Book meme

My eldest daughter, the granola otherwise known as Amka, has tagged me. Aah...this is a good tag. I like to think about books.

1. Name a book that has changed your life. I don't remember the title of the book. It's the first book my mother read to me. I cannot remember a time in my life when I didn't love books and that has been one of the things that my life is about. My favorite Christmas present as a child was "The Anthology of Children's Literature", a book that was fat enough even for me. Oddly enough my parents apologized for giving me the book. They thought it didn't compare well to the gifts the other children received. I would be willing to bet that I am the only one who still has a gift from that Christmas and that my gift brought more hours of happiness and pleasure than all the other gifts combined.

2. One book that I have read more than once? Just one? Can't do it. I will share a list of writers whose books I have read more than once and will most likely return to again. Willa Cather (The Song of the Lark, My Antonia), Jessamyn West (Crescent Delahanty...first read this one while I was in high school), Wallace Stegner, Conrad Richter, Herman Wouk, Carl Sandburg (yes, he is a poet but he wrote wonderful biographies of Lincoln and his wife as well as a terrific novel, Remembrance Rock, one of my all time favorites), Gerard Manley Hopkins (yes, I know he is a poet and technically did not write a book, but he is my favorite poet) William Stafford (also a favorite poet), Tillie Olsen, Orson Scott Card, William Shakespeare. I am sure if I thought long enough I could go on. Currently I am loving novels based on American history and written during the 20th century. Ten years ago I was kneedeep in medieval history and world literature. Love old English...and I ain't talking Shakespeare here...he was the first modern writer.

3. One book you would want on a desert island. Just one???? It would have to be a very big, very fat book that I edited myself with all my favorite scriptures, favorite poetry, and excerpts from my favorite novels.

4. One book that made you laugh. Ummm.... Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. I used to read this to my kids. :) Gloria Sylvia Cynthia Stout would not take the garbage out....so I wraps my hair around my bare and down the road I goes....No one loves a Christmas tree on March the 25th...heheh still makes me giggle

5. One book that made you cry. Sophie's Choice by William Styron (read this one during one of my WW II phases)

6. One book I wish I had written. Hmm...I have frequent episodes of writer's envy. I wish I written some of Hopkin's poems. I wish I had written The Tempest by Will Shakespeare (one of the finest things ever written imho). I wish had written all the books I have inside me.

7. One book I wish had never been written. Hard to say here. Whose opinions are not valid enough to write? I wish that people would get along together better than they do. I wish no one would write a book that inflicted undeserved pain or suffering on anyone else.

8. One book that you are currently reading. Oh my. Just one? I never read one book at a time. I am reading The Big Sky by A. B. Guthrie Jr. Another of those American historical novels. Pretty good, too, I might add. I picked it up because it has a forward by Wallace Stegner. I am also reading Healing Moves by Carol Krucoff and Mitchell Krucoff, MD, a book about how exercise is actually good for you. hmmm. Honey and Salt which is a book of poetry by Carl Sanburg. My Hopkins is always on my bedside table. I also dabble in the scriptures, Old Testament and Book of Mormon, but not as regularly as I did a few months ago.

9. One book you have been meaning to read. One book???? Just one? Well, I have recently discovered that Jessamyn West and Willa Cather were more prolific than I thought they were. So I have their bibliographies to finish. And both of them read Virginia Woolf, a writer whose books I have not read. Ought to do that...she was one of the most influential women writers in the US. I have also been thinking about all the literature in the world that was not written by Brits or Americans. Lots of stuff out there to read.

10. Now tag five people. Yikes...I am just getting started in this blogging world. I am gonna pass on this one.