A Bookish Meme

I've been given a challenge by Terrance. I normally don't do memes. I don't know why. But it doesn't matter. This one, I'll do.

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

Wow. Well, I'll choose something significant, but less well known: The Way of a Pilgrim -- a classic of Eastern Christian spirituality from the 19th century. I was first introduced to it by a piece of fiction (Franny & Zooey, by JD Salinger), and I read it as an undergraduate. Sadly, I've never read it again, but this is the book I choose as the book I would be and preserve.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Yes, many, including comic book characters. But that was a long time ago, and we won't speak of such times.

The last book you bought is...?

The Norton Critical Edition of Julian of Norwich's Showings--in Middle English (from the Paris manuscript), with critical essays and contextual pieces. For my master's paper.

The last book you read is...?

I'll qualify this. Cover to cover, no skimming? Conversation as Ministry (Douglas Purnell), for a course in Fall 2004 on "Spirituality of Pastoral Care and Counseling." I've covered many books, either not cover-to-cover, or via skimming, since then.

What are you currently reading?

I'm in school. There are books on my nightstand that I pretend I am reading. Really, though, school reading fairly occupies my time. With that said...

For Contemplative Drawing:

• Betty Edwards, The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
• Matthew Fox, Original Blessing
• Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play

For Church in History II:

• Justo Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity: Reformation to the Present Day
• about to begin: Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited; and Charles Sheldon, In His Steps

For Foundations of Christian Spirituality:

• Simon Chan, Spiritual Theology: A Systematic Study of the Christian Life
• Margaret Guenther, The Practice of Prayer
• Jim Goll, Wasted on Jesus
  
• The Upper Room Dictionary of Christian Spiritual Formation
  

For my master's paper:

• Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (a.ka., Showings)

For guilty pleasure:

• short stories from Robert E. Howard's Nameless Cults. REH was the pulp-era creator of Conan the Cimmerian, a.k.a Conan the Barbarian, and was actually a fine writer in his own right. This volume collects his Lovecraft-inspired works. There is actually some crossover between the writings of Howard and Lovecraft, and you could properly count Conan in the Cthulhu mythos.
  

Five books you would take to a deserted island

Not as easy as I thought. Yes, my original list was 7+ books, but here we have the winners:

• The Bible, with Apocrypha (specifically, the Oxford NRSV Study Bible)--as a source of spirituality, literature, myth, poetry, I am hard pressed to find anything that competes with this. (Technically, it is many, many books, but I will sidestep that technicality.) A study Bible of the type with historical critical notes and maps, not just multihued sidebars about how to love Jee-zus.
• The Lord of the Rings--technically, a novel, not a trilogy. I've read it over a dozen times. It can stand a few dozen more readings, I believe.
• The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson--to feed another aspect of my spirituality and my intellect, and because I'd probably never have any other occasion to read this collection.
• The Mahabharata--I thought long and hard over this one; an Indian (South Asian) epic that dwarfs the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is the story which the Bhagavad Gita occurs in the midst of. The version I'm choosing is an older translation, because it is the only complete English translation. Of course, it is, in this translation, 4 volumes (2000 pages total), so I'm not sure whether that would count as four books. If I had to choose a single volume edition, then I'd go for Krishna Dharma translation (1000 pages). And If I weren't really on a desert island and just wanted to read (or rather, reread) a nice abridgement of the story, I'd read the Narayan edition (under 200 pages).
• Spiritual Classics: Selected Readings --edited by Richard Foster, this is my iffy-selection. I wanted something that encompassed the breadth of Christianity, and wasn't too slanted toward a certain tradition. Of course there is a slant in this, and Richard Foster is not my favorite author. But I respect his spirituality and what he is trying to accomplish, and I believe that in this volume, the other voices he is bringing to the forefront (e.g.,Augustine, Thomas Merton, Fredrick Buechner, Evelyn Underhill, Martin Luther King, Jr., Hildegard of Bingen, John Milton, etc.) will add a panoply of voices beyond and above his own.
  

Who are you going to pass this baton to (three persons)? And why?

I have to choose three people who will actually do this? I follow a number of blogs, but I don't actually know that many bloggers. With that said:

• Biquet--housemate, friend, and my Mirror Mirror universe duplicate. He is the post-Enlightnment version of me. (I retain just enough myth to stay on the cusp of the Enlightenment.) He would doubtless have some fascinating items. (I enjoy his blog, he just needs to blog more. I know, who am I to talk?)
  
• Peacebang--I know she reads, and she reads a tremendous amount. She has a lovely library and a magnificent mind.
  
• Boy in the Bands--Even though he won't do this, cuz it isn't quite his style. But that's his choice; I still choose to nominate him!
  

With that, these meme concludeth!