Flashes of Panic

The Stick:

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

I don’t get this one. What book do I want burned? Or, were I about to be incinerated, what book would I want to be? The Asbestos Primer, by R. E. Tardent?

I confess it’s been too long since I read F451, but I can offer a good story about it: I actually read my second copy of F451. My first copy came along with me on a high school Eastern Europe tour, in the time between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Before I had the chance to read it, we were stopped at a border station between Czechoslovakia (which still existed as such, at that point) and Poland. The Polish customs officer was a student of English, and our group leader suggested, sotto voce, that it might grease our way into Poland if we had some English reading material to offer him. So I anted up my Bradbury, which I hope found an audience for whom its message was a bit more immediate. (Damn, that’s a tortured sentence.) Then I had to buy another copy, on return to the States, and figure out what I’d given him.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Oh, yes. The problem, I’ve found, all the fictional women I’ve really, really liked were in books written by men, so not only are they recycled fantasies, they’re probably subtly impossible.

The last book you bought is:

Honestly, I don’t remember. I get the majority of my books as gifts, from one bibliophile relative in particular who is pretty well keyed-in to what I like. Looking at the bookshelf, probably a four-pack from Bookpeople last June:

• Hackers and Painters, by Paul Graham
• Just for Fun, by Linus Torvalds
• In the Beginning… Was The Command Line by Neal Stephenson
• The Private Revolution of Geoffrey Frost by J.E. Fender

OK, there’s a trend. Fender is not as good as Forester, but then again, who is?

The last book you read:

The Geese of Beaver Bog by Bernd Heinrich. Heinrich is stellar, both a perceptive and intelligent scientist and a curious human in a way anyone can identify with. I didn’t know that he’d been a champion marathoner (and ultramarathoner) until I’d already read three or four of his books. I have a story about him, via the above-mentioned years at a magazine, but I fear it might not be for public consumption.

What are you currently reading?

Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson, which has been a disappointment so far. But he has time yet.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

What, I get to plan on being marooned? I think there should be a business rule against that, probably applied at the application level. Anyway, it happens, for reasons I don’t fully understand but expect to, that I have two books on celestial navigation on the “to read” section of my shelf. Can they come? But I assume the intent is, what five books would you re-read first?

• Northwest Passage by Kenneth Roberts.
• The Once and Future King by T.H. White.
• Less Than One by Joseph Brodsky. (Shouldn’t that go without saying? Anyway, I think Brodsky would make stellar desert-island reading.)
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. If I can count it as one, I’ll take both my ‘95 Ardis edition and my yellow-bound Master i Margarita and re-teach myself Russian from the Master the way Nathaniel Bowditch, of the New American Navigator, supposedly taught himself Latin, French and Spanish using Bibles.
• Ship of the Line by C. S. Forester, showing most sides of the most compelling sail-opera character ever created. Hornblower would have been a computer geek, I think.

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

Julie at No Fancy Name, because I’m hoping it won’t all be novels for her classes. And I know she’ll follow up; she needs the break.

Ms. Feverish at Sea-Fever, because I know she’s spent some time in a bookstore or two. And she needs a break, too.

And Wolf Angel, because I think she reads more than she normally has time to tell us about.

Now Playing: The SXSW Showcase torrent—thanks for the tip, Julie!