Fairly Symmetrical

1. Name a book you love no matter what anybody says.


The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Say what you will about the thinly veiled Christianity, but my dad read these books to me when I was sick once, as a kid, and they hold a special place in my heart.

2. Name a book you loathe no matter what anybody says.


Can't think of any I loathe right offhand, but J.R.R. Tolkien's Silmarillion is mind-numbingly boring no matter who says it's not. The man had a mind for detail, he was creative as all get out, but damn he should have hired a ghostwriter to make stories out of his material. :) Thank god for Peter Jackson, that's all I'm saying.

3. Name a book you think is undeservedly obscure.


We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families. The true story of the Rwandan genocide, one of the decidedly less shining moments in recent history. Reading news stories about current events in the Sudan--and other places--makes this book all the more painful (and relevant). This is what the U.N. should be for, not running multibillion dollar oil-for-food scams and letting the Syrians write Human Rights resolutions.

4. Name a book you think is undeservedly famous.


Ah, this one is even topical. James' Joyce's Ulysses. This may be something like my lack of appreciation for certain forms of abstract art, but it seems to me that the only thing worth admiring in Joyce's work is the sheer amount of determination it takes to write that much nonsense down. Ulysses is at least more readable than Portrait of a Young Man, though, I'll give it that much.

5. Name a book you think you ought to read.


Harold Abelson & Gerald Sussman, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. Or maybe Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics. The list, written in 6-point Times New Roman, probably would stretch to the moon and back, actually.

6. Name a book you think I ought to read.


See #3.