Desert Island Books

[Don't Panic]

1) Lord of the Rings
2) The complete Hitchhikers guide onmibus , a trilogy in 5 parts
3) Survival guide
4) Tropical fruits and plants and their uses
5) A beginners guide to weaving
6) A beginners guide to smithing
7) Good Omens
8) 1984

Album: Rolling stones Forty Licks

Luxury Item: My sweetheart

[Pappa]

You're cast away on a desert island. You can take 8 books with you. Which books would you take and why?

You may also take one album of music and one luxury item.



Here's mine.

Books

1) 1984 by George Orwell

I regard this as one of the finest works of fiction ever. Aside from all the insight into totalitarianism, the way Orwell depicts the loneliness and necessary self-reliance of the human condition I find amazing. Internally, we are all alone in the universe and he captures this perfectly in Winston Smith.

2) We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

This book is like Brave New World, only good. Huxley claims he wasn't aware of it, but that seems unlikely too me. Like Brave New World and THX 1138, the story is about a breaking free from a stifling 'perfect' future, for something more base and animal.

3) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

This book has been described as the "greatest work of rapture of the 20th C". It's a strange thing to read, early sections are disturbingly alluring. Yet the book is never explicit. Throughout the book you are an observer on the mind of a man who sees the world differently to you, is a monster, and yet you feel empathy for him. Lolita doesn't easily fit into standard stereotypes or categories. Narbokov's writing style is sometimes obscure, but paints a wonderfully detailed picture of the world, often through small suggestions.

4) The Trial by Franz Kafka

I like this book in part due to similar reasons to 1984. It depicts a mind working alone in the world. But also, Kafka manages to put across the sense of continual paranoia, something I've not read before. The protagonist, Joseph K., seems to make every decision that I wouldn't. Time and again, he behaves in a manner that I cannot understand or identify with. Every example of him coming into contact with a woman is bizarre. Every time he is presented with a choice, he seems to do the opposite of what I would do in the same situation, and I find it infuriating to read. Also, the possibility that he may have created a bureaucratic hell of his own choosing just by playing along is a very strange idea to contemplate. Finally, there's the ending, which actually shocked the the hell out of me when I first read it.

5) Burmese Days by George Orwell

I could have included Orwell's complete works, but I'd have run out of space. I always identify with Orwell's main characters (who were presumably a projection of himself), and this is his darkest version ever. This time, it's not merely a self-reliance or loneliness of mind, but an actual torture of being unable to express what's in one's head due to class and cultural rules. I've previously described this book as "the only book that ever knock me off my perch". If you've not read it, I'd recommend it. It's Orwell's first novel, has a hint of Kipling to it, but is unmistakably Orwell's style.

6) Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov

I've loved all of Andrey Kurkov's books and would recommend them all. I had trouble picking my favourite, so I picked the first of his that I read. All Kurkov's books have what should be pretty dark storylines, death, mafia, etc., but the tales are lifted by the introduction of children and animals (into somewhat odd, haphazard and dysfunctional makeshift families). He has a curious way of cutting from scene to scene, leaving out all extraneous text, but missing nothing important. The stories are endearing, funny and uplifting in very dark settings.

7) Rainforest Shamans: Essays on the Tukano Indians of the Northwest Amazon by Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff

Without at least one good anthropology book with me, I'd probably cut my losses and walk into the sea. Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff spent 30 years working and living with the Tukano. He was a fantastic anthropologist and the huge amount of effort he put into studying the Tukano gave a very detailed insight into their lives and worldviews. If all anthropologists had his dedication and insight, there would be a much greater understanding of why different cultures have different values and ways of looking at the world, and that would be a great step forward for us all.

8) The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Social History of Drugs by Richard Davenport-Hines

Easily the best book ever written on the history of illegal drugs and drug prohibition.

I wanted to include the Bible too (New King James Version), as the sickest joke book ever written, but I ran out of space.

Album


That's a no-brainer for me. It's the only album I can listen to every day and never get bored of it. There's a huge amount of other music I'd miss though.

Luxury Item


This was tricky, but in the end, only one think would do and that's beer, many cases of it. But which beer? I prefer mild ales to anything else, but as it would be a hot, tropical island, something wet, sharp and refreshing would be more appropriate, like an old-fashioned astringent British bitter or a tasty and refreshing IPA or American Pale Ale. In the end, I went for a local favourite, a little known micro-brewery that's only about 15 miles from my house called the Otley Brewing Company, and the beer is Otley O1. It's a lovely, sharp, golden ale.

This thread needs some bumpage.

[surreptitious57]

And God Created The Integers : Stephen Hawking
The Legion Of The Damned : Sven Hassel
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy : John Le Carre
The Third Book Of Blood : Clive Barker
Revelation Space : Alistair Reynolds
Hamlet : William Shakespeare
Consider Phlebas : Iain Banks
The Koran : Mohammad

Live In London : Deep Purple

File

[hadespussercats]

1. Villette, Charlotte Bronte


click the spoiler if you want to read some thoughts I had about reading Villette the first time.

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

... In a way, I felt like Villette had found me, at a time I desperately needed to be found.

Back then, my friend and I were employed in a dingy shop in Long Island City, where bleary men sipping forties out of paper bags at ten in the morning hassled women from the subway to the warehouse door. Most of our colleagues were deeply depressed, and sniped quietly in the ill glow of fluorescent track lighting. At the time, I was one of them, though having a job with regular hours was part of my self-prescribed therapy to pull myself out of the pit.

My regimen of leaving the house each day to make money and converse with other people was successful in improving my overall mental health. All the same, each time I pushed through the doors of that gray, glowing den of passive aggression to put in my eight hours, I could feel my soul growing browner and drier at its edges.

My mornings were laden with dread. Generally, I woke up two hours before I had to leave the house, to ensure that I would have plenty of time to ready myself for the day; still, I was often late for work. I would linger over my morning pages (another part of my self-prescription), smoking and drinking cup after cup of coffee. In a sudden fit of awareness I would look at the oven clock and see that it was already ten in the morning. I'd look down at my still pajama-clad self, and think What the hell am I doing?

This morning, I was actually running a bit early-- with no coffee in the house, there had been little incentive to linger. I decided to swing by Dunkin Donuts on my way from the bus to the train.

I settled into a corner table with my bagel, and took Villette out of my bag for company. The story lured me in almost immediately, and I realized with a strange clarity that nothing I was likely to do at work that day would be as important to me, as soul-saving to me, as finishing it then and there. I called in sick, then went back to my book.

A few hours later, I was still sitting at the corner table. I'd forgotten where I was. I sat hunched around my book, my hair falling in a screen around me. I'd braced my arms against the tabletop-- it must have looked like I was trying to keep myself from falling in headfirst. I noticed soggy raised bumps on the cheap paperback pages, and realized I was crying.

I pressed the book under something heavy overnight, and returned it with sincere thanks to my co-worker the next morning. But the story stayed with me, a pensive mood I couldn't shake for days.

2.Bel Canto- Ann Patchett



Quiet, raw, serene, heartbreaking. Sensitively drawn characters, and a fine ear for love in all its forms. I felt like this book was written for me.


3.Faeries- Brian Froud and Alan Lee



I wrote about this book extensively somewhere else on Ratz, so I'll keep it brief. The drawings and stories in this book connect my childhood and my adulthood, the work I do now and what I used to dream I'd do someday. They still inspire, and if I were alone on a desert island, I'd want this memory of the best parts of my family history.


4. Persuasion- Jane Austen


My favorite Austen by far. I can't live alone without at least one really excellent romance novel.

5. The Notebooks of Leonardo DaVinci- by himself.

or, even more awesome, something like this:


Why would anyone choose the Bible when you could take this instead?

Do I need to explain this one? Inspiration, education, and the company of one of my all-time dinner party guests to keep me warm.


6. Poetry in English: An Anthology- M.L. Rosenthal, editor



I suppose it doesn't need to be this exact anthology, but I was checking online and this has pretty much all the basic poems I'd want around, not only for comfort, but to save myself from going insane trying to remember how the rest of any particular poem goes (which is the sort of thing my mind tries to do when I'm by myself.)

Actually, I should buy this. Hm.

7. Collected Fictions, Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley


I haven't finished this book yet, but it's excellent so far, and I'd love to bring something with me that's new to read. Besides, it's my husband's favorite, so I could read and remember him talking about the stories and feel like he was near.

And it's a hefty volume, so it could keep me busy for a while.

8. A very large blank notebook.


As for luxury item, you might be thinking I'd choose a pen or a paintbrush, given my last book choice. But I figure pens aren't too difficult to rig up, and if push came to shove I could always write in blood.

I think I'd bring one of these:

(I'm feeling deja vu. Did I write this before? )


And for my album (I'm assuming we'll have a way to play it?)

Blue, Joni Mitchell

And that's the end!

