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Author
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Comment
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Kerrie
Registered User
(4/26/02 7:46:39 am)
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Desert Island Library... Revisited!
I just thought I would revive an old poll, to see if any of our tastes have changed, if more recently released books have replaced any on our lists, let newcomers add to the mix. And here's the pitch:
If you were to be deserted on an island, which 10 books would you take with you? (And why, if you are so inclined to include.)
Soft whispers and valley blossoms,
Kerrie
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Annette
Unregistered User
(4/26/02 8:11:11 am)
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Books
Only 10? :-)
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley (mine's a bit dog eared now but something that I can read over and over again.)
Faerie Tale by Raymond E. Feist (just a great book.)
Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper
Daughter of Regals by Stephen Donaldson (lots of great
tales.)
Prospero's Children by Jan Seigel
Thorn by Frances Gordon
The entire Thousand Nights and One Night original translation.
The Spellkey by Anne Downer
Dark Cathedral by Freda Warrington and the sequel, Pagan Moon.
Annette
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Jane Yolen
Unregistered User
(4/26/02 8:28:01 am)
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My 10 in no particular order
Isak Dinesen collection of stories
Ursula LeGuin's Wizard of Earthsea
Natalie Babbit's Tuck Everlasting
Stevenson's Treasure Island
Calvino's Italian Folktales
T.H. White's The Once and Future King
Randall Jarrell's The Bat Poet
Robin McKinley's Beauty
Kipling's Jungle Books
King James Bible
Jane
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La
Reine Noire
Registered User
(4/26/02 8:55:34 am)
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I have to narrow down to ten?
Oy...this is the girl who has six massive boxes of books in storage till she gets a larger place next year, plus all the books she had with her...
Complete Works of Shakespeare
Complete Works of Jane Austen (yes, I do own that book, so it exists. ::grin:: )
Robin McKinley - Beauty
Angela Carter - The Bloody Chamber
Anais Nin - Cities of the Interior
Sharon Kay Penman - The Sunne in Splendour
Jack Zipes' translation of the Arabian Nights
Tanith Lee - Red as Blood
Helen Hollick - Pendragon's Banner Trilogy (alright, there's three of them, so I suppose that's cheating, but someday they might release them as a single book...)
The Works of Oscar Wilde
~Kavita
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Charles Vess
Unregistered User
(4/26/02 9:42:14 am)
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Hmmm...
William Horwood's DUNCTON WOOD. All 6 in the series, but the first in particular.
Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond series or perhaps her, KING HEREAFTER novel.
James Francis Child's ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH POPULAR BALLADS.
Angela Carter's THE BLOODY CHAMBER.
Patrick O'brien's MASTER AND COMMANDER at the least but all 20 books in the series would do very nicely I think.
Lord Dunsany's THE KING OF ELFLANDS DAUGHTER.
Sherman Alexie's THE RESERVATION BLUES.
Harper Lee's TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.
The Lore/Sendak collection of Grimm, THE JUNIPER TREE
Neil Gunn's BUTCHERS BROOM (or the SILVER DARLINGS).
Maurice Walsh's THE SMALL DARK MAN (or TROUBLE IN THE GLEN).
And then I would have to sneak in with another small box containing: Terri's THE WOOD WIFE, Jane's TOUCH MAGIC, Charles de Lint's MEMOREY AND DREAM, Tolkien's LORD OF THE RINGS, some Loiuse Erdrich (?), and Byatt's POSSESSION.
Then quite happy I would be too!
Charles
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Gregor9
Registered User
(4/26/02 12:36:50 pm)
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Re: Hmmm...
Ten. I don't know if I can do ten. I mean, I can name ten, but then I want to name ten more, etc. But for the sake of lists...
A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, because I re-read it every now and again.
The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, because I re-read it even more often than the Miller.
The Odyssey, Homer (Fagles translation)
Lud in the Mist, Hope Mirlees
End of the World, Otto Friedrich (a glorious history text)
The Antelope Wife, Louise Erdrich (one of the finest novels I've read)
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
The Complete Shakespeare
Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
The Arabian Nights, Hadawy edition
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Jess
Unregistered User
(4/26/02 1:17:39 pm)
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Thinking in the box
Kerrie,
I am afraid I am all over the map here.
1) The Oxford Universal Dictionary - it is my best friend and if nothing else, I can memorize word meanings.
2) Wilderness Survival Guide by Gregory Davenport;
3) The Federalist Papers;
4) The Grapes of Wrath;
5 and 6) Appropriate field guides for the region for plants and animals - might I suggest stopping by Diane Schmidt's Field Guides for Field guides - the reason is simple, I can't read all of the time and I could spend wonderful hours identifying animals and plants;
7) The Messier Objects - to keep me busy at night;
A really good introductory College physics text for a year long
course (okay, I have always wanted to learn physics, but never had
the time. Really.);
9) The Arabian Nights - have Zipes, but everyone keeps telling me Hadawy's translation is better; and
10) Probably Harvard Classics Volume XLIII- English Poetry, Tennyson to Whitman.
Jess
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Jess
Unregistered User
(4/26/02 2:04:02 pm)
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Ten books
Jane, I just want to add that I love Once and Future King, but I haven't read it in eons. Thanks for reminding me of it.
Jess
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ZMethos
Registered User
(4/26/02 4:07:48 pm)
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Re: Desert Island Library... Revisited!
Uh. . . well, I'd want "Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman and Terry Prachett for sure. . . Just because this book is one I re-read pretty regularly and always enjoy. As for others, I'd have to think a little more about it. Maybe Diana Wynne Jones' "Chronicles of Chrestomanci" books.
~M. Pepper
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Laura
McCaffrey
Registered User
(4/26/02 4:11:57 pm)
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Re: Ten books
Oh I can never do this right. Last time I completely forgot to add
any of Jane's books though I was doing a children's/YA list. How
about ten authors so they could just keep writing books for me to
read?
I'll go as Jess went and put in the a decent dictionary - it would keep me entertained for years. Say, Random House Webster's Unabridged.
Atwood - Handmaid's Tale, no, wait, I meant Lady Oracle, no The Blind Assasin, no The Robber Bridegroom, no Alias Grace - well, you get the point.
Jane Austen - (note to myself, in case of being stranded on desert island must buy one volume containing all of her works)
Tolkein - (note to myself - there must be some collection somewhere of the Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring trilogy in one volume - find it in case of being stranded on desert island)
Kingsolver - Animal Dreams
Howard Schwartz - Elijah's Violin and other Jewish Fairy Tales
Shakespeare - A Midsumer Night's Dream, heck I want The Tempest, and Twelfth Night too so we might as well make it a Complete Works.
Brigg's British Folktales
Let's see only two spots left and too many books I want. Well, for this list I'll just go the King Arthur route and put in -
White's Once and Future King and Bradley's Mists of Avalon
Final note to myself - make sure my desert island is near everyone else's on this board so I can beg them to swap books.
Laura Mc
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alina
Registered User
(4/26/02 7:41:51 pm)
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Re: Ten books
My (way too short) List:
1. Ender's Game- Orson Scott Card
2. The Ultimate Hitchhikers Guide- Douglas Adams
3. The Adventures of Pippi Longstocking- Astrid Lindgren
4. Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid- Hofstadter
5. Tregarons Daughter- Madeleine Brent
6. Girl of the Limberlost- Gene Stratton Porter
7. A Little Princess- Frances Hodgson Burnett
8. The Cronicles of Narnia- (all in one box, does that count?)
9. The largest most complete fairy tale anthology I can grab (hopefully edited by Jack Zipes)
10. A very large blank notebook, (and a packet of new pens).
That was hard!
Alina
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Terri
Registered User
(4/27/02 7:17:30 am)
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Re: Ten books
Sticking to ten is always hard, particularly when you know that what you *ought* to ask for on a desert island are survival guides....
1. The complete works of Jane Austin
2. The complete works of Shakespeare
3. The complete poems of Mary Oliver
4. The complete poems of Rilke
5. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
6. The Golden Book of Fairy Tales by Marie Ponsot, illustrated by Adrienne Segur
7. The Diaries of Anais Nin
8. The complete fairy tales of Jane Yolen (if the book doesn't exist, then it ought to...)
9. Islandia by Austin Tappan Wright
10. A nice fat book of Renaissance art
Then I'd have to sneak in a book of "Golden Age" fairy tale illustration, some more fiction by Dorothy Dunnette (Lymond or Niccolo? It's a toss-up), The Earthsea Books of Ursula Le Guin, Louise Erdich's The Antelope Wife, Sebastian Faulkes' Birdsong, A.S. Byatt's Possession, Alfredo Vea Jr.'s La Maravilla, some nonfiction by Lewis Hyde, Jack Zipes, Marina Warner, and Gary Snyder, some nice fat biographies by Michael Holroyd, and a few fairy tale collections. And a knap sack full of favorite books by friends -- the folks on this board, plus Pat McKillip, Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, Heinz Fenkl, Sara Smith, Tanith Lee, and, oh, there are too many good writers in our field to list, so it's going to have to be a very BIG knap sack. Maybe I could take these extras in place of food....
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Jane Yolen
Unregistered User
(4/27/02 8:01:12 am)
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Nah-Nah
Terri Windling is a big fat cheater.
Gosh, how many mistakes can a person make in one short sentence! <G>
Jane
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Jess
Unregistered User
(4/27/02 8:39:53 am)
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Survival Guides
Terri,
I have been blasted by my husband for being too practical (i.e. survival guides). He said I took the fun out of the exercise. So, perhaps we should assume that our survival is "taken care of". Field guides though are more for enjoyment in my case. Having opened up another option, I suppose I would have to add the complete works of Shakespeare, preferably an annotated version. Any suggestions.
The books I threw out included the Bible, the complete works of Leonardo de Vinci, a good set of Grimms (Zipes?), Undaunted Courage (for inspiration), Plato's Republic, The Complete Works of O'Henry, Shelby Foote's The Civil War (3 volumes would keep me reading for a year and I would marvel over his ability to make history come alive), Mozart's Horn Concertos (I would need to be able to bring my horn), an Almanac (for those stupid things that you couldn't remember), etc.
Jess
Jess
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swanchick
Registered User
(4/30/02 4:47:39 pm)
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Desert Island Books
My desert island list; subject to change daily as I remember books
I had forgotten previously.
1. MISTS OF AVALON (Bradley)--Judging from the battered condition
of my paperback copy, I would have to surmise that I like rereading
the darn thing.
2. DAUGHTER OF THE FOREST (Marillier) and/or THE WILD SWANS (Kerr); my two favorite adult fairy tale retellings at the moment; if I have room I'll take both; otherwise I can't decide which one.
3. BLACK THORN, WHITE ROSE (Datlow/Windling), my personal favorite of the series
4. WINTER ROSE (McKillip), just for being wonderful
5. POSSESSION (Byatt), which I like more every time I look at it. It still impresses me that she actually went and WROTE POETRY "as" the two poets. There was a reviewer on Amazon who griped that the poetry wasn't as good as "real" poetry of the era. I think they missed the point. She didn't have to write the poetry at all...
6. WAKING THE MOON (Hand), another one of those books I reread frequently--I don't agree with all the politics, it's the characters and language that I love.
7. FEAST OF ALL SAINTS (Rice)--my favorite book of hers. No vampires, even! Tearjerker. I STILL cry at the end, every time.
8. Almost forgot! THE ARMLESS MAIDEN.
9. ON THE EDGE OF DREAM (Heath), wonderful retellings of Celtic stories.
10. The thickest blank book I can find, and a pen, so I can scribble.
So that's my desert island list, *not* to be considered final...
swanchick
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swanchick
Registered User
(4/30/02 4:50:40 pm)
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Laura has a point
Laura McCaffrey has the best point of all. We have to make sure
we all get stranded on the same island; then we can share. We can
bring more books if we eliminate redundancy.
swanchick
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Maatera
Registered User
(5/1/02 8:22:26 am)
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another book
Only 10 books eh, that's really hard! I think most of my picks have been mentioned already: Jane Austin, Shakespeare, Atwood, the Oxford dictionary so I'll just add one that hasn't come up. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It's an incredible book that I'm not sure how to catagorize. All I can say is that I find something new in it every time I read it.
I might have to smuggle in some rum as well to go with all those
tropical fruits that are going to be growing on my deserted island.
Connie
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Jess
Unregistered User
(5/1/02 9:12:17 am)
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Blank books
Kerrie,
Don't you think given the writers and artists here that we would have to assume an unlimited amount of paper and appropriate writing/artist supplies would make their way "accidentally" to the island?! Thus, it would alleviate any need to put "blank books" on the list.
Btw, adding more books daily to the "to read" category. OH, for more than 24 hours in the day.
Jess
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