Book Meme: I Got Tagged!

[Ed. note: I was sort of hoping someone might tag me on this and was delighted when TCF did.]

There's a nice little literary meme making its way around the blogosphere to allow people to take time out from political essaying or whatever is normally being discussed to talk books. TCF of the fine That Colored Fella's Weblog, whose own interesting answers appear here, tagged me tonight. So I thought I'd take a few minutes before I turn to one more look through the tax forms and calculations to respond.

It's a neat idea and I encourage people to play along at home!

My responses:
You’re stuck in ‘Fahrenheit 451’. Which book would you be?

Oh my goodness. A tougher question, I haven't been asked lately. I've got about 10 novels I'd like to pick, but I'd be more inclined to be a single bound edition of all of Thomas Paine's most important work.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Only one? I don't think I've ever had a crush in real life past the second grade. But with books, yes.

Oh, damn! You want a name? (Considering which of the half dozen will appear least embarrassing in pixel print. At different times, "Tom Jobe" in "The Grapes of Wrath", the quirky psychiatrist in "Ordinary People", Jay Gatsby in "The Great Gatsby" and the odd professor/writer in "Wonder Boys" and (most strangely) Jim in "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil".

What is the last book you bought?

Technically, the last one I bought was one of mine because a friend needed a copy and I was out. But I don't count that.

So it would be Amy and David Goodman's "The Exception to the Rulers."

What are you currently reading?

Re-reading Toni Cade Bambera's "These Bones Are Not My Child", a story told with the backdrop of a missing child during the Atlanta Child Murders case in the late 1970s. Really an exquisitely told tale that almost makes you ache for the activism of that time and gives you a look at an Atlanta most of us have never read about.

Five books you’d take to a desert island.

1) Kurt Vonnegut's "Galapagos" or his "God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian"
2) Ira Levin's "This Perfect Day"No, Joseph Campbell's "The Power of Myth"
3) Alice Walker's "Meridian"
4) Dalai Lama's "The Art of Happiness" (so I could finally finish it)
5) An empty large notebook so I could write. (Good writing always makes my hands begin to move, wanting to respond to the work by writing myself.)

And now... to whom should I pass the baton? I know several people who've already taken it.

Well, I think it should be Joanne at The What Class, Karlo at Swerve Left (have you been tagged already? I didn't find it on your blog.), and Diana at Democracy in California (whom I'm also not sure has been tagged.

And thank you, TCF. You folks should check out the link to his collaborative comic I posted yesterday.