These are the six books I chose to march alone out into the desert with, what are yours? · 4:13am Aug 29th, 2014
Some variation of What five books would you want to be stuck on a desert island with? is a pretty popular icebreaker/get to know you/boredom thresher game, because over the course of the game, everyone gets a chance to be in the spotlight, paid attention to by everyone else, while talking about themselves, and if the thought of that doesn’t get you wet, you’re not a real human being. It’s also supposed to help you get to know each other because most people make their favorite books/movies/breakfast foods a part of their identity.
It doesn’t really work because learning a person’s favorite things only tells you what they think of themselves, or who they want you to think of them as. Favorite things are a personality trait that we all construct entirely on our own, sort of like what clothes you wear. It doesn’t tell you much about who’s actually inside. Just one of the many plentiful reasons why picking favorite things is stupid.
I imagine the nature of what about the person the question reveals might change some in a different circumstance. Give people time to make a decision and they have that much time to lie themselves or to you, give people a microphone to shout out their decision all over the company parking lot and you give them a reason to lie to themselves or to you. But if you take a person and drop them in front of a bookshelf full of books they’ve already read and give them exactly one minute to grab whichever books they want and tell them that’s all they’ll be able to read for the next year or so, and then leave the room and promise to never see them again, which books they grab might actually tell you something about who they are, or at least something about who they are at that particular moment.
A week ago I was getting ready to move into my new apartment, and I’d waited way, way too late to start moving stuff out, so when I finally got around to my bookshelf, I only had the time and space to grab a handful of books, and it would be a long while till I could get the rest. I grabbed a few, dropped them in a box, and headed out.
Today, I finally looked through what I brought over, and now I’m wondering why I grabbed these and why I didn’t grab others. So I thought it would be fun try and figure out what each of those books might say about me.
I grabbed six books. They are:
The Book by Alan Watts
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
The Elements of Style by Strunk and White
a
The Book
This is sort of the odd man out in my frenzy-packing collection. It’s the only real nonfiction book in there. I’d guess I grabbed this baby to let inform everybody that I’ve earned my Philosophy Junior Explorer badge, and like every good little boyscout, I’m hella proud of it, and will be until one of those bitchy Eagle scouts saunters his toned ass on over to my gummy bear campfire and starts vomiting Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas all over my sash.
Until then, I’ll feel plenty smart about myself.
The Catcher in the Rye
I remember not liking this one much at all when I first read it, because Holden Caulfield whines slightly more often than a starving cat lying it’s skeleton down to die in front of a turkey factory does. Then I read it again later and realized that I was a stupid idiot, because Catcher in the Rye is awesome. Holden tramples through just about insecurity and lust that every modern person ever has felt, and reading it is an exercise in screaming down at the book while sitting alone in your room, ‘Holy shit yes!’ So I guess bringing this book says that I want to punch out garage windows with my bare hands and erase all the fuck yous out of the world.
Cat’s Cradle
When I first finished reading this, I remember immediately flipping back to the front and starting from the beginning again, because it said everything about religion that I’d ever thought about religion. Apparently Kurt Vonnegut is a humorist. I never noticed until someone else pointed it out to me, but I guess this book is supposed to be funny. I never once laughed while reading it, though. Bringing this book must mean that I’m still taking the joke way too seriously.
The Martian Chronicles
This is another one I wasn’t very impressed with at first, but then reread and loved later. There was a time when I would reread a story out of this collection every time before writing something on my own to psyche myself up, because I thought Bradbury was the sparkling frozen overpriced lemonade on an overcrowded commercial beach, bought for you by a kindly old man who only did it out of a love for making people happy, and slipping cool, sweet, icy down your throat. And Bradbury was all the cute girls in bikinis on the beach, too. And the sunscreen. Now, anyone familiar with Bradbury’s hyper-in-your-face style should be pausing here for moment and saying to themselves, Wait, but, Hoof, you don’t write anything like Bradbury at all and you never have. Which is true, and now you know what a spectacular failure I was the whole time. I guess I brought this because I forgot that I don’t do that ritual anymore.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
I had to write an essay about this book for a class once. If you’ve ever read Fear and Loathing, you’re probably wondering, What the hell did you write about? and also, What the hell is this book even about?
My answer is an overwhelming ‘Yes!’ on both accounts.
It’s a hell of a fun read, though.
Bringing this must mean that I’m disappointed in everyone and everything in the whole world, all the time.
The Elements Of Style
I don’t really use writing guides, because I’m dumb and I think I don’t need them. But I remember this having a lot of straightforward, common sense, no nonsense writing advice, that would probably really improve my writing if I took any of it seriously. When I grabbed it, I must have thought I still give a shit about being a good writer.
Spoiler alert, past me:
I don’t.
So the joke’s on you.
Ha ha ha aha ahah ahahahhhahhhahahhaahahhahhahahhaaaahahhahahahahahahhhahhahahah.
a
Now, you should try and run over to a bookshelf really fast and grab five books without thinking too, then figure out what they say about you.
Because look at how much fun I’m having while doing it right now.
"Favorite things are a personality trait that we all construct entirely on our own"
Well, it could be argued that our entire personalities are something we construct on our own, really. We all make the decision to be who we are somehow.
Anyways, I don't think favorite things are a completely irrelevant measure. After all, learning who someone wants to be is a fairly important thing to know about them, really.
For me, "which six books do you take" is like asking "which six bricks out of this wall are your favorites?" I have my collection of SF short stories, my collection of antique textbooks, and some reference materials. Not many of those are going to be useful on their own.
Everything else is on my e-reader, which I can lug out into the desert just fine, along with a solar charger.
Present, future, past. In that order.
I'm more excited about the books I will come to read than the ones I already have.
I would bring six of those, and mark them off my reading list.
Bam.