Pharyngula::A bookish meme

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Monday, March 21, 2005

A bookish meme

PZ Myers • 36 Comments (last page)

Oh, no. Profgrrrl asks me to address a meme, and when can I ever turn her down?

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

I think I'd want to memorize a translation of Gilgamesh. As long as we're trying to preserve literary tradition, let's save the old stuff, too. There are also some personal sentiments attached to that particular book.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

What? No. Do people actually feel that way about characters in books?

The last book you bought is:

The Book of Spiders and Scorpions, R Preston-Mafham.

The last book you read:

The Scar, C Miéville.

What are you currently reading?

The Ancestor's Tale, R Dawkins.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

They must be l o n g books, if they're going to keep me going until I'm rescued.

The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, by SJ Gould.
Developmental Plasticity and Evolution, by MJ West-Eberhard.
On Growth and Form, DW Thompson.
Principles of Neural Science, ER Kandel et al.
Moby Dick, H Melville (I gotta have one work of fiction in there).

That ought to keep me occupied.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons)? And Why?

This is cruel, to pass this burden on to others. And only three? I'm going to imagine that it's a request to invite three people to a small party at my place, and choose three that I think would interact well and stir up some interesting conversations: enough in common that they'd get along well, enough different that they'd be stimulating. I pick Rana, Scott, and Jaquandor. And because she'd be there anyway, I'm going to ask a fourth: Skatje.

Update: Scott has obeyed, as has Rana, although with much well-warranted grumbling. Jaquandor hasn't even noticed yet, and Skatje, well, Skatje is a teenager right here in my house. I know how much obedience to expect.

Trackback url: http://pharyngula.org/index/trackback/2058/QLEe49UV/

Comments:

#19331: John Wilkins — 03/21 at 04:56 PM
Moby Dick is fiction?

#19333: Rana — 03/21 at 05:10 PM
Oh, farts!

#19337: profgrrrrl — 03/21 at 06:17 PM
Why is everyone picking Moby Dick?

And is it really so important that I need to read it someday?

#19338: Rana — 03/21 at 06:29 PM
I don't know. I read Moby Dick for the first time a couple of months ago, and it didn't do much for me. But, then, I was more interested in the whaling details than anything else, so I'm not an ideal person to ask about it.

#19339: PZ Myers — 03/21 at 06:33 PM
I love Moby Dick. It's quirky and strange and it's got all those chapters about biology.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#19343: — 03/21 at 06:52 PM
The book I'd memorize would be The Hobbit.

#19344: Rana — 03/21 at 06:55 PM

The whole time I was reading it I was oscillating between "Whoa, cool whaling facts!" "No! Whales are NOT fish!" "Poor whales!" "Hmm... I wonder if anyone has done an environmental history of 19th century whaling beliefs and how they affected the whaling industry and consumption of whale products?" and "What a strange story."

I also felt like I needed a lit prof to guide me through the things I was missing, writing and allusion-wise.

So it was a rather uneven experience.

#19345: Rana — 03/21 at 06:58 PM
It being Moby Dick, not The Hobbit, of course.

Arrrrr! Thar she blows! Th' white wyrm! Ready the aerial harpoons! Strike at th' heart o' tha' cursed Smagu!

(Time to knock off for the day, methinks!)

#19346: Danny Boy — 03/21 at 07:14 PM
Oh, can you give a review of Dawkins' book when you're finished? Hehe

Trackback: A Bookish Meme Tracked on: Blog, Jvstin Style (207.44.152.70) at 2005 03 21 17:47:07
Pharyngula::A bookish meme Via the blog Pharyngula, a rather different book meme....

#19348: Matt McIrvin — 03/21 at 07:48 PM
I don't know how to answer some of these. But my answer to #1 sprang to mind immediately: Stanislaw Lem's Cyberiad, in the Michael Kandel translation. If Chad Orzel or Kate Nepveu didn't claim it first.

#19350: — 03/21 at 07:52 PM
Good choice of books. There is enough paper in Gould's whopper to origami yourself an ocean liner, and with the knowledge you glean from Moby Dick you'll soon have more than enough whale blubber to keep you sleek, healthy, and waterproof. No need to wait for rescue at all.

#19354: coturnix — 03/21 at 08:32 PM
I was 10 years old when I read Moby Dick (unabridged). Who knows what I missed? But even at that age I was screaming about the biological inaccracies.

When I first saw this meme, I understood it differently. I said I wanted to be the "Firefighters' Manual" as the only book sure not to get burned!

