9622.net

The reason I posted this now, mid-beer, is that I had this sudden thought that it would be a mighty fine thing to have the entirety of Metafilter in a single book. The smarts, the dumbs, the intrigue, the infighting. Not much of a plot, but great characterization.

As far as my desert island books go : that's a hard fucking question, isn't it? Without thinking too carefully about it, and keeping in mind that I've had a few, some that pop to mind are :

but that's just off the top of my head...thinking in terms of reread value alone.

A related question would be (and I'd be interested to hear y'all talk about) "What criteria would I be trying to meet in my choice of desert island books?"

This is one of those questions where I don't know whether to choose all books that I've read already (guaranteed to be enjoyed at least the first few re-reads, but might not stand up to years of repeated reading), or to go with ones which I've always wanted to read, but never had the time. I mean, I would hate to get to a desert island with a crate of books I'd never read, & discover 3/4ths of them are cruddy. Perhaps it's better to go with a half-and-half strategy?

let's see... definitely the Hitchhiker Omnibus, as well as G.E.B. (heh... maybe on a desert island I'd be able to read it enough times to wrap my head around it properly once and for all); also at least one Dickens novel, and Stephen Fry's Paperweight... Hrm... I need more time to think this over, obviously.

Actually, I'm reading a fantastic book at the moment called, "From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life", by Jaques Barzun. I'm only about 150 pgs in (it's 800 densely printed pages), but so far, I believe it would be a "desert-island"er.

I can't think of ten off the top of my head right now (woe the loser English major!), but will add Che: A Revolutionary Life to the list...even if you don't agree with anything he did or said, he was a seriously intense dude, an intelligent medical student, a halfway decent poet, and someone who, for better or worse, did everything with the utmust gusto. A very good read.

Plus, ya know, if you were on an island and all, it might motivate you to start a revolution. Or not.

This is going to be one of those threads where I keep adding and adding...

*Anything by Mark Twain.
*e.e.cummings
*Dancing on My Grave by Gelsey Kirkland
*my photography books of Max Waldman and Howard Schatz, because I need visual stimulation
*My collection of Sandman comic books, visual stimulation and fascinating storyline
*My collection of Anne Rice books, for good trashy fun.
*The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie(sp)
*Don Quixote
actually, all of those Penguin classics will do me just fine, both to re-read some of them and find new reads.

Just finished or recently finished reading:

*I Malavolgia by Giovanni Verga (gonna have to reread this one again, this time without the dictionary at my side.)
*Scritto sul corpo by Jeanette Winterson
*Italiani By Tim Parks
*In principio erano le mutande by Rossana Campo

Oi Migs! I asked this in the other thread, but I'm not sure if you saw it. Are you published in Italia? If so, do you know which publishing house handles the translation?

"Is TV Guide a book?"

(Back in the present, Homer is filling out college applications. His
garbage bin is full of crumpled paper.}

Homer: [growls in frustration]
Lisa: Dad, don't let these application essays throw you. Let's see:
"List your three favorite books and how they've influenced your
life."
Homer: Is "TV Guide" a book?
Lisa: No.
Homer: "Son of Sniglet"?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Katherine Hepburn's "Me"?
Lisa: No!
Homer: Oh, I suck.

Damn my typing. I Malavoglia

Can I include the collection of Johnny the Homocidal Maniac comics, by Johnny Vasquez? Best. Comic. Ever.

Also, Aloud! Voices from the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe was great. I had, during my last semester at Rutgers, a class with Miguel Algarin, who compiled the book. He brought in many of the poets to read in class, including Reg E. Gaines (he wrote Bring in the Noise, Bring in the Funk) and Edwin Torres were, like, totally rad.

Link to Edwin Torres.

Obviously my Riverside Complete Works of Shakespeare, so it'll count as one book (although I prefer the Arden publications). Then maybe Ulysses by Joyce, since I'd have time to read it, although it just might drive me insane to be reading Ulysses alone on an uncharted desert isle. Pride & Prejudice by Austen. And A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu by Proust, which I've now owned for 2 years and haven't read yet. And the complete diaries of Anais Nin.

Chris - ten is damn difficult. I assume some cheating is allowed, in the form of choosing authors and collections rather than individual works)

Tanakh (doesn't count);

1. Samuel Beckett - Complete Plays, Novels and Short Stories (if only one novel, Watt; only one play Endgame; one short story collection, Fizzles);
2. Paul Válery - Complete Poems, Stories and Journals (the whole Pléiade; if only 2 volumes; The Cahiers);
3. Yasunari Kawabata - Complete Short Stories;
4. Wallace Stevens - Collected Poems;
5. Luís de Camões - Lírica(Collected Poems);
6. Jorge Luís Borges - Collected Short Stories;
7. Plato - The Dialogues;
8. Wittgenstein - (Inexistent)Complete Works(if pressed, Culture And Value);
9. James Boswell - The Life of Samuel Johnson;
10. S.J.Perelman - The Most Of S.J.P.

I would still feel very frustrated and hard done by and spend my time on the island in a funk.

[Dear Romakimmy: No, the bastards!]

Damn. Well, that explains why I couldn't find anything.

It would be a crime (or, an effrontery to all that is decent) if I didn't put Confederacy of Dunces on there.

I didn't know that the Desert Island Game meant ten things! This is good news...

When I sober up (and recover from any ensuing hangover) I'll defintiely come up with some more faves...

Before you sober up, Stav - where's that fine photograph from? Cheers.

I'm flattered, Romakimmy!

Stav: Desert Island Discs is actually eight pieces of music and one book, apart from the Bible. So I, erm, interpreted it in the light of EBK's record thread to mean 10 books plus anyone's version of the Bible.

The chicken is silenced!?!

Speaking of Wittgenstein, anyone read Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson? I'm trying to figure out if that would be a good or bad book to have alone on a desert island. The narrator in WM is either the last person on earth or thinks she is, which amounts to the same thing in the end.

Well, what the hell:

Thomas Wolfe - Look Homeward, Angel
Haruki Murakami - Hardboiled Wonderland and The End Of The World
Franz Kafka - The Complete Stories
Gaiman - Sandman
Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle
David Brin - Sundiver/Startide Rising/The Uplift War
Henry Miller - The Rosy Crucifixion
Knut Hamsun - Pan
Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment
Bill Bryson - Notes from a Small Island/The Lost Continent

Oh and maybe Kenzaburo Oe's A Personal Matter.

Vladamir Nabakov -- The Defense (which was made into a half-way decent movie last year called The Luzhin Defence)

The Story of O

I should call Bill Bryson and tell him he's on a list next to Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

I actually was stranded on a desert island the summer after I graduated from high school (more or less, I was staying on the Big Island of Hawaii with some ultra-religious relatives in an undeveloped area, no running water, no electricity, caught rain water for bathing, etc.) and I had very little money so I bought the biggest, thickest book I could afford.

Hence, on my "vacation" in Hawaii I read War and Peace.

I think now I would choose something more pedestrian, probably a copy of Stephen King's The Stand and Dean Koontz's Strangers. Wrapping one's head around Tolstoy only gives migraines, especially for a seventeen-year-old.

I'd also take a Portuguese/English dictionary and hope that Migs would send me a novel in a bottle.

And in addition to the Bible, the Torah and the Koran.

Kaf--You know Bill Bryson?

I would include my copy of So You Want to Live in Hawaii, but, being on an island and all, I don't think I would need it.

One of my all-time favorite read and reread books is Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove. That sounds terribly pedestrian next to the learned works posted thus far, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I like hitting the trail with Gus and Coll and the boys every now and then. A great adventure and a lot of laughs.

I'd probably also take Tolkein's trilogy because I realized when I saw the movie that I've forgotten a lot of the details.

Complete works of Shakespeare, yes, but no Bible, Koran, whatever. Bleah. If I'm on a desert island, I think I'll worship bottled water.

Heh no. If I did, I'd tell him he has an ultra-whiny voice. Never listen to his books-on-tape!

Does a list of desert island books mean books I've already read and loved so much they became part of me, or books I perhaps haven't read and would finally get the time to read if I were stranded? Both, I guess. Anyway, an offhand list of mine would include:

KJV Bible. Sheer grandiosity of the prose. Declaiming the Book of Revelations, or Genesis, or Job, while walking around the island would be a blast.

Homer. The Illiad and The Odyssey. The Greeks believed that Homer contained everything anyone could want to know, so I've gotta take them. Robert Fitzgerald's translation is my sentimental favorite.

Sappho, et al. The Greek Anthology. The Barnestone translation is another sentimental favorite. Hmm. I'm not going anywhere. Maybe I should just learn Greek on the island and read the last 3 books in the original.

Shakespeare The complete works. The English Homer. When I was in HS I used to imagine how cool it would be to know whole pasages of Shakespeare by heart, like the Savage in Brave New World. I guess I'd take my Riverside, too, but I agree with Witchstone--I rather have my Ardens.

The next six are subject to change without notice on a daily basis but would usually include a few of these.

Garcia Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude. "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." Oh, man.

Percy, Walker The Moviegoer. Or maybe Love in the Ruins. We only wish our therapists were this insightful.

Celine Journey to the End of the Night. All the dark beauty of a futurist manifesto. The 20th century in words.

James, Henry Portrait of a Lady. One of the few books I literally couldn't put down. What a disappointment the movie was. I think James's later revisions mangled it, so I'll take the 1881 text.

DeLillo, Don Great Jones Street. Is the Gaze (as Frank Lentricchia once called him) America's greatest chronicler of late 20th century urban bourgeois angst? Probably. But I won't have to worry about all that on my island, so I'll take his hilarious novel of the rock star Bucky Wonderlick and his sleazy manager Globke.

Stokstad, Marilyn Art History. Everyone castaway needs a good history of art. This one will tell me how to make lost wax castings and when I'm tired of reading I can look at the pretty pictures.

Wish you'd been around sooner, Kaf. I checked out "Neither Here Nor There" on tape from the library--a good listen, I thought, for my afternoon walks--but immediately shut off the cassette player upon hearing the most nasally, obnoxiously bizarre voice I'd ever heard.

Shocking lack of women authors in most of your lists. What, is this a boyzone or something?

Hey October, perhaps after months of reading One Hundred Years of Solitude on a desert island I could finally figure out who was who. I have never gotten the "name all your children and their children and their children the same fucking name" thing that people seem to love doing.

Oi, Miguel! I'm with romakimmy--will we ever see any English translations of your books in the States? Personally, I can't wait to read Portugal's favorite monkey-lovin' novelist.

October: Percy, Walker The Moviegoer. Or maybe Love in the Ruins. We only wish our therapists were this insightful.

Love in the Ruins? I now have a nonsexual crush on you. Wouldn't that make the best fucking movie?

Also, my link to Walker Percy: the plantation home he describes in Love in the Ruins (and also, The Thanatos Syndrome) is a real home. It was built by my maternal great, great grandfather right before the civil war.

I'm waiting for the last of the Percys to pass away so I can reclaim it.

Worship? Feh. The only worshiping done around these parts is to the Cult of Me. I merely think the parallels between the books of 3 of the major religions would prove interesting enough to while away a few thousand hours on an island.

And after that, looking for double entendre should take up another few thousand hours.

Gone with the Wind, for as many times as I read it as a young'n, would not make the cut. "Tommorrow is another day" would get very depressing very quickly on an island.

I'm working on my list. Give me time.

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome the submission of any of these works in ebook format to my (slowly) growing collection. Word, rtf, pdf, txt, all formats are welcome.

I think I'll post my ebooks in zip format for you guys when I get home. Not much in there, and it is only what I can find, but they are nice to have nonetheless.

Ah but anticipation is so much better, octobersurprise. By the time a book of mine will be published in the States you'll be going "Wait a minute, isn't this that old fart that used to post modesty screens to that silly monkey site?"

Crash - don't tempt me! Don't forget I'm louco! The extra U makes me that bit crazier.

These threads are great because you know people really mean the books they put in their lists and so you get firm, firm recommendations. I'm ashamed there are already ten books by authors I've never read purloined from the collective lists(three I'd never even heard of).

Btw, octobersurprise: I thought it meant books we'd already read. Otherwise I'd prefer almost anything new to re-reading favourite books. Your idea would be:

10 books you've been meaning to read for ages and would take with you for an indefinite stay on a desert island - a guilty, but delicious list!

here goes:

the Bible (duh!)

the Lord of the Rings trilogy (guess that counts for three, huh?)

Jane Eyre

a book of T.S Eliot's poetry

The two books on worship that my late worship pastor wrote

And two big books of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons.

Oh, man. How could I forget White Noise?

And, witchstone, I've wondered in the past why so many of my favorite books are by male authors. I suppose it's just an experience thing, what a reader is exposed to, or what resonates within the reader.

If I were to list some female authors I've enjoyed, I'd say Christina Peri Rossi, Kathy Acker, Banana Yoshimoto. But it's true that I wouldn't put them on my Desert Island Ten list. Peri Rossi's "Dostoyevsky's Last Night" and "Ship Of Fools" would be very close, though.

Oh, can I add the Tao Te Ching too?

Marion Zimmer Bradley - I've always liked the different POV on the Aurthurian legend and, to a lesser extent, the siege of Troy.

Canterbury Tales. To Kill a Mockingbird. A Light in August. The God of Small Things. Edgar Allen Poe. Poppy Z. Brite. Dante. Hitler's Pope. The Godfather.

Can I just bring the Library of Congress?

Oh, can I add the Tao Te Ching too?

Sure, you'll just have to wrestle it from me first.

Don't make me go all Lao Tzu on your ass.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanence(sp). Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Hemmingway (not The Old Man and the Sea, though. If I had to hear one more time about Christ symbolism in high school, I though I was going to puke.) Leaves of Grass. Alan Ginsberg. Catch-22. Lorca. Yeats. Kerouac. Dumas.

I sit here and keep thinking of titles in the two floor to ceiling bookshelves I had crammed full to overflowing before I left. I've never been good at choosing lists of just 10. or 20. or whatever.

I second Crash's motion. Mig's manuscript in a bottle and a good dicitonary.

ooooh, i'm going to have fun browzing for booz at textz.com...

I might be tempted to add Neuromancer to that list too. And Iain Banks' "The Crow Road".

