Even the Devils Believe

Ben started a new meme with a post today, and I thought I would pick it up:

1. One book that changed your life:
Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter (eds.), Feminist Epistemologies (1993)
This is a fairly academic work, but it asks some really critical questions about how we know things and how we define (and consequently pursue) truth. Epistemology deserves a great deal more attention than it gets, in my opinion.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once:
Donna Tartt, The Secret History (1993)
This was a text assigned in an English course Sue and I both took at IMSA, and we've both come back to it over and over again.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island:
Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity: A Short Systematic Theology (2001)
This would provide fodder for some very fruitful reflections while waiting to be rescued, I think.

4. One book that made you laugh:
Frederick C. Crews, The Pooh Perplex: A Freshman Casebook (1963)
An hysterical take-off on literary criticism when it takes itself too seriously, all masquerading as a serious collection of essays on Winnie the Pooh. One of the (ficticious) critics reads the Pooh story allegorically, seeing Christopher Robin as a stand-in for God the Father. This he proves through an anagram of Christopher Robin — "I HOPE CHRIST BORN. R." Says the critic, "I take this to be a decree in the hortatory imperative, dispatched to the Heavenly Host, urging the speedy fulfillment of the Incarnation and signed 'R' for REX."

There's now a sequel, called Postmodern Pooh, published after Crews retired from teaching. It does more or less the same thing to contemporary critics and their new paradigms.

5. One book that made you cry:
Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies (1999)
Lahiri is one of the finest writers now living, certainly one of the best contemporary American writers.

6. One book that you wish had been written:
Nikolai Gogol, the second and third volumes of Dead Souls.

7. One book that you wish had never been written:
Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days (1995, and all its numerous sequels and spin-offs)
Bad writing and bad theology plus wild popularity equals very unfortunate.

8. One book you’re currently reading:
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1995)
Foucault seems to have some interesting ideas, but it's difficult to tell because his writing is so opaque. Still, I'm trucking along.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:
William T. Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ (1998)
The description of this book on Amazon strikes me every time I read it. Unfortunately, it's an expensive Blackwell edition, but it still seems like something important to pick up, and quite relevant given the political situation in the US and other supposedly "historically Christian societies."

10. Now tag five people: This is the part that never seems to work with memes — I just tag everyone.