I Went to a Desert Island, and All I Got Was...

ok, so that was going to be a bad joke about either sunburns or coconuts. Couldn't bring myself to actually go there.


I've often thought about the whole Desert Island thing. Everybody asks the question. If it's not what famous person would you bring with you (Johnny Depp thank you very much), it's what survival gear would make the trip (water, fishing pole, and a boat*). But I can't honestly say I've ever given much thought to what books I'd bring.

It's not that I don't enjoy reading the same books over and over again, I do. Like most people today with our limited incomes, I have to think really REALLY hard about each and every thing I purchase. So I don't really get a lot of new books, and end up reading my old books dozens, if not hundreds of times. Alice in Wonderland - I think I'm into the easy one-fifties. Shirley Damsgaard's Abby and Ophelia books are well into the 30's. Any Terry Pratchett Discworld book ever... lets just say I've had to replace copies because they fell apart.

But if I can only have three books to last me for conceivably the rest of my life? Uhhhhhhhhhh... No clue. So I'm just going to go out on a limb and guess.

1- THUD! by Terry Pratchett. If you've never read a Discworld book, this isn't the place to start. Not that you wouldn't 'get it', but you wouldn't REALLY get it. Oh, you'd enjoy the hell out of it, but if you don't know all the back story, it's just an enjoyable romp with trolls, dwarves, ware wolves, vampires, politics, and the baddest assed cop ever, Sam Vimes. You won't know WHY Sam is the baddest assed cop ever; WHY Sybil is bald, beautiful, and covered in leather and iron; or WHY Anguina and Sally don't get along, and why Carrot just doesn't understand. (admittedly you will get the short explanation, but trust me, you have to read the rest of the series to really REALLY understand) But you will know where your cow is.

2- The Lord of the Rings books and the Hobbit, I'm counting these as one. I'm not even going to try for a mini-review. If you don't know the story, you've been living under a rock. Seriously, who couldn't read these over and over and over and over again?? (with the exception of everything Tom Bombadil says)

3- Story Telling by Tori Spelling. I'll need toilet paper. Another thing most people don't think about on a desert island.

Hopefully I won't have to read these books and these books alone for the rest of my life, I'm assuming there's at least a pretty good chance that the Coast Guard will at some point find me. Or maybe it's Greenpeace. I can never remember.


* why does no one ever think about bringing a boat with you to a desert island? Get off the damn island people! And don't give me that bull about you can't bring a boat, no one ever in the history of ever has said "what three things would you take with you, but you can't say boat".