Poetry Forum

You've all heard the programme I'm sure - but if you were stranded on a desert island what 5 books, 3 albums and 1 luxury would you take with you?
Sharra
xx

Okay me first I guess...

Books

1. The Day of The Triffids - John Wyndham (My favorite book)
2. The oxford book of English Madrigals (There must be music!)
3. The Whitsun Weddings - Philip Larkin
4. The Tempest - William Shakespeare (I'm on a desert island right? So I guess...)
5. Alice In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (For fun!)

____

Albums

1. The Stars and The Sea - Boykillboy (My favorite album right now)
2. Transatlanticism - Deathcab for Cutie (Best mellow / sulky album ever!)
3. The Madding Crowd - Ninedays (Nostalgic and Personal meaning!)

(Nothing too profound here...but then I can only take three!! I really wanted Zelenka's requiem and some Schubert songs too but....)

____

Luxury
(Guess I can't say life raft, lol)

My friends! (I know it's cruel to wish them stranded along with me, but.... I'm a bad bad man!)

____

And that's my desert island list!

Great selection of books, PCFJ! You've got a bit of everything there.

I believe in the Radio 4 show everyone is allowed the Bible and Shakespeare as "freebies", so assuming this still holds, I'd take:

- Ulysses - all life is in it.
- a very old, calf-bound, illustrated complete edition of Byron - I got such a book for Christmas and am rather enchanted with it.
- the biggest available edition of Poems on the Underground - the best all-round selection of poetry ever made, I reckon.
- In Search of Lost Time, in the revised Scott-Moncrieff translation, six volumes by the Modern Library - I'm currently on book II and couldn't bear to give up now.
- Homer, in the original as well as the transalations by Fitzgerald and Fagles. I could devote my time to learning Ancient Gk from a line-by-line analysis. Much have I travelled in the realms of gold...

- Mahler's 4th symphony. The soprano part in the 4th movement would suffice for human voice.
- Beethoven's 6th.
- A mixtape of my own devising.

- Writing materials.

I love this question!

Books:

1. The Time Travellers Wife by Audrey Hiffenegger (I never get tired of it)

2. Angelas Ashes by Frank McCourt (remind myself that other people have a harder time!)

3. La Gloire de mon Pere by Marcel Pagnol (to practise my French)

4. Mort by Terry Pratchett (To make me laugh)

5. Beloved by Toni Morrison (I have a coursework assignment on the novel, might as well get some work done)


Music:

1. Love, The Beatles

2. The Sound of The Smiths

3. The "Amelie" soundtrack by Yann Tiersen

Luxury item:

A piano

Catch 22 Joseph Heller
The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoievsky
Bleak House Charles Dickens
The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
Tom Jones Henry Fielding

I guess my luxury item would be whatever is available to play the albums on, which would be:

Highway 61 Revisited Bob Dylan
Funeral Arcade Fire
Let's Make This Precious Dexy's Midnight Runners

But that's really not enough music!

I posted the question but am really struggling with answering it myself:

Books
Lord of the Rings (sentimental - I've read it sooo many times since I was very little)
Pride and Prejudice
Moby Dick (I studied it last year and never really got into it, but desperately wanted to be as enthusiastic as other people about it)
The Time Traveler's Wife
Staying Alive - Unreal poems for unreal times.

Albums
Pink Floyd - Wish you were here
Les Miserable sound track - for good singalong value
Harry Potter Order of the Phoenix audio book (is that cheating do you think?)

Luxury
If I'm allowed then I'd have a solar powered laptop with satellite internet link.
If not then I'd have a solar powered portable dvd player with the complete collection of Stargate DVDs. (sad eh? )

sharra
xx

Sharra, if you're having Stargate, could I have the extra two series of Firefly that never actually got made?
I've been thinking about this and I can't come up with a list at all. Too many choices.

Rosemary

Ros that sounds like a plan - and maybe we can work out some dvd exchange via seagull?

Books

Unaddressed Letters - Goes everywhere with me.
War and Peace - Maybe I'll finish it this time.
A book of survival techniques.
The largest collection of poetry I can find.
The Rosetta Stone - Maybe I'll have a crack at deciphering it in my spare time, and hopefully some one will come looking for it.

Albums

Pink Floyd - The Final Cut
The Guillemotes - Through The Windowpane
Henryk Górecki - Symphony No. 3

Luxury Item

Acoustic guitar.

(I'm sure a laptop with Internet connection is cheating, you wouldn't need to choose books and albums)

Ben - I think you're probably right about the net connect. The thought of only having 5 books tho - *shudder*
And not being able to talk to anyway!! Maybe I'd have to communicate with all of you guys by smoke signal or drums?
Sharra
x

Wouldn't that be really cool if the islands were close together so that we could hear eachother? We already have a piano and a guitar, tambourine anyone? Fiesta!

