So Digby's tagged me on the book-meme thingie. Off we go:
You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be [saved]?
Since so many other folks have saved the Big Important Pieces of Serious Literature, I'm going with the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. It all comes in one binding, so I think that's fair. And to lose Douglas Adams' literary contribution would break my fool heart.
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
I constantly have crushes on fictional characters. Just don't tell my girlfriend.
The last book you bought is?
Kinda did a spree at Barnes and Nobles yesterday, and picked up Norman Mailer's The Fight, Paul Roberts' The End of Oil, and Sara Nelson's So Many Books, So Little Time. I'd easily recommend the Mailer and the Roberts, but skip Nelson. I thought I was getting a smart and fun meditation on being a read-a-holic, but what I really picked up was a mostly banal trip through her opinions on reading. Did you know books can make you remember a certain time/place in your life? Did you know books can help you escape the real world? Did you know the books your friends recommend can say something about their personalities? Etc.
What are you currently reading?
Bad question. I've got, at any given time, about 15 books open, so I'll try and limit this:
Robert Parker's biography of John Kenneth Galbraith (amazingly good, but absolutely endless);
Joel Slemrod's Taxing Ourselves;
The aforementioned Mailer and Roberts titles;
Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment,
The Right Nation;
The United States of Europe;
The New America Foundation's State of the Union;
Chris Matthews' Kennedy & Nixon;
Robert Dallek's biography of JFK;
The list, unfortunately, goes on.
Which of those will get finished, I just don't know.
Five books you would take to a deserted island?
I should stay away from the cheap How to Make Fire answers, right?
I'd probably go for the longest, densest stuff I could find. We're talking Rawls, Proust, a set of encyclopedias, that history of The Reformation everyone likes so much, and probably, again, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
Brad Plumer, because he was an English major and will thus offer much more erudite answers than you got here;
Jesse Taylor, because I want to know, also because he sent me Lethem's Fortress of Solitude which is now one of my favorite books;
Praktike, because I want to know more about the man behind the psuedonym.