I know I’m an independent sort of blogger. My need is to write, and I use the blog format because the LifeType software is so easy to use, is very flexible, and allows comments. The only reason I'm familiar at all with commercial places like LiveJournal, MySpace, and Blogger is that I have to venture into that territory to read some of my friends' blogs. So I'm really clueless about the whole blogging community thing, especially memes and tagging, which generally seem pretty silly to me.
However, a friend has this on her blog, and I like it, so I'm going to do it. I won't tag anyone, but I'd love to read your responses if you want to put them in a comment here, or on your own blog if you have one.
Note: I could answer every one of these points with "The Bible," except possibly #7 (though in some moods, who knows?), but that would be rather pointless, so I'm going to leave it out and consider other books.
1. One book that changed your life:
All books change my life, one way or another. For the moment I'll single out Marie Winn's The Plug-In Drug, because that opened my eyes to what television does to children and other people. Liberating ourselves (i.e. learning to use the tool carefully and sparingly) from that mind-numbing, time-wasting device was one of the best decisions we've ever made.
2. One book that you've read more than once:
Almost any book worth reading is worth reading more than once. (Maybe my memory is just too poor.) But a good answer would be everything George MacDonald wrote. I have the complete collection from Johannesen, thanks to my very generous father, and there is enough goodness packed into even one book to merit re-reading many times.
3. One book you'd want on a desert island:
Hmmm, I might have to break my resolve and say the Bible. I would have plenty of time for uninterrupted study (if I weren't too busy trying to secure water, food and shelter), and being marooned would certainly provide plenty of opportunities to test my faith. Practically speaking, however, I'd look for something called How to Survive on a Desert Island.
4. One book that made you laugh:
Most recently, Holy Humor by Cal and Rose Samra of the Fellowship of Merry Christians. I was reading while Noah was sleeping on my chest, and I had to stop because the upheavals kept waking him.
5. One book that made you cry:
Books generally don't make me cry. Music does, but not books. Unless I'm crying because there are so many good books and I'll never be able to read but a tiny fraction of them.
6. One book that you wish had been written:
Updates from authors on how their views have evolved since they were set in ink. John Holt did this beautifully with the revised version of How Children Learn. I particularly would like to know how C. S. Lewis's view of women changed after he married Joy Davidman. I know it did, but that was within a few years of his death, and after most of his books had been written.
7. One book that you wish had never been written:
As a writer, it's hard to wish any book unwritten; that would seem like wishing someone's child had never been born. But there are many books I wish I had left unread. Books change the mind, and foul images and foul attitudes are nearly impossible to expunge. Unfortunately, a visit to the children's section of your local library will most likely reveal a sizeable collection of such books.
8. One book you're currently reading:
Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat. I can't comment on it because I haven't finished, but I'll post a review when I have.
9. One book you've been meaning to read:
The complete works of Francis Schaeffer. I've read several of his books, but I have the whole set on my bookshelves and I'd like to fill in the many missing pieces. Reading The God Who Is There as part of my Lenten discipline two years ago, I was struck by how many things it explains now that I didn't understand back in the 1970's, and even more by how it agreed with what I was reading in John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education. When an evangelical Protestant theologian living in Switzerland and a self-described lapsed Catholic schoolteacher from Pittsburgh tell me the same things, perhaps I had better listen.
