OK, having been duly tagged, I'll do the meme thing.

1. One book that changed your life

"Waking the Moon" by Elizabeth Hand.

Not sure how, yet, but that book had enough impact on me that it must have changed my life somehow. I read it about eight years ago and I still don't feel ready to re-read it, since so many scenes and images are so thoroughly imprinted in my mind from my one and only reading of it at that point. Something about the nexus of the time I read it (the summer before I started college), what my interests were, the emotional impact, the way it wowed me on a stylistic level, I dunno. But it was high impact.

At the WisCon Writers Workshop, that book came up as a stylistic example and I was able to quote stuff verbatim despite the eight-year lag.

Actually, come to think of it, I do know at least one way it did change my life. It was definitely part of what kindled my interest in my first year in college in stuff like anthropology, mythology and comparative religion. (Things that were not really that high on my radar before hand.) Which in turn led to my taking a bunch of religious studies classes at LCC. Which, in a very indirect sort of way, eventually led to me majoring in philosophy (which I got interested in as a side-effect of all the religious studies stuff). Which in turn led to my currently being ensconsed in sunny and degenerate Miami writing this post.

Strange that this chain of events never ocurrred to me until just now. Huh.

2. One book you have read more than once?

"Valis" by Philip K. Dick.

I read it the first time when I was...I don't know...maybe 18 of 19? It blew my mind, but I also found it deeply confusing. I was so used to reading nice traditional, linear novels that on some level, cool as it was, it just didn't compute. I could handle the ambiguities.

Then, I read it again when I was 25, right around the same time I started writing again. I liked it even better the second time through and--maybe my mind had been scrambled in some disturbing way in the interim--but it even made a lot more sense to me. I was right there with the weirdness.

Anyway, twice is enough for the moment. Reading "Valis" is like dropping acid. Interesting, possibly enlightening and certainly entertaining, but not something one should inflict on one's psyche on a regular basis.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?

Um...

Either "Finnegan's Wake" by James Joyce or "Guilty Pleasures" by Laurel K. Hamilton. I'm not sure.

One or the other, though, for sure.

4. One book that made you laugh?

Books make me laugh a lot, actually. Probably makes it sort of a disturbing experience to be around me while I read.

As alluded to earlier, Philip K. Dick's sense of humor--deadpan and very nasty--works just about perfectly for me, so I tend to laugh a lot while reading his books. More actually, than I have while reading some books marketted as spoofs.

I haven't finished it yet, but the first chapter of Robert Rankin's chocolate bunny book--I don't remember the full title--reduced me to pretty helpless laughter in a completely different way.

5. One book that made you cry?

I'm much too macho to cry.

It's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

6. One book you wish had been written?

Since I've got a PKD theme going with the previous entries, I'll mention his aborted sequel to "The Man in the High Castle." I guess he nipped it in the bud after two chapters since he thought it would be too disturbing to immerse himself in writing about Nazis again, but the two completed chapters (included in "The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick" anthology) are really cool, enough so that its frustrating that there aren't any more.

7. One book you wish had never had been written?

"Kitty Goes to Washington" by Carrie Vaughn.

In the spectacularly unlikely event that Ms. Vaughn happens across this, I should emphasize that I *loved* the first novel, "Kitty and the Midnight Hour."

That's why I wished she had written something just as interesting, as cool and weird and as funny and as emotionally connected. Instead, she wrote a competent and in many places entertaining novel that pretty much left me cold. Wouldn't have bothered me much--and I might have even liked it--if I hadn't known she could do so much better. Which is why, even though I didn't hate it, I wished she had written that other novel instead.

(I do recognize that she probably had a contract and a deadline for "Kitty Goes to Washington," which probably accounts for a lot of the thrown-together-stock-material feel of it. Unlike "Kitty and the Midnight Hour", which she took her time on gestating, workshopped bits of at Odyssey, published some chapters of it as short stories in "Weird Tales" and elsewhere, etc.)

Or "Industrial Magic" by Kelly Armstrong.

Exactly the same deal on all counts. Loved "Bitten," loved "Dime Store Magic," and these should prove that if Armstrong had written up a *new* idea, instead of continuing with the same characters after their character arcs had been resolved, it would have been great.

8. One book you are currently reading?

"Perdido Street Station" by China Mieville. I decided it was time to finally see what everyone else was talking about.

9. One book you have been meaning to read?

Well, there are as usual about twenty or thirty books I've been meaning to read, but having PKD on my mind tonight, I'll mention that I have been meaning to read "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" ever since I read the desription of it in "Divine Invasions."

10. Now tag five people.

Tina W., Tina C., Caroline, Gord, Shawn.

Being full-grown adult-type people, I don't think I need to say that you should feel free to ignore being "tagged" if you please. Memes are not chain letters, and great misfortunes will not befall you for breaking the chain. (-: