lb_lee: A colored pencil drawing of Raige's freckled hand holding a hot pink paperback entitled the Princess and Her Monster (book)
lb_lee ([personal profile] lb_lee) wrote2025-01-22 06:02 pm

LB’s Books For A Desert Island

With much discussion and friendly debate, we LB alters have come to consensus on a matter of great import: what books we would take with us to a desert island of exile. We could never choose just one, so we narrowed it down to four: text fiction, text nonfiction, comics fiction, and... uh... non-text-focused nonfiction.

PROSE FICTION: Spider Robinson’s “Callahan and Company” or “Callahan Chronicals” (they’re basically the same three-book omnibus). Many short stories, ranging in length from five to fifty pages and mood from comedy to heartwrenching, with a plural hive mind climax as Robinson is wont to do. Easiest choice of the four; it’s the book we have loved for longest.

PROSE NONFIC: Marie Cartier’s “Baby, You Are My Religion: Women, Gay Bars, and Theology Before Stonewall.” Quotes all Mori’s fav lesbian writers, equal parts queer history and liberatory theology. A difficult choice!

COMICS FIC: Kelly Turnbull’s “Pipeburn Cafe,” but a mythological paper omnibus that includes the two color chapters on slipshine.net, the black and white chapter just released, and the roughly fifty pages worth of art and doodle comics gleaned off three different social media sites over the course of roughly eight years. Pipeburn has everything: gay brain-damaged Cree cyborgs, humor, horror, and porn, it makes us laugh, it makes us sweat, and you should always go into exile with at least one porno.

NONTEXT NONFIC: Eadweard Muybridge, either “Animals in Motion” or “The Human Body In Motion.” Best all-around ref book we own.

With the exception of Robinson, none of the books are a “favorite,” exactly, of anyone here. What they are: all-around crowdpleasers. All break down into sections, allowing you to focus on one little bit, or devour long chunks instead. All are versatile in mood, tone, and subject matter. Happy, sad, thoughtful, horny? Covered!

Thus ends the most important debate of our age.
erinptah: (Default)

[personal profile] erinptah 2025-01-23 06:05 am (UTC)(link)
Good choices!

And fistbump, because I feel like the "what would you take to a desert island" question is supposed to just be a quirkier way of asking "what's your favorite," but I also get caught up in the logistics of the whole Desert Island part.

(My "what albums would you take" answer is to fill every slot with Enya, not because she's my favorite musician, but because if I have to listen to the same thing on loop until I get rescued, her music is the stuff I'm least likely to get horribly sick of.)
gingicat: deep purple lilacs, some buds, some open (Default)

[personal profile] gingicat 2025-01-23 11:57 am (UTC)(link)
What books would you take if you knew you were guaranteed to come back in three months?
minoanmiss: (Minoan Woman by Ileliberte)

[personal profile] minoanmiss 2025-01-23 01:51 pm (UTC)(link)

I like your list!

One of the highlights of my congoing experience was getting to hug Spider Robinson. NGL it was nice to hug someone who I knew enjoyed it (but not laciviously), and I got to thank him for his line about small men and large women.

numb3r_5ev3n: Dragon pendant I got at a renfaire. (Default)

[personal profile] numb3r_5ev3n 2025-01-27 04:37 am (UTC)(link)
Fiction: Count Zero by William Gibson or The Vanishing Tower by Michael Moorcock
Nonfiction: Modern Magick: 12 Lessons In The High Magickal Arts by Donald Michael Kraig
Comics fic: I would have said Sandman, The Doll's House, before this month- but uuuughghhhhhhh. Maybe an Invisibles omnibus (by Grant Morrison and others) if it exists.
Nontext nonfic: ????