Fruhead Spaceship Library

Here's the situation. The world is coming to the end and all the Fruheads can escape in a spaceship. There is only limited space of course and everyone is allowed to bring one book for the library. What book would you bring. Some ground rules and suggestions. You can only take one volume. If the book isn't published in one volume you can't take the whole thing. Don't pick a book that somebody else is taking. That would be a waste. We can all share the books in the library. I'll go first. I'm going to pick something that I'm pretty sure no one else will take if I don't. The Cream of the Jest by James Branch Cabell. I bet you thought I'd take Jurgen didn't you?

Origin of the Species. Need some Darwin.

Only one book? Thats like having "The last Supper" with only 12 apostles, one Jesus and no kangaroos. Bugger that. The closest thing I can think of without breaking the rules would be to bring along a set of "Great Books of the Western World," but that is a pretty piss poor solution too.

See, imy answer to this is going to be drastically different than my answer to "what book would you have on a desert island?" I think I would have to go for cultural importance over my own tastes.

Hopefully, I wouldn't be the only person with these archival tendencies, because I don't think there is one volume of all human knowledge (well, other than the Hitchhiker's Guide ;-) We would need a good cross-section of science, litterature, philosophy, and also I'd hope for a number of coffee-table books of photographs.

Myself, I would probably bring the New York Public Library Desk Reference that I found a couple of weeks ago. Lots of trivia, charts, numbers, facts, etc.

The closest runner-up I would have would be some Norton Anthologies. Definitly the World Lit book (the first volume if I had to choose) and the Modern Poetry anthology too.

I only own one book so I would bring it..."the machinests hand book" it could actually be very handy

That is breaking the rules, You are only allowed one volume.

On the bright side, there are over 5000 people on FHDC so that means over 5,000 books in the library.

If there was destroying the world, I'd bring the Bible. If it was just Fr�heads taking a space cruise, I may have thought of something else simply for the fact that I'm a religious person and end of world is Jesus stuff, you know? ;o) And if not me, who? (Unless someone else wants to bring the Bible... then I'll go with Theif of Souls by Neal Shusterman.)

Actually, is there a rule where you can't memorize your favourite books for later putting down on paper � la Farenheight 451?

geek.




:-)

Idle thoughts of and Idle Fellow

nuff said, beotches

Only one book? My first instinct is to take Stephen King's The Eyes of the Dragon -- it's my travel book. Been reread on most long trips I haven't driven.

But if I bring that, I feel like I'm somehow failing an obligation to the community at large. Just because I can reread the book with no turnaround time after finishing doesn't mean it would keep anyone else amused.

My next thought is to grab an RPG corebook -- there is a smattering of gamers, after all. But with only one book to choose... well, it'd be just as easy for us to collectively agree on remembered rule sets.

So I'm just about stumped.

And then I think of the perfect answer: My unabridged dictionary. It's even an old unabridged dictionary, which makes it that much more interesting.

Should someone else have a better, more interesting dictionary they'd want to bring, there's always Carla Emery's Old Fashioned Recipe Book. It's old fashioned in that it tells everything from how to doctor with honey, to how to raise your veggies, to how to skin a rabbit, and tell when the wood-fire oven is ready to roast in. If not useful, it's at least really interesting.

eeee, jerome k. jerome! *awards many careypoints*
i still don't know what book i'd take...i'll have to get back to y'all on this one.

*blink*
Ok, I know I'm a lit-geek and all, but I honestly can't even wrap my mind around only owning one book...
(not that there's nessisarly anything wrong about that, but it baffles my mind ;-)

bring one of those E-book things that stores like 100 books?

I just read that for the first time.. or rather, had it read to me... and as someone who doesn't like Stephen King's writing at ALL, I LOVED THAT BOOK! :)

I will decide between my copies of Brave New World and 1984. If anyone wants to bring a copy of one or the other, let me know and it will make my decision much easier.

Anyone who knows me (which really isn't that many people on here, as far as I know, but oh well) knows that I'd feel obligated to bring an Oz book, but I'm not sure which one.� Probably either The Land of Oz or The Patchwork Girl of Oz.

i'd bring some Mary Oliver poetry. Or some Billy Collins. cause they rock.

Interesting choices, the two greatest dystopian novels. I read them at just about the same time, loved them both.

Guess which character I identified with and my friends identified with me?

Yep, Bernard. I'm him and Piggy from Lord of the Flies.

