The Eleven

May 21, 2008

As a mind experiment last night, I decided to test my quick-reaction book associations.

I gave myself three minutes and assembled the eleven books I would seize from my library were I to have to abandon the rest. No real thinking time, no real criteria, just impulse.

These are the eleven I chose. In no order. Or, the order of the pile I put them in.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Water Music by T.C. Boyle
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
The Iliad by Homer
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Baltasar Gracian
The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
Beowulf, Seamus Heaney translation
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Anvil Press)

The simplicity of this is: I’m not going to explain why. It’s just what it is. These are the books I would take.

How about you?

5 Comments

autumn says:

i’ve been mentally rubbing my hands together over this one for a day or so… here’s what i got:

1. Sometimes After Sunset By Tanith Lee
2. The Savage Girl by Alex Shakar
3. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
4. The Gunslinger by Stephen King
5. Rogets Thesaurus
6. Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh
7. Dean’s A Book of Fairy Tales
8. The Princess Bride by S. Morgenstern
9. I Ching: The book of Changes
10. Ethics by Spinoza
11. Illusions by Richard Bach
Kathleen says:

Wow that is a really hard question!!! And in three minutes??? Ummm…. Okay,
1 “Lord of the Rings” by Tolkien,
2″Pride and Prejudice” by Austen,
3″The Secret Garden” by Burnett”,
4″Moon Called” by Briggs,
5″The Three Musketeers” by Dumas,
6″Fire From Heaven” by Renault,
7″Daughter From the Forest” by Marillier,

okay I’m definitely over the three min mark… so I probably would have grabbed a couple by some of the authors I already listed above! But wow, great question.
Kathleen says:

I’ve also just added you to my LibraryThing Bloggers page, so drop by to make sure your name and link are correct :)
Elizabeth says:

GAH! Eleven? That sends my OCD into an uproar…..okay here goes.

1 – The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay
2 – Cry to Heaven – Anne Rice
3 – I Capture the Castle – Dodie Smith
4 – A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
5 – LOTR Trilogy – JRR Tolkien
6 – The Genesis Trilogy – Madeline L’Engle
7 – An Incomplete Education
8 – Norton Anthology of Lit by Women
9 – Dragonriders of Pern Trilogy – Anne McCaffrey
10 – Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
11 – 1001 Places to see before you die
Pam says:

Oooh, I love this! Mine would be:
“House of Leaves” by Mark Z. Danielewski
“The Firebrand” by Marion Zimmer Bradley
“Till We Have Faces” by CS Lewis
“The Iliad” by Homer
“Daughter of Troy” by Sarah Franklin (sensing a Trojan War theme?)
The Complete Poems of Catullus
“The Dark Tower” by Stephen King (I’d take the whole series, but then that would be 7 whole choice right there)
The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
“Two Moons in August” by Martha Brooks
“The Secret History” by Donna Tartt
“Imajica” by Clive Barker