Book Survey

I just imported this survey from The Common Room and it looked like fun. Most of the books are ones I read long ago, but not all:

1. One book that changed your life: Either Atlas Shrugged or Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible. Both are secular works, but both made me sit up and actually examine my faith and not just take it for granted. They're not light reads.

2. One book that you've read more than once: Would you believe The Black Stallion? Every year, from third grade through high school, that was the book with which I started the school year. I would check it out ceremoniously from the library on the first day of school. It became a talisman for me, and the movie was a wondrous thing, although that's not Alec.

3. One book you'd want on a deserted island: the Bible. Maybe I could finally read it beginning to end.

4. One book that made you laugh: Dave Barry's Babies and Other Hazards of Sex. Probably because I read it when I was the mother of young children and my sense of humor was desperate.

5. One book that made you cry: The Diary of Anne Frank.
"In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death. "

6. One book that you wish had been written: I wish Jesus had written something himself. I read the Bible and in my cynical moments, think that it's all hearsay. It would be nice to know what the man was actually thinking. I do realize, though, that that's the point: it's faith we go by, not proof. But it would be nice.

7. One book that you wish had never been written: Mein Kampf. Not because of the book, but because of what it helped to bring about.

8. One book that you are currently reading: Velvet Elvis. Knitter's Almanac. Some alternate history novel that I suspect I've read before. I'm sorry, did you say one?

9. One book you've been meaning to read: Death by Suburb and The Suburban Christian. But they're on order!