I've been watching that pesky "stick" circle around blogland for a while. Finally it's my turn, thanks to Kevin. Okay then.

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451. Which book do you want to be?

I think some people have been misled by this question: in the novel, this doesn't mean a book to be burned but a book that a resistance member chooses to memorize and thus "become." So I'd probably choose the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass (the later editions are too long).

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Like Kevin, I too have had a thing for Death from the Sandman comics. Beatrice as embodied by Emma Thompson in Much Ado About Nothing. And two Lucas-heroines were crucial to my pubesence: the bikini-clad Leia of Return of the Jedi and the sassy, blue-eyed, probably alcoholic heroine of Raiders of the Lost Arc, Marion Ravenwood aka Karen Allen. Guess I'm too visual a guy to have a crush on purely literary women, unlike the hapless hero of Woody Allen's great short story, "The Kugelmass Episode."

The last book you bought is:

Peter Gizzi's Some Values of Landscape and Weather.

The last book you read is:

Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day.

What are you currently reading?

The twentieth anniversary issue of Verse, James R. Mellow's Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company, Steve Healey's Earthling (I'm reviewing it for Bridge), Steve Benson's Blue Book, Jed Rasula's This Compost: Ecological Imperatives in American Poetry, and the first edition Dungeon Master's Guide.

Five books you'd take with you to a deserted island:

I'm assuming that a copy of the Bible and a complete edition of Shakespeare are gimmes, here. The other books are chosen for voluminousness (lots of time to kill), rereadability (ditto), and the company they'd provide:

1) John Milton, Complete Poems and Major Prose.
2) J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings.
3) Complete works of Rilke in German.
3a) a German-English dictionary.
4) James Joyce, Ulysses.
5) Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu.
5a) a French-English dictionary.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 people) and why?

This stick dies with me, but y'all should feel free to answer it on your own blogs or webpages or church newsletters or whatever.