book meme

Kept meaning to get to this, but I didn't. Until now...

1. One book that changed your life: C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain. It's not a great book. If I remember correctly, Lewis encouraged people to read the later A Grief Observed instead. It was the first non-fiction book I ever read, though, and so was very exciting. It hadn't occured to me that people would just write books about ideas, rather than making me wade through characters and plots and long descriptions of sunsets over grassy meadows just to get to the point. And no, books about dinosaurs and horses and Abraham Lincoln didn't count, in part because I had read them already, and in greater part because what I wanted was something more abstract. Ironically, the thing that makes A Grief Observed so much better than The Problem of Pain is that it is far less abstract; The Problem of Pain is an attempt at building a theodicy, while A Grief Observed is what Lewis wrote in the aftermath of his wife's death. I probably wouldn't have liked A Grief Observed at the time.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once: Zorba The Greek. He dances what he can't say! Don Quixote wins 2nd place.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island: Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. I haven't read this book, but I really want to. It strikes me as the sort of book that would require uninterrupted time, so a desert island would be a great place to read it. 2nd place: Till We Have Faces.

4. One book that made you laugh: Scientific Progress Goes "Boink" (Calvin and Hobbes). I used to read and reread these cartoons while practicing my trumpet- reason #73 that I'm not an accomplished trumpeter.

5. One book that made you cry: Where The Red Fern Grows. It was assigned in class when I was in middle school, and I read it within a few days on the bus. And cried on the bus- it was so embarassing.

6. One book that you wish had been written: How about "Hit and Miss Evangelicalism at a Quaker Seminary for Dummies?" That would be a useful book.

7. One book that you wish had never been written: I'm going to cheat and list an entire series of books: anything written by John and/or Stasi Eldredge. I read Wild at Heart the way that Kate read The Prayer of Jabez: sitting in the college bookstore, because I was too indignant to buy it. I can boil the entire philosophy of gender down into two clauses: men want to accomplish things and be admired, women want to be protected like princesses and adored. Men secretly desire risk taking behaviors, hunting and bloodshed, and women secretly desire to be desired. If this doesn't describe your experience of your gender, then you aren't properly in touch with your gendered nature. That's far more than two clauses, but it's an infuriating series.

8. One book you’re currently reading: Meaning, by Michael Polanyi.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read: I'm going to cheat again and list two. A Poetic for Sociology would be a great follow up to Meaning, and I've wanted to read Deeply Into The Bone since junior year or so of college.