Most Under-Rated Book

This is a tough question in many ways for me as I tend to look at the reviews quite a bit before I decide whether or not I'll read a book.  Hence, I tend to read well reviewed books.  However, recently, I picked up a book at our book club swap and was really surprised.  The book was Villa Pacifica by  New Zealand author Kapka Kassabova.   The writing was very evocative of a tropical setting and I loved how the author played with the paradoxes of time and place.  Bizarre things begin to happen at an isolated hotel and the reader doesn't know which is real and which is not.  Lots of twists and turns that I think many would enjoy if they gave it a shot.  The reviews on Good Reads are a bit low at 3.20, but there are only 16 of them, so I think if we could get the numbers up, the reviews would improve as well.

Guilty Pleasure

I think my guiltiest pleasure when it comes to reading must be Bridget Jones Diary.  It set the tone for chick lit and I loved reading of Bridget's dating/work/friend/family foibles.  The scene where she attends a dinner full of couples is classic and still makes me smile.  This book even set me on the road to reading other chick lit with reckless abandon (though I've now ditched this "genre" altogether as I reached a saturation point).  I think that Helen Fielding did a marvelous job of catching the life of a single female and in so doing created a book that had the potential to be throw away fluff.  Although I don't think I'll try the new Bridget Jones' book (no Mark Darcy!), I can still appreciate the guilty pleasure of the first.

Book I've Read the Most Number of Times

See previous post.  I tend not to re-read books, so this is a tough question to answer.  However, I do remember a period back in high school when I was reasonably obsessed with a certain book by S.E. Hinton called The Outsiders.  Ponyboy, Sodapop, Johnny, Dallas - I loved them all.  The whole idea of the wrong side of the tracks was intriguing and Ponyboy's academic bent also interested me.  It even sold me on some of Robert Frost's poetry.  I do think that this book represents a particular moment in time for me in terms of my literary tastes as I doubt very much that I'd like this book much anymore.  Unlike others, it seems like a young adult book that is strictly for young adults.

My Comfort Book

I am not one to re-read books, it's just not my thing.  For that reason, it's somewhat difficult to choose a comfort book as there's not too many that I would go back and re-visit.  That being said, if I were to have to choose a comfort book, it would have to be one from my homeland (Canada!) that brings with it some nostalgia.  And after doing some thinking, I realise that book is likely Anne of Green Gables, which is brimming with interesting characters who you want to get to know.  And really, how can a world in which Matthew Cuthbert exists not be comforting.  Bring on Green Gables and Avonlea!

Worst Book to Movie Adaptation

I'll go with the Da Vinci Code here.  While not great literature by any stretch of the imagination, it is a page turner.  Somehow the film-makers found a way to make it borning.  I stopped watching mid way through.  'nough said!

Longest Book I've Read

All I'll say is that it's a testament to Ken Follett that I didn't even originally think of Fall of Giants as one of the longest books I've read.  Then I started to do some checking and realised it was by far the longest at almost 1000 pages (other than his sequel which came close).  Perhaps because of all the intertwining stories, it just doesn't feel that long.  I had originally thought that Donna Tartt's The Gold Finch was the longest and while I really enjoyed that book, I could easily identify points where the story dragged.  Not so with Fall of Giants.  Hats off to Ken Follett for creating a compulsively readable tome!

Favorite Side Character

Last year I experienced the joy of reading a great book entitled Heft by Liz Moore.  It told two stories that were bound together by the main characters' connection to a single woman.  One of the stories is about a morbidly obese man named Arthur who has sadly allowed his obesity to render him housebound.  Arthur himself was a fabulous character for which I felt a great deal of sympathy, but there was also a fantastic side character in this novel.  At the beginning of Heft, Arthur decides that he needs to hire a cleaner - enter Yolanda a heavily pregnant young woman.  Yolanda became Arthur's salvation in that it was her honesty, persistence and caring that got Arthur out of the house again.  Yolanda was more than this though as she was not without her problems.  She was unmarried and her boyfriend is a bit of a dirtbag.  Her problems though are perhaps what make her inherent goodness shine through and I still remember her fondly for how she helped Arthur.