What Kind of Reader Are You? Take the Booktryst Reading Personality Quiz!

by Stephen J. Gertz

1st question: Blurry or crystal clear?

The good folks at ReadCentral have prepared a brief quiz to help define your reading style and predict your reading personality based upon your responses. Here's a sample question:

Question 3  :  You wake up one morning and find yourself in the midst of heaps of books. How will you react?

A. So many books! Life is beautiful!

B. So many books! There should be some worth reading.

C. So many books! That one, over there, looks interesting. Let me start with that first.

D. So many books! Hope there are some that fit my taste.

That's one of five, and typical. It's not bad yet there's something a bit too Sunshine Stepford Reader about it for my taste. But perhaps I'm just a cockeyed pessimist, always looking for the gray lining within the silver cloud to brighten my day and make me feel that life is worth something, if not living.

And so Booktryst has prepared a Reading Personality Quiz of our own. Its sage perspicacity will awe and astound. Ready? Set? Peruse!

Question 1 : October 1964. Santa Monica Civic Auditorium,  the T.A.M.I. Show. You're a member of the callow Rolling Stones during an  early American tour and you've just witnessed James Brown blow the roof off the joint with a now-legendary performance that knocked the audience over like bowling pins. You have to follow his act. What book are you reading?

A. On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.

B. The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene.

C. The Book of Common Prayer.

D. Seduction of Suicide by Kenneth Tullis.

E. It's All Over Now by Mandy Smith.

Question 2 : Good news! You've just been diagnosed as a clinical depressive thus confirming all your worst negative ruminations; you're not crazy. Bad news: You have zero tolerance for  prescription anti-depression drugs. But you've always loved to read. What do you self-medicate with?

A. A History of Coca, the Divine Plant of the Incas by W. Golden Mortimer, M.D.

B. Flowers in the Blood: The Story of Opium by Dean Latimer and Jeff Goldberg.

C. Laughing Gas (Nitrous Oxide). Edited by Michael Shedlin & David Wallechinsky.

D. Reefer Madness by Larry Sloman.

E. All of the above.

F. All of the above, all at the same time.

Question 3 : Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, you walk into:

A. A Christian Science Reading Room.

B. A library with  a librarian who scolds, No Reading Allowed. Or maybe it was No Reading Aloud. Whatever, you can't be sure so you close your book and go to the rest room to read in peace without a proctor giving you the evil eye. The acoustics are perfect.

C. The waiting room at Jiffy Lube. Time to catch up on those three-year old issues of Car and Driver, Motor Trend, Super Chevy, and Peterson's 4Wheel & Off Road.

D. Rick's Café Américain in Mojave, California. You came for the firewaters. You were not misinformed. You belt a few back. Soon, you remember a lost love, an unforgettable book, the one that got away. Then tears flow into your Scotch like club soda; since the accident your lacrimal glands effervesce and produce seltzer. You drunkenly bark at the piano player, "Read it again, Sam!" He has no idea what you're talking about. And his name is Larry.

Question 4 : You're compulsive reader Henry Bemis sitting amongst the ruins of a library in a nuked-out, post-Apocalyptic Twilight Zone realm with all the books in the world strewn about and all the time in the world to read them. Suddenly, you have a bitter premonition that your eyeglasses will break leaving you unable to read at all. Oh, cruel irony! But before you wallow in self-pity, renounce God, and accept Satan as your savior you must choose what the last book you'll ever read will be. Oh, and you're kind of gimpy now, getting around is tough and there's no time to limp around so you have to be satisfied with the small pile of books at hand. Unfortunately, the pile offers a  random sample of the library's holdings of  law books. So, what'll it be?

A. The Code of Civil Procedure of the State of California. Approved March 11, 1872. With Amendments Up to and Including Those of the Forty-First Session of the Legislature, 1915. With Annotations Embracing the Decisions of the Courts of Last Resort of the State of California, and with Frequent Reference to the Decisions of the Courts of Last Resort of Other States, and of the Federal Courts by Charles H. Fairall.

B. Gesetzbuch über das gerichtliche Verfahren in Civil-Rechtssachen für die Stadt u. Republik Bern, mit erklärenden Anmerkungen Bern, Walthard, 1822 by Samuel Ludwig Schnell.

C. The Politics of European Sales Law: A Legal-Political Inquiry into the Drafting of the Uniform Commercial Code, Vienna Sales Convention, the Dutch Civil Code and the European Consumer Sales (Private Law) by Bastiaan Van Zelst.

D. Kita? B Al-Anwa? R Wa-Al-Mara? QIB: Code of Karaite Law. Vol III: Circumcision, Sabbath; Civil and Criminal Law, Liturgy by Ya'qub Al-Qirqisa.

E. Criminal Law Revision Committee, Second Report (Suicide) by Home Department, British Parliament.

Question 5 : You thought you were buying an E-Book. Turns out, you've subscribed to an Internet dating service for socially maladroit readers, which pretty much covers all of us. You fill out a profile and

A. Declare that anyone who reads Tolkein is tetched in the head.

B. Assert that the soft touch of your finger upon paper as you point to each slowly and lovingly read word  is nothing compared to what that finger'll do behind closed doors, hubba-hubba, heh-heh, with a hey, nonny, nonny, and a hotcha-cha.

C. Announce to all potential partners that you're an honest person, trustworthy, an open book - and the book is Mein Kampf.

D. Realize that you'll never get a date for as long as you live. And afterward, forget it; even worse luck.

Determining Your Reading Personality: It you've made it this far we urge you to consider seeking the help of a professional.  A professional what, we leave to your discretion.

Always remember: Your bookshelves are a mirror of the soul  (hopefully yours), and you are what you read so avoid reading cereal boxes, particularly General Mills' Frankenberry, and especially Ralston's Breakfast With Barbie.
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Book Store Provides Speed-Shrink Psychotherapy

Wednesday nights in lower Manhattan’s SoHo district have gotten a little saner. The Housing Works Bookshop Café, which donates 100% of its profits to Housing Works, Inc., a social enterprise, is offering psychotherapy to its customers and neighborhood denizens in three-minute doses for those whose therapists are on vacation or who require a quick jolt of personal problem advice.

You’d think that three minutes wouldn’t allow enough time for introductions much less delving into the dark recesses. But Jonathan Fast, one of the eight psychiatrists and psychologists who staff these Wednesday nights and who is also a professor at Yeshiva University, asserts that “What I have discovered is that these brief conversations absolutely turn into real therapy. You start with the classic ‘What can I help you with?’ and make a really fast assessment."

It’s a very popular event at the Housing Bookshop Café, which has established a strong neighborhood presence by providing citizens with a great deal of “value-added” to the bookstore experience. So popular, in fact, that traffic control is necessary.

The classic Waiting Room is now the Waiting Line. Lianne Stokes, a free-lance writer who is the event’s emcee and traffic cop, recently became annoyed when a session went well beyond the allotted time by an eternal, infernal thirty seconds and had to lay it on the line to those on line: “Move the line, people. Believe it or not, someone here has worse problems than you do, if you can imagine,” she announced through her microphone.

It’s like being at a book signing and the guy at the front of the line hands the author ten first edition copies for signing: a hog-like Me! Me! Me! abuse of privilege and courtesy.

Instant advantage: No browsing through eight-month old copies of Time, Field and Stream, APA journals, Penthouse, or the Daily Racing Form in the waiting room of your shrink's office. Plenty of up-to -date and actually interesting reading material abounds at the Housing Bookstore and Cafe. And the standard waiting room silent assessment of whether others are as crazy or crazier than you now becomes a festive, communal on line experience. Confidentiality? Schconfidentiality! We're all in the Mental Muck together.

It must be a bit dispiriting, though, when the Speed-Shrink inevitably declares, “Sorry, our time is up” before we’ve even finished stretching the neurotic muscles and gotten our psycho-blood freely circulating. “We’ll pick it up next session. No cutting in line, please."

Sorry, but I cannot restrain myself from imagining what these therapy sessions would be like if John Moschitta were at the therapeutic helm to pack a lifetime’s worth of problems into a neat psycho-package and keep those long-lines moving:

“Housing Works Bookstore Café has established itself as a downtown New York institution and tourist destination. Readings, concerts and a fully stocked café make the Bookstore a great place to meet friends, relax and shop the best book, movie and music selection in New York City. All merchandise is donated; we are staffed almost entirely by volunteers; and our charming, book-lined space, which features dramatic wooden staircases and balconies, is available for rental.”

Nice piece about the Housing Bookstore and Cafe in today's New York Times.