Two Books on a Desert Island...

[Philip Overby]

Presume you have been stranded on a desert island, a la "Lost" or "Gilligan's Island." If you could bring one book to read for the rest of your days, what would it be? You can only have one book, meaning you can't have a series.

On the flip side, you have discovered a solar-polared laptop, meaning you can write all day forever until you die if you so choose. The only hope you have of someone reading this book is if they find your body 100 years later. What kind of book would you write?

Book to Read: One of the Choose Your Own Adventure books (at least then I can read different stories over and over)

Book to Write: An epic, never-ending fantasy saga about 100 generations of dragon slayers that are attempting to kill every last dragon in the world. The problem is the world is infested with them and there are more dragons than anything else (some are big and some are small) like cockroaches.

That should keep me busy.

 

[Androxine Vortex]

Book to Read: Holy Bible (Or the Omnibus collection of every book ever written comprised into one book)

Book to Write: Me kind of analyzing my life, thoughts, philosophy, and kind of rambling on until I die. That way the story will never die until I do, that should keep me busy.

Man I should really go find food, but I have to finish this if I ever want to get published! lol

 

[ThinkerX]

Book to Read: Something I had NOT read before. Maybe the collected works of Shakesphere or the Rig Vedas. Doesn't matter which.

Book to Write: I have read of situations where people in utter long term isolation maintained their sanity by creating highly detailed fictional worlds. So that is what I'd do: create a highly detailed fantasy world and write a series of long interlinked stories set in it...

...dang drat it...ain't that what I'm doing now?

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Book to read: Either The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, Diaspora by Greg Egan, or The Lord of the Rings.

Book to write: I dunno. Fan fiction sequel to Cast Away, since I'm stuck on a desert island.

 

[Reaver]

I'd read ANY book on how to get off a desert island. When I made it back to civilization, I'd write a book on how to get off a desert island.

 

[Penpilot]

Rifting off Reaver's comments.

TO Read: I'd read "1001 ways to make a ocean liner from bamboo, sand, and rocks."

TO Write: "1-million reasons I hate, seafood, coconuts, banana's, and sand."

Seriously though.

To Read: Anything book that's really long and really good.

To Write: Everything and anything, from Epic fantasy, to even romance. With all that time, got to have variety.

 

[Steerpike]

I think Gilligan's Island demonstrated that despite the existence of materials, mechanical genius, and outside intervention, it is in fact impossible to get off a desert island.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

I think Gilligan's Island demonstrated that despite the existence of materials, mechanical genius, and outside intervention, it is in fact impossible to get off a desert island.

I think Gilligan's Island was actually just a prequel to Lost.

 

[Ravana]

I think Lost was a pointless sequel to Gilligan's Island.

To read: the Mahabharata. Unabridged. That'll keep me for a while—there are very few books in the world that come in just a bit shy of two million words—and unlike most of the other "long" books out there, it's one I've always wanted to read. (I've read a couple abridged versions already.) In a bilingual version with the Sanskrit in both transliteration and devanagari; that way, I can pick up all the rest of the stuff my one Sanskrit course didn't have the opportunity to cover at the same time.

To write: an intricate, ever-evolving, massively-multiple-PoV saga about humanity's spread outward to the stars, with a focus on examining the question of what it means to be "human" in contexts where the definition constantly requires updating, beginning with its first off-world moonbase and ending… well, since it's a story I'd rather never see end, I'm not going to write one to it.

 

[Caged Maiden]

To read: M.Y.T.H. Inc. in Action by Robert Asprin. It is hilarious, and by far the funniest book I've read (several times). I think about then, I'd be needing a good laugh.

To write: Well, I like a bit of fantasy and a bit of romance. I can see it starting with a few fantasy novels set in really detailed worlds, but quickly moving to romance as boredom and loneliness set in...

 

[ThinkerX]

I think Lost was a pointless sequel to Gilligan's Island

At the risk of threadjack, I gotta disagree. 'Lost' was among the very, very few shows which actually held my interest the past decade. It was original and well done.

To read: the Mahabharata. Unabridged. That'll keep me for a while—there are very few books in the world that come in just a bit shy of two million words—and unlike most of the other "long" books out there, it's one I've always wanted to read.

This one would work for me. Besides being something I'd not read, I'd be looking for something very long and complex, as well as high quality (which was why Shakesphere made the list).

 

[Ravana]

It's great–even in the one-volume, (massively) abridged versions that can easily be found. The length of the full version is largely due to the fact that just about every time something happens, one of the characters tells a story he knows that relates to it, so it ends up being a compendium of the majority of Hindu myth and folklore. That also means you aren't going to be missing much, if any, of the main story if you read a shorter version, though… so don't wait until you get stuck on the island before seeking it out.