I’m going to assume we’ve set up a secret library with the volumes we’ve already chosen. So three of my choices are already there, TKAM, Shakespeare, and LOTR.
Guess I’ll go for a study edition of the Bible. One with the Apocrypha included, so probably the Oxford edition. Good stuff, and there’s some cool stories. If I’d had a daughter I’d have named her Judith.
Does it mater when they are available as ebooks?
Since Fabulous Creature is clearly bent on destroying all knowledge (a) to make his rule easier to hold and (b) to be a dick, I’m pretty sure he’s destroying all the ebooks. You only get to save & keep a conventional codex.
I’ll go along with this.
I HAVE the complete, leather-bound LOTR - in red, of course.
I see that somebody has (fortunately) already saved Shakespeare, so I shall rescue the Orlando Furioso. I suspect the new book-less world would have need of Ariosto to point out all of our absurdities.
Besides, hippogryphs are super-cool 
I considered that, but LOTR has a nice appendix, and I can keep in practice by removing it when I feel the need. And if I can’t have Sil and UT and HOMES, LOTR then encompasses Middle Earth well enough for me. 
Otherwise, Newton and Leibniz couldn’t resist taunting one another now, could they? 
Ulysses
By God, I will make others suffer as well!
UK Habitats of the Canadian Goose
If you get the reference let me know.
Were I not committed as a matter of principle to fostering evil and inflicting as much suffering as possible, I’d grab FC’s time-skipper and an immortality serum and give JRRT the leisure & time necessary to write a 7th & 8th book to LoTR: one telling the stories hinted at in the Appendices about the other fronts of the battle against Sauron. I want a full-on account of the war of the Dwarves & Orcs, and I want to know what happened during the siege of Lothlorien.
ETA: Did Leibniz ever taunt Sir Isaac? I always thought their battle consisted of (a) Newton devising the calculus and delaying his publishing, (b) Leibniz devising and publishing while Isaac was busy thinking about apples and not having sex, and (c) Newton abusing his position to make Leibniz’s life hell afterwards. What did I miss?
I’d have to say my rare first-edition copy of De Revolutionibus. As soon as your flying monkeys dig that out of my library and take it to safety, they can burn the rest down.
How well do the flying monkeys read? I suppose if they would bust me for The Anarchist’s Cookbook, they’s also bust me for U. S. Army Field Manual FM 3-24. :smack:
Then I’d go for The Columbia Encyclopedia, the most compact 1-volume encyclopedia I know of.
The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
Fahrenheit 451 is the only logical choice.
They’re idiots, of course, but they know how to use a digital camera and record everything. They’re not going to STOP you from taking whatever book you want, because that would be cheating. But when the quislings looking over the records of who took what see the Handbook, your name is likely to go on the “talking 'bout a revolution” watch list.
Does anyone else see a flaw in this plan?
I want to hear how Isildur got out of Minas Ithil with a seedling of the white tree, when it fell to Sauron’s forces.
Also, just what was Cirdan doing on all those long nights, alone in the tower of Emyn Beraid, looking into the Palantir? Communing with hot blonde Vanyar nissi?
Um, guess I shouldn’t rely on The Baroque Cycle for my history lessons, huh?
1984
Although I am not sure if I am considered to be “in good standing” :eek:
I wasn’t disputing you. I was genuinely interested. Someday I want to write a story about them.
Good Omens, of course. Pratchett and Gaiman in one neat package, plus a cautionary tale for Fabulousie about what happens to would be tyrants (uhm…they get to go to the circus, but still have to do their homework.)
Someone think of the children! No Dr. Suess, no Where the Wild Things Are, or even Superfudge makes little Jack a dull boy.
No prob. I’ll just use Ulysses. That will kill anything.
crap. Wargamer has it out. Oh, well. Ayn Rand it is, then. Violates the Geneva conventions, I’m sure, but such is war.