Selling Sno-Cones at the Beach

it's raining; what am I reading?

One Day at a Time didn't tag anyone, but I'm taking the book challenge anyway:

1. A book that changed my life: I am really stuck on this one. I can’t really remember when I didn’t know how to read and I can't think of how my life has been moved in a different direction by reading a specific book.

2. A book that I’ve read more than once: well, there are lots. See #8. Or #4. Or Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, say.

3. A book I’d want on a desert island: The Bible. I’ve always wanted to read the whole thing, and I’d have the time.

4. A book that makes me giddy: Hm. Not sure. Giddy isn’t a word I tend to use about myself.

5. A book that I wish I had written: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Also Possession by A.S. Byatt.

6. A book that wracked me with sobs: I might tear up when I read, but I can’t remember sobbing. I cried when Hawthorne died in I think it was the Edwin Miller bio (what, I didn’t expect it?!) and I was very melancholy when I’d finished a book on Maria Callas and Ari in late June. I love biographies, but it so often seems that subjects’ later years are so much less than they had wanted, and that just makes me so sad for them, and frankly, apprehensive for me and the people I know and love.

7. A book that you wish had never been written: That’s easy: Brett Easton Ellis, American Psycho. It made me sick. Well, I already had a cold; that’s not what I mean. It made me sick for what it can mean to be human. God, I can’t believe that BEE is in two consecutive entries of this blog. Ewwww.

8. A book that I am currently reading. Wings of the Dove, Henry James, for like the fourth time. I have it here with me in Poland; it’s inscribed by my friend who wrote the notes to it; and I dream of salvaging a very bad paper I wrote about it into publishable shape.

9.A book I am meaning to read. I have a long list, mostly for my lit review. But for fun, perhaps Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. That’s sort of a busman’s holiday, to get me thinking about civic participation.

10. What's your list?

Posted by otto0114 at August 25, 2006 01:41 PM