100 people surveyed, top answers on the board...

Surveys typically drive me nuts - i don't see the point in answering things like, "have you ever made out? what are you wearing? who's the last person you yelled at?" but this was on someone else's blog and doggone it, here i am.

i'm a loser, i know.

1. One book that changed your life:
More Than A Carpenter by Josh McDowell
little. tiny. book. really made a huge difference in my life.

2. One book that you've read more than once:
The Stand by Stephen King
this book has done the shock-and-awe on me since reading it the first time back in high school. stunning book, maybe not a literary classic, but the vision and harrowing nature of it... dunno. have read it probably eight times in the past 16 years. while king's writing is usually hit-or-miss (and it's usually one hit, two misses, one hit, two misses) this one is right on the money.

3. One book you'd want on a desert island:
The Stories of Ray Bradbury by Ray Bradbury
100 of Bradbury's favorite stories - awesome short stories that can be read over and over. very vivid imagery.

4. One book that made you laugh:
The Umbrella Man and other stories by Roald Dahl
Dahl is an incredible storyteller. humorous, ironic, sarcastic, hilarious. i woke lise up a couple times laughing while reading this in bed over the course of a week. i fell in love with his writing as a boy (most notably, Danny, Champion of the World and James and the Giant Peach) and as an old man i still find him to be a riot.

5. One book that made you cry:
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
probably my favorite book of all time. the melancholy sweetness of the story, the optimism found, lost and regained, the coming of age and pining for a simpler time, the realization of things lost and the marching of time - bittersweet.

6. One book you wish had been written:
Under the Bleachers by Seymour Butts

7. One book you wish had never been written:
The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien
i've never thrashed myself so hard as i have in trying to read this book. several times over the past 25 years i'll pick it up, get 40 pages into it and put it down with a splitting headache. too much! too much!!

8. One book you're currently reading: A Great Improvisation : Franklin, France, and the Birth of America by Stacy Schiff
i've been reading a lot of history and biography this past year and a half - very strange for a guy who has read fiction 2-3 hours every night for the past 27 years. David McCullough has been at the top of the list of authors, but schiff won the Pulitzer Prize for biography with this one last year. took me two tries to get into it, but it's a good one.
9. One book you've been meaning to read:
Teacher Man by Frank McCourt
McCourt wrote a book called Angela's Ashes several years ago - i got it at sam's club cheap because the cover intrigued me. it's a stream of consciousness account of McCourt's growing up in Ireland with THE dysfunctional irish family. this is book three of his memoirs and it's been difficult to get to it with about 10 other books lined up to read...

and now, to add a few categories of my own:

10. One book that has scared the crap out of you:
Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon
this is another book that has been re-read many times and it still scares the crap out of me. it's old. it's out of print. it's worth hunting down at a used bookstore and reading it.

11. The one book that is most recommended to others by you:
Your First Two Years in Youth Ministry by Doug Fields
having done youth ministry for thirteen plus years, this is the best book out there for folks who are starting out in this ministry. fields is not my favorite writer by any stretch, but this is good for those who have no idea what they're doing or maybe just need some guidance.