The Reading Lamp: from a land down under

In just 3 posts, The Reading Lamp has become incredibly well-travelled, in short order spanning 3 countries - Canada, the US, and now Australia! In this edition, Kate lets Chuck Palahniuk down gently but is much less kind to the unfortunate Georges Perec.

Your name: Kate

What are you reading now? About five different books, the most recent being If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino.

Where are you reading it? In cafés and restaurants, on buses, in parks, in bed...in Canberra, Australia.

How did you discover this book? A friend told me all about it, highly recommending it, then today I found it in a bookstore and couldn't resist.

What about a dessert book, a book you could read and then eat? A fine anthology of poetry, that could be carved up into tiny courses of deliciousness, albeit only a fraction of them sweet.

Who is your literary boyfriend or girlfriend? (Could be either a character or an author, and if it's an author, he or she need not still be alive.) Chuck Palahniuk and I have spent a lot of time together, but we're really just good friends...but I'd probably reconsider my preferences for Virginia Woolf.

What book would you like to put into a mine shaft and blown up? Why? Life: A Users Manual by Georges Perec, which is an experiment in psychology masquerading as fiction. I should be put in the mine shaft with it for having read all 500 pages of it, even if it was for uni.

What's the most embarrassing book you've ever received as a gift? Did you read it? A pop psychology book; I forget exactly what self-help niche it was marketed at...I think I managed the first page, no more.

Favourite book-related website (besides www.bookphilia.com, of course)? www.literaturejunction.com, of course.