Wednesday, August 09, 2006

I've been tagged???

OK, The Bride Who Wore Black has tagged me, so I will submit. While I am very tempted to respond with Wild at Heart for every answer, I decided to play nice - for today.

1. One book that changed your life: Amusing Ourselves To Death by Neil Postman. It opened my eyes to the way the news media shapes and influences opinion, and to how much we have lost the ability to digest complex ideas - we want sound bites.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once: I'm gonna cheat and give two - The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien) and The Stand (Stephen King). I read both while in high school, and many times since. LOTR edges out The Stand by a wide margin, but the Stand has some of Stephen King's best characters (of his older stuff, I quit reading him after IT). They are a little similar in that the characters in both are on quests where they have to face evil both from within themselves and outside. I hate the way King ended The Stand, but the 500 pages before that are pretty good.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island: That book from Myst, where you open it and get transported somewhere else. Or one with a map to all the Dharma Initiative hatches.

4. One book that made you laugh: "I've got it again, Larry...an eerie feeling like there's something on top of the bed." The Far Side Gallery by Gary Larson. A true geek's geek.

5. One book that made you cry: Wild at Heart. I won't try to defend it theologically, I'm not qualified. But it touched something in me that had been dead for a long time.

6. One book that you wish had been written: How to Make a Fortune from the Trivial Knowledge You Already Possess!!

7. One book that you wish had never been written: Prayer of Jabez. It's a cool prayer, but I think it gets blown out of proportion.

8. One book you’re currently reading: Nothing currently. I just finished Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. I like his perspective on some things. On Monday I will be up to my eyeballs in textbooks (final 15 hours of coursework, yeah!) whose names I do not yet know.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read: Gospel of John in the original Greek. Not to boast, because I'm not sure that I can do it. That's why it's on my "meaning to read" list.

10. Now tag five people: Sorry, this really is a dead end. You got off the superhighway when you made that left turn in Albuquerque.

3 comments:

rhon said...

They Myst book! I can't believe I didn't think of that. Brilliant.

Erin said...

Aha! You've been hiding your Bat Blog in another cave, Leatherwing.

Got any good recommendations on a Stephen King novel? I totally loved one of his short stories, Quitters, Inc. It was less horror and more suspense. I'd love to read some more along those lines.

Leatherwing said...

Erin, Quitters, Inc came from Night Shift, a collection of his short stories. I think he may do short stories better than he does novels. So you may also like Skeleton Crew, another short story collection I read and enjoyed.
As far as novels go, The Stand is probably my fave, but it clocks in at over 500 pages. Salemn's Lot creeped me out when I first read it in high school and I still enjoy reading about little dead Danny Glick scratching on the 2nd floor window asking to come inside.
His four novellas published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman were also pretty good. The Long Walk stands out in my mind from that collection.
Enjoy.