tree_and_leaf | Book meme, gacked from fernwithy (Reply)

1. One book that changed your life?
There are a couple I could name here - I wouldn't be the same person without The Lord of the Rings - or I suppose I could be smart and say the Bible, because my life, and the world we live in would be entirely different without it.

However, I shall say Gaudy Night, because that was where I first understood about academia and the honour of the mind, and the importance of finding your job and doing it well. I suspect it also had an alarmingly large impact on my ideas about love.

- Possession almost fits in the same category, except as an Awful Warning about bad things that can happen to graduate students. But though I love the book, I'd rather stick with the positive ideal.

2. One book you have read more than once?
Oh come on, only one? All right, then, this time I will name Lord of the Rings. I first read it when I was eight, and have been returning to it ever since.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?
I believe the traditional answer is 'The Bible-or Shakespeare'. Could I have a combined edition, like those Bibles you get bound with Hymns A and M or the BCP?

Alternatively, a book about the local flora. I think I can probably remember most of the necessary survival stuff from my various Scout books, but I'd rather not play Berry Roulette, thanks.

4. One book that made you cry?
Effi Briest, by Theodor Fontane. Alternatively, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

5. One book that made you laugh?
All the Discworld books have made me laugh at some point. Let me take the opportunity, however, to plug Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, a satire of rural novels which will never stop being funny. I particularly cherish the scenes at the Church of the Quivering Brethren. It has a system of three and four stars for particularly 'good' descriptive passages, as an aid to the busy reviewer. Actually, there are some fan-fics which could adopt this system with profit.

6. One book you wish had been written?
I think it would have been really cool if Casablanca had been based on a novel by Raymond Chandler. I'd definitely read that.

7. One book you wish had never had been written?
The bloody Da Vinci Code, etc.

8. One book you are currently reading?
Die Vermessung der Welt, by Daniel Kehlmann. It's about Carl Gauss and Alexander von Humboldt, and is funny and rather grotesque. as well as having some interesting ideas about, er, measuring the world.

9. One book you have been meaning to read?
The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene. I promised a friend I'd read it and let him know what I think.