Two Book Lists by Spencer

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1st Book List

1. First book to leave a lasting impression?
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
I remember wanting to be be just like Toad when I grew up!

2. Which author would you most like to be?
If I have to choose a well-known author from history, rather than simply becoming the well-known author I hope to be someday, then I would pick either Henry Miller or Dorothy Parker. I am so torn! :-)

3. Name the book that has most made you want to visit a place?
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway caused me to want to visit Paris France, so I did.

4. Which contemporary author will still be read in 100 years?
John Updike

5. Which book would you recommend to a teenager reluctant to try 'literature'?
Depending on the age, sex, temperament, and the experience level of the given teenager, I'd recommend The Annotated Alice: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, John Tenniel, and Martin Gardner; or Animal Farm by George Orwell; or The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien; or The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; or The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger; or The Annotated Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Michael Patrick Hearn, and E.W. Kemble; or Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen; or Persuasion by Jane Austen; or The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett; or Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler; or Goldfinger by Ian Fleming; or Catch 22 by Joseph Heller.

6. Name your best recent literary discovery.
Haruki Murakami

7. Which author's fictional world would you most like to live in?
No question! P.G. Wodehouse's world of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster.

8. Name your favorite poet?
Piet Hein, Edgar Allan Poe, Allen Ginsberg, T. S. Eliot, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Frost, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and (rapidly catching up) W. H. Auden.

9. What's the best non-fiction title you've read this year?
The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis by Paul Levy

10. Which author do you think is much better than his/her reputation?
Nicholson Baker, who is SOOOOO much better and more interesting than that ghoulish dullard, Stephen King, that it is laughable to think King has harshly criticized Baker's work. Stephen King, on the other hand, is an author who is much WORSE than his reputation!

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2nd Book List

1. One book that changed your life.
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, and Catch 22 by Joseph Heller both did.

2. One book that you have read more than once.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, and Catch 22 by Joseph Heller are three.

3. One book that you would want on a desert island.
SAS Survival Handbook: How to Survive in the Wild, in Any Climate, on Land or at Sea by John 'Lofty' Wiseman

4. One book that made you laugh.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee

5. One book that made you cry.
The New Testament of The Bible. It's such a sad story!

7. One book you are currently reading.
Collected Poems: Auden by W. H. Auden

8. One book you have been meaning to read.
The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

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