RA FOR ALL...THE ROAD SHOW!

I can come to your library, book club meeting, or conference to talk about how to help your readers find their next good read. Click here for more information including RA for All's EDI Statement.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Monday Discussion: Desert Island Book

To continue with the adult summer reading "Novel Destinations" theme, I want to talk about desert islands.

My almost 9 year old daughter asked me the other day what book I would bring if I were stuck on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean (her and her brother have been watching the first 3 Pirates of the Caribbean movies at home, so she has desert islands on the brain).

Before I could answer, she said, "I would bring the big Lord of the Rings Trilogy in one book because I haven't read them yet, and they are so long, when I finished, I could go back and start again since I would probably have forgotten a lot of it."

Good choice, I say, especially considering what a huge fantasy fan she is.  So I thought about the question, and I think I would pick Moby Dick.  I read this book back in college and loved it, but haven't read it since.  With it's ocean setting, detailed passages that are begging to be read more than  once, and its length, Moby Dick would keep me occupied for quite a while on a desert island.

So now it is your turn.  For today's Monday Discussion, let me know what 1 book you would take if you were stranded on a desert island.  Try to settle on just one.  It is harder than it seems.

Click here for the Monday Discussion Archive.

3 comments:

John BPL RA said...

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. I was assigned to read it several times in college and never did. It is beyond long. I always slid by with excerpts and interpretations but never actually sat down with the real thing. It is filled with not only historical fact but also a lot of speculation which has since been written off as incorrect. Still, I'd like to read it. It would be interesting. Being stranded on an island is probably the only way it's gonna happen. I figure I could kill it while waiting for the coconut hooch to distill.

Kimberly said...

If I could only take one tome, it would probably be a Bible. I'm not well read in it (even with all the literary illusions that come from it) but I understand there are tales of sex and deceit, poetry, and self-help. More likely, though, I'd have a blank book and spend my time trying to write from memory the bits and pieces that I do remember from things I've read before.

Mike said...

MIKE BPL REF,

My desert island book would be the Complete Stories of Jack London.
The Unabridged Edition.

First, London is a great author and his stories about Man against Nature might just help me survive and secondly, the book is special to me because my parents gave it to me for my 25th birthday and they each wrote
kind notes to me inside the front cover and seeing their handwriting might not make me so alone on a desert island.