Tagged! Book meme

Yaxlich, a very cool guy over there in the land of mentally mixed-up royalty (Wills is cute, though), tagged me with a meme. It's about books, and I do so love books!







1. One book that changed your life - the hardest question first.
Boy, this is hard. One book? Just one book? Well, I'll say that this book had me fall in love with reading and literature at an early age: 70 Favorite Stories for Young Readers. It features work by contributors such as Louisa May Alcott, O. Henry, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ray Bradbury, James Thurber, Walter de la Mare, and others whose significance in the literary world would dawn on me several years later.

2. One book that you've read more than once.
Another tough one. I've read so many books over and over. One of the most recent would be Gai-jin, by James Clavell. I enjoy historical fiction, and this one just grabbed me and swallowed me whole. It was like I was actually seeing and living life in mid-19th-century Japan, when honor and duty were the way of life there. I've also re-read Clavell's other historical books, notably Tai-Pan and Shogun.

3. One book that you'd want on a desert island.
Damn, I can't answer this! It's like asking me to choose only one food to eat for the rest of my life. Can I ask for broadband Internet connection instead so that I'd be able to download all the e-books I want to read? Oh, maybe Xaviera Hollander's Letters to the Happy Hooker (tee hee)

4. One book that made you laugh.
Seinlanguage, by Jerry Seinfeld. Also, Erma Bombeck's If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? And the classic English As She Is Spoke--this one is a must read.

5. One book that made you cry.
I cry even at commercials and funny movies. Okay. The Diary of Anne Frank. Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Erich Segal's Love Story. (yeah, yeah, I read sappy love stories. Shoot me.) The Little Mermaid in an anthology of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales (one reason I never deigned to watch the Disney movie version. The bastards desecrated my favorite fairy tale).

6. One book that you wish you had written.
I wish I could have contributed to Songs of Ourselves: Writings by Filipino Women in English, edited by Edna Zapanta-Manlapaz. A wondrous collection of literature by Filipinas in and out of the Philippines.

Otherwise...hmmm. None, really. There are many that I've savored, but I've yet to find one that will make me wish I'd written it. Maybe one day I'll write one and somebody will say "Gee, I wish I'd written that book!" Dream on, girlie.

7. One book you wish had never been written.
Hmmm. None, really. There are many that I've disliked, but I've yet to find one that will make me wish it had never been written. Maybe one day I'll write one and somebody will say "Gee, I wish that book had never been written!" Bite your tongue, girlie.

8. One book that you are reading at the moment.
I have three. Points of View: An Anthology of Short Stories, edited by James Moffett and Kenneth R. McElheny; The 100 Best Poems of All Time, edited by Leslie Pockell, and the Reader's Digest Book of Facts. All of which I'm re-reading, by the way. I alternate them. One for before going to sleep, one for when I'm doing my thing in the bathroom, one for "just because."

9. One book that you've been meaning to read.
Jeff Bezos: Business Genius of Amazon.com, by Judy Garty. Never mind the tarmac-like forehead. He made a fortune out of selling books. He's awesome.

10. Five others that you’d like to do this.
I'm tagging other blatantly obvious bibliophiles. Mimi, Gale, H, Morgen, inamini, Irene, Ian, and Prometheus. Oh, that's eight. What the heck. I never did learn to deal with numbers. Of course, anyone who wants to do this, feel free. Leave a comment and I'll read your book list.

Thanks, Yaxlich! This was fun.