#19357: — 03/21 at 08:40 PM
I don't know...I'd probably lean towards books on boat building, celestial navigation and wilderness survival (for the appropriate clime and region)

I read Moby Dick long ago and agree with Dorthy Parker who said "Moby Dick taught me more about whaling than I ever wanted to know." If I were to take Melville to an island, I'd probably gp with Typee and Omoo, his books about life among the natives of the islands in the South Pacific

#19359: Rana — 03/21 at 08:42 PM
I don't know...I'd probably lean towards books on boat building, celestial navigation and wilderness survival (for the appropriate clime and region)

Exactly!

(And I'm a reading junkie, who will read sugar packets when there's nothing else available.)

#19370: Ben — 03/21 at 09:53 PM
And is it really so important that I need to read it someday?

The problem lies in the fact that an original piece of work can sometimes become a victim of its own success; so completely assimilated by the culture that actually experiencing it can become anticlimactic. Kurosawa's early stuff, for instance, continues to be so influential to this day in terms of narrative and cinematography that younger viewers seeing them for the first time will anachronistically dismiss it as derivative and unremarkable because they're unable to place it in historical perspective. Perhaps that's the unavoidable Catch-22 (ha, more cultural references to literature). When you define the culture, you cease to be unique within it.

"The great trouble is that the preachers get the children from six to seven years of age and then it is almost impossible to do anything with them." --Thomas Edison.

#19376: bitchphd — 03/21 at 10:33 PM
Truisms about Moby Dick that are actually false:

Only men like it.
It's boring.

It's actually a really fantastic, dense, complex novel. A fav. But requires some time to sit with it--not beach reading.

Unless, of course, it's a beach on a desert island.

#19378: coturnix — 03/21 at 10:42 PM
I read it at the beech. I stepped on a sea-urchin so I was confined to lying around for a few days. What else to do but read a fascinating huge novel about whales!

#19379: John Wilkins — 03/21 at 10:42 PM
I bought a copy of Moby Dick when I was thirteen. I first read it when I was 43. I was enthralled by it, but (i) I read it in a single session over a week or so, and (ii) I was already interested in both biology and the 19thC.

Had I read it at 13, I would not have understood or appreciated it (I read Dostoevsky at 13, and failed to understand it all, but I appreciated it).

This is not a book to be picked up when you need something to pass the time.

#19385: — 03/21 at 11:13 PM
Thinking of Melville raised a side question.

When I was in high school in Ohio many years ago I read Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" and Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" (short stories) Talking to friends about my age (44) from around the country, I discovered every one of them had read the at least one of stories. Most (over 75%) had read both. Talking to friends c.10 years younger, only a handful had read "The Lotery" and even fewer read "Bartleby" When I talked to friends c 20 years younger, some had read one or both but on their own not in school. Most hadn't heard of either (except for the abysmal movie adaptation of "The Lottery" they made for tv a few years ago).

So the questions are:

Did you read either or both in school? On your own?

Do you know of similar stories/books everyone you know read back in the day but are not read much today? Let's make it wothwhile literature please (I will pummel anyone who says "Chariots of the Gods")

#19390: covington — 03/22 at 12:06 AM
I'd want to be the US Constitution... might as well pick a work that's already been lost.

#19396: Rana — 03/22 at 01:48 AM
I think I read The Lottery. I'm in the <10 years cohort (35).

I also remember reading Death of a Salesman, The Scarlet Letter and The Glass Menagerie.

#19398: — 03/22 at 02:05 AM
I read The Lottery two and a half years ago, when I was 14, but it was because my Freshman Composition professor assigned it.

#19401: Nullifidian — 03/22 at 03:34 AM
I read "Bartleby, the Scrivener" in my American Lit class in high school. I'm 25 now.

"We are obliged, therefore, to spread the news, painful and bitter though it may be for some to hear, that all living things on earth are kindred.” Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

#19402: Nullifidian — 03/22 at 03:57 AM
You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

Der Tod in Venedig und andere Erzählungen (Death in Venice and Other Stories) by Thomas Mann.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Yes, I guess. Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Beautiful, intelligent, witty, honest, and self-assured.

The last book you bought is:

American Purgatorio by John Haskell.

The last book you read:

The Development of Animal Form: Ontogeny, Morphology, and Evolution by Alessandro Minelli

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
The Lives of the Artists (complete set) by Giorgio Vasari
Darwin: Voyaging and Darwin: The Power of Place by Janet Browne
Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan
The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski

"We are obliged, therefore, to spread the news, painful and bitter though it may be for some to hear, that all living things on earth are kindred.” Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

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Monday, March 21, 2005

A bookish meme

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