I’m finally going to answer ChaliceChick’s summons and answer these bibiophilic questions.

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

Lao Tzu’s Tao te Ching. It has to be the only book I want to know (in some deep, wisened sense of that word). Plus, it would lend itself to interesting company.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Does Princess Leia count when I was five??

The last book you bought…?

Last book I bought was Sword & Citadel by Gene Wolfe. Second half of the "Book of the New Sun." Sort of artsy fartsy sci-fi. A readable Dahlgren. It’s set millions of years in the future when a fatigued "Urth" awaits the final collapse of its sun, now a red giant.

The last book you read is…?

The last book I 100% finished was Shadow & Claw, the first half of "The Book of the New Sun." More recently, I read bits and pieces of Harold Bloom’s Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds.

What are you currently reading?

Just started Sword & Citadel a couple of nights ago. When I’m not in the fiction mood, I’ll start The Essential Emerson, making me a good Unitarian for once. I picked up the Emerson because of Chris Lydon’s podcast interviews with Harold Bloom and Cornel West. He asked them some inane questions about Emerson, but they turned his straw into gold. (Love Chris Lydon, but this was not his best.) Now that I’ve read more of Bloom’s thoughts on Emerson, I wonder if Mark Twain might be more my

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

• Tao te Ching (For reasons above.)
• The Bible (To fight with and to refer to. Besides, I’d end up needing Ecclesiastes, Genesis, and Job.)
• Sam Delaney’s Neveryon Series (Four books, but I could glue them together. Includes a brilliant rewrite of Genesis 2-3. Great fantasy book for folks who hate fantasy books. I’ll be re-reading this every year for a while. Delaney is an award winning gay African-American novelist and author of Dahlgren above.)
• The Portable Nietzsche (Either that or Genealogy of Morals or The Gay Science. Hard to choose.)
• Collected Works of T.S. Eliot (The long version with "Le Figlia Che Piange.")

Who are you going to pass this baton to (three persons)? And why?

My recently engaged and very funny cousin Rotten Robyn because she hasn’t been blogging much since the ring. My good friend at Rae’s Place because I want to know. And the guys at Great Minds Do Not Have to Think Alike because I’ll enjoy the compare-and-contrast that will go on.