Book meme

Via Canopy. :)

1. One book that's changed your life.
Famous Five, by Enid Blyton, because I learnt how to read from them.

2. One book that you have read more than once.
The World's Religions, by Huston Smith. Quite the classic.

3. One book that you would want on a deserted island?
The Bible, failing which, the telephone book (with lots of pages).

4. One book that made you cry.
A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving. I bawled at the end of the book.

5. One book that made you laugh.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

6. One book you wish had been written.
Running in Singapore, by mis_nomer & Smole

7. One book you wish had never been written.
I actually don't know..

8. One book you are currently reading.
Specimen Days, by Michael Cummingham.

9. One book you've been meaning to read.
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller. I've been meaning to read it since 1999! It is never in the library. And I'm not even sure if I will like it.

10. One book you're glad to own.
The NIV Exhaustive Concordance. It was a gift on my 21st birthday, my pride and joy. But these days, with Bible Gateway, who needs 10kg concordances? So I have to choose The Lord of the Rings Triology instead, a gift from Smole.

11. One book from which you must read aloud.
The Complete Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A. Milne. Because of sentences like these: "Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump. bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it."

Additional questions by Canopy:

12. One book you never want to live out
The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown. My heart will race, my hair will stand, and then I will turn into a bowl of cheese.

13. One book you empathise with deeply
The Hours, by Michael Cummingham

14. One book that has helped you to avoid serious mistakes.
Bleak House, by Charles Dickens. There is a character in there who chalks up whatever he decides not spend as profit -- for example, if he decided not to spend $600 on a new bicycle, he can spend $400 on furniture and still make a net savings of $200. I find myself thinking like this all the time.

15. One book whose quotes keep coming back to haunt you.
The Bible.

16. One book that inspired you.
The Pursuit of God, A W Tozer

And additional questions by me :)

17. One Two books that scared you
Night, by Elie Wiessel, because it was real.
Knowing God, by J I Packer. It felt worse than a horror story. It was the first time I contemplated the "otherness" of God -- his utter holiness and absolute power -- and I lay in bed with my eyes wide open with terror.