Book Meme

This has been going around the blogosphere, so I guess it's my turn.

One book you’re currently reading: The Irresponsible Self by James Wood.

One book that changed your life: Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy.

One book you’d want on a deserted island: I hate questions like this one. I'm going to cop out and say The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume II.

One book you’ve read more than once: The Alphabet of Grace by Frederick Buechner.

One book you’ve never been able to finish: Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.

One book that made you laugh: Alphabet Juice by Roy Blount, Jr.

One book that made you cry: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. I'm not sure if it did or not. I don't cry at a lot of books. But it seems possible.

One book you keep rereading: Rabbit, Run by John Updike.

One book you’ve been meaning to read: Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov.

One book you believe everyone should read: The Bible, if only to understand the roots of Western culture.

Grab the nearest book. Open it to page 56. Find the fifth sentence…

"For Furber, the man of barely controlled passion, sees Omensetter as a devil whose 'luck' leaves in its wake a series of victims: Pimber (himself a spectacular suicide) and Watson (the man who gave Omensetter his first job)."

That's American Fictions 1940-1980 by Frederick R. Karl, and I believe he's discussing William Gass' Omensetter's Luck.