Book Meme

I've been tagged by Lovely Salome to do a book meme. I haven't done a meme for a while, so here goes:

#1 - One book that changed your life: Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart, by Joyce Carol Oates. I read this in early high school, and it gave me a sense the possibilities of prose. From the second chapter, when the description of a woman’s voice (“a low hoarse scraping sound like steel wool scouring a pan”), I was drawn in. I became a big Oates fan, and her work influenced my development as a teenage writer.

#2 - One book that you've read more than once: Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. When my parents inherited my great-grandfather’s set of Harvard Classics, they were all in pristine condition—except for P&P, which was held together with tape. My great-grandfather reread it every year. I read it for the first time when I was 17 and staying in England with my family. Austen’s humorous prose made me forget the fact that I was miserable being cooped up in a tiny house in a rural town, an ocean away from my then-boyfriend. I reread the book again in college when I took a Jane Austen seminar, and now I reread bits of it whenever I see a movie or TV adaptation.

#3 - One book you'd want on a desert island: To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf. This is my all-time favorite book. Woolf’s insights—into family life, the passage of time, the human condition—still dazzle me. Sometimes I think, If I can write a book like this, I’ll be able to die happy. Of course, things didn’t work out so well for poor Virginia Woolf.

#4 - One book that made you laugh: Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris. I like the fact that he writes about growing up in Raleigh, so I can picture some of the places.

#5 - One book that made you cry: My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult. It was completely emotionally manipulative, but I cried anyway.

#6 - One book that you wish you had written: See #3 above. I would also be happy to claim Mrs. Dalloway, Jane Eyre, or The Collected Works of Emily Dickinson.

#7 - One book that you wish had never been written: There are lots of books I don’t like, but I’m not sure I can wish any of them out of existence.

#8 - One book you're currently reading: Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy, by Carlos Eire. I’m reading it for a book club and finding it hard to get into.

#9 - One book you've been meaning to read: His Dark Materials Trilogy, by Philip Pullman. I’ve had these books for months, but with three book clubs and a freelance job that involves reading YA novels, I haven’t had much time for my own reading.

#10 - Tag Five People: Natalie, Tom (now that he has a blog), Kaela (now that she has a blog, but it’s an art blog so I’m not sure I’m allowed to tag her), Kiki (if she has time for postpartum blogging), and Hannah (when she feels up to blogging again).