Meme meme meme meme meme

Personally, I always thought memes were those little images of what percentage of a total dork you are:

My top result for the SelectSmart.com selector, Which Dragonlance Character Are You?, is Dalamar

...but Emily says that this is a meme, and wikipedia says that "tunes, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches" are memes. So I guess this qualifies as a "way of making a list of books."

A book that's changed my life? This one is easy: Europe on 84 Cents a Day. Before I read this, I had never been to Europe and had never hitchhiked. Now I've done both of those a lot. (honorable mention to Clan of the Cave Bear for possibly being the start of my interest in linguistics.)

A book I have read more than once is Clan of the Cave Bear, approximately 20x in English and once in Spanish. Also in this category is The Girl Who Owned a City, My Side of the Mountain, Jurassic Park, Interview With a Vampire, Baby Island (don't ask), and in fact almost everything I read before age 18. I used to reread before I discovered that there are soooo many books in the world.

On a desert island, I'd want Clan of the Cave Bear for survival tips- and it's really long too! Or if I had to pick something else, a current favorite is The Pillars of the Earth. Cathedrals have little to do with desert islands, but it's long and awesome enough to qualify.

A book that made me laugh? Notes from a Small Island. One cannot read Bill Bryson without ROFLOAO.

A book that made me cry is The Giving Tree. Stuff about aging and time passing always gets to me. For adult books, The Lovely Bones would probably top the list.

Three books that are overrated? Anything by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Courage To Teach, and Who Moved My Cheese (or similar books that turn a short article into a hardcover by using big fonts and pictures.)

What I wish had not been written... I have to say this is somewhat redundant with "overrated," but I really wish all that crap about multiple intelligences hadn't been written. "No, really, you're not stupid, you just have gym class intelligence."

One book I am currently reading is Breakfast of Champions, halfheartedly. I've had a yellowed copy sitting around ever since I heard it was the "naughty" book on the book report books list.

What I've been meaning to read: all that high-falutin' stuff on Emily's post... and more fiction; I'm falling into the grad school too-much-reading-to-do-pleasure-reading trap.

I'm adding a question to the meme: what's the last book you read that you would recommend? Timeline, by Michael Crichton. Great story, and the transcription errors... well, I don't want to give anything away!