A book that changed my life (besides the Bible):
Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller was definitely the right book at the right time for me. Though I can't credit it alone for the change, it prepared me for an episode of major transition in my life -- the kind of transition that starts inside and works its way outward.
A book I’ve read more than once:
Oh, there are so many. Some books are just that good, others have more to offer as you grow, and then there are the ones I revisit because they're sitting on my shelf and I can't remember what they were about. (In recent years, these last are generally being considered for discarding.)
I think the only book I've read twice in a row may be Moominsummer Madness, by Tove Jansson. I don't know how old I was, but I wasn't ten yet. I remember finishing it in the dentist's waiting room, regarding it with a happy sigh, and then opening right back up to the first page to start over again. Jansson's sweet, quirky Scandinavian fantasies were, to my young mind, the very height of imaginative revelry, and her characters became my best friends.
A book I would take with me if I were stuck on a desert island:
A blank, unlined Moleskine.
A book that made me laugh:
I remember chuckling quite a bit this summer over To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis.
A book that made me cry: [I've re-inserted this category, which was mysteriously missing from Ike's list]
Here's a secret about me: all it takes is the right cue, and any story can have me in tears. It doesn't have to be well-done; it doesn't have to be worthy of the emotion; all it has to do is evoke the right sentiment, or play the right chords on the soundtrack, and voila! I'm all sniffly.
With that said, the last book that I felt earned my tears, rather than just pushing my buttons, was The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. Man, that book got sad.
A book that I wish had been written:
I was going to say that I wish Peter Beagle would write a novel in which the quality of the story matched the quality of the prose and the characters, because he's one of my favorite authors, but somehow he hasn't written one of my favorite novels. But then I remembered that I haven't read all of his books yet. Besides, his road trip memoir, I See By My Outfit, is one of my favorite books, and may very well be largely fiction for all I know.
A book that I wish had never been written:
There are so many books without which the world would be none the poorer (trust me, I know these things) that to wish any one of them out of existence would be like wishing a single leaf off your lawn in autumn.
A book I’ve been meaning to read:
My "To Read" list currently includes 94 titles -- not to mention all the books on my shelves I haven't read yet but aren't on that list. Here's one that's in both locations: The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain, by Alice Weaver Flaherty.
I’m currently reading:
Icelander, by Dustin Long (fiction)
Getting Things Done by David Allen (nonfiction, I fervently hope)
Consider yourself tagged if
Olly-olly-oxen-free!
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4 comments:
Oh yeah, I guess there was at least one other book I read twice in a row. (That's the trouble with writing things down; sometimes they prove you wrong.)
Lindsey-I took your suggestion and read The Time Traveler's Wife, and bawled like a baby too. Books I wish had never been written??? I'd hate to wipe a book out of existence; afterall, it's a BOOK...isn't there something sacred there? But, all Harlequin Romance novels can go if for no other reason than my grandma reads them. And that's just creepy to see.
I like Getting Things Done, it feels like very practical and effective advice. This may be TMI, but I wanted to reread it, so I reserved a copy from the library, picked it up when it arrived, and had to return it when it was due, without actually getting around to opening it.
Twice.
The Time Traveler's Wife turned this hulking pile of man into a lip-quivering tear machine -- both times I read it.
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