Harvard gal Adrienne Aldredge had 10 questions for yours truly about my reading history. They seemed a little forward but “humor me,” she said, so here you go:

1. One book that changed your life?

Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book, of course.

2. One book that you have read more than once?

I try to read Joel Marcus’s Jesus and the Holocaust every Good Friday.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?

For a longer reading project, I think I’d like a collection of Geoffrey Household novels.

4. One book that made you cry?

I’m a guy.

5. One book that made you laugh?

Richard Dooling’s Brainstorm. Especially Judge Stang.

6. One book you wish had been written?

In Defense of Hypocrisy. Oh wait, I wrote that. I hope that long-time American Spectator editor Wlady Pleszszynski one day writes a no-holds-barred autobiography. I doubt I’d come out unