Book survey meme

[resonant]

Hey! I can breathe through both nostrils tonight! Thank the deity of your choice for antibiotics. If I'd been born before the age of antibiotics, my life would certainly have been phlegmy, brutish, and short, and then I would have carved up my own face with a grapefruit spoon.

Here's the other book survey:

Book you keep meaning to read that always gets bumped to second place by new purchases:

Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay. I can't tell you how many times I've checked out Tigana plus something else, read the something else, opened Tigana and gotten through the prologue and two pages of the first chapter, and then had to return both books to the library.

Book you put down halfway through and never got back to: That second book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.

Book you love and can never convince anyone else to read: Moby Dick. Everybody hates this book but me. It's, like, shorthand for "that famous book which we all agree is unreadable, right?" But I loved it.

Book you'll never read no matter how many people tell you you should: I've read all kinds of crap because people told me I should. I'd probably give just about anything a try. But I have absolutely no qualms about dropping it after ten pages if it bores me.

Children's book that no one else remembers except you: Does anyone else remember, there was a series about a family of kids named Melendy? I don't remember any of the titles, though. Also, Joan Aiken's Arabel's Raven.

Children's book everyone seems to have read that you've never read / heard of: The Wind in the Willows.

Terrific book, terrible movie: Isn't that pretty much of a "duh" proposition? I do have to say, though, that Jurassic Park was a surprisingly entertaining book.

Book you loved on first reading which on subsequent readings wow, not so much: Can't think of any adult books. I adored the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books as a child, but I think they're lame as hell now that I'm reading them repeatedly to my daughter.

Most Overrated / Overhyped Book or Author, in your opinion: I hate William Faulkner. Is the purpose of language to communicate, or what?

Non-English Major/author answer: I don't get why everybody likes Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy so much. The ideas are interesting, sure, but the actual story reads like an outline. Tell, tell, tell. I remember encountering a line that quite literally said something like, "She now realized that she loved and trusted him deeply."

I also hated The Mists of Avalon.

Most Underrated / Misunderstood Book or Author, in your opinion: Stephen King isn't underrated, god knows, but I think he's under-respected. Even a book like The Tommyknockers, which is a failure in many ways, has moments of human understanding that just take my breath away.

Comments

[strawberrythief.livejournal.com]

I love Moby Dick. I read it for the first time in freshman English class, adored it, and have kept a copy ever since and re-read it frequently. Quotes from it float through my head at odd moments... just this morning I was toweling myself off after I got out of the shower and I was thinking about religion, about why people need it, and how Ahab's "all visible things are but pasteboard masks" speech explains that ancient impulse completely in the space of four sentences. And Tashtego looking at the dancing sailors while he sits and smokes -- "Humph. I save my sweat." Starbuck, so sweet and grave even at the extremity... "Is this the end of all my bursting prayers, my lifelong fidelities?" Stubb wishing for cherries -- "I call ye assassins of as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost!" And Flask wondering if his poor mother had drawn out his part-pay yet.

It's odd to me that most people think of Moby Dick as a childrens' book, or an adventure "yarn" about hunting a whale. Melville's whale is like Melville's women; largely defined by absence, in the hollow impressions left on the minds of his sailors. There are so many powerful scenes in that book; Ahab's stealthy, Manichean seduction of Starbuck -- "Thou requirest a little lower layer." (The whole strange effect of those familiar and affectionate Quaker "thees" and "thous" in the brimstone that pours from Ahab's mouth -- Melville puts that to such good use.) Hawthorne was obsessed with the idea of the the "unforgiveable sin", but Melville had the courage to parse that idea out. "Talk not to me of blasphemy! Why, man, I'd strike the sun itself if it insulted me!"

Aagh, I could go on and on. (Even more than I already have.) The first time I read Farenheit 451, I immediately thought, "I would be Moby Dick." I'm so glad to find someone else who loves that book, too.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

The Melendy family is from the Four-Story Mistake books by Elizabeth Enright. Wonderful series! And I *love* Arabel's Raven and pretty much everything else by Joan Aiken. Wolves of Willoughby Chase is one of my favorites.

[mrsronweasley.livejournal.com]

Couldn't deal with Mists of Avalon. I think I put it down and never came back to it after about 30 pages. If that long.

Moby Dick

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

A couple of summers ago E and I saw a phenomenal piece of performance art (I'm reluctant to call it an opera because I ordinarily don't like those) by Rinde Eckert called And God Created Great Whales. It's about a composer named Nathan who's writing an opera based on Moby Dick. He's also losing his mind -- literally, for some arcane medical reason -- and every day he records messages for himself on tape recorders to remind himself of who he is and what he's working on. It is perhaps the most phenomenal piece of theatre I have ever seen. We saw it twice. It made us weep.

So anyway, I figured if Rinde Eckert liked Moby Dick enough to base this thing on it, then I had better get over myself and try to read it. //grin// This fall I finally did. And I was amazed! It's funny! It's wackily postmodern, with some scripty bits wedged in amongst the fiction and the digressions! Plus -- those first hundred pages or so are absolutely slashtastic. ;-)

Oooh! Oooh!

[(Anonymous)]

"Nightbirds in Nantucket"!
Joan Aiken rocks. Plus, both the one I mentioned and the one Tzikeh mentioned are increadibly slashy. Femslashy, even.
(yes, I know I'm probably going to hell for slashing, what, thirteen year old girls? Still. Just wait for them to grow up, that's all I have to say.)

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

I've never read Moby Dick, because I picked it up as an eight-year-old and was bored stiff. But I adored Billy Budd at fifteen. So perhaps, at twenty-five, it's time to give Moby another try....

Re: Oooh! Oooh!

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Oh my gosh, I never thought about slash between Bonnie and Sylvia - but yeah, if you're into femslash, that makes sense.

[parkergray.livejournal.com]

I have all the Melendy books!

The Saturdays, then The Four-Story Mistake, then Then There Were Five, and, finally, A Spiderweb for Two: A Melendy Maze. By Elizabeth Enright.

I adore those, man. I went on a quest a few years ago, and finally found all of them, so now I have all four.

I don't think I've ever met anyone else who's even heard of them.

Melendy family

[kiranovember.livejournal.com]

I loved The Saturdays and The Four-Story Mistake.

This whole thread has made me go looking for the children's books mentioned to see if they are still available, and I've had several good discussions with the children's book lead at my store.

I remember a series about the Happy Hollisters that I've never been able to find, and few people have ever heard of them.

Kira