Wednesday 25 May 2011

Have you chosen your

Desert Island Discs yet? Yes? Right. (You might let me know. I will endeavour to get the supplies in.)
Now, please choose your Desert Island Books.
You may have eight books. Yes, I know it is going to be far more difficult than choosing eight pieces of music.
This is a serious business. You may have just eight books with which to spend the rest of your life. Are they going to be reference or fiction or a mix?
Mmm...is it cheating if I ask for a full version of the Oxford English Dictionary? Please let me know.
Looking around at all the books I have here this would be a very, very difficult decision to make.

6 comments:

widdershins said...

The Oxford? ... mmm ... a book is a book is a book.

Non-fiction:
1 - 1001 ways to play solitare
2 - a magic book of blank pages that never runs out of pages (even if you tear 'em out to make a deck of cards!)(Cheating I know, but what's a list if you can't cheat at least once?)
3 - my favourite tarot book
4 - A survival handbook that just happens to be written about the very place I'm stranded on

Fiction: (in no particular order)
5 - 'Last and First Men' by Olaf Stapleton
6,7,8 - the 'Empire' Series by Janny Wurts and Raymond Feist
9 - 'Enders GAme' by Orson Scott Guard
10 - 'Dies the Fire' by S. M. Stirling

Luxury Item: Magic pen to go with the magic book.

Rebecca Brown said...

Oh my, this is just too hard!

Here goes...
1) Complete Jane Austen (this isn't strictly cheating, I do have this on my shelf)
2) firebrand by Gillian Philip
3) complete Oscar Wilde (same as above. Wonder how many of these I can get away with?)
4) poems of Christina Rossetti

Crikey, half through already. Gulp.
5) Bible. Yes really.
6) photo album - the one I keep saying I must get filled except that i'll have already done it.
7) around the world in 80 days
8) Bridget jones' diary.

That is, of course, assuming I can't say "kindle & solar-powered charger"...

Claire King said...

I would take:

1) Emile Zola's Les Rougons Macquart (I like your style, Rebecca) in French

2) Hachette French/English Dictionary

3) The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

4) Bill Bryson - A short history of almost everything

5) Poems of Maya Angelou

6) Teach yourself yoga

7) Manuscript of my novel The Night Rainbow. I know that sounds awfully egotistical, but in fact it's a bit like a photo album for me, there are so many moments I stole from my daughters, so it would stop me missing them!

8) Manuscript for the novel I'm writing at the moment. What better place than a desert island to get that book written! Can I have it? Does it count?

I've not gone big on novels. Must be feeling in a practical mood tonight!

catdownunder said...

Hmm...ideas..thankyou...more please!

widdershins said...

Ok Cat ... what's yours?

catdownunder said...

Fair question
(1) the complete OED,
(2) Markings (Dag Hammarskjold)
(3) Run Away Home (Elinor Lyon)
(4) The principles of knitting (Hiatt)
(5) King James version of the Bible (for the poetry)
(6)complete Pablo Neruda (dual language version)
(7) a large multi-language dictionary
(8) the complete Shakespeare