My theory on the lack of women representatives in peoples' list: a great dearth of women who were able to struggle to the top of any field, craft, art. Women authors are limited due to the very nature of patriarchal society. The women who wrote were ignored, and are largely now forgotten.

Therefore, contemporary women writers are trying to make up for thousands of years of the snub. How could there possibly be as many great women writers to choose from as men with the long arch of history being dominated by men?

That said, there are always the greats that have slipped through anyway. Sappho, Ms. Dickenson, Austen, etc. But even when women were becoming more visible, men still dominated. Look at those damned existentialists, with Sartre's poor wife Simone de Beauvoir trying to keep up with the boys club and represent for us ladies!

Blah blah blah. I'm embarrassed to say, I don't think I can play the "island book game." Most of the books I've read over the last several years have been non-fiction, most of them terribly depressing, most of them not good escapist tripe that I would want to pass the days. Like King Leopold's Ghost about the rape of the Congo by Belgium. Very uplifting.

But I know my husband would put Don DiLillo's White Noise on there. He can have some of my island reads. I guess.

Posted by: readymade on August 27, 2002 01:46 PM

Oh, Mary Shelley's Frankentein would also be one of my favorites. And The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (a novella: the entire text)

The very first novel was written by a woman. I forget her name but the book was The Tale of Genji.

Stovros, where are we at in our lives when we are disserted on this island? Why I ask. Well if I'm reading about the future and I lived most of my life with modern conveniences and now I'm living very primitive. Then knowledge of some of the actual things in the books that I no longer have or I was waiting to also see, would be frustrating. But things I have never seen or used would be fine because they would only exist in my imagination. So what am I saying is, if I was left on a disserted island right now, the only modern thing I would want that moves faster than me running would be a surf board, as my modern convenience on this isle would be some great wave action.(I do have some choices, just didn't want to take up too much room at once, plus I hope I understood you, thewonderchicken)
Ps, If I recall your local,Korea. And this may be easier for you than others, like I have a clue as I just spent some time doing absolutely nothing on a beach on an island for days at time.

• Canterbury Tales - Chaucer
• Don Quixote - Cervantes
• Paradise Lost - Milton
• The entire Pratchett Collection - Terry Pratchett
• Iliad and Odyssey - Homer (the greek one)

Those are all books that I can read over and over and over again and not get bored with...so I think those would be my choices..at least off the top of my head. 

Lady Murasaki Shikibu

I remember studying that novel in a Japanese Literature course.

Her father was also a well known scholar. Her father allowed her to study with her brother and even let her learn Chinese characters, which was improper for girls at that time.

Women were not allowed to learn the characters used for writing books. An interesting story.

I think a Boy Scout Handbook might be very handy. Otherwise, gotta concur with Witchstone's choice of the Bard. Gibbon's Decline and Fall..., Hamilton's Mythology...

Otherwise, something that's going to give me hope and/or help me resign myself to my cruel fate. Vonnegut's Mother Night. Stephen King's unabridged The Stand. Moorcock's The Warhound and the World's Pain. Spinrad's The Void Captain's Tale. A volume of Auden.

How could I forget White Noise?

I did, it was EASY. Bleh.

*whacks Fes upside the head with a copy of Underworld*

Oh, and nice call on the Moorcock, though I'd go with Corum.

I love the wording in this article:

Almost instantly he declares his love for her and pursues her with a flurry of letters. She never answers. The more he finds out about the princess, however, the less he likes of her. Genji cannot help but feel guilty after admitting this love, though, and maintains the relationship long after his feelings die down. In one of the last affairs, Genji is on the receiving side of lust.

Even back in 973 they knew about pity fucks.

*whacks Kaf back with a copy of Strunk and White*

Style does not equal substance, my brother. There may have been a story hidden in White Noise somewhere, but damned if I could find it. Some dork's breafast table reveries do not a classic make.

The Swords novels run a close second choice to Warhound, but I gotta go with "Do thou the Devil's work, and ye shall see Heaven far sooner than thy Master." Gives me chills everytime.

*steps between unc and kaf*

think about the books, man!

*gets thwacked with copy of atlas shrugged*

The story was about Death, and the fear of it. As JAK Gladney says in the book "All plots tend deathward". When you remove the fear of death with the happy grey pill, you lose your humanity.

It's about how ridiculous society has become, that there are professors of Hitler and Elvis Studies.

It's about ways of seeing, and how overanalysis changes things, like the World's Most Photographed Barn.

I see the book as a sort of survey of posthumanism, kind of riffing on the human condition in the US at the end of the 20th century. In a sense, there is no linear story.

But it's about a lot of things.

*lobs a volley of Beatrix Potter miniature hardbacks*

Those hurt!

*shrugs, puts down Strunk and White, extends hand in peace gesture*

Maybe I'm just too literal-minded, might be worth a second look.

