Oh! And I added some that I thought should be there. Daggone it, Susan, can't leave well enough alone can you?
1. Book/s that changed your life:
I don't think any have ever changed my life with a capital "c". OK, sure, there could be an argument for a certain longstanding addiction to all things Hamlet, not to mention the shelfspace involved therein, but it's not like I've ever gone hungry in order to pay for a fix of a new critical edition or a reprint of an early stage production on DVD or anything... :)
Lots of books have knocked me over in that way that a really engrossing film does in the movie theater and you come out into the light struggling for a second to figure out which reality is true. For a list see most of the answers for #3.
Actually I did think of one that changed a bunch of my reading lists and made me uncommonly diligent about reading classics (read: from the classical era, not Great Books) for a while: The Day I Became an Autodidact by Kendall Hailey - it's out of print but if you scrounge a copy and it doesn't hit you at all, just add it to your list of stuff based on my #11 below and we'll talk.
And I wish that John Robbins' Diet for a New America had changed my life more either of the times I read it, but that's all on me and my beef farm upbringing not on Mr. Robbins.
2. Book/s that you've read more than once, some way more than once:
...among others I'm doubtless neglecting here...
3. Book/s you'd want on a desert island:
I've long thought all I'd need is Hamlet but lately I think I might want Le petit prince, too, and probably Moby Dick since I still probably won't have read it by then (cf. #10 below).
4. Book/s that made you laugh:
The latest ones were Augusten Burroughs' Running with Scissors and Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle which is going to sound insensitive because they're both memoirs about rather strange and difficult upbringings with emotionally challenged parents. Guess I was in a groove...
5. Book/s that made you cry:
Many have made me quite sad, the latest that elicited real tears being Audrey Niffenegger, The Time-Traveller's Wife, but Alice Walker made me sob at length with The Color Purple. The movie is quite a good adaptation but until you've read it you Really don't know the depth of this story. (Of course I was recovering from quite a painful bicycle accident at the time so I might have been a bit emotional anyway, but I don't think that was it, honestly.)
6. Book/s that you wish had been written:
No idea. Seems like there are plenty as there is - my reading list certainly isn't going hungry. Guess if I ever think of one I can start my writing career with it! nyernt nyernt
7. Book/s you wish had never been written:
I kind of wish none of Robert James Waller's books had ever been written but then again they're so fun to mock, plus Bridges led to one of the most fun Doonesbury sequences ever. Along the same lines (mockability) would be The DaVinci Code... Actually I kinda do wish that one had never been written... along with pretty much anything by V.C. Andrews. In fact, has anyone ever really researched these so-called authors? I think they're both pen names for a gaggle of bored 8th grade nerds in some study hall somewhere.
8. Book/s you're currently reading:
Val McDermid, The Torment of Others
Gabaldon, Drums of Autumn (about to give up actually, cf. above "boring" mention)
Kim Harrison, Dead Witch Walking (what can I say - it's a freebie from work)
Jennifer Duncan, Frontier Spirit: The Brave Women of the Klondike
Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet
9. Book/s next on your list to read:
Edward P. Jones, The Known World
Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces
Ondaatje, Coming Through Slaughter
Atwood, The Penelopiad (pending the Homer below... :)
10. Book/s you've been meaning to read forever:
Moby Dick
Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct ( I know, I know, what self-respecting linguist hasn't read this?!)
Homer
Mary McCarthy, The Group
Great Expectations
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine
Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety
Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics
11. Book/s you've read that you've been meaning to ask someone to decipher:
House of Mirth is the biggest to come to mind (next time you feel like doing a mini-book report Tracy?), altho I felt the same way about Waiting (the one by Ha Jin, not the restaurant-worker hijinx book) among others...
12. Book/s you can't seem to get into no matter how many times you try or how desperately you want to read it/them:
Henry James Portrait of a Lady
Laurence Sterne Tristram Shandy
I know there are others and frankly I'd prefer not to try to think of them at the moment or else I'll probably dig them out and have another go, only to put them aside shaking my head in wonderment yet again.
You're it! Of course there's no one left to be tagged but oh well.
3 commentaires:
tipping the velvet.. . great clothing descriptions, the kind i wish wharton, woolf and others would have spent more time writing about. book was given to me as a "loan don't return" book from a friend who picked it up in london. it's an odd read, even for a winterson fan, and i haven't been able to get into it again. i wonder where sarah waters did her clothes research.
i have been meaning to get nancy rexford's studies (i heard her lecture once, one good thing that's come out of my job, and since i'm obsessed with the victorian and post eras in terms of what people wore, i think this would help me, as much as my new york 1880s architecture book does).
out of stock
thanks for the feedback on the bks! the Winterson reminds me - she's another I want so to get into but so far not grabbed much... I read _Oranges..._ and have started _Written on the Body_ several times, making it a different number of chapters each time, always to lose interest... you and Jessica both love it so I'll probably keep picking it up for a few more years yet (in fact Jessica gave me my current copy)
oops I just realized that Yahoo message couldn't go anywhere, replying to the blogger no-reply thingy so you missed where I said:
try bookfinder.com if you haven't already - that's the most comprehensive book search I know of - it gleans from amazon and powell's and a bunch of others so you should have luck... or alibris.com -- altho bookfinder actually culls from them, too, I just remembered
:)
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