If you were stranded alone on an island, until death, what ONE book would choose to have with you, and why?
I think I am gonna have to go with The Bible, KJV. For helping to maintain sanity, morale, intellectual stimulation, faith, the will to live, and the strength to die.
However, it seems that a field survival manual would be a close tie. (Some would say the Bible is a survival manual, but that’s another thread, another forum.)
“Hmmm is that snake poisonous? Let’s see if Genesis chapter 9 says anything. Nope”
hiiisssssssss :::strike:::: oops…thud
If I was bringing a book simply to bring a book (not because I need it to provide survival information) I would likely bring the thickest volume of the Encyclopedia Britanica.
Let’s face it. I would be completely bored by any book within a month. Might as well bring something that would take a while to read.
I am very well read, I have read thousands and thousands of books. But I can probably count on two hand the number of books I have read more than once, I just don’t understand people that can read the same book over an over again.
In the desert island scenario I would probably just not take any book as it would just remind me what I was missing.
There are a few books I can, and have, read over and over. The Stand and Gone With the Wind, among various others.
That being said, I would take my “quad”. It’s The Bible, The Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants and Pearl of Great Price, all together. Sure, technically it’s 4 books, but they are all together in ONE book.
One book? I’d go crazy! It’d have to be a very thick one and would have to be really good… so I don’t know… I’m a fast reader too so with all the time I’d have on the island (after doing what I needed to survive) it wouldn’t take me all that long… I mean endless hours of time to fill… and when I can read an average novel in a couple hours I would be reading that book possibly several times a DAY nevertheless imagine in a week. I would get tired of it pretty quick. So I guess I would go with the Bible… heck maybe then I would even read the lists instead of skimming over them like I usually do!
ONE book is a hard ask, but I think it would have to be Catch 22. It surprises me evertime I read it again and always makes me laugh.
Maybe if I took War and Peace though, I would actually get through it. (Otherwise there would be lots of sleeping on that island)
Some sort of encyclopedia would be the most useful, but when it comes down to fictional entertainment I’d bring Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, bound in one large volume with The Hobbit. Not only is this long, it lets you escape into a whole different world, which could help with the psychological difficulties of isolation. I mean, you’d probably go insane, but if you go insane what’s a better place to hallucinate being in then Middle-earth?
That’s my view anyway.
A really big, complete, unabridged,
dictionary, even one with other languages
if I could find it. As Hawkeye Pierce
pointed out on an Episode of MAS*H
“All the other books are in it.”
