Can't We Just Play Freeze Tag?

I didn't die! But I think I gave The Tina the plague. Yikes. I'm hanging at home today seeing if my fever is going to come back or if it's gone for good. In the meantime, here's some literate stuff, tagged underhandedly by Lindsey.

[1] Name 5 of your favorite books

1. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. This should come as no surprise to anyone, as my most prized possession is an autographed, leatherbound, gold-leafed-paged copy that I don't read every year. I do have a paperback copy that I read. Why did I first read it? Because some parents wanted to ban it. Take that, censorship!

2. GUT Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson. I had to read this my sophomore year of college, and I just fell in love with it and her writing. It's amazing. I loaned that one out several months ago. I want it back!

3. The Tao Is Silent by Raymond M. Smullyan. This book is a large factor in why I love Eastern philosophy. This one, too, has been loaned. Lent? I don't? For Lent, I'm giving up loaning out my favorite books.

4. Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra. This was my favorite book until Catch-22 came along. I read it when I was 12. Looking back, that's a little young for prison rape and murder.

5. The Hours by Michael Cunningham. How can a man write women so well? I adore this book. It was required reading my senior year of high school.

[2] What was the last book you bought?

Dan Brown's Angels and Demons

[3] What was the last book you read?

Angels and Demons

[4] Name five books that have particular meaning for you.

1. One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish: When I was in day care, the teacher would let me read to the class sometimes, and I would always read this book, because I loved it.

2. Catch-22. I know I've picked this one already, but I can't leave it in just one category. I adore this book. I read it every year, and I often use it for paper topics, when applicable. I think it's because I usually prefer British literature (I really didn't like much, if any, of what I had to read junior year), but something about this book just gets me. It's often referred to as the "anti-heroic anti-novel" - I can see that. Oh, and that post about the "snowed-ins of yesteryear" that nobody got was a reference to this book, when Yossarian asks, "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?" You can bet that if my away message says, "Looking for the Snowdens of yesteryear," I'm reading this book, or writing a paper on it.

3. Job. This was always my favorite book of the Bible, and even though I stopped going to church years ago because organized religion did me more harm than good, I still like this book. Doing some research, many scholars believe it is the oldest (meaning it was the first to be written down - not that it happened first), and it is also the only book written in dramatic form. Neat, huh?

4. The Code Book by Simon Singh. Cryptography has always been a hobby of mine, so I bought this book to read up on some of its history. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

5. The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou by Maya Angelou (duh). Since eighth grade, she's been my favorite poet, when my English teacher did a reading of "Phenomenal Woman."

[5] Three books you are dying to read but just haven't yet.

1. I Ching by some dead Taoist masters. I don't own this one yet, but I really look forward to reading it someday. As soon as I finish The Tao of Physics, I'll probably start it.

2. Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hoftstadter. Mathematics, art and music coalesce in this really large volume recommended by Ron Bombardi. I own it. It's quite thick, but I can't wait to read it and have to keep asking my parents what all the music jargon means.

3. Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant. Vince at work talks about this book a lot, and we talked about it in Jack's class, so I'd like to jump in and see what it's like.

[6] Tag five people to go through this same ordeal.
I'm going to do what that sneaky Lindsey did: If you're reading this, you're tagged.