Self Absorption, part II

Another self absorption list courtesy of Jesse over at Hyperion Court. I've been ultra busy, hence posting is slow - but I couldn't resist another chance to talk about myself. For those of you that care, it is possible (even likely) that posting will pick back up again by October.

1. One book that changed your life.

Every book changes my life. Knowledge is like that.

The Annapolis Book of Seamanship changed me more than most. I don’t think I ever learned so much at one time, or had my identity transformed as much.

2. One book you have read more than once.

The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be. This book is Farley Mowat’s best work of humor (and poignancy), looking back on his boyhood life on the Canadian prairie and the singular dog he shared it with.

3. One book you would want on a desert Island.

The Bible. Maybe that way I would finally get around to reading the whole thing. I would want, of course, a parallel version, with at least four significantly different translations, with the Apocrypha and the Gnostics, and a detailed concordance.

4. One book that made you laugh.

Anything by Pat McManus.

5. One book that made you cry.

The Killer Angels. Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer prize-winning, historical but fictionalized account of the Battle of Gettysburg made me understand war and respect those who wage it. That’s no small statement from someone who was once, in teenaged idealism, a pacifist.

6. One book you wish had been written.

I dearly wish that The 64 Dollar Tomato (William Alexander) was about twice as long (the opposite of my usual reaction to books). I also wish Michael Creighton had finished a number of his plots differently (Sphere being the worst offender). But for liber de novo, I would really like to read a coherent novel assembled out of Tolkien’s ideas about the 1^st or 2^nd ages of Middle Earth. I know the outlines of these stories are in the Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings Appendixes, but those are an assemblage of short stories and histories. Full novels would be great.

7.) One book you wish had never been written.

There are any number of ghost-written trashy autobios of pop culture figures that aren’t worth the trees they killed to print them, but I don’t think they deserve annulment, just derision. I well and truly hated Ayn Rand’s Anthem when I was forced to read it in high school, but it was the brilliant flame of teenage contempt for boring, overwrought social commentary. I think the book that would truly belong on this list is one that elicited no response whatsoever – one so badly written it generated not even mild annoyance nor the faint satisfaction of having finished it. One so badly conceived I put it down in the first chapter and promptly forgot it existed. Of course, having forgotten it, I am powerless to list it here. Dianetics might come close (Flame away, Scientologists).

8.) One book you are currently reading.

I’m reading about 10 at any given time – some I haven’t opened in months, some I try to open nightly. The most active one on the pile is My Imagined Country by Isabel Allende. The book I’ve been reading for the longest continuous stretch is Jacques Barzun’s Dawn to Decadence, 500 years of western cultural history. It is a magnificent work of intellectual brilliance, written after a lifetime of authoritative study which, despite Barzun’s age, is written in an engaging, concise, and illuminating manner. It’s also a goat-choker that requires a lot of attention while reading (and I tend to make notes in pencil in the margins of books that actively engage my brain – a habit that drives more than one of my friends insane). Therefore, I usually only read it on trips or vacations or really quiet weekends. I’ll get through it one day, but it won’t be any day soon (Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel is next on the rumination reading list, followed perhaps Dennis Overbye's Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos).

9.) One book you have been meaning to read.

There’s about 50 on the pile of books I OWN that I’d like to read. Extend that to the whole bibliophilic realm, and there are uncountable hordes. I really want to read Darwin’s The Origin of Species and Plato’s Republic soon. These are two foundational texts of Western culture that somehow I’ve missed out on reading.

10.) I'm replacing the traditional "now tag five people" closing with a tenth book: One book you've pushed on everyone you know.

I tend to pass around SF more than other flavors of literature. A decade ago, the book was David Brin's Earth. A lot of the character building is monodimensional, but I can forgive that becuase the book is more plot driven: theoretical physics adventure, speculative cosmology, and a 50 year projection of the state of the planet wrapped into one. Plus the plot of the spinoff epilog was, I am certain, the genesis of Benford's Cosm, written 8 years later (the two are frequent collaborators). I like Brin's treatment of the plot better than Benford's, but then again Brin didn't have to turn it into an entire book.

More recently, I've been pushing Dan Simmons' Hyperion and sequels or Jack McDevitt's Engines of God (which is head and shoulders above the rest of his work, by the way), or Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog. I'd push Poul Anderson, but nobody listens...