Perhaps memes aren’t quite as dead as I said they were the other day. Case in point: I’ve been “tagged” by my friend and occasional commenter, Jen Broschinsky. The meme she passes along to me is a toughie; I’ve read a heckuva lot of books in my life, but I have a hard time when people ask me to start ranking, rating, or quantifying them. Still, what can you do when you’ve been tagged by a fellow blogger? I give it the old college try below the fold:

1. One book that changed your life:
   The most difficult category on this list, as I honestly can’t think of any one title that significantly altered the trajectory of my life. I do think very highly of Thoreau’s Walden…
2. One book you’ve read more than once:
   Star Wars, a.k.a., Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker, a.k.a. Star Wars: A New Hope, by George Lucas (actually Alan Dean Foster, but Uncle George’s name is on the cover). I’m talking, of course, about the novelization of the original Star Wars film. It was the first “grown-up book” I ever owned, and I read my original copy of it so many times during my childhood that it literally came apart in my hands one awful day out in my treehouse. I still have a few lines of it memorized, actually. (“Like the greatest of trees, able to withstand any external attack, the Republic rotted from within…”)
3. One book you would want on a desert island:
   James Clavell’s Shogun. I’ve wanted to read it for a long time, and it’s so long that it might keep me occupied until the rescue ship arrives.
4. One book that made you laugh:
   The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
5. One book that made you cry:
   Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. Read it as a kid and bawled like a baby. Didn’t think about it for years, until I was helping my dad clean up my grandmother’s house following her death. I found a copy of it in her things, flipped to the ending (no spoilers here!), and damned if the tears didn’t well up as if I was ten years old again. One of these days, I’ll have to re-read it in its entirety.
6. One book you wish had been written:
   The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. A high-brow book that unabashedly reveres a medium most people consider hopelessly low-brow — the comic book — while managing the clever trick of being completely accessible to those who know nothing of either comics or literary fiction. It truly is a masterpiece.
7. One book you wish had never been written:
   Mein Kampf. No explanation needed, I trust.
8. One book you are currently reading:
   Crucible: Kirk by David R. George III, a Star Trek tie-in novel and part of a trilogy commissioned to celebreate the 40th anniversary of the original Trek series’ premiere. I intend to write in depth about this trilogy, but trust me when I say that it rises above the level of the usual tie-in.
9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:
   There are hundreds of those, but if you force me to name names… The Grapes of Wrath. I Cliff-Noted my way through this one back and high school and I’ve always regretted it, especially after I read and loved East of Eden on my own a few years later. One of these days…