I’ve never been “tagged” for a meme before but John Baker just hit me up. So here I go:

1. One book that changed your life?
Jeez. Don’t start with an easy one. I don’t want to pick one of the college essay ones like The Fountainhead. So I’ll say David Lee Roth’s Crazy From the Heat.

2. One book you have read more than once?
I used to read Catch-22 every summer. It would always surprise me and I’d always laugh.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?
God help me, I’m going to say The Lord of the Rings. Oh, oh, wait. I know. I’d take my copy of P.G. Wodehouse’s The Most of P.G. Wodehouse. I love every story in it and I take such pleasure in reading them that I don’t rush through the book (still haven’t finished them all) and I could go back and re-read them and I’m fairly sure I’d experience the same contentment I did on the first read.

4. One book that made you cry?
I think Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies qualifies because if I’d been reading it in complete privacy, I’d have been bawling.

5. One book that made you laugh?
Just one? I’ll name one I haven’t talked about on the blog before: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. I read it on a long car trip with my dad and I laughed so much, he borrowed the book immediately.

6. One book you wish had been written?
I’m working on it.

7. One book you wish had never been written?
I like John’s answer here: “I don’t want to stop people writing, but there are many books that should never have been published.”

Never been written? That’s an insane thing to ask a writer. I thought of joking that we could have done without Pamela Anderson’s Star, but I really don’t even wish that had never been written.

My answer couldn’t be merely a bad book because bad books convince us we can do better. I don’t know, you know? There’s plenty of books I wish I’d never read or even tried to read or more acurately, “been assigned” to read (see almost everything in any class I took for my degree) but I can’t say I wish they’d never been written. Just don’t tell me I have to read them. Diversity’s a wonderful thing. Read what you like.

8. One book you are currently reading?
Ahem. Well, okay. Yeh. I’m reading The Dharma of Star Wars by Matthew Bortolin. So now you know how I went.

9. One book you have been meaning to read?
You know, the Bible.

10. Now tag five people…
Doug, Dredge, Neil, Blake, and Karol.