*thwhacks adampsyche for good measure, grabs Atlas Shrugged, begins chewing pages into a paste to make giant paper mache Easter Island-type monolithic head*

Hey look! It's the kid from Easter Island!

*thump*

Anyone else ever watch "The Critic"?

kaf, before i lose consciousness, what story were you referring to just a minute ago? "The story was about Death..."

*Lobs The Chronicle of Narnia series from behind bible-fortified bunker*

*goes over to other side of island, looks up Gilligan and Skipper*

I thought it meant books we'd already read.

Yes. That's what I thought too.

By the time a book of mine will be published in the States ...

"Cardoso? Yeah, I've been reading him for years. I like his early, funnier stuff better."

*waits for accolades for being extra-hip*

Adam, I was talking about White Noise.

And Fes, you know I respect your opinion. My blather about the book is just my take on it. Us lit types love to babble about that crap.

*waits for extra hips*

*is the man with the four-way hips*

Cardoso? His earlier comments are excellent, reminiscent of Fishfucker's later work, but his later work is somewhat more disjointed. As the critics became increasingly vituperative, it seemed, Cardoso only redoubled his efforts, spilling forth page after page in a seeming endless stream, as if he were trying to assuage his detractors by dint of volume alone...

Wait a sec - he writes books, too??

*ducks*

*thwhacks adampsyche for good measure, grabs Atlas Shrugged, begins chewing pages into a paste to make giant paper mache Easter Island-type monolithic head*

I know it's very uncool to say so but this had me in stitches; still does.

*giggle-trembling*

Kaf: of course! And I yours, hence my willingness to take a second look at White Noise.

Okay, here goes...

William Faulkner- Absalom, Absalom!
John Kennedy Toole- A Confederacy of Dunces
Carson McCullers- Ballad of the Sad Café
Charles Portis- Dog of the South
Eudora Welty- The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
Flannery O’Connor- The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor
Robert Penn Warren- All the Kings Men
Toni Morrison- Beloved
John Gregory Brown- Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery
Douglas Adams- Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Series

You might notice a slight regional bias. I make no apologies for this.

Ha! Gawd, I miss college. You know, I am going to use this list as soon as I am done with my current book. No doubt.

Hmm, toni morrison is good...I read something else by her, for an African American lit class, but forgot the damned name of it...

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison may be up there too...

Kaf--I think your 9622-monkey analysis of "White Noise" is quite apt.

On another note, I think I'm going to hide over here for a few months while the blue settles down. Can we make a little island pact that there will be no smear campaigns here? Every time I go over there and read something I enjoy, some idiotic exchange ruins it for me.

Posted by: readymade on August 27, 2002 02:47 PM

*giggle-trembling*

*looks around approvingly*

"My job here is done! Up, up and away!"

*crowd gazes upward, only to see the blazing red "UF" on black cape before it disappears over the horizon*

Woman: "Who was that handsome wisecrackin' man?"
Man: "No one knows... but thank goodness he was here."

• On the Road - Jack Kerouac
• The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
• Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe
• The Undertaking: Life Stories From the Dismal Trade - Thomas Lynch
• The Stranger - Albert Camus
• The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
• Maus & Maus II - Art Spiegelman
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
• The Razor's Edge - W. Somorset Maugham
• Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse
• The Chronicles of Prydain - Lloyd Alexander (if I had to pick one, it would be The High King)
• A Thousand Acres - Jane Smiley
• Pet Semetary - Stephen King
• The Natural - Bernard Malamud
• To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
• The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Elements of Style - Strunk & White (assuming I have the ability to write on this "island") (and, hey, quit throwing it around, guys).

I have the feeling there are more. This is much more difficult than a music list.

Nice little selection, Chef. I haven't read Absalom! Absalom!, but Sound and the Fury would be high on my list.

*finally remembers to underline book titles*

I saw an earlier movie of The Importance of Being Earnest, hysterical play. I just downloaded that ebook this afternoon.

Pardon yourdamnself: The Undertaking: Life Stories From the Dismal Trade - Thomas Lynch

As someone who grew up in a funeral home, let me just say, "Amazing, amazing book." I've read all of Thomas Lynch's books and a few articles he's done here and there (his poetry is especially ribald). An amazing writer who also has this completely separate "career." A model to all of us closet word processors.

(my parents met Lynch at a funeral directors' convention. My mom is all, "We met the nicest man at dinner tonight. I think he's a writer." Uh, yeah, mom! It's that book I've been asking you to read for a year. "Oh, well, I got a set of his books and he signed them for you." *prayed to God that my parents didn't say anything embarrasing to Thomas Lynch*)

As an adult that likes to re-read a favorite childhood book now and then, and on a dessert island who wouldn't want to relive their childhood. Heck it's lights out after dark anyway, no mom yet no electricity too.
Speaking from my comment above. So as a kid at heart, I would go with Death in the Long Grass by Peter Hathaway Capstick for those monkeys whom like outdoor adventures and tales of hunting. The tales most enjoyed by me were the ones of the game hunter being hunted by the game. This book to live by would be a must on the isle, The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss.
PS, I bet you would never watch TV, the view alone would be suffice, and a phone just pick up a shell, it is the same sound heard around the world.

CC, I'm a huge fan of The Undertaking, and I don't think Bodies in Motion and at Rest is all that far behind. I haven't read the poetry, only because I don't normally invest the time necessary to read poetry. But I might make an exception.

I chose to put that on the list because I think it's an amazingly thought-provoking meditation on all aspects of death -- from the literal needs of the body to the social needs of those left behind. I love how he manages to convey that death is both routine and profound at the same time. The fact that he has a wicked sense of humor seals the deal.

By the way, do you watch Six Feet Under? If so, what do you think of it?

ColdChef--You are so very right! Great book about the bittersweet nature of death and remembrance, the odd business of funerals, and in general a very well-written series of essays that make one reflective on mortality, one's own and the collective's as well.

If I were to make a list (If, I say) it would include Faulkner's Sound and the Fury for so many reasons. It was the first book that opened my eyes to the expressiveness and flexibility of language, the potential depth of character study, and created an overwhelming sense of "What the hell have I been missing all these years?"

I found this quote on the internet; I would have picked a different one had I time to search, but que sera sera:

"When the shadow of the sash appeared in the curtains it was between seven and eight oclock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciatingly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it."

Posted by: readymade on August 27, 2002 03:22 PM

As someone who grew up in a funeral home

Coldchef = Anna Chlumsky in My Girl?

In re: undertakers: I used to (ahem) blaze up the occasional mind-dart with a couple of mortuary science majors back in my college-hoodlum days. They had some of the most OUTLANDISH textbooks you'd ever care to look at high. Nightmare city.

Adam, I think you'll like the Importance of Being Earnest. I think Wilde was one of the best writers in history, and I suspect there's even more humor in the text than could be conveyed on the screen.

Also, to everyone, if you haven't done so, take a look at the Maus books if you get a chance. They're "graphic novels" in which Art Speigelman captures his father's stories about life during the Holocaust (and his own strained relationship with his father). The "comic book" aspect is most notable in the depiction of Jews as mice, Germans as cats, and Americans as dogs. Sounds kind of odd (and it is), but it's very moving, too.

Short answer:

I really like "Six Feet Under." My family doesn't.

Long answer:

If you really want to know, email me.

Coldchef = Anna Chlumsky in My Girl?

Man, I have GOT to see that movie.

Jeff, agreed on MAUS. Excellent stuff.

The Subterraneans, Jack Kerouac. My favorite by him.

I did read The Importance of Being Earnest for a Victorian Lit class I was in...it was jolly good fun.

And, Jack's Scripture of the Golden Eternity.

Hellfire. What Ashbury said only louder re: Banks and Simmons.

Even better than reading Importance of Being Earnest is seeing a really really good production of it. Which is not going to involve Reese Witherspoon.

too lazy to underline, but here ya go:

1. The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoyevsky
2. The Gulag Archipelago - Solzhenitsyn (if I'm on an island, maybe I'll actually make through all three volumes)
3. Catcher in the Rye - Salinger
4. Great Apes - Will Self
5. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
6. The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
7. Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (I still think he was a much better short story writer than novelist)
8. Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith (boring as hell, but another tome that I'd like to complete)
9. Les Miserables - Hugo (I could read it over and over and over and....)
10. And I'll throw the Lord of the Rings trilogy in there too, but only b/c I really want to, i swear....

Angela Carter was the big omission from my first list. Nine other works by women authors I'd fight to recover while the ship was sinking would include Woolf, of course, either Mrs. Dalloway or Orlando. Jane Austen: a toss-up between Sense & Sensiblity, Pride & Prejudice, or Mansfield Park, depending on my mood. George Eliot's Middlemarch. Katherine Mansfield, Complete Stories. Dorothy Parker's Poems or Stories is a tough call, but I'd probably take the poems in a pinch. Flannery O'Connor. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Dickinson, LeGuin's Earthsea books (in one volume, of course,) and lastly, my favorite children's book: Julian May's They lived in the ice age.

*starts training a staff of monkey librarians. hands out plastic gloves to keep the poo off the books*

I hope we all end up on 9622net Monkey Island, as it will have the best Library found. 100 years from know some dope finds a coconut. On it is scribbled a map, with a bunch of names that the dope decides to google. The google returns a synopsis of a group on an Internet site with made up names that all decided to take a three-hour cruise, and were never seen. Side note by all witnesses who watched the boarding party, they had only their clothes on their backs and a chest full of books. The old timers say out on some isle is the world's best collection of valuables that does not need a power cord..........

Richard Powers, The Goldbug Variations
Carole Maso, Ghost Dance, Ava
D. T. Suzuki, Manual of Zen Buddhism
T. S. Eliot, The Four Quartets
Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language
Rainer Marie Rilke, Collected Works
Douglas Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach
Dante, The Divine Comedy

and a blank sketchbook...

Ivan Klima: Love and Garbage
Douglas Adams: Life, the Universe, and Everything (my favorite out of the three. Er, five. You know.)
Kurt Vonnegut: Bluebeard
Robert Heinlein: Time Enough For Love
A.A. Milne: the giant Milne omnibus that has the Pooh books and the poetry books
ee cummings: i, six nonlectures
Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell: From Hell

...and that perennial island favorite, How To Make Sex Toys From Coconuts and Palm Fronds, written by me after I've read all the books three times.

Some of these have been mentioned, but:

• JD Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye
  
• Raymond Carver - What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (Actually, I would take that, Cathedral and Will You Please Be Quiet Please? and slip them into a looseleaf binder to count as one)
  
• William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury
  
• Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer
  
• James Joyce - Ulysses
  
• Flannery O'Connor - Everything That Rises Must Converge
  
• The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams 1909-1939
  
• Joseph Heller - Catch-22

Oh, and East of Eden. Duh. Good thing someone will have the monkey librarians to fill in the blanks.

OK here are my books!:

1. The Joke - Milan Kundera
2. A Book of Luminous Things - ed. Czeslaw Milosz
3. Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
4. The Virgin Suicides - Jeffery Eugenies
5. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
6. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
7. Memories of Hadrian - M. Yourcenar
8. Faust - Goethe
9. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
10. Lolita - Nabakov

I'll start packing!

whoops! - that would be Nabokov, my friends,

Hoopla! Thanks for all the great ideas!

*limbers up downloadin' finger*

I oughta actually come up with a full list of my own, probably.

And that image was about 5 pages deep in a Google image search for 'necronomicon', if I recall correctly, Miguel...

Miguel said : "10 books you've been meaning to read for ages and would take with you for an indefinite stay on a desert island..."

Ah, but my choices (so far) are all books that I have read, many times in most cases, and consider old friends...

Also, I will compile the uberlist of books when this thread dies out, and see if I can track down e-books of them all (I have many, already). Bandwidth permitting, perhaps we can share.

E-books of them all

*Faints in awe and gratitude*

Mmmm...Emptybottle's loss looks like being our gain for the time being.

Me, I sense a novel is being written...my nostrilly tendrils surely do not quiver in vain...

Wow. I can't believe I missed this today.

See what happens when you roll out of bed at 1 in the afternoon?

1. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
2. Imajica - Clive Barker
3. The Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchett
4. The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch: A Romance - Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean
5. The Fall of America: Poems of These States, 1965-1971 - Allen Ginsberg
6. Einstein's Dreams - Alan Lightman
7. The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran
8. Perdido Street Station - China Mieville
9. The Last Night of the Earth Poems - Charles Bukowski
10. Everybody Pays - Andrew Vachss

Bonuse three:

• Take the Cannoli - Sarah Vowell
• Tao Teh Ching - Lao Tzu
• Motherless Brooklyn - Jonathan Lethem

For firewood: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers and All Tomorrow's Parties - William Gibson.

I would also like to thank kafka for bringing Murakami to my attention. I am currently enraptured by Hard Boiled Wonderland and the end of the world, chosen because I'm a sucker for any book advertised as "hard-boiled."

hard boiled was the greatest cinematic masterpiece of our times.

not really, but it was hysterical, in a titus andronicus kinda way.

Stav, if you would be able to get them to me, I would host them and make them available for download to all. How big could they all be?

Pretty chunky, I'd say. Satanic Verses is long, and about 2 Mb, plain text, but zips down to about 500k. Multiply that by 50 (?) and you're looking at 25Mb.

But maybe we can figure out a way to distribute it a bit...

*puts on thinking cap, scratches under armpits, hoots quietly to self*

If you don't mind springing for postage (I would pay for that if you want), slap 'em on a cd and ship 'em.

Or, I am not sure if you are familiar with .rar files, but you can make a compressed archive that is divided into multiple, smaller files (at the size you determine). So, you can take a 25 MB file, and chop it up into, say, 12 or so 2 MB files, and when they have all arrived, that archive can be opened.

Or, I can meet you in the bookz room sometime, or set up an ftp upload for ya. Don't know what kind of connection you have. Just a thought, no rush or anything. (can you tell I really am getting into ebooks?)

Speaking of which, I am debating on taking the time to make all the mixes I received available for download (like how my mix is available). Would anyone object to having their mix freely distributed? At least that way stav can get his mitts on them.

I'm cool with it if you want to do my mix, although I'd like to point out that my offer to simply send whoever wants one of mine is always on the table. ( I get a kick out of the reactions I've gotten from this mix.)
Also, about 90% of my disc comes from CDs, and will sound fine compressed, but the other two or three songs that came from mp3s will re-compress pretty shitty.

My desert island books, by the way, would be Understanding Media by Mcluhan, and Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton.

Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel! I loved that book when I was a kid. Many of my favorite children's books are no longer available like:

Dooley and the Snortsnoot (although my brother got a copy on ebay)
Turtle's Flying Lesson
Hooray For Pig

It's tragic.

But, we now have "The Gas we Pass."

And the pop-up Kafka's Metamorphosis.

Of course, all the disturbing post-industiral themes have been removed. Gregor learns the power of self-esteem by being asked to the prom, despite his new handicapable appearance.
The best bit is when he tries to eat her head.

Mike Mulligan *rocked*. I wore out the storybook record when I was a kid. I wanted to drive a steam shovel.

And now that's got me thinking about my favorite kid's book that's long out of print: Seals On Wheels. Can't find a copy to save my life. Night is falling...bang!

Good thing Harold and the Purple Crayon is still around.

Wasn't Spike Jonze going to make a movie of that?

Harold and the Purple Crayon, I meant, in my near-sentence above.

Easier than the music list, because yes, moods depend on whether you're really into the book or not, but truly good literature tends to be further and fewer between. No time for cocktails today; no links either. So anyway, here's my quicklist, and yes, I am a bandwagon reader, so pardon my taste.

-Dune, Frank Herbert (sacrifice the Star Wars)
-The Illuminatus trilogy, Robert Anton Wilson
-Confederacy of Dunces (Chef, props for this inclusion)
-The Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra
-The Catcher in The Rye
-Aah, I haven't finished Fury, by Rushdie yet, but my session today left me feeling like I just ate the richest, most delectable piece of NY cheesecake ever. I have a feeling it will end up making my list.
-Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
-Complete works of Poe(Lovecraft will just not do)
-Unabridged Oxford English Dictonary
-JTHM complete, Jhonen Vasquez
-notebooks by Walt Whitman

runner-up authors to follow...

For my science fiction fix, I'd also have to bring along the 7 books (so far) in the Ender's Game series by Orson Scott Card.

I'm reading Midnight's Children by Mr. Rushdie right now and although he has really beautiful sentences, I just can't get into the story. I'm about halfway through and I put it down a couple of weeks ago and haven't really wanted to pick it back up. It's something about the tone of the narration, I think. *shrugs*

Also, I think I'd bring Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott. Never thought an old ex-Mormon agnostic like me would actually enjoy a book that deals with faith.

I'm writing a new children's book now. I'm calling it Midas Mulligan and the Steam Shovel. It's about a curmudgeonly, but lovable uber-capitalist and his magical steam shovel of downtown urban renewal. Just wait--it'll be the shit come Christmas.

damn, fogot the illumatus trilogy

First off, a couple of good reference books, with old and knew learning - one about astrology, a second about the ocean. I would need recommendations; this looks like a cool star book.

Then:
Flaubert - Madame Bovary
Dostoyevsy - Crime and Punishment
Joyce - Ulysses
Borges - Collected Short Stories
I.B.Singer - The Collected Stories
Pynchon - V
Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness Of Being
Carver - What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (or preferably the jpoulos collection, aka London Picador's 1985 "The Stories of Raymond Carver")

fnord!

Here's what I'll take

1. Ulysses - James Joyce. If I can only bring one book, this is it.
2. The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Hopefully a new one with the newly discovered "Edward III."
3. The Decameron - Boccaccio. Storytime! Yay!
4. Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon. It's damn good. Plus I keep my rolling papers in it. You never know.
5. The Masks of God Series - Joseph Campbell. If I had to pick one, then Creative Mythology
6. The Oresteia - Aeschylus.
7. Pornography. I change my mind. If I have to take just one, this is it. I ain't talking to no volleyball.
8. Cryptonomicon - Neil Stephenson.
9. The Divine Comedy - Dante
10. How to Build Cool Things Out of Coconuts and Palm Fronds - Prof. Roy Hinckley

Jesus, did I write astrology....
Astronomy.

Have to say that Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut was a runner-up because of mention of the wise Bokonon. It's probably the only Vonnegut book I could tolerate for lack of "and so it goes..." and bad head "chemicals". That old bumblenut Kilgore Trout actually was on to something here.

Oh, man, I LOVED A Confederacy of Dunces. My god that was a brilliant book. It was one of those books that I gave to lots and lots of people at Xmas. Possibly *the* great American novel. (for our time.) Couldn't say enough good things about this book...bloody brilliant.

Not sure I'd want it on the island though...kinda depressing.

1. Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
2. Prometheus Rising - Robert Anton Wilson
3. Think and Grow Rich - Napolean Hill

where can I download the whole novel Satanic Verses?

KHANNNNN!

I could tell you, but then I'd have to declare a fatwa against you.

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