Join a community of bloggers, and next thing you know you've caught a communicable disease. Chris at Creek Running North saw fit to tap me with a chain letter blog meme called "Fahrenheit 451" that's infecting the blogosphere. I have to accept the challenge, or be declared an illiterate wimp, I guess.
No one calls me an illiterate wimp without a Chuck Palahniak-style fight. So here goes:
You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
I'd want to be the most persuasive book I could be, so I'd be The Penguin Book of Historic Speeches given to me a few months ago by the most gifted politician I know (and a pretty good doctor, too). It was his own copy, tattered and dog-eared, and full of wisdom, like William Pitt: "Where law ends, there tyranny begins" and Elizabeth Cady Stanton: "The male element is a destructive force" (written 100 years before Kevin Drum was born!) and Vaclav Havel: "We live in a contaminated moral environment." What more could I possibly hope to be?
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
When I was 13 I read These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder and fell hard for Almanzo, quiet, capable, and good with vehicles. I, in fact, married a guy just like that.
The last book you bought is?
Travels with Macy, by Bruce Fogle. The famous London veterinarian travels across America with his golden retriever Macy, retracing Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, but in a GMC motorhome instead of a truck named Rocinante. Along the way, he talks to Americans about the war, the president, and their dogs, and discovers we aren't the provincial creatures he'd imagined. I'd heard him on BBC, and knew I couldn't wait for the paperback. I was right; it's rewarding on many levels—harrowing adventure, political insight, and sheer puppy love.
What are you currently reading?
Almost finished with Macy (saving the last chapter, like a long goodbye) and nibbling on several others, including Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way; How to Speak Dog and The Intelligence of Dogs, both by Stanley Coren; Learning Their Language by Marta Williams; Don't Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff; The Politics of Deceit by Glenn Smith; The Story of Britain by Rebecca Fraser; Portuguese Irregular Verbs by Alexander McCall Smith; In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner; and various travel books. I'm ready for more historical fiction, since I enjoyed The American Boy by Andrew Taylor, but I must finish off one of the above before I pick up London by Edward Rutherfurd.
Five books you would take to a desert island:
Not to be conceited, but I'd like to take one of my own unpublished books, since they can be endlessly rewritten, for hours and hours of mental stimulation beyond any available by legal or illegal means. But which one? The first, which still needs some work? Or the one that was the most fun to write? No, I'll take the one I abandoned to go work in politics (that island isn't in need of reform I hope), the one I still don't know the ending to.
Since I'll be doing some writing, I'll take The Describer's Dictionary by David Grambs, a lovely book that prods a sluggish mind. Sort of like a thesaurus on steroids.
A cookbook—The Voluptuous Vegan? Vegan Planet? No, I'd better take something like Edible Wild Plants, since I don't know a horsetail from horseradish.
Continuing that theme, Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, since I also had a crush on John Grady. (And I think all good books will make you fall just a little in love with their heroes.)
Something to make me laugh, because life's not worth living if you can't laugh. David Sedaris, or even Dave Barry, because with no toilet on the island, potty humor will be a lot more nuanced.
Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
To my oldest daughter, because she's got the gumption to tell me no and stop this madness.
To my youngest daughter, because she's secretly a poet and is funny besides. (I suspect she'll be a great bloggist one day, if she's not already.)
To my new blog friend Christie, who likes dogs too, writes pretty well, and might know some more dog books I could read.
Now, do I get 1000 postcards from France?
