“using symbols using words / can be likened to a deep sea diver / who is swimming with a raincoat”

[larryhammer]

Book meme via naraht and others: The Seven Deadly Sins of Reading —

Lust, books I want to read for their cover:
- The Moonlight Mistress, Victoria Janssen
- The Beauty’s Blade, Feng Ren Zuo Shu
- Heavenly Tyrant, Xiran Jay Zhao

Pride, challenging books I’ve finished:
- Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
- Gravitation and Cosmology, Steven Weinberg
- 古今和歌集 (in the original)

Gluttony, books I’ve read more than once:
- Persuasion, Jane Austen (and the rest of Austen, but that the most)
- The Unknown Ajax, Georgette Heyer (and several other Heyer, but that the most)
- Protector of the Small, Tamora Pierce (and Circle of Magic, but that the most)
- Always Coming Home, Ursula K. Le Guin (and several other Le Guin, but that the most)
(and many many more …)

Sloth, books on my to-read list the longest:
- The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Titus Alone, Mervyn Peake

Greed, books I own multiple editions of:
(not counting multiple translations of the same work)
- Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
- Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling
- The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien

Wrath, books I despised:
- The Jade Mountain, tr. Witter Bynner
- A Hundred Verses from Old Japan, tr. William Porter
- Outlaws of the Marsh / Water Margin

Envy, books I want to live in:
- Always Coming Home, Ursula K. Le Guin
- Annals of the Former World, John McPhee
- Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, Hokusai

Actually, just replace the other two with Always Coming Home a few more times.

---L.

Subject quote from I Want You, Savage Garden.

Comments

[puddleshark]

My Gluttony list would be far too long to post. I re-read ten well-loved books for every new one book I read these days. But Persuasion, The Unknown Ajax, and Protector of the Small are all somewhere on the Gluttony list.

Your Sloth list is impressively scary!

[larryhammer]

That's nowhere near my complete Gluttony list. That's just a few of the most reread.

(One especially fraught day when I was 16, I read the first two Harperhall books three times each.)

[asakiyume]

Love your final remark ^_^

And 古今和歌集 in the original is a huuuge accomplishment.

[larryhammer]

I fudged a little bit for 古今和歌集 -- I never actually read book 20. But I figure 19 books is still worth pride.

[pauraque]

When you go to live in Always Coming Home, take me with you!

[larryhammer]

If I can!