By both Paula and Roy, and I feel strangely honored, if not honorably strange. They answered questions -- now I get to too! It'll take awhile, though. My books are on shelves in the dining room, and I just sat down to do this, and now two other people have joined me and want to play cards while we eat ice cream left over from a birthday party last weekend.
1. Is there a book that you really want to read but haven’t because you know that it’ll make you cry?
No.
2. Pick one book that helped introduce you to a new genre.
Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century by Greil Marcus
Not a history book. That wouldn't be new. More of a weird social critique, I dunno. I read it when I got it over twenty years ago and learned obscure facts about punk culture that made me look really smart and hip when I started interacting with strange other humans via online bulletin board systems. I'm thinking this book (a Christmas present I would never have glanced at on my own) broke me of straight history books.
3. Find a book you want to reread.
This is so random. At this instant I'll take L.A. Confidential, or better yet The Big Sleep.
4. Is there a book series you’ve read but wish that you hadn’t?
No, I'm not too shy about quitting a book I don't like. There is this one book series called Left Behind but I only got halfway through the first chapter. I do regret reading that much, if that counts.
5. If your house was burning down and all of your family and pets were safe, which book would you go back inside to save?
Hard to say, I have a few irreplaceable books. But I hope I first grab both the ancestral Bible printed in Stuttgart in the 1700s and the U.S. History book published in 1848. All the rest can take their chances. No, somewhere is the binding of all known copies of the aviation magazine my grandfather started just before the Depression. Somewhere is the remembrance book of my other grandfather's WWI artillery battalion. I don't want to lose any of that. Not sure where they are. Grr! Bad question!
6. Is there one book on your bookshelf that brings back fond memories?
The Lord of the Rings reminds me of warm Spring afternoons in junior high school, reading of rabbit stew in Ithilien while America played A Horse With No Name on the radio ... and many similar memories, pleasant places, deep dreams, while the music, whatever it was, was always good.
7. Find a book that has inspired you the most.
At this moment I will say Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, because since reading it I have more easily seen that skeptics and people of faith, freethinkers and believers, are all the same, driven by the same instincts and capacity for abstraction, only approaching life and cosmology and everything in different ways, as life and experience have taught them. But of course this question can be answered a zillion ways.
8. Do you have any autographed books?
Yes, but damned if I remember which. Oh wait, found one: The Lincoln Secret by John A. McKinsey, given me by my cousin because the author is some guy she knew in Dixon and for all I know was giving away signed copies. I haven't read it.
9. Find the book that you have owned the longest.
This is hard because I'm not at home and after several days of being in drafts I want to get this thing published. Also hard because I have a lot of books that have been in the family longer than I have and I have to filter those out. If I think about books acquired when I was young without being able to paw through the vaults ... the first that comes to mind is the Book of Common Prayer that I was issued at my Confirmation. This took place at Grace Cathedral up on Nob Hill in San Francisco, where we wore boy-suits and gathered at the front while bagpipes echoed around the columns. But before that we filed through the underground spaces where Bishop Myer signed my prayer book. I felt very special and religious.
10. Is there a book by an author that you never imagined you would read or enjoy?
No. Well, probably yes, but I can't remember any that I felt that way about before I went and ahead and read and enjoyed them anyway.
The next step is to tag five people but the blog world ain't what it used to be and the people I would tag arready done been arready, so I'll do just one: Harry!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
re Horse With No Name--since we both grew up in the Bay Area (you do consider Berzerkly in the BA?) you might be interested to know that kids in the Midwest did not hear precisely the same songs that we did on the air back in the 60s and 70s. I can't think of any specific examples at the moment, but not everything that got lots of air out of San Francisco necessarily did out of Omaha, Kansas City, OK City, and so on. Swear to God: some people around here never even heard of Moby Grape, Vanilla Fudge, or half the songs that Quicksilver Messenger Service did, which is, well, I don't what it is, but it ain't right.
And this music today--it's not even music. It's just NOISE. Giddoffmylawn!
Great answers, Don. Really enjoyed this.
Agree with Roy re the songs. We're a couple years apart, and the songs I most remember playing repeatedly on the radio from the summer between fresh & soph years were Long Tall Glasses and Lido Shuffle.
{like}
Post a Comment