WIPs include: Kiri Shawl (Elann's Peruvian Cashmere)
1. One book that changed your life: Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë.
This was the first book that really made me go, “Wow. That’s what literature is and this is what literature (and authors) can do.” I was moved—blown away—by so many aspects of this novel: the intensity and power of love between two beings--“I am Heathcliff!”—but then the darkness that such a passion can lead to (i.e. digging up your lover’s grave; or, bashing your head against a tree over and over again); the complexity of adult relationships; the wildness of the heath; and most importantly, the fact that a young woman living in a rural, somewhat isolated, environment, surrounded by an ensemble of loving siblings (but no real money), can live such an imaginative, and important, life.
2. One book that you've read more than once: Monkey Beach, by Eden Robinson.
Robinson is a Haida/Haisla author from Kitimaat, British Columbia who writes a compelling coming- of-age novel of a young First Nations woman in Canada. It’s funny, it’s dark, it’s mysterious, it’s familiar.
The book that I’ve read more times than any other: Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë.
3. One book you'd want on a desert island:
My first response is to write (sarcastically), How to Live/Survive on a Desert Island.
My real response is the Oxford English Dictionary (I'd learn every word in the language, including its history, and then write my own epic novel filled with such an expansive vocabulary. More importantly, let's remember that the OED comes with a tiny magnifying glass which I would use to get fires going and signal passing airplanes & ships!)
4. One book that made you laugh:
Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections (the opening, like no other book, had me laughing out loud right away).
Robert Sedlack’s The African Safari Papers also made me laugh in a similar way. There’s something so funny(and moving) about parental/familial dysfunction.
5. One book that made you cry:
Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen. I set down the novel at the end of it and sobbed.
Jose Saramago’s Blindness. (Not for the easily disturbed reader. An ugly, ugly dystopia: the horror of humanity, and of course, the beauty too.)
6. One book you wish had been written:
How George W. Bush Nearly Won the Presidency (Twice! *Gasp*) in America: Thank Goodness He Didn’t!
7. One book you wish had never been written:
Any of the numerous self-help (and self-righteous) books that someone very dear to me (who shall remain nameless) reads and then sends me preachy (not pithy), obnoxious, and obvious snippets of self-help “wisdom”.
8. One book you're currently reading: I’m in the midst of several—
Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex
David Mas Masumoto’s Harvest Son: Planting Roots in American Soil
Ellen Meloy’s The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky
Michael Pollan’s A Botany of Desire (audible).
9. One book you've been meaning to read:
Zadie Smith’s White Teeth or On Beauty
10. People to tag:
Amanda Cathleen, and any one else who might want to do this meme--[Becky(Fluffa)]? Anna of My Fashionable Life? Julia of MindofWinter?]
|