For Jack

Copy the list below and replace the answers with your own, then tag [an arbitrary number of] people and the person who originally tagged you so they may see your answers. I tagged either fellow bookish types or those who recommended some of the books to me on this list.

1. One book that changed your life?
“Tales of the City”. It is a simple book but one that really moved me in ways I never expected. It not only had the weird magic of San Francisco or the pop culture trappings but was my first exposure to a great gay character in Michael ‘Mouse’ Tolliver which was a rarity in what I had read up to that point. It was also my first real exposure to the serial style format which included jumping from character with no main focus, unexpected storylines disappearing but then re-connecting much later but prepared me to read other serial styled authors like Charles Dickens much easier.

2. One book you have read more than once?
“Gone With the Wind”. It’s easy to make this novel be all about Scarlet and Rhett with curtain ball gowns and long sweeping staircases but that’s not why I need to reread this book once a year. It is a detailed and nuanced portrait of what happens when a society falls apart and really goes into the psyches that exist in such a situation—between Scarlet, Rhett, Melanie, and Ashley one is allowed to see and be exposed to the pathos of what we call society and what collapses in terms of morals, manners, expectations and emotions when society is gone. I still cry when I read the list of the dead because of how much you care about people and what they are fighting for. It’s not about what the North or the South stood for —it’s about people in time of crisis.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?
“Henry and June”. I think there is no other book-fiction or non-that makes me think about relationships like Anais Nin’s journal. Her beautiful language, her musings on creativity and sexuality, and the overall unique and universal understanding she has for love and lust, hunger and heartache is just so beautiful that to be able to read and reread it would quite fine with me.

4. One book that made you laugh?
Anything by essayist Michael Thomas Ford. I find his musings about life, sexuality, family and relationships to be quite funny. Whether it’s his multi essay attempt to live life like a porno flick, his musing about breaking up with his long term boyfriend or his explanation about how writers don’t write for art much as they write to not be caught slacking—he cracks me up.

5. One book that made you cry?
‘House of the Spirits’ is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read and makes me cry so many times through out the story. It’s has a sense of spirit and pathos strung together with such a musical and lyrical sense of prose that I can’t help be drawn in for days on end only to be deeply sad when the story does end. It has one of my favorite first lines of any novel and one that pops into my head fairly often.

6. One book you wish you had written?
‘Boy Meets Boy’ is the type of young adult book I wish there was more of. Not since Francesca Lia Block (of the Wheezy Bat series) has there been a writer so talented at creating their own world, their own style of prose and a unique feeling of existence. David Levithan has a handful of other books (‘Nick and Nora’s Infinite Play List’ among them) but this one still stands out as his best in creativity, emotion and depth. I wish I could paint the music like his characters seem to—or write like him some day.

7. One book you wish had never been written?
No such thing. I think all books have a place and audience. (Though if a gun to head—the fourth ‘Twilight’ book.)

8. One book you are currently reading?
‘Dr. Zhivago’ I have a crush on Russian literature currently and have been rereading all of the epic stories that I can. The only thing about this book that bothers me is I always only picture Omar and Julie as Yuri and Laura—damn that film!

9. One book you have been meaning to read?
‘Tropic of Cancer’. For some reason Anais Nin’s journal has made me much more interested in trying Henry Miller again. The few times I have tried to delve into his work I have found myself either very put out or bored by how dated it feels.

10. One book that was difficult to read?
‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ I will not get into my feelings about this book outside of that the scope of the story is so huge that I would have nightmares of keeping track of imagery, symbolism and characters. I should read it again—after I get back through all my Ayn Rand.

11. Favorite childhood book?
‘The Fox and the Hound’ was the only Disney film I was allowed to see as a child and this book was one of the last one’s my parents ever had to read to me. I still find myself thinking about Copper and Tod’s story and get a bit misty when I think about how it all ends. Yes it is an allegory for race relations but I love it to this day.

12. Popular book you have no desire to ever read? I have really tried with the following authors but just cannot get into their stuff--Stephen King, John Grishom and Danielle Steele. While they each had books I enjoyed, they seem to be dried out as artists. It worries me because it makes me feel out of touch with the mass markets.