Raisin wrote:Wouldn't that be really cool if the islands were close together so that we could hear eachother? We already have a piano and a guitar, tambourine anyone? Fiesta!

No! I'd never finish reading Proust with you lot playing mariachi tunes day and night, never mind translating him into Ancient Greek!

Oh alright then, spoilsport

This little archipelago seems to be getting rather crowded! I like the idea of seagull post though. Ben, excuse my ignorance, whose Unaddressed Letters?

Lol, I would be surprised if you knew the book. Unaddressed letters by Sir Frank Swettenham http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Swettenham I found a copy tucked away in a book shop in Brighton many years ago and fell in love with the style of writing and the stories in it. I promise myself one day I'll get hold of a copy of his other book Malay Sketches. Both have been out of print for years.

1) The River Why?
2) My Family and Other Animals
3) The Shipping News
4) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
5) The Idiot's Guide to Building a Raft


1) Kelly Joe Phelps - Shine Eyed Mister Zen
2) Nick Drake - Pink Moon
3) Floater - Angels in the Flesh Devils in the Bone

*Gibson acoustic guitar

the wonderful flight to the mushroom planet
the black sheep
vanity fair
crime and punishment
a dummies guide to living guide to living on a desert island

albums

johnny cash anthology
the sound of a crowd at a football match
thats what call music 1(so I can own it)

luxury item - a parrot,african grey -of course

BOOKS:
Night Watch by Terry Pratchett (for the giggles)
The Magical Realism Trilogy by Louise de Bernieres (as a way to get more books if it had to be one magical realist book, I'd probably go for 100 Years of Solitude by Marquez)
The Complete Sandman by Neil Gaiman (the big hardbound collection, just marvellous stuff)
Collected Poems by T.S. Eliot (I'll miss Murder at the Cathedral though)
Either Collected Poems by C.K. Williams (I have this marvellous Bloodaxe edition) or the Penguin Book of English Verse (for the variety)

Herge, Iain M. Banks (in the M. mode) and Ellis Peters missed out, as did philosophy and theology in general, and The Constant Gardener by Le Carre.

ALBUMS:
Coheed and Cambria, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth
William Shatner, Has Been (no, really. I'm deadly serious)
either Hellogoodbye, Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs! or Nizlopi, Half These Songs Are About You

With Mitch Benn, Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Kate Nash missing out...

LUXURY:
Writing materials, as I forget if they're included in the automatic choices or not...if they are, I'd go for the solar-powered DVD player with Firefly and Serenity.

On my desert island instead of taking records/CDs you have to take 8 books, 1 record/CD, and 2 luxuries. Here's mine:

The World of Jeeves. (Jeeves and Wooster anthology.) PG Wodehouse.
The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.
The Millenium Trilogy. (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.) Stieg Larsson. (This is my current Read.)
A Merton Reader: Various writings of Thomas Merton.
Seven Pillars of Wisdom. TE Lawrence.
'All I Ever Wrote' - The Complete Works. Ronnie Barker.

My record/CD: The Planet Suite of Holst.

Luxuries: A box of pencils and stacks of paper.

On the original programme you took the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible.

Well I would take a modern translation of the Bible, and instead of Shakespeare I would take 'The Definitive Visual Guide to Art,' it is a book with over 600 pages of paintings.

Well that is my selection, I wonder if that reveals anything about me.
What would other forum members take, give it a go I found it fun trying to limit my selection to such a small number, I could of named hundreds of books. Go on give it a go.

Ok, sticking strictly to the brief and taking only 5 single volumes and 5 single discs...

Books

Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie
Wildwood by Roger Deakin
The Fellowship of the Ring by Tolkien
The Alchemist by Coelho
City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende

CDs

Zooropa - U2
In Sides - Orbital
Di Filetta e Di Amore - Patrizia Gattaceca

Luxury Item

A big box of Lego

Books
1. Little Dorrit- Charles Dickens
2. Paradise Lost- John Milton
3. The History Boys- Alan Bennett
4. Wolf Hall- Hilary Mantel
5. Harry Potter 1-7 (in one volume so they all count as one!)

Albums
1. Jeff Buckley- Grace
2. Antony and the Johnsons- I Am A Bird Now
3. MGMT- Oracular Spectacular

Luxury
Radiohead with their instruments so they can perform for me whenever I like.
Because I didn't want to pick one of their albums

I would take offense. Then I would curse every theistic god I could think of. Bastards.