Creek Running North

You know, I was sure that if I kept my head down this meme would pass me by. But wouldn’t you know it. Not only do I get tapped for the thing long after all the best comments on this infernal game have been made, but I get tapped by one of maybe three bloggers in the world who I can’t just blow off. When your blogmother hands you a gift, you can’t just say “no thanks” even if you’re pretty sure it’s actually the gom jabbar.

So here goes.

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates by The RAND Corporation

Or Ed Abbey’s novel Jonathan Troy, because that’s the only way I’ll get to read it. Abbey hated it and made sure it never saw print.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Aside from Rana? Hmmm. That’s a tough one. Maybe “Mike,” the sentient mainframe computer from Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, or perhaps the fictional “Ed Abbey” author character — not to be confused with the guy whose driver’s license read “Edward Paul Abbey” who sat down at the typewriter and banged out Desert Solitaire. Or Joe, the Airedale in the ultra-cloying Beautiful Joe by Margaret Marshal Saunders.

As for female characters, I guess maybe Codi Noline in Kingsolver’s Animal Dreams. My crushes on women tend to favor the non-fictitious variety.

The last book you bought is?

Antiintellectualism in American Life, Richard Hofstadter

What are you currently reading?

At any one point in my life, I have about 20 books I’m theoretically reading for work. (What ADD?) So instead of listing them all, I’ll just enumerate the books currently opened and face down on my bedside table:

Animals in Transition Translation, Temple Grandin [need more caffeine]
Collapse, Jared Diamond
Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon, Michael Ghiglieri and Thomas Myers
Packrat Middens: The Last 40,000 Years of Biotic Change, Julio Betancourt, Thomas R. Van Devender, and Paul Martin
Confessions of a Barbarian, Ed Abbey
Once Upon A Desert, Mojave River Valley Museum
The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Richard Hofstadter

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-By-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot, 1972 edition, John Muir. (Maybe that should have been my answer to question #1.)
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, Stephen J. Gould
Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
Birds of That Specific Deserted Island, Kenn Kaufman
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, Cliffs Notes

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

To Deaniac-in-exile Kathy Flake because I bet she’ll mention a book I didn’t know I needed to read.
To Neo-Mensch-evist Michael Bérubé because I’m betting he’s too busy to do it, thus limiting the damage I cause by passing this infernal memoid on.
To People’s Attorney Skelly Wright because I’m curious.

Update: Kathy and Skelly have responded and passed along the infernal book meme. Updated further: So has Michael. I can die in peace now.