The book of Bajesus. That's the most important book ever.� It's got a story about Bajesus and the 7 discreples. What are discreples?? I have no idea, but my possible future younger�stepbrother asked me the other day if I knew anything about Jesus and the 7 discreples.� I think he had gotten the bible and Snow White mixed up, but that's cool as they are both full of bs anyhow.� : )� So.. Seriously, more seriously, I'd probably go with a dictionary/thesaurus combo.� I can read those for hours.

The Oz books rock. All but the Wonderful Wizard are unjustly neglected.

lord of the riiiiiiiiiings! *ducks*

dude. i mean, if christopher lee can read it once a year and never get bored of it, then so can we. (and plus, it's like 3 books in one. i'm not cheating, nooooooo.) :)

hmmmm... If the world were ending them I would want us to have books of collected thoughts on various subjects, particularly philosophy, math, science. As much of�the knowledge that humans have acquired so far so we don't have to "reinvent the wheel".

I'm really not sure what I would want to bring if I limit my selection to stuff I'd actually want to read.

I don't suppose we should bring books on anything we already are proficent at, we can write those books on the long journey to whereever we are going.

Funny, I can't read the whole thing once without getting bored of it ;-)
But then I love the movies *shrug*

Hey I was betting on someone else taking it. I used to read it about 4 times a year, now I'm down to once every other year or so.

Silly me misread the opening post. OK then: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume. Antony Flew edited its posthumous publication of 1777. He also modernised spelling and punctuation and embodied the author's footnotes in the text. Other editors go a bit over the top with their modernisations and / or leave the notes out altogether.

liner notes from fruvous albums!

Ah, see, I was just about to say "Okay, I guess I'll be the Jew and bring the JPS Tanakh." Just so you know, that is the five books of Moses, the writings of The Prophets, and the collection other Writings that make up the Jewish Bible. I too am going with cultural significance in a sense... though it is also very entertaining reading and gives one something to do... as in interpretation and argument.�Also, the JPS translation is a very good one, and on top of that, it, of course,�includes the original Hebrew.

Oh, and just so you don't jump in my ass about it, I'm not bringing it as a moral guideline for us to live by, don't worry.

Those aren't books. You can just stuff those in your pants.

Ahhh, that's what Jian does.

*runs*

you'll tap a 1/4-20 hole in the spaceship and kill us all!

No canadian spelling unless you live north of the 49th parallel.

mine doesn't... include the Hebrew that is. Very entertaining though.

JPS publishes an English Tanakh and an English/Hebrew.

first instinct was for "V" by Thomas Pynchon or "House of leaves" by Mark z Danielewski but both those books spark of paranoia attacks for me so good but not in confined spaces of a spaceship,� I might kinda freak everyone out.� SO� would bring Anne of Green Gables because it is like a comfort blanket to me or alternatively the one in the same series where she agrees to marry Gilbert.� I used to read them at 3am after a panic attack and be able to calm down and go to sleep fine.�� I think comfort books are important now the religious ones are getting covered.

Atlas Shrugged.

Although it is very hard to choose just ONE book. There are so many good ones.

coz i loved that book.

and when i was done with it, i missed it.

yah.

No no I have read the book. I know not to do that.

alan mendelsohn. no, wait, harriet the spy. no, wait, i capture the castle. no, wait, possession. no, wait, microserfs. no, wait, ladder of years. no, wait, pride and prejudice. no, wait...

Bring Jurgen, you'll finally get a chance to read it.

if i'm gonna be stuck with only one book for the rest of my life, it sure as hell won't be jurgen. :)

yah...um....SOME fool will prolly bring 'jurgen'{not} and we'll just read it then.

but. will we stillbe able to find our 'post jurgen' accompanying gordonletters then??? ;)

Same here.
Heh.
The movies are fun though.

YAY BILLY COLLINS! let's just hope he comes out with a "complete works" before the spaceship has to take off....

Can I count the leatherbound complete one book version of the hitchhikers series as one book?

Of course, it is one volume, just like the one volume LOTR.

I think the actual Hitchhikers guide will come with the spaceship.

The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All by Alan Gurganus.�

The general idea:

a 99-year-old woman in the 1980's tells her story about living with man she married at age 15 - he was 40years or so older than her, and had been about 14 when he fought in the war.�

I'm pretty sure it's fiction inspired by actual events (that probably happened to several people).� The Civil War facts are certainly convincing.

I chose it b/c I'm re-reading it now, and I wouldn't want to leave Earth without finishing it.

YAY CAREYPOINTS!!! dude. this is the fist time I've recieved points from anyone. so I can keep track.... how many do I have now?

hmm...it's been a while since i've given out points. way back in the day, i was threatening point winners with prizes, including the carey indie tape. heeee. let's say, uh, 50?

50 sounds kewl. how many points to I need to get some indiejoy? *loves indie musacks*

Wait, if the real Hitchhikers guide is on the ship, than there go most of my suggestions.

I guess it's Norton stuff for me. Yay!

[wow...I really need to get back to school. Someone register me for some fall classes...now... ;-)

Jian.� Oh wait...you said a book.

I'd have to go with the Norton Anthology of Western Music volume 1.� Forget the textbook, the scores are more important.� I would hope someone else would bring volume 2 or we'd lose everything after the baroque period.

My boyfriend's Canadian. He yells at me when I spell things the "American" way.

Wow, you have a mean boyfriend. :(

*hugs*

Tell him he lives in North America and he needs to learn to spell. :o)

I second that!� Or third it!� Or whatever ordinal-type thingy we're on.

I'm not coming if someone doesn't bring the entire Ender's Game and Dune serieseseses.

Ok, if the entire earth is going to be destroyed, then we will be the ancients of all future humanity. We need to have some specific historical reord. I propose that someone prints off every single page of FHDC (including all archived wall conversation) and binds it (I know where we could get that done too...) While I don't imagine that we would use it, it would be important for future generations.

Ok, did I just reach a new level of geek there?

And thus ensuring that the tribe of Fr� be able to hand down to it's descendants the zaniness that was the old way, before the exodus?� So they have something more than oral history when they establish themselves... well, where ever it is they end up?

Arg.� Reading too much random incomplete fiction.� Brain melting.

Don't mind me.

...will bring her complete works of Shakespeare.

Drat... now I have to come up with another book.

After some thought, I'll bring The Second Thought of an Idle Fellow.� I haven't read it, but it seems like a good idea to have a companion volume.� Most of my favorite books for pleasure reading are parts of trilogies (with no single volume publications... yet).� Runners up include: Without Remorse (Tom Clancy) and 20,000 Things to be Happy About (I'll have to look up the author.� It's a list of little things everyone take for granted.).

With 5000 Fruheads on board, I think FHDC would survive as is on the ship (although there would be some downtime to relocate the server).� I'd probably end up with a year old profile again. :-)

Now where do we put all the terminals?

Actually, he just teases me. But then again, his spelling is way off in general, so I tease him back. It's just evil like that. :oD

So far the Origin of Species is the only science book anyone is taken. Am I going to have to leave behind my beloved Cabell? Of course I don't know what science book I'd bring. Newton's Principia Mathimatica is the most important one ever written but it is in Latin, and perversely eschews all use of calculus, that makes it really hard to follow. Perhaps I can find a one volume edition of the Feynman Lectures, the greatest physics text ever.

Well, if I had more choices I'd bring all of my quantum mechanics books, but gosh darnit I don't now, do I?

One would hope that once we were all on a spaceship together we'd actually talk face to face. :)

science is hard. let's go shopping.

in that case, couldn't we stuff bunches of small paperback in our pants?

Volume III of the Feynman lectures is Quantum Mechanics, so if I can get it in one volume you'd have some.

I could bring Weinberg's Gravitation and Spacetime.book. The first chapter is called "Is middle earth flat?" So we'd have Physics and Tolkien content under one cover.

*blink*

Face to face? What's that?

A Siouxsie and the Banshees song. Duh. :)

mmm... only poetry. Small books of oetry travel in the pants. And liner notes, which fall into the same category.

And no anthologies or complete works in the pants. Those have to go as your main contribution.

Dude what if we have cargo pants with many many large pockets?

i say we cahnge the rules to,"all the books/liner notes you can cram in your pants, plus 1

I would take any Terry Pratchett book. That guy is amazing.
Either that or my "Monty Python's Flying Circus; Just the Words" script books. But then again, that's two volumes...

I'll bring the second volume!

also, YAY for Terry Prattchet!

Yeah, but I don't trust computer programs (and websites) to last for a few thousand years. That's why we need an archival record for all of the future fr�onauts.

I mean, I would hope that we would land some day and begin a new human homeworld...

Are we sure this is�the *real* spaceship and not the one that's programmed�to crash into the sun? (a la Simpsons)

Yes it is a real spaceship, I even made sure to take out insurance.