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| I love books so much, I pose for photos at landmark bookstores |
Book Survey - An Old Post about Books, from 2008
Apparently I took a book survey in 206 and then redid it a few years later. Here are the 2008 answers, as opposed to the 2006 ones.
1. What is a book that changed your life?
Encyclopedia Brown, yes. But also...the stuff I'm reading now for my critical thesis. And those books are all over the place. But they are changing the way I see things.
2.What is a book you’ve read more than once?
Still Bridget Jones, Harry Potter and Jane Austen. And before I didn't say, though it was true then and is true now, my favorite books of poetry. That's one of the many things about poetry that is so so so good: the poem's meaning, or better, mattering change over time.
3. What is a book you’d want with you on a desert island?
Still Rimbaud, yes.
4. What is a book that made you giddy?
[Shrug.] Still the Odyssey. Talk about meaning changing, or mattering changing depending on when you get to it. The last time I taught that book, a ten year war was unfathomable. Now, we're five years into Iraq, and some of my students have been there. I think if I taught it now it would be a different experience for everyone, students and me.
5. What is a book that made you sad?
The End of America by Naomi Wolfe.
6. What is a book you wish had been written?
An unabridged capturing of Bernadette Mayer’s Memory creation/exhibit thingy thing from the 70s. [same answer as before]. But I'd also like to add some other things. Like, the Bible written with the Gnostic Gospels and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene in it. Or "The Complete Works of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz" and all those other lost bits of knowledge that have been destroyed due to their challenging nature.
7. What is a book you wish had never been written?
I don't know. I think books are like events, and without certain events in history and books in history, where would life be without them? So, none.
8. What is a book you’re currently reading?
Fictive Certainties. Also, on the complete and utter opposite side of the spectrum (though maybe not...), I just finished re-reading the last Harry Potter. ("In such cases myth is truth of the fact and not the fact a truth of the myth...on 1st page of former, so you never know...Don't laugh at my hokey-ness! I know I am a dork.)
9. What is one book you’ve been meaning to read?
Of the books on my shelf: Man on a Donkey, from Sadie, several Christmases ago...And now that I've listened to that podcast I randomly downloaded about POund, more poundian things (though, not right now--too dangerous with the crit thesis going on; will get my head all muddled). And also, since I've read so many Jane Austen novels, Middlemarch, which someone--can't remember who--called the "grown up Jane Austen novel". And a re-read of the Odyssey, since I keep talking about it. And finish re-reading my new translation of Sir Gawain. And the Iliad, since I never have read the whole thing. And and and and and...etc.