[Jason]

A zombie thread!

8 books on an island eh.. I'll have to give it some thought.

If only I had some brains.

[Tero]

Botany guide for the area.

Luxury items: sea birds field guide and binoculars.

[hadespussercats]

3) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

This book has been described as the "greatest work of rapture of the 20th C". It's a strange thing to read, early sections are disturbingly alluring. Yet the book is never explicit. Throughout the book you are an observer on the mind of a man who sees the world differently to you, is a monster, and yet you feel empathy for him. Lolita doesn't easily fit into standard stereotypes or categories. Narbokov's writing style is sometimes obscure, but paints a wonderfully detailed picture of the world, often through small suggestions.

I used to work with this director who really loved Lolita.

I've read it, I enjoyed it, but... She had a boyfriend (actually, come to think of it, I think he was Welsh) who lived in... The Cayman Islands, I think-- he worked in finance. He came to visit her, and she told me how they spent a day lying in bed reading Lolita to each other.

To each their own, I guess, but it kinda squicked me out. Particularly since I and several other colleagues stayed at her parents' place in Vermont, and saw how weird her relationship was with her dad. She was in her mid-twenties, but would bounce up and down and twirl her hair and speak baby talk whenever he showed up.

Anyway, that's what I think of every time I see that title, now. That and that the chick in the Kubrick film was waaaaaay too old for the story to make sense.

[Svartalf]

Michael Moorcock - The Cornelius Quartet - The adventures of psychedelic special agent / super villain, Jerry Cornelius and his collection of absurd friends and relatives. A collection of four novels that form an ever-shifting narrative. Characters die and reappear. The scene shifts from 21st century Notting Hill to 9th century Byzantium and back without a pause. Nothing is as it seems. Tasty World!

.

I don't get how anybody would want to bring THAT as part of a limited supply of books... That omnibus was among the top three eye openers I've gotten that morecock was a horrible hack... heck, the latter two "novels" in the set don't even make sense at all... even Finnegan's wake was more readable.

[Pappa]

3) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

This book has been described as the "greatest work of rapture of the 20th C". It's a strange thing to read, early sections are disturbingly alluring. Yet the book is never explicit. Throughout the book you are an observer on the mind of a man who sees the world differently to you, is a monster, and yet you feel empathy for him. Lolita doesn't easily fit into standard stereotypes or categories. Narbokov's writing style is sometimes obscure, but paints a wonderfully detailed picture of the world, often through small suggestions.

I used to work with this director who really loved Lolita.

I've read it, I enjoyed it, but... She had a boyfriend (actually, come to think of it, I think he was Welsh) who lived in... The Cayman Islands, I think-- he worked in finance. He came to visit her, and she told me how they spent a day lying in bed reading Lolita to each other.

To each their own, I guess, but it kinda squicked me out. Particularly since I and several other colleagues stayed at her parents' place in Vermont, and saw how weird her relationship was with her dad. She was in her mid-twenties, but would bounce up and down and twirl her hair and speak baby talk whenever he showed up.

Anyway, that's what I think of every time I see that title, now. That and that the chick in the Kubrick film was waaaaaay too old for the story to make sense.

It definitely squicked me out too... bu that's one of the reasons I liked it so much. I was impressed with how Narbokov managed to get me to feel sympathy for Hubertwhile regarding him as a monster. Not usually at the same time, but I kept catching myself. It's weird.

[hadespussercats]

3) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

This book has been described as the "greatest work of rapture of the 20th C". It's a strange thing to read, early sections are disturbingly alluring. Yet the book is never explicit. Throughout the book you are an observer on the mind of a man who sees the world differently to you, is a monster, and yet you feel empathy for him. Lolita doesn't easily fit into standard stereotypes or categories. Narbokov's writing style is sometimes obscure, but paints a wonderfully detailed picture of the world, often through small suggestions.

I used to work with this director who really loved Lolita.

I've read it, I enjoyed it, but... She had a boyfriend (actually, come to think of it, I think he was Welsh) who lived in... The Cayman Islands, I think-- he worked in finance. He came to visit her, and she told me how they spent a day lying in bed reading Lolita to each other.

To each their own, I guess, but it kinda squicked me out. Particularly since I and several other colleagues stayed at her parents' place in Vermont, and saw how weird her relationship was with her dad. She was in her mid-twenties, but would bounce up and down and twirl her hair and speak baby talk whenever he showed up.

Anyway, that's what I think of every time I see that title, now. That and that the chick in the Kubrick film was waaaaaay too old for the story to make sense.

It definitely squicked me out too... bu that's one of the reasons I liked it so much. I was impressed with how Narbokov managed to get me to feel sympathy for Hubertwhile regarding him as a monster. Not usually at the same time, but I kept catching myself. It's weird.

I should clarify-- it wan't the book so much that squicked. I found the book elegant, disturbing, but more funny than anything else (I guess that makes me the weirdo! )

But if I wanted to lie in bed with a man and read sexy stuff together, that wouldn't be my choice. That's what I found squicky.

[Pappa]

3) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

This book has been described as the "greatest work of rapture of the 20th C". It's a strange thing to read, early sections are disturbingly alluring. Yet the book is never explicit. Throughout the book you are an observer on the mind of a man who sees the world differently to you, is a monster, and yet you feel empathy for him. Lolita doesn't easily fit into standard stereotypes or categories. Narbokov's writing style is sometimes obscure, but paints a wonderfully detailed picture of the world, often through small suggestions.

I used to work with this director who really loved Lolita.

I've read it, I enjoyed it, but... She had a boyfriend (actually, come to think of it, I think he was Welsh) who lived in... The Cayman Islands, I think-- he worked in finance. He came to visit her, and she told me how they spent a day lying in bed reading Lolita to each other.

To each their own, I guess, but it kinda squicked me out. Particularly since I and several other colleagues stayed at her parents' place in Vermont, and saw how weird her relationship was with her dad. She was in her mid-twenties, but would bounce up and down and twirl her hair and speak baby talk whenever he showed up.

Anyway, that's what I think of every time I see that title, now. That and that the chick in the Kubrick film was waaaaaay too old for the story to make sense.

It definitely squicked me out too... bu that's one of the reasons I liked it so much. I was impressed with how Narbokov managed to get me to feel sympathy for Hubertwhile regarding him as a monster. Not usually at the same time, but I kept catching myself. It's weird.

I should clarify-- it wan't the book so much that squicked. I found the book elegant, disturbing, but more funny than anything else (I guess that makes me the weirdo! )

But if I wanted to lie in bed with a man and read sexy stuff together, that wouldn't be my choice. That's what I found squicky.

Yeah.... that would be quite disturbing.

[hadespussercats]

3) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

This book has been described as the "greatest work of rapture of the 20th C". It's a strange thing to read, early sections are disturbingly alluring. Yet the book is never explicit. Throughout the book you are an observer on the mind of a man who sees the world differently to you, is a monster, and yet you feel empathy for him. Lolita doesn't easily fit into standard stereotypes or categories. Narbokov's writing style is sometimes obscure, but paints a wonderfully detailed picture of the world, often through small suggestions.

I used to work with this director who really loved Lolita.

I've read it, I enjoyed it, but... She had a boyfriend (actually, come to think of it, I think he was Welsh) who lived in... The Cayman Islands, I think-- he worked in finance. He came to visit her, and she told me how they spent a day lying in bed reading Lolita to each other.

To each their own, I guess, but it kinda squicked me out. Particularly since I and several other colleagues stayed at her parents' place in Vermont, and saw how weird her relationship was with her dad. She was in her mid-twenties, but would bounce up and down and twirl her hair and speak baby talk whenever he showed up.

Anyway, that's what I think of every time I see that title, now. That and that the chick in the Kubrick film was waaaaaay too old for the story to make sense.

It definitely squicked me out too... bu that's one of the reasons I liked it so much. I was impressed with how Narbokov managed to get me to feel sympathy for Hubertwhile regarding him as a monster. Not usually at the same time, but I kept catching myself. It's weird.

I should clarify-- it wan't the book so much that squicked. I found the book elegant, disturbing, but more funny than anything else (I guess that makes me the weirdo! )

But if I wanted to lie in bed with a man and read sexy stuff together, that wouldn't be my choice. That's what I found squicky.

Yeah.... that would be quite disturbing.

I mean, unless it were James Mason, alive in his prime. Then I might make an exception....

[rasetsu]

The books:


1. The Holy Bible




2. The Tao Te Ching




3. Sun Tzu's Art Of War




4. The Zhuangzi




5. The Bhagavad Gita




6. The Diamond Sutra




7. The Lotus Sutra




8. The Quran




One luxury Item: solar rechargeable mp3 player filled with great music (or if not allowed, barrels and barrels of fine tequila)

The album I'd take, failing the mp3 player? AC/DC's Back In Black, or Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti. It's a toss up.