PZ Myers. 2005 Mar 21. A bookish meme. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/a_bookish_meme/>. Accessed 2008 Dec 01.

Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Monday, March 21, 2005

A bookish meme

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.

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.

Posted by PZ Myers on 03/21 at 03:26 PM
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  1. Moby Dick is fiction?
    #: Posted by John Wilkins  on  03/21  at  04:56 PM
  2. Oh, farts!
    #: Posted by Rana  on  03/21  at  05:10 PM
  3. Why is everyone picking Moby Dick?

    And is it really so important that I need to read it someday?
    #: Posted by profgrrrrl  on  03/21  at  06:17 PM
  4. 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.
    #: Posted by Rana  on  03/21  at  06:29 PM
  5. I love Moby Dick. It's quirky and strange and it's got all those chapters about biology.
    #: Posted by PZ Myers  on  03/21  at  06:33 PM
  6. The book I'd memorize would be The Hobbit.
    #: Posted by  on  03/21  at  06:52 PM
  7. smile 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.
    #: Posted by Rana  on  03/21  at  06:55 PM
  8. 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!)
    #: Posted by Rana  on  03/21  at  06:58 PM
  9. Oh, can you give a review of Dawkins' book when you're finished? Hehe
    #: Posted by Danny Boy  on  03/21  at  07:14 PM
  10. 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.
    #: Posted by Matt McIrvin  on  03/21  at  07:48 PM
  11. 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.
    #: Posted by  on  03/21  at  07:52 PM
  12. 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!
    #: Posted by coturnix  on  03/21  at  08:32 PM
  13. 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
    #: Posted by  on  03/21  at  08:40 PM
  14. 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.)
    #: Posted by Rana  on  03/21  at  08:42 PM
  15. 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.
    #: Posted by Ben  on  03/21  at  09:53 PM
  16. 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.
    #: Posted by bitchphd  on  03/21  at  10:33 PM
  17. 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!
    #: Posted by coturnix  on  03/21  at  10:42 PM
  18. 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.
    #: Posted by John Wilkins  on  03/21  at  10:42 PM
  19. 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")
    #: Posted by  on  03/21  at  11:13 PM
  20. I'd want to be the US Constitution... might as well pick a work that's already been lost.
    #: Posted by covington  on  03/22  at  12:06 AM
  21. 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.
    #: Posted by Rana  on  03/22  at  01:48 AM
  22. I read The Lottery two and a half years ago, when I was 14, but it was because my Freshman Composition professor assigned it.
    #: Posted by  on  03/22  at  02:05 AM
  23. I read "Bartleby, the Scrivener" in my American Lit class in high school. I'm 25 now.
    #: Posted by Nullifidian  on  03/22  at  03:34 AM
  24. 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
    #: Posted by Nullifidian  on  03/22  at  03:57 AM
  25. Hey, good call on the Preston-Mafham book! I haven't seen it, but if it's anything like the other books he and his brother have put out, it will be bursting with beautiful photos. Heiko Bellmann is another great arachnopaparazzo, but in my judgement nobody can beat the Preston-Mafhams.

    As for the meme: I'm too dull to imagine what book I'd like to be, and I don't know what 'passing the stick' means. But:

    Last book bought: a technical reference for Photoshop Elements 3, actually.

    Last book read: Henry Gee, Deep Time (a bit of a disappointment).

    Current [re-]reading: Malachi O'Doherty, The Trouble with Guns (best analysis of Northern Ireland republicanism I've ever seen, by an author who can't be accused of carrying a brief for unionism).

    5 desert island books: Sterne, Tristram Shandy; v. Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus; Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow; Joyce, Ulysses; Beckett, Trilogy (Molloy, Malone meurt, L'Innommable). The island plays a role in the choice, of course. Dubliners is better, but thinner, than Ulysses, and Murphy is better than the latter two parts of the Beckett trilogy, but only one volume. But you should all read Tristram Shandy even if you're not on an island awaiting rescue.
    #: Posted by Mrs Tilton  on  03/22  at  04:26 AM
  26. You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

    I'd say Fahrenheit 451, but that would put us in some kind of recursive nightmare, wouldn't it? So it's a toss-up between East of Eden and Goethe's Faust.

    Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

    Would anyone ever actually admit to this? Come on.

    The last book you bought is:

    Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, believe it or not.

    The last book you read:

    Jules Verne's A Journey to the Center of the Earth.

    What are you currently reading?

    Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.

    Five books you would take to a deserted island:

    I don't know that.
    #: Posted by  on  03/22  at  07:24 AM
  27. I wanted to be Thornton Wilder's Theophilus North. (Imagine an American Jeeves without the veneer of subservience.)
    #: Posted by Matt McIrvin  on  03/22  at  07:30 AM
  28. I've read Bartleby and The Lottery and Moby Dick on my own; I read Death of a Salesman and the Glass Menagerie because they were assigned to me in high school. I've never read the Scarlet Letter.

    And I agree that Moby Dick is a phenomenally rich novel. Until I read it, I had this impression of 19th century writers as stodgy, linear story tellers...but that book has such a bizarrely complex structure and has this wonderfully syncopated rhythm--stretches of action and mood and meditation -- that it is really far ahead of its time.

    The Preston-Mafham is excellent. Not only good photography, but great anatomical illustrations.

    What's this "The Development of Animal Form: Ontogeny, Morphology, and Evolution" by Minelli, and why haven't I heard of it before? Is it good?
    #: Posted by PZ Myers  on  03/22  at  07:35 AM
  29. If you like 'bizarrely complex' and 'non-linear', you'll love Tristram Shandy. (And that was 18th century!)
    #: Posted by Mrs Tilton  on  03/22  at  08:02 AM
  30. Last book read: Ilium, Dan Simmons.

    Currently reading: H.M.S. Surprise, Patrick O'Brian. Needs whaling.
    #: Posted by Aaron M  on  03/22  at  09:27 AM
  31. I've now danced for you, puppet master! Oh, I read The Lottery and Bartleby the Scrivner in school, and I'm 35. I read Moby Dick on my own at the age of 24.
    #: Posted by Scott Spiegelberg  on  03/22  at  10:16 AM
  32. Nice meme! I posted my answers over here. I read The Lottery in school, Moby Dick on my own (but without paying sufficient attention to really get it), and Bartleby never. Everything Mrs. Tilton says on this thread is worth listening to and heeding.
    #: Posted by Jeremy Osner  on  03/22  at  12:24 PM
  33. Hey, your daughter has a blog! I surfed over and, well: its design has an admirably restrained visual appeal -- but I could not understand a word. It appears that I cannot speak Teenager. Perhaps I will visit again, when BabelFish offers a translation program.

    In just under a year I expect I shall lose the ability to communicate with our eldest son. At that point he will doubtless become a regular reader of Sklog.

    On the larger issue, we have hit upon a perfect response to teh Teenage. At the eruption of the first pimple, it's off to boarding school with the lad. Military boarding school, in Australia.
    #: Posted by Mrs Tilton  on  03/22  at  03:10 PM
  34. Sorry Mrs Tilton, we don't have military boarding schools. We rely on imitations of British boarding schools like Eton.
    #: Posted by John Wilkins  on  03/22  at  04:20 PM
  35. Aaron M, there's a bit of whaling later on in the series. Well, not so much whal-ing, as whal-ers.
    #: Posted by  on  03/22  at  06:46 PM
  36. John:

    we don't have military boarding schools. We rely on imitations of British boarding schools like Eton.

    Oh, bugger.

    NelC:

    there's a bit of whaling later on in the series. Well, not so much whal-ing, as whal-ers.

    Still, there's at least one dramatic harpooning.
    #: Posted by Mrs Tilton  on  03/23  at  03:42 AM