The Proust Questionnaire — Book Edition

Monica Förster Answers The Proust Questionnaire—Book Edition

By Monica Förster November 15, 2013

Monica Förster, Product Designer (Stockholm)

This November marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Marcel Proust’s opus, In Search of Lost Time (A la recherche du temps perdu), originally known in English as Remembrance of Things Past. To honor the occasion, we developed the Designers & Books version of the eponymous Proust Questionnaire, which we’ve sent out to various contributors and friends. Rather than including the questions from the original that asked about a wide array of “thoughts and feelings,” our adaptation focuses solely on the respondent’s relationship to books.

View the complete questions asked in The Proust Questionnaire—Book Edition

Here are the answers Monica Förster sent in response to the Proust Questionnaire—Book Edition:

1. Of these, your reading preference: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama:
Fiction, poetry, and drama.

2. Your favorite childhood book (or favorite childhood author):
The Odyssey; The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis.

4. Your favorite book title (because you like the sound of it):
In Search of Lost Time is one.

5. A book you could never finish:
Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.

6. A book you will never start:
Any crime fiction.

7. If for some reason it turned out that you could save one and only one book from among those you own, which would it be:
The Bible.

8. A book you should have read but haven’t:
American Tabloid by James Ellroy.

9. The best “book as object” you own (how it looks over what it says):
Vidar by the typographer Carl Fredrik Hultenheim.

10. Your reading speed: very slow, slow, moderate, fast, very fast:
Fast to very fast.

12. Your most idiosyncratic reading habit:
If the book is very good I will stay up all night until I have finished it.

14. If you could be any author:
Stephen Hawking.

15. If you are what you read, the book that best says who you are.
Karin Boye Samlade Dikter’s Collected Poems.

17. The last book you bought:
His Life and Work by Stephen Hawking.

18. Your favorite place to purchase books:
Konstig Books in Stockholm; Walther König in Cologne.

19. The book you are currently reading:
His Life and Work by Stephen Hawking.

20. The book you will read next:
ZeroZeroZero by Roberto Savignano.

21. The current location of the book you will read next:
A bookstore.

22. Your favorite format for books: paper or pixels:
Paper.

23. If you could have written any book:
The Bible.

24. A book that was particularly meaningful to, or highly recommended by, an acquaintance of yours:
Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates.

25. If you have the chance to plan it, the last book you’ll read:
The book about the scientific discovery that finally explains the connection of everything in the universe.

Also see “Celebrating a Proust Anniversary with The Proust Questionnaire—Book Edition.”

Adrian Shaughnessy Answers The Proust Questionnaire—Book Edition

Marian Bantjes Answers The Proust Questionnaire—Book Edition

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