Thursday Threesome

Onesome: Great- Who's the greatest influence in your life? ...and could you write about them?

My mother. I suppose I could, but she's really led a very tame life, aside from being stuck at work during the Hurricane of '38...

Twosome: American- Who do you consider to be the greatest American writer of all time? Counterpoint: whose books are sitting on your nightstand?

I guess this will strike people as hopelessly lowbrow, but...Madeleine L'Engle. I guess I'm supposed to say something like "Mark Twain" or "Herman Melville," and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of my favorite novels and I love Twain's wit, but...

Who's on my nightstand? A big fat bound volume of St. Nicholas magazine (volume 2 to be specific, November 1874 through October 1875. However, my nightstand is a bookcase! Inside are all of Madeleine L'Engle's nonfiction, all my Gladys Taber books (except for Stillmeadow Album, which won't fit), and La Storia, the Story of Italians in America.

Threesome: Novel- What's your favourite book/novel? Hmmm... What's so special about that one book?

My stock answer stands: "One book? You want me to pick one book? That's like asking Olivia Walton which of the seven kids is her favorite."

Some of my favorites are as follows:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Little Women and Eight Cousins, Louisa May Alcott
Beautiful Joe: A Dog's Own Story, Marshall Saunders
Addie Pray, Joe David Brown
Red Sky at Morning, Richard Bradford
The Good Master, The Singing Tree, The Chestry Oak, and The Open Gate, Kate Seredy
The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, and The Last Enchantment, Mary Stewart
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
Pride of the Moor, Vian Smith
Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
Understood Betsy, Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Behind the Screen, Kenneth McGowan (history of motion pictures, with a particular emphasis on the silents)
Everything But Money, Sam Levenson
Cheaper by the Dozen, Frank B. Gilbreth Jr and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
Life is a Banquet, Rosalind Russell
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Kate Douglas Wiggin
Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
Lad: A Dog, Albert Payson Terhune
Lassie Come-Home, Eric Knight
Spencer's Mountain, The Homecoming, and You Can't Get There From Here, Earl Hamner Jr
Wyoming Summer, Mary O'Hara
Escape to Witch Mountain, Alexander Key
Roller Skates, Ruth Sawyer
The Family Nobody Wanted, Helen Doss
The Edge of Day (Cider with Rosie) and I Can't Stay Long, Laurie Lee
What Katy Did, etc., Susan Coolidge
A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle (heck, any L'Engle book, except maybe The Love Letters)
Most of Robert Heinlein, especially the juveniles: Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Between Planets, Red Planet, Podkayne of Mars, The Rolling Stones... (Have Spacesuit was my first Heinlein.)
All of Nick O'Donohoe's Crossroads books
All of Katherine Kurtz/Deborah Turner Harris' Adept books
All the Harry Potters
Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy
Torey Hayden's books (educating special-ed kids)

This is just off the top of my head and I can keep going if you like... :-)

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 12:21:00 PM

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