{"id":883,"date":"2007-03-05T18:52:58","date_gmt":"2007-03-05T18:52:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=883"},"modified":"2007-03-05T18:52:58","modified_gmt":"2007-03-05T18:52:58","slug":"puffbirds_book_meme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2007\/03\/05\/puffbirds_book_meme\/","title":{"rendered":"Puffbird’s Book Meme"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps memes aren’t quite as dead as I said they were the other day<\/a>. Case in point: I’ve been “tagged” by my friend and occasional commenter, Jen Broschinsky<\/a>. The meme she passes along to me is a toughie; I’ve read a heckuva lot of books in my life, but I have a hard time when people ask me to start ranking, rating, or quantifying them. Still, what can you do when you’ve been tagged by a fellow blogger? I give it the old college try below the fold:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. One book that changed your life:
    \nThe most difficult category on this list, as I honestly can’t think of any one title that significantly altered the trajectory of my life. I do think very highly of Thoreau’s Walden<\/i>…<\/li>\n
  2. One book you’ve read more than once:
    \nStar Wars<\/i>, a.k.a.,     Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker<\/i><\/a>, a.k.a. Star Wars: A New Hope<\/i><\/a>, by George Lucas (actually Alan Dean Foster<\/a>, but Uncle George’s name is on the cover). I’m talking, of course, about the novelization of the original Star Wars<\/i> film. It was the first “grown-up book” I ever owned, and I read my original copy of it so many times during my childhood that it literally came apart in my hands one awful day out in my treehouse. I still have a few lines of it memorized, actually. (“Like the greatest of trees, able to withstand any external attack, the Republic rotted from within…”)<\/li>\n
  3. One book you would want on a desert island:
    \nJames Clavell’s     Shogun<\/i><\/a>. I’ve wanted to read it for a long time, and it’s so long that it might keep me occupied until the rescue ship arrives.<\/li>\n
  4. One book that made you laugh:
    \n    The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy<\/i><\/a> by Douglas Adams<\/li>\n
  5. One book that made you cry:
    \n    Where the Red Fern Grows<\/i><\/a> by Wilson Rawls. Read it as a kid and bawled like a baby. Didn’t think about it for years, until I was helping my dad clean up my grandmother’s house following her death. I found a copy of it in her things, flipped to the ending (no spoilers here!), and damned if the tears didn’t well up as if I was ten years old again. One of these days, I’ll have to re-read it in its entirety.<\/li>\n
  6. One book you wish had been written:
    \n    The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay<\/i><\/a> by Michael Chabon. A high-brow book that unabashedly reveres a medium most people consider hopelessly low-brow — the comic book — while managing the clever trick of being completely accessible to those who know nothing of either comics or literary fiction. It truly is a masterpiece.<\/li>\n
  7. One book you wish had never been written:
    \n    Mein Kampf<\/i><\/a>. No explanation needed, I trust.<\/li>\n
  8. One book you are currently reading:
    \n    Crucible: Kirk<\/i><\/a> by David R. George III, a Star Trek<\/i> tie-in novel and part of a trilogy commissioned to celebreate the 40th anniversary of the original Trek<\/i> series’ premiere. I intend to write in depth about this trilogy, but trust me when I say that it rises above the level of the usual tie-in.<\/li>\n
  9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:
    \nThere are hundreds of those, but if you force me to name names… The Grapes of Wrath<\/i>. I     Cliff-Note<\/a>d my way through this one back and high school and I’ve always regretted it, especially after I read and loved East of Eden<\/i> on my own a few years later. One of these days…<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Perhaps memes aren’t quite as dead as I said they were the other day. Case in point: I’ve been “tagged” by my friend and occasional commenter, Jen Broschinsky. The meme she passes along to me is a toughie; I’ve read a heckuva lot of books in my life, but I have a hard time when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memes-and-quizzes","category-the-bookshelf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}