Books

You know that hideous part of being sick where you’ve slept all you can, pumped yourself full of medicine, and half-dozed through what seems like multiple seasons of CSI and Law & Order, and yet, despite all those heinous crimes being handily solved, you’re just not feeling much better? Thanks to the blitz of drugs and midday naps (not to mention several hours of Bruckheimer-produced television), you’re sort of groggy and unfocused, and it doesn’t seem like a good time to do anything. Well that’s where I am this evening. Michael, however, has tagged me with the fast-spreading book meme, and I suppose this is as good a time as any to ponder the impact of various tomes on my existence. It’s either that or another 42 minutes of grisly murders, grim dialog, and convenient clues.

1. One book that changed your life?
Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

2. One book that you have read more than once?
Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game

3. One book you would want on a desert island?
It’s probably cheating to say The Collected Works of [Beckett, Shakespeare, anyone else with an overstuffed “collected works”], so maybe David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest because, stuck on an island with nothing else to read, I wouldn’t feel guilty for neglecting other reading for several months to give it the close attention it requires.

4. One book that made you cry?
I don't think I've ever cried when reading a book. If I did I was a little kid. American Pastoral, though, maybe had a similar effect. I think the stock lit-nerd phrase for it would be, "it dredged up powerful emotions."

5. One book that made you laugh?
Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Yes, a generic choice, I know—but what can I say? It's funny.)

6. One book you wish had been written?
What an odd question. Maybe Incontrovertible Proof of God's Existence and Goodness, by The Being Universally Agreed Upon to be the Supreme Creator of Existence. That may be asking too much, but I didn't make up the question. My second choice would be Everything That Is Terrible in Steven Spielberg's A.I.: How I Would Have Made Something Brilliant, Not This Pretentious Piece of Crap by Stanley Kubrick. It's a step down from the first choice, I know.

Late Addition: I'd really like to see, All My Movies Explained in Plain English by David Lynch—not because I particularly want their creepy dream logic spoiled by explanation, but because, really, it'd have to be damn fascinating to find out what that guy thinks.

7. One book you wish had never been written?
Beloved, by Toni Morrison. Alright, Morrison clearly has a gift for densely layered fiction, but fercryinoutloud, somehow part of me thinks that the mountains of effort expended on this book by academics and lit-crit showoffs would be put to far better use somewhere else.

8. One book you are reading currently?
Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, edited by John Willett

9. One book you have been meaning to read?
Just one? That’s kind of stifling. I'm quite interested in Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children, but seeing as I've read—just to take a small example of the gaping holes in my literary life—only two books each by Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, maybe I should choose something a little less current and a little more relevant. I don't even know how to pick books to read anymore. It's like sorting through a truckload of crystals—without careful inspection, many look like diamonds, but it takes a lot of time to go through each one and decide.

10. Pass it on

Well, howbout it, Andy, Chuck, and Reihan?