JLF pal Jerry Agar responds to my tag:
1. One book that changed my life: Be Your Own Brand by David McNally and Karl Speak. It got me to give up trying to be a successful morning disc jockey, which was something I kept failing at, to becoming a talk show host, which up to now has worked wonderfully well. Know where you fit in, and stop being a round peg trying to get into a square hole.
2. One book I’ve read more than once: Goals by Brian Tracy. Knowing where you want to go is fine. How to get there? I mention this book on the air from time to time when in discussion about the “plight of the poor.” The book is available for free at the library and likely to do you more good than another episode of Springer.
3. One book I’d want on a desert island: Surviving the Desert by Gregory J. Davenport. (I have not read it. Seems practical.)
4. One book that made me laugh: On Writing by Stephen King. Part autobiography, it is a wonderful text on the art of writing.
5. One book that made me cry: Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis.
6. One book I wish had been written: A Return to a Sense of Shame by the NAACP. The biggest problem in the inner cities of America is out of wedlock births to teenage mothers. The cycle of poverty stems largly from that one issue. It became a plague about the time government decided to facilitate it rather than condemn it. I spoke to a columnist for the Kansas City Star about the problem and he talked of young girls he knew who had more than one baby. I asked whether he had ever said to them, “Shame on you. Shape up and start living your life right.” I now have quite a collection of emails and phone messages calling me a racist. The babies keep on coming.
7. One book I wish had not been written: Tess of the D’Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy. What a turgid piece of crap to assign to a high school male. I got through it by going over to my best friend’s house on the weekend and splitting up the chapters. We briefed each other on the details of what we had read, passed the test and burned the book (literally) while blasting Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out.”
8. One book I am currently reading: George Washington and Benedict Arnold: A Tale of Two Patriots by Dave R. Palmer. It is fascinating to learn how similar the two men were in their person and their lives. As a Canadian I was fascinated to learn that Benedict Arnold attacked Canada – and lost! So apparantly he let the home team down more than once.
9. One book I’ve been meaning to read: The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and Leanord Peikoff. I loved Atlas Shrugged, and everyone tells me to read this one. Someday I will.
