mychai's Diaryland Diary

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First Friday Five (and other alliterations)

Can you believe it's already March?

Anyway, this is a rare Saturday evening post. I'm taking a break from working out and packing and decided I would try my hand at The Friday Five just to see if I like it or not.

Enjoy!

1. What is your favorite type of literature to read (magazine, newspaper, novels, nonfiction, poetry, etc.)?

When I read leisurely, I usually go for books about travel. I'm not talking about travel guides, but books by William Least Heat-Moon and Peter Jenkins. They do the travelling and write about it quite well so I can enjoy their journeys from my bedroom.

When it comes to reading more scholarly works, I like fiction from the Modernist period. The poems of T.S. Elliot, Steppenwolf, The Sun Also Rises, Spoon River Anthology. Stuff like that. I have a whole shelf on my bookshelf dedicated to the Modernists.

2. What is your favorite novel?

Easy: Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon.

It's a true tale about the author getting laid off from his job as a professor at the University of Missouri, his wife finding another man, and basically everything going to crap. So, he packs only essentials in his VW-like van and riding all over America meeting people, seeing new things, and just reflecting on life. It is one of the books that has had quite an impact on my life.

3. Do you have a favorite poem? (Share it!)

Oh, definitely. Walt Whitman is one of my all-time favorite poets. He moves me. Here is just one of my many favorites from him.

I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,
Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,
But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not,
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss,
And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room,
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,)
Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love;
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana solitary in a wide flat space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend or lover near,
I know very well I could not.

4. What is one thing you've always wanted to read, or wish you had more time to read?

I would like to read all 45+ enstallments of the Wizard of Oz series. I read "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," and I completely fell in love with it. I doubt I'll enjoy the movie as much any more.

I guess I wouldn't mind reading the Harry Potter books, though I doubt I ever will. I also wouldn't mind reading the Bible from cover to cover, just to see what the whole fuss is about. I like what Rabbi Hillel said, though: "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study it."

5. What are you currently reading?

A girly book I picked up on a whim. I'm not absolutely lost in it, so it is taking time to get through it all. It's called Riding the Bus With My Sister. It's a true story -- of course -- about a writer who found her mentally retarded sister's practice of riding city buses strange... so she decided to try it herself for a year.

She found enlightenment, strength, girl power. Yeck. That's why I'm not lost in it.

8:34 p.m. - Sat., Mar. 1, 2003

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