Andrew tagged me. Like him, I also like reading these -- he's right, it helps you learn more about people and where they come from.
Rules are: list books important to you by category, explain why, tag five more. Here goes.
A book that changed your life
Stuart Little. I'm serious. It was a gift from my mother and the first real book I ever read. I read it on the living room couch late one summer, back when kids had unstructured time to do that kind of thing. It did two things that have been with me ever since: Firmly gave me the joy of reading, and made me understand how great it is to explore the world.
A book you've read more than once
There have been several, but Charles Kuralt's A Life On the Road is one of them. I was a huge fan of CBS Sunday Morning (still am), and Kuralt wrote like an angel. He packed a lot of interesting things into his career before Sunday, and not only is his story content fascinating, his insight into the simple and profound plus his writing style makes the book like...I don't know, like a favorite song.
A book you'd want on a desert island
That's tough, because eventually I'm going to get tired of reading it. Maybe The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Aone 1932-1940. It's my favorite of the Churchill bio trilogy by Manchester, and it's about the time he was starkly out of favor with Britons. Even in his frustration with the direction of the country, he had faith he'd be called upon to contribute, and never lost confidence in his ability to help save the nation. Maybe hearing Churchill in my head telling me to "never give in" would get me through the sandy days of scanning the horizon for ships.
A book that made you laugh
Lloyd: What Happened. Stanley Bing's first novel. It's fast, fun and really pokes at the absurdities of the corporate world. Every now and then Bing slides a one-liner in there that takes you by surprise, which if you ask me is one of the critical ingredients of true humor. I remember annoying my wife mightily by shaking the bed with laughter as she was trying to sleep.
A book that made you cry
I don't really cry at books, but some of them do get me in the breadbasket. One that got me a little recently was Three Weeks with My Brother, which my wife gave me to read. It's about an around-the-world trip Nicholas Sparks took with his brother, but woven between stories from the trip (which actually aren't supremely interesting) are stories about their childhood together, family problems, the death of their sister and parents, and all the moving around they did as kids. Not all of it related directly to my own life, but what did brought out some emotion in me.
A book you wish you'd written
The Right Place at the Right Time, from Robert MacNeil. I've always enjoyed books by journalists, particularly those as accomplished as MacNeil. If I had seen what he did, reported on it, and could write like he can (he is without peer), you might as well have titled this category, "A person I wish I could be."
A book you're currently reading
I'm reading Jonathan Alter's The Defining Moment, about FDR's first 100 days in office. It's thick reading, but Alter does a good job pointing out how FDR was an underwhelming person in general, an indifferent governor of New York, and not at all expected to do well in the White House, all before rising to the occasion in 1932.
A book you've been meaning to read
There have to be a million of them. I haven't read as much literature as I should have, so being a Mississippi River native, I'll go with nearly anything by Mark Twain, outside of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
Andrew listed a great book, Let My People Go Surfing from Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, which may be the best business book I've ever read thanks to its pure simplicity. I reviewed it a while back.
Great meme, Andrew, thanks for tagging me. I'll tag:
John
Ray
Scott
