ElShaddai has tagged me with a new meme which seems appropriate for 1st April:

Books are scarce in the world. They are illegal in some provinces. They are not easily replaced if not impossible to replace if lost in many if not most circumstances. If you can replace a book or buy one it is usually through the black market at astronomical costs that you cannot afford. Yet you have been able to maintain one of the best collections in the world. If your entire library was about to burn up (think of the firefighters in Fahrenheit 451 invading your home) and you could only have one* book to take with you other than the bible, what would that be and why?

Simple Rules
Answer the question. Offer one quote that resonates with you. Tag five people whose response is of genuine interest to you and inform him or her that they have been tagged. Cheers!

*And it cannot be an entire series of something, that’s cheating.

Nathan Stitt has already chosen The Lord of the Rings. I shall cry “Foul!” about this because it is really three books bound together as one, and because I didn’t get the chance to choose it myself. Well, I could do, because the rules don’t say I can’t copy others’ good choices, and my edition is not the same as his but a cheap paperback. So I will try to be a bit more creative.

Let’s look at the scenario. It is not the “Desert Island Discs” one for which I might want to choose a big book which I could reread again and again as I waited, bored, for rescue. Anyway on the desert island I would also have the Bible and Shakespeare, and there is enough there to dispel boredom.

In the world of this meme there is unlikely to be boredom as I would surely be politically active trying to overthrow this repressive government – or in jail where I probably wouldn’t be allowed to take the book. And, as Doug suggested, the complete works of Shakespeare might also be disqualified as “an entire series of something”. (Would I be allowed only part of the complete works as a series which is not entire?)

So my choice would have to be something valuable, perhaps even irreplaceable, rather than something I would actually want to read all the time. That makes for a difficult choice. I might have to choose something like ӘРӘБ ВӘ ФАРС СӨЗЛӘРИ ЛҮҒӘТИ simply for its rarity, and its irreplaceability for my Bible translation work which could otherwise continue mostly with the texts in my computer, but as this is a monolingual dictionary in a language few of my readers will understand there is not much point in me providing a quote from it.

So where does this leave me? If I am to post tonight I will do so without actually naming a book or quoting anything. But I do just have time to tag a few people: the blogger formerly known as Lingamish; Suzanne McCarthy, who can’t choose KJV or a Latin Bible translation; Eddie Arthur, but I won’t let him choose his own dissertation; Henry Neufeld, and I suppose I shouldn’t let him take a book he publishes; and in honour of a post Confessions of a Jaded Reader which is on his RSS feed but no longer on his blog, Tim Chesterton. I hope they are all reading this blog and so will know that they have been tagged.

I can’t resist these quizzes. I came to this one from the results at Eternal Echoes. It’s actually a rather silly one based on a very small number of questions. But the results are fairly close to the mark. I don’t have a history of excelling in leadership positions, but that is because for various mostly good reasons I haven’t actually been in many.

You Are a Colon

You are very orderly and fact driven.You aren’t concerned much with theories or dreams… only what’s true or untrue.You are brilliant and incredibly learned. Anything you know is well researched.  You like to make lists and sort through things step by step. You aren’t subject to whim or emotions. Your friends see you as a constant source of knowledge and advice. (But they are a little sick of you being right all of the time!) You excel in: Leadership positions You get along best with: The Semi-Colon

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

I was not surprised to find that in The Hermeneutics Quiz, which I found from a tip by Dave Warnock and (for those of you put off by long words like “hermeneutics”) is in fact a set of questions on how I interpret the Bible, I came out as a “moderate”, with a score of 55. This rather simplistic score conceals the fact that the majority of my points came from the last few questions which were mostly about the applicability today of Old Testament law. I took a more conservative position on the earlier questions about the Bible. I was also somewhat surprised that my more individualistic answers about how I interpret the Bible and follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit made my score a more conservative one. It seems to me that this quiz needs at least two or three dimensions, perhaps more, rather than trying to place people along a single conservative-liberal axis.

I found a quiz on Facebook (thanks to my friend Emily) Which Winnie-the-Pooh character are you? My result came out as:

You are:

	Winnie-the-Pooh
	You are Winnie-the-Pooh, the slow but lovable bear. You love your friends and always make time to spend with them, especially if they share their snack with you.

Perhaps I got this result because a lot of my answers revolved around food!