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Gilligan’s Library….

The Source

Gilligan’s Library…. The game is simple…a deserted island, a single book, and you. We sent the question around to Source-area readers and here’s a smattering of what they’d take with them. (Many cheated and named more than one book, but I show leniency to all castaways.) Kristin Van Aken Jamison: Don Quixote. “I’ve started to read it about five times.” She says she inspired her brother Ryan to read the classics after she took Dr. Kerbaugh’s IC Masterpieces in Literature class. Still trying to get through the tale of the Spanish knight, she says “It has become a running joke in our family now: Ryan regularly asks me what book I am reading and I reply, ‘Don Quixote, of course!’” Jan Terry: Along the River Road. Set in Jacksonville, Franklin, and Springfield, this sequel novel by LLCC adjunct Isaac Morris recently came out in Kindle. “The other,” says Jan, “would be a King James version of the Bible. It’s the only book I’ve read that I understand differently every time I read it.” Cindy Thomas: The Shack, by Paul Young. Jess Spradlin would pack a copy of Dr. Snow by Carol Saline. Newly married Tim Chipman picks Travelling Mercies by Anne Lamott, “an irreverently revert book of faith lived out in contemporary times. …funny, witty, and written by a Presbyterian.” Mayor Andy Ezard is perhaps looking above and beyond the troubles of floods, water outages, and tight budgets as he chooses Heaven is for Real, by Todd Burpo. Being a fire chief puts you in a practical mood as Rick Kluge makes the highly sensible choice of How to Get Off a Desert Island for Dummies. Rick doesn’t list an author. I think I know why. Mary Gray confirms that there must indeed be a Survival for Dummies manual since she too would be packing the guide in her knapsack. She says, “I was in Girl Scouts and a farm girl but didn’t learn much about survival.

Lincoln Land’s Maryjane Million resisted the urge to send an entire list, but finally landed on My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult, adding, “We are our sister’s and brother’s keeper whether we like it or not.” Janet Chipman says that the obvious choice is the Bible “..because it’s filled with life..truth, adventure, mystery, poetry, assurance.” She adds, “If something’s real to you then it never grows old.” Her fiction choice was Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. In fact, in her response she was able to quote entire passages by heart. Dr. Susan Weller, DDS: Forensic Art by Karen Taylor. Susan admires “her remarkable ability to sketch likenesses from verbal descriptions and reconstructs faces.” A less macabre choice for Weller is Hawaii by James Michener. WRMS Morning DJ Randy West: The Pacific War 1941-45 by John Costello. He adds, “As long as I knew I was going to be rescued anytime soon.” Local artist Steven Varble opts for Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. He says, “I have a copy of the book that belonged to my great aunt…..I’ve been reading it for over 10 years and still haven’t made it to the end. Being on a desert island would give me plenty of time to get it done. Now a DESSERT island would be even better!” Ann Prather of Virginia: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. “It is one of the few books I have re-read.” Gary Scott, station manager of WLDS/WEAI says he’d pick The SAS Survival Handbook by John Wiseman, but if he had to stay on the island he’d choose J.R.R. Tolkien’s Hobbit and Lord of the Rings Trilogy. He adds, “For contemplation purposes, the Bible.” Diana Olinger lists The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini as her first choice. “This book gave me an insight into a country I know very little about …Afghanistan….the characters seem so real you forget it’s a novel.” Ed Leach of D& E Technical makes the mysterious choice of The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. “Matching wits with the master of the whodunit!” Leach says the deserted island would give him time to pick up each of the carefully hidden clues, and it was the first book he loaded onto his IPhone. Passavant Hospital’s Kevin Eckhoff has a signed copy of Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock by Sammy Hagar. Kevin notes, “A desert island would be the perfect opportunity to read the story of one of rock-n-roll’s coolest stars.” Attorney Eddie Carpenter says that his first inclination is to list The Bible, but he says, “It is hardly fair to pit a God-inspired against merely man-inspired books,” so he chooses Thoreau’s Walden, hoping that the words of the New England writer will help him “adjust to the environs and the slow pace of life.” Diane Leach says “I just love a good “Good vs. Evil” story!” so she opt for the Bible, adding that Stephen King’s The Stand is one of her all-time favorites. “He’s a master storyteller of the first order, and this tale is one of which I never tire.” Stephen King is also a favorite of Sherry Hopkins. Her favorite is The Dome. “It’s an engrossing book that reminds me of my own town and makes me damn happy to be on a deserted island.” She’d also settle for The Boy Scout Survival Guide. Source publisher Marcy Patterson said, “The Bible…I have always wanted to read the entire thing,” adding that she’d also like to take a book by Richard North Patterson. Stephanie Smith Wilke claims she’d need a book that’s worth multiple readings, makes her think, have parts worth memorizing, helps her grow old alone on the island, makes her a better person, teaches her priorities…exciting, sad, happy…and that the only book to fulfill all that would be a good translation of the Bible. She also says, “I’ll put Sacajawea on that list because I want to read it again.” Marsha Nelson of the JACC assumes that the deserted island would come with a Gideon Bible included, so she picks Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Joy Becker hopes she’s back from the island in time to give her paper at her Wednesday classes, and opts for Charlie Chan, the Untold Story by Yunte Huang. Her daughter Kristan would take Shel Silverstein’s classic, Where the Sidewalk Ends. Her husband Bobby Hoffman would rather be stranded with a DVD player and the movie Hoosiers, although he’d settle for Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken. Stephanie Richardson must settle for a tie between the SAS Handbook: How to Survive in the Wild in any Climate, at Land or Sea, and The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency. She favors the second choice since it includes a cookbook. Local musician/teacher/magician Jeremy Bartunek says he’d eschew bringing a novel since there’s a limit to how many times he could read it. He opts instead for J.S. Bach’s Der Kunst Der Fuge (Art of the Fuge) so he could study it in his head and by the time he was rescued he’d write his own book on baroque music, then others could take his new book to their own deserted island. JHS teacher and theatre director Rich McCoy says he’s take The Oxford English Dictionary. He says, “It’s fascinating reading, plus it contains all the other books, just scrambled.” Realtor Bob Chipman would turn to Alexander Dumas and all 1200 pages of his Count of Monte Cristo. Bob adds that he enjoys the book so much that he might forego rescue from the island. Gary Hadden gladly notes that instead of reading he’d write a book on the joys of being able to bring his children to work with him every day. He says, “I really can’t call it work since we accomplish so much in a day!” Costumer Janet Long says she’d like to read the entire LaHaye and Jenkins Left Behind series at once, but if limited to a single volume she’d take Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life. Tina Vernon fudged a bit and picked both a fiction and non-fiction book for her stay on the Island. Her fiction choice is The Grand Sophy, “…a Regency romance written by Georgette Heyer …a complex, funny book filled with wonderful characters,” and for non-fiction she’d pack James Hollis’s The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife or Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places. Routt instructor Amanda Fox points to These is My Words—The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901 as her choice island reading, book by Nancy E. Turner based upon her family’s oral history of her great-grandmother Sarah. She says, “I love Sarah’s spirit and the everyday details of this book. Linda Van Aken cheated unmercifully and named four books…What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Caldwell, Dickens’ Great Expectations, Stephen King’s The Longoliers, and Richard Peck’s A Long Way from Chicago. A voracious reader, Bob Large would pick tales of adventure for his island sojourn favoring two Jon Krakauer books, The Perfect Storm and Into Thin Air, the author’s account of scaling Mt. Everest. Sally Nurss, who as co-owners of Our Town Books should know a title or two, says, “In a dilemma of this kind, I think Creative Problem Solving by Scott Isaksen would be useful. The review promises that it is ‘perfect for any type of setting.’” Perhaps Debbie Pettit took the most constructive approach by saying, “I’m having difficulty narrowing it down to just one book, so I think I’ll take paper and pen and work on writing one myself.” I don’t remember seeing books on Gilligan’s Island, but the passengers of the Minnow had the Professor to rely upon. …and if that didn’t do the trick, gazing at MaryAnn would suit me just fine. I’ll trade my book for your binoculars.