Literary Meme

In a last ditch attempt to get myself back in the blog, I am attempting a Meme. Here goes.

1. Who is your favourite hero of fiction?
It started out with Nancy Drew, and graduated to Zooey

2. What is your most treasured possession?
I truly would mourn the loss of none (except my R30 sunglasses - that's about US$5! I love them.) As for my kids, didn't someone clever and wise whose name I cannot remember say we don't own them.

3. Which living person do you most dislike?
Smug ones

4. What is your greatest fear?
Fear itself

5. Who or what has been the greatest love of your life?
Reading (and duh, my family of course)

6. What is your greatest regret?
Being intimidated into not marching on campus against apartheid

7. If you could choose to be a character in a book, who would it be?
Dorothea from Middlemarch

8. Which book have you read the most in your lifetime?
Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger

9. What is your favourite journey?
Over Sir Lowry's Pass with Cape Town below, and driving up into the Drakensberg mountains from Pietermaritzburg

10. What do you most value in a friend?
A good laugh

11. What quality do you most admire in a woman?
Humour, strength, honesty, insight

12. What are your favourite names?Franny and Zooey, but my husband won in naming our kids Joseph and Ella. He says I have appalling taste in names and he may be right; I once liked the name Ptolemy.

13. What do you do as a hobby?
Read, ceramics (the new pottery)

14. What are your top 3 books?
Anna Karenina
A Suitable Boy
Almost any Russian novel

15. Where do you get your greatest ideas for writing?
On my pillow