Okay, I've finally ponied up and responded to the meme. Here it is, probably highly predictable.

1) You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

One has to make a number of assumptions about this question; I don’t know that I could make just one.

Let’s say I’m a female Guy Montag and I’m leaning towards hanging onto a book. It’d be a toss-up between Campbell’s Hero of a Thousand Faces and Pinkola-Estes’ Women Who Run With Wolves. They might explain the Jungian theory behind human’s drive to wipe out history so that I could wage an effective fight against the book-burning political and cultural directive. As often as book burning has occurred over time, this must be archetypal behavior, yes? Or perhaps I’m just in need of simple beauty; who could object to a book of Shakespeare’s sonnets? Easy to hide – unlike the magnificent The Riverside Shakespeare.

Or let’s say I’m the fire chief with my closeted hoarding of books – which book would I add to my collection? Gah! There are so many treasures that deserve saving, I don’t even know where to begin. I’d be overwhelmed by the choice. In that case I would squirrel away that Riverside Shakespeare or a copy of the Tao Te Ching, something timeless, rich and beautiful.

Perhaps I’m myself, stuck in F451 – it would be so much easier to pick books to burn for the greater good. Unfortunately, in spite of my belief in free speech, I believe there are some books that are an enormous waste of resources. Treason written by She-who-will-not-be-Named and Bush at War by Bob “I’m not Bernstein” Woodward are just two such books I’d happily burn. This is the best these two people could do? They couldn’t pay some ghostwriter to do better? Unfortunately, this is the slippery slope; burning this uncompressed fuel would only reinforce the wrong ethic.

2) Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Many crushes, many times. Truly tasty characters are those in which we can earnestly believe, the kind of person with whom we can empathize deeply enough to almost fall in love.

As a young teen I always adored Joffrey de Peyrac in the Angelique series; who wouldn’t want their very own intelligent, versatile and wealthy rogue? Who wouldn’t want to be adored as de Peyrac adored Angelique? Oh, for the days when desires were so simple...

3) The last book you bought was?

Which store?

At Amazon, it was a copy each of Landscape Plants for Subtropical Climates and Subtropical Garden, both for my parents’ home in Florida. Having lived most of their adult lives in the Midwest, gardening in subtropics is a challenge; a lot of what they’ve known about gardening has been completely upended.

At Barnes and Noble it was a copy of a book on _________ before my last Democracy for America Meetup. (Get the discount card; it pays for itself, especially if you end up in the Café sipping a chai and nibbling on biscotti reading a copy of Foreign Affairs every month while waiting for the rest of your DFA folks to arrive!) Oops, I can’t disclose this title or topic, it’s an as-yet ungifted present for someone. Shhhh…don’t tell her, she’s getting a book! She loves books as much as I do; aren't friends like that the best?

At Salvation Army (one of my favorite bookstores!), it was a PILE of books, several brown paper sacks filled to the brim. I couldn’t pass up deals like a dime each for Fleming’s Arts and Ideas or Watterson’s Architecture: A Short History, or the very handy and timely Cabinetry: The Woodworkers Guide to Building Professional-Looking Cabinets and Shelves (helped while shopping for cabinets for the new house). I can’t even recall which books I bought in the last bags I brought home; I have piles and piles of them here, waiting for the new book case in the new house. (Yes, I’m a book hoarder. I must possess them as much as they possess me. Libraries are great but only for books that I need as occasional references. I need to own the ones I read and re-read.)

4) The last book you read was?

Not quite finished with Leon Jaworski’s The Right and the Power; I was feeling rather nostalgic for Nixon and Watergate. I never thought I’d miss those days.

And I’m finishing Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee as well, seem to read it in fits and spurts, a page here, a chapter there. I'm bad about this; I tend to read several books all at the same time and not in a continous fashion. What about you?

5) What are you currently reading?

See above, but next in the queue is Collapse by Jared Diamond; I’m nuts about the guy. I find him to be highly accessible and the kind of person I’d most like to have a beer with at the local pub. Can you imagine the conversation?

6) Five books you'd take to a deserted island?

More assumptions required, really. Let’s assume I’m going for a finite period of time on a sort of mandatory, all-expense paid vacation. (If only…can I pick the island, too? Define “deserted” – does that include maid-service once a week?)

I would have to take books that I’ve been meaning to read and haven’t read or want to re-read, like these:

The Essential Ellison -- re-read and re-read, over and over, dark and de-lovely.

The Collected Works of Ken Wilber – Volume 7, containing A Brief History of Everything and The Eye of Spirit. Ken Wilber’s unified field theory of psychology (transpersonal psychology) deserves multiple readings, too.

Machiavelli’s The Prince, Plato’s Republic and Sun Tzu’s Art of War – all three, together, because I’ve always wanted to map out where these guys overlap in their approach to the opposition and put it to use. (Insert wicked, witchy laugh here…muwahahahaha…)

And I want to read but haven't yet read The Synaptic Self, been sitting on the top of a pile for entirely too long. [sigh]

But if I was being forced to live on this deserted island indefinitely because of some freak accident, I’d have to say I hope to have these on hand:

SAS Survival Handbook: How to Survive in the Wild, in Any Climate, on Land or at Sea – ya’ gotta’ eat. And you’ve gotta’ have shelter.

Red Cross First Aid and Safety Handbook – safety first!

Gray’s Anatomy – just in case I need to bandage something BIG, I’d rather have a roadmap.

Alas, Babylon – tempting, if frivolous, just because it seems to fit the spirit of survivalism…but on second thought, I’d grab the Ellison compendium above to remind how blessed I am to be away from evils that are part and parcel of civilization.

A New Kind of Science – a re-read, but heck, besides fighting for survival, what else do I have to do? I could spend all my free time running mental models of cellular automata and contemplating the idea of a self-computing, self-aware universe

Or maybe I'd re-read Gould's The Structure of Evolutionary Theory; it would keep me busy for quite a while, whether stuck indefinitely or no. Been meaning to do so. Or maybe I should look for something lighter and fun, like The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke, or speaking of F451, Bradbury Stories...by the way, is there a collection of Vonnegut out there?

7) Who will you pass this stick (3 persons) on to, and why?

Fellow Salon blogger Art Jacobson of Ojo Caliente – because he kindly volunteered and he thinks he needs a project; I also think Art will do a bang-up job on this.

Christine at Catnmus – another kindly volunteer who is a strong reader, too.

Rob Salkowitz, are you up for this? Enquiring minds want to know!

It was worth the exercise to be infected and have to consciously evaluate one's reading habits. I definitely need to do more reading than I've been doing; I guess I didn't realize how light my reading load has been of late. I usually juggle three to eight books at any time, a mix of light reading and heavy tomes. Perhaps I've spent too much time on the internet lately, reading topical and current material. Hmm. Have your reading habits changed over the last couple of years?

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