Monday, August 07, 2006

One Book

I've been tagged by Lesley to do this little book meme, and I've been thinking about it overnight before getting into it... This is a really nice little book meme, so I've enjoyed pondering it!

One book that changed your life.

I'm going to go with the Bible on this one. Not because I've actually read it, I surely haven't. But I think of any book, this one has probably had a profound effect on a vast number of people, due to the squabbling, inspiration, misuse, and good use it's been put to and inspired.

One book that you’ve read more than once.

I have read many books more than once. One that stands out for the sheer number of times that I've read it over the past 18 months is Jennifer Crusie's Bet Me. This is the fluffiest of all chick lit, and a romance novel to boot, but the book is just so darn much fun!! I have probably read it close to 20 times in the past year or so (it helped me keep my sanity while I was stuck in bed for 2 months). Every time I get bored and want to catch something quick, I pick it up. It never fails to make me laugh, and I can get through the whole thing in about 1 sitting of 90 minutes, which is great. The perfect beach book.

One book you’d want on a desert island.

This is a toughie. I think I'll go with The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook. This should entertain me as well as provide me with everything I'd need to know about getting through whatever hazards might be lying in wait while I hope for rescue.

One book that made you laugh.

I would say the first Harmony Book, Home to Harmony by Philip Gulley. When the men decide to spend the money from the Choctaw Indian Shoe Mission to go see Mark McGuire hit a home run and the town finds out about it...well, you know hilarity ensues. The whole book is chock full of fun little vignettes like that. I have never loved a series of books more (Sorry, Nancy Drew!)

One Two books that made you cry.

For this one, I'm going to list two, the first being the one that made me cry the hardest, the second being the one that made me cry the most. There are no rule police, right? :)

The book that made me cry the hardest was Elizabeth Berg's Talk Before Sleep. I had heard Elizabeth speak on NPR and a woman called in to say that she had read this book and had shared it with all her friends, who had all loved it. So I decided to check it out.

Wow. By way of a quick summary, the book revolves around a woman dying of breast cancer and her best women friends who are spending every minute they can with her before she dies. As I got closer to the end (and by that, I mean any page after the halfway point), I couldn't stop reading it. And the closer I got, the worse I was crying.

I finally wound up staying up till around 2:00AM to finish it. I was reading it at a time my great aunt was diagnosed with cancer, and we knew she would be leaving us. I cried so hard for her and for all the other women in my life who lost their battles with cancer, I woke the General up out of a sound sleep, and I couldn't even explain to him what was wrong. It was that moving.

The one that has made me cry the most, however, is Kris Radish's Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral, which had me crying by page 3 and didn't let up through the whole rest of the book. And I was not alone. Fellow Lit Chick Nicole had a similar problem.

One book that you wish had been written.

Back in high school, I started fleshing out an epic Western-Romance-Adventure novel. I got 60 pages into it, and the stupid disk corrupted (thanks Windows 3.x), and I lost the whole entire thing. The book is still in my head, and while I've had to change the plot for reasons that shall only ever be known to me and my friend Amy, the story itself was sound, and I've always felt like it could probably go somewhere. So I've been taking notes, and I might just take another crack at it.

One book that you wish had never been written.

Probably Scarlett, the sequel to Gone With the Wind. GWTW was an amazing classic and a stand alone book. It really didn't need a sequel. I didn't read Scarlett, but from what I gather it was not all that fantastic, not even close. And frankly, my dear, I'm not surprised. I'd rather use my imagination to figure out what Scarlett and Rhett and Ashley would all be up to after the original closed, than to have someone who is not Margaret Mitchell tell me.

One book you’re currently reading.

Michael and I are currently about halfway through Almost Friends, the latest installment in Philip Gulley's amazing Harmony series. The Harmony Books remain my favorite down home, folksy good time books, and are on the top of my favorite books ever. This new one is laugh-out-loud funny and a wonderful story of friendship, new beginnings, and life.

One book you’ve been meaning to read.

I have a whole stack of books I've been meaning to get to, and a list of books that I've been wanting to read for a long time. Probably the main one that comes to mind since Heather started the "Should Have Read It" book club is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. It was required reading for high school, yes, but somehow I decided it wasn't worthy of my time and didn't bother.

Now tag five people.

Who to tag...

Well, I dunno if they even read my blog, but I'll tap the 2 Lit Chicks I know who have blogs:

Jill: http://www.mandjkeller.com/

Nicole: http://www.myspace.com/didichoosetolove

And 3 more folks...

Lara: http://www.littlenet.org/lara/blogger.html

Annette: http://nettiemac.blogspot.com/

Tal: http://talgleck.blogspot.com/

0 pearl(s) of wisdom: