Baptist church.

10. A series that you love: Definitely Dorothy Sayers’ Wimsey mysteries, beginning with Strong Poison, in which the aristocratic detective saves Harriet Vane from the hangman’s noose, and ending with Busman’s Honeymoon, in which he marries her. The best one, though, is Gaudy Night, where Sayers explores the issue of women in academia versus women who choose to marry – yes, this was an issue in 1935, and no, it’s not totally irrelevant in 2006.

11. Your favorite horror book: See answer to question 2.

12. Your favorite science-fiction book: I’m going to have to pick another L’Engle and go with A Wrinkle in Time. Read it and the sequels for the first time when I was sick with a very bad cold, which just made them that much stranger. I’m not actually that much into sci-fi as a genre.

13. Your favorite fantasy book: The Lord of the Rings, no contest. But I also love Robin McKinley’s stuff, especially Beauty and Rose Daughter, two varying approaches to the re-telling of the same fairy-tale.

14. Your favorite mystery book: Leaving Sayers out because I’ve already mentioned her, it would probably come down to one of Josephine Tey’s novels, either Brat Farrar or The Daughter of Time.

15. Your favorite biography: Maybe Nicholas and Alexandra, by Robert K. Massie. Had to read it for a European history class senior year of high school, and I guess it’s not exactly a biography, but it is a thrilling narrative of the tragedy of the last Russian emperor and his family.

16. Your favorite coming-of-age book: The Greengage Summer, by Rumer Godden, in which an adolescent girl spends a summer with her family in the Marne Valley and must deal with evil coming from an unexpected source.

17. Your favorite book not on this list: That is very hard to say, but I’ll go with The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoevsky asks all the right questions and gives literature its most convincing and sympathetic good guy. I dare you to read it and not fall in love with Alyosha.