I've been tagged by A Musing Mom to participate in a book meme. Cool! So here we go:
1. One book that changed your life.
Jaws by Peter Benchley. Even more so than the movie, this book has made me forever skittish at the mere thought of swimming in any body of water other than a pool. What?
2. One book that you have read more than once.
Stephen King's The Stand -- probably my favorite King novel. Also the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Yes, I'm a dork. And no, I can't follow directions.
3. One book you would want on a desert island.
The obvious answer would be The Outdoor Survival Handbook (or something similar) by Raymond Mears. Duh.
4. Two books that made you laugh.
Naked, a hilarious memoir by David Sedaris covering just a portion of the outlandish moments that have comprised his life, from hitchhiking across the country to his stint at a nudist colony. And Jonathan Franzen's novel about a dysfunctional family to end all dysfunctional families, The Corrections.
5. One book that made you cry.
Final Rounds, James Dodson's story of the last trip he took with his father, a golf vacation through England and Scotland, before his father succumbed to cancer. A golfer's Field of Dreams.
6. One book you wish you'd written.
Any one, just one, book of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series...and the money that came along with it.
7. One book you wish had never been written.
Leviticus.
8. Two books you are currently reading.
More of David Sedaris' crazy life-antics in Me Talk Pretty One Day, and Steve Martin's autobiography Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life.
9. One book you've been meaning to read.
I'm really wanting to go back and read a bunch of the classics, and the two at the top of the heap, for reasons unknown, are Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula. Some of it's because I'm a freak and like to read things that scare me out of my mind, and the other is because I read Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian last year, a historical take on the legend of Vlad the Impaler or Count Dracula, and wanted to follow it up by reading the mother of all vampire books.
10. Five people that I tag.
Muddleman
Brandt's Randts
The Dancing Sni
Beast Mom
I can't count either.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Book Meme
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5 comments:
Thanks for humoring me. It was fun to see your responses (I'm with on wishing I'd come up with a Harry Potter book).
Not a problem, it was fun! I tried taking a different approach on some of the questions ("Jaws" obviously not being a "life-changer", but I thought people might get tired of hearing things like "The Holy Bible" or "7 Habits of Highly Effective People".
How's this for a life-changer. When I was about 15 I read a short story called "The Boogeyman" by Stephen King. In it, the main character, a father, would put his kids to bed only to have them wake up screaming in the middle of the night. He'd find them in their rooms, standing in their cribs, pointing at the closet door and crying "Boogeyman. Boogeyman." The closet door was always cracked open an inch when the father was absolutely certain that he had closed it.
The story gets much worse from there, but to this day, every night when I tuck the girls in, I make sure their closet doors are shut tight!
I have read so many books, some classic, most not, over my long lifetime, that I would have trouble picking my favorites. I do remember reading Dracula while I was in high school. It scared me so much that I would only read it in study hall, which was a huge, wooden-floored room above the gym. I keep meaning to read it again to see if it still scares the heck out of me.
I mentioned the wood flooring of the study hall, because our idea of fun in the early '60's was to arrange for everyone to drop his/her books at precisely the same moment, with the percussive effect of a bomb exploding. Sadly, I don't remember the reaction of the teacher on duty.
Loved the pictures of the girls with their guitars.
FYI, lots of adults take piano lessons!!! sbham
Dracula was quite good, but I didn't think it was all it was hyped to be. The story elements were great, but since we know them, that leaves reading for prose, and I remember thinking he wasn't a great writer.
But that's probably partly because I'd already read a lot of Stephen King and fallen in with his meandering, detailed style. Still like it, and I re-read the Stand last year for the 5th time... I remember the Boogeyman, too, freaked me right out. His short stories have always been scarier than the longer ones, Salem's Lot excepted. That is probably the fiction that has freaked me out the most. *looking around the darkened room for grinning vampire teeth*
I don't know if you like Bruce Campbell, but his autobiography was great!
If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor. The title alone screams greatness :)
sbham
Are you still willing to pay for those lessons? ;)
Greg,
Yeah, I remember "Salem's Lot" scaring the crap out of me, too. In one of my earlier posts, I wrote about my experience reading "IT" when I was in college. That freaked me out quite a bit as well.
And I love Bruce Campbell and his "Evil Dead" movies. I'll put that one on my list. Thanks!
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