the book meme
I need to clear my brain and stop working on
my BlogHer posts for a little bit. Since both
trillwing and
New Kid tagged me for the book meme, I can't escape its grasp...
1. One book that changed your life?
Dr. Willis E. McNelly's The Dune Encyclopedia, ca. 1984. Seriously. I was eleven years old when I read this, having already read all of Frank Herbert's Dune novels up to that point. With a stack of books and a crazy large "reference" book, I learned to do research.
It was all downhill from there...
2. One book you have read more than once?
I read a lot of books more than once. For purposes of answering this question, I'll say that when walking past my bookshelf looking for something to read, it's likely I'll grab a Hardy novel or a Zola novel. I've read many of them, many times over.
3. One book you would want on a desert island?
The Riverside Chaucer, because it's the lengthiest book I own besides my Nortons. Plus, you can re-read Chaucer so many times and still not get everything (at least I can!), so it'll give me something to do on that island.
4. One book that made you laugh?
Geez, I don't know. Lately I've been reading nothing but stuff for my comprehensive exams and none of it has been terribly funny (for instance, we just worked through the Greek tragedies). Pass.
5. One book that made you cry?
I cry all the damn time. I'm such a sap that I can find things to cry about in sitcoms. So I'll answer this with the last book that made me cry, and that was...[thinking]...Snow Mountain Passage.
6. One book you wish had been written?
This involves creativity, so...pass.
7. One book you wish had never been written?
My first book, back in 1999/2000. While I am thankful for the money and happy that my books have helped people learn cool stuff, the steady stream of people who saw fit to bombard me with emails and phone calls (at my home and at my office) to tell me how much I suck because a) girls shouldn't write tech books and/or b) the book doesn't cover what [caller/emailer] wanted it to cover and/or c) they have a problem with code on page 6 and wouldn't I just walk them through following the step-by-step directions personally because they bought my book ... well, it really made me a bitter, grudge-holding person against the entire high-tech industry and people in general. The misplaced sense of self-importance, the expectation that the dollar I get from their purchase of my book somehow gives them unfettered access to my personal time or the time of my co-workers, it just doesn't sit well with me. Not terribly rational, I know, but there it is. Trust me, I could go on...and on...and on. But I'll just leave it at that. I wish I had never written my first book, because if I hadn't written the first one I wouldn't have written the other ones, and I would have moved on from this place a loooong time ago.
8. One book you are currently reading?
Emerson: The Mind on Fire
9. One book you have been meaning to read?
Heh. This is easy. Moby Dick. Seriously. I am the Worst. Americanist. Ever.
10. Now tag five people:
I tag...YOU, times five!
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101 movies meme
Ok, here's a movie meme. It's the list of "
movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies" and for the most part I think it's a good list.
Other bloggers are bolding the ones they've seen, so I shall do the same.
Although I score pretty low on the have-seen scale, my absolute all-time favorite movie is in this list. See if you can guess which one it is (people who actually know the answer are forbidden from ruining the fun!).
"2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) Stanley Kubrick
"The 400 Blows" (1959) Francois Truffaut
"8 1/2" (1963) Federico Fellini
"Aguirre, the Wrath of God" (1972) Werner Herzog
"Alien" (1979) Ridley Scott
"All About Eve" (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
"Annie Hall" (1977) Woody Allen
"Bambi" (1942) Disney
"Battleship Potemkin" (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
"The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) William Wyler
"The Big Red One" (1980) Samuel Fuller (Seen half of it.)
"The Bicycle Thief" (1949) Vittorio De Sica
"The Big Sleep" (1946) Howard Hawks
"Blade Runner" (1982) Ridley Scott (I know, isn't it interesting/sad that I've never seen this?)
"Blowup" (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
"Blue Velvet" (1986) David Lynch
"Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) Arthur Penn
"Breathless" (1959) Jean-Luc Godard
"Bringing Up Baby" (1938) Howard Hawks
"Carrie" (1975) Brian DePalma
"Casablanca" (1942) Michael Curtiz
"Un Chien Andalou" (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
"Children of Paradise" / "Les Enfants du Paradis" (1945) Marcel Carne
"Chinatown" (1974) Roman Polanski
"Citizen Kane" (1941) Orson Welles
"A Clockwork Orange" (1971) Stanley Kubrick
"The Crying Game" (1992) Neil Jordan
"The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951) Robert Wise
"Days of Heaven" (1978) Terence Malick
"Dirty Harry" (1971) Don Siegel
"The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972) Luis Bunuel
"Do the Right Thing" (1989) Spike Lee
"La Dolce Vita" (1960) Federico Fellini
"Double Indemnity" (1944) Billy Wilder
"Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (1964) Stanley Kubrick
"Duck Soup" (1933) Leo McCarey
"E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) Steven Spielberg
"Easy Rider" (1969) Dennis Hopper
"The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) Irvin Kershner
"The Exorcist" (1973) William Friedkin
"Fargo" (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
"Fight Club" (1999) David Fincher
"Frankenstein" (1931) James Whale
"The General" (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
"The Godfather," "The Godfather, Part II" (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
"Gone With the Wind" (1939) Victor Fleming
"GoodFellas" (1990) Martin Scorsese
"The Graduate" (1967) Mike Nichols
"Halloween" (1978) John Carpenter
"A Hard Day's Night" (1964) Richard Lester
"Intolerance" (1916) D.W. Griffith
"It's A Gift" (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
"It's a Wonderful Life" (1946) Frank Capra
"Jaws" (1975) Steven Spielberg
"The Lady Eve" (1941) Preston Sturges
"Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) David Lean
"M" (1931) Fritz Lang
"Mad Max 2" / "The Road Warrior" (1981) George Miller
"The Maltese Falcon" (1941) John Huston
"The Manchurian Candidate" (1962) John Frankenheimer
"Metropolis" (1926) Fritz Lang
"Modern Times" (1936) Charles Chaplin
"Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
"Nashville" (1975) Robert Altman
"The Night of the Hunter" (1955) Charles Laughton
"Night of the Living Dead" (1968) George Romero
"North by Northwest" (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
"Nosferatu" (1922) F.W. Murnau
"On the Waterfront" (1954) Elia Kazan
"Once Upon a Time in the West" (1968) Sergio Leone
"Out of the Past" (1947) Jacques Tournier
"Persona" (1966) Ingmar Bergman
"Pink Flamingos" (1972) John Waters (But I've seen every other John Waters film...)
"Psycho" (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
"Pulp Fiction" (1994) Quentin Tarantino
"Rashomon" (1950) Akira Kurosawa
"Rear Window" (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
"Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) Nicholas Ray
"Red River" (1948) Howard Hawks
"Repulsion" (1965) Roman Polanski
"Rules of the Game" (1939) Jean Renoir
"Scarface" (1932) Howard Hawks
"The Scarlet Empress" (1934) Josef von Sternberg
"Schindler's List" (1993) Steven Spielberg
"The Searchers" (1956) John Ford
"The Seven Samurai" (1954) Akira Kurosawa
"Singin' in the Rain" (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
"Some Like It Hot" (1959) Billy Wilder
"A Star Is Born" (1954) George Cukor
"A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) Elia Kazan
"Sunset Boulevard" (1950) Billy Wilder
"Taxi Driver" (1976) Martin Scorsese
"The Third Man" (1949) Carol Reed
"Tokyo Story" (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
"Touch of Evil" (1958) Orson Welles
"The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948) John Huston
"Trouble in Paradise" (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
"Vertigo" (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
"West Side Story" (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
"The Wild Bunch" (1969) Sam Peckinpah
"The Wizard of Oz" (1939) Victor Fleming
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