There is another of those book memes going around, and it was sent to me by Justine, of Adventures in Asia. I have indeed had a lot of time on my hands to read since my injury, though I have been doing some medical reading to catch up, so haven’t gotten a lot of novels read. Nonethless, here are the questions and my answers.
Q: You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
Not sure I would want to be a book at all, in that world. If I had to be, it would be one of the banned/challenged ones. Maybe Darwin’s “Origin of Species”; one of the most revolutionary scientific books of the past few centuries. It amazes me that there are still people who can say with a straight face that they don’t “believe” in evolution. It’s not a religion, it’s a scientific fact. Saying the world is flat doesn’t make it so. My alternate choice would be “A Wrinkle in Time”, by Madeleine L’Engle, one of my favorite books of all time, and also on a variety of banned books lists. It’s a wonder that humans have survived as long as we have, as stupid as we can be at times.
Q: Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Not really. If I had one, it would probably be the swashbuckling Francis Crawford of Lymond, from Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond series. Handsome, brilliant, daring, dangerous. My kind of guy.
Q: The last book you bought is: “Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine”. Oh, you probably meant NON-medical reading. That would be Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s bookbookbook “At Knit’s End”.
Q: The last book you read: “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell”, by Susanna Clarke.
Q: What are you currently reading? “Snow”, by Orhan Pamuk, and “East of Eden”, by John Steinbeck. And the “Collected Stories of Grace Paley”, by Grace Paley. (And Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine. Pretty exciting reading.)
Q: Five books you would take to a desert island. Most of these I have never read. I’ve read parts of Twain, parts of Trevor, and Tolkien once, but certainly could re-read it. They’re all big books that would last until I was rescued.
1. “Collected Works of Mark Twain”, the unabridged edition
2. “Collected Stories”, William Trevor
3. “Remembrance of Things Past”, by Marcel Proust
4. “Make Way for Lucia, the Complete Lucia”, by E.F. Benson
5. “Lord of the Rings Trilogy”, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Q: Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
1. Laurie, of Etherknitter. She also has lots of time on her hands to read after surgery.
2. Cara, of January One. She is a librarian, a reader, and started Knit One Read Too.
3. Wendy, of The Bookish Girl. How could I not, with the name of her blog?
————————————————————————–
Every so often I check out the Google search strings that got people to my blog. Here are a few favorites from this week:
“things that could be worse”
“bourbon girl” (my favorite)
“one handed knitting”
“one handed zipping technique”
“internal pictures doctor ass” (I can only imagine what this person was really looking for.)
I’m not making those up.
I’ve seen Grace Paley read – she’s a hoot and exactly what you’d think from her stories. Her short stories are fantastic. Her poetry – not so much.
Thanks for the toss. I’ll get right on it!
I’m honored ma’dam. Look for my answers later this week. This is a fun one – I like to imagine which book I’d like to be in. Wrinkle in Time is a damn good selection. I’m glad you’re reading East of Eden. It is one of my all time favorite novels. Pure smut. 😉
BTW – we saw John Prine this past weekend. It was my first time, the hubsters millionth. I highly recommend it. It was great. His new album came out today. He sang a bunch from it and I enjoyed all that he played.
Do you need / want novels?
When you said you were catching up on some medical reading, I was thinking you’d gotten a few issues behind on NEJM and JAMA. Isn’t Harrison’s supposed to be more of a reference than catch-up reading? The 16th edition has 2607 pages!! As a med student who has not enough time for knitting (I didn’t give my URL above as my blog is in miserable shape), I’m starting to think I never will have time if this is what they mean by “life long learning.” I’ll have to stick to knitting for babies in chunky yarn, it appears. You’re an inspiration!
“things that could be worse”, indeed. Wonder what they were looking for?
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is an interesting book. I enjoyed it.
My blog is in dismal shape too–I just started it, though. I have enjoyed reading your blog…I linked here from another knitting blog and was captured by the grisly injury story (being a nurse, the medical stuff grabs me). Also, I was wondering: how in the world do you track google strings? Pretty hilarious what people look for. Kinda scary too!
one of your last book purchases was Harrisons? (did you go with the two volume set or the one volume-mega-book? I have the 1000+ page one book and often put down “lugging Harrion’s around” on the medical form when it asks for “exercise.”) I second what Ruby B says, an am surprised that you bought it…
Thanks for the risotto recipe (I’m a bit behind in commenting on blogs…). I have a lot of basmatti rice to use up and even if it doesn’t work out exactly like a risotto I’m always game for something new to try. (I’m trying to use up all I have in the pantry and sometimes my creative side doesn’t mesh with my tastebuds!)