Speak of the devil and he will hear about it shortly

So Ambrose Bierce could have advised Shelley (of The Menagerie) when she ended her answers to a five-question meme a few hours ago with this daring sentence:

I tag Rozanne, Mellow-Drama, Isaac (although he appears to be meme-proof), and the Mad Poet.

How can I resist answering?

1.  You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451.  Which book do you want to be saved?

-- The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas pere, in the original French.  It's a good adventure story, it's long, and I need to practice my French more often, so by reading it I could combine civil disobedience with self-education.

2.  Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

-- Yes, but not one that any reader of this blog is likely to have heard of.  Quite some time ago I was madly enamored of a fictional character in a work of non-fiction.  Her name is Kate Crandall and she appears in John J. Tarrant's book How to Negotiate a Raise, which I first read shortly after it appeared in 1976.

3.  What is the last book you purchased?

-- Like Shelley, I hardly ever buy only one book at a time.  On my last trip or two to a bookstore (the trips blend together), I bought Amos Oz's memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness, a mystery by Robert van Gulik called The Emperor's Pearl, and four Batman graphic novels.

4.  What are you currently reading?

-- It's rare for me to "be reading" a book because I read most books from start to finish in one sitting, so I'm rarely partway through a book.  At the moment the only two that I'm partway through (or more exactly, still working on) are Elementary Theory of Numbers, by William J. LeVeque, and De Re Metallica, by Georgius Agricola, as translated by Herbert Clark Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover.

5.  What five books would you take to a deserted island?

-- The Count of Monte Cristo (see above) for escapism, The Oxford English Dictionary (with the magnifying glass, please) for education, a P.G. Wodehouse omnibus for amusement, and any two volumes from Will and Ariel Durant's history of civilization.  If I'm stranded on the island and not just visiting then in place of the Durant volumes I would substitute Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything and a field guide to edible and poisonous plants.

Comments

[Shelley]

Batman graphic novels? You've gone up several notches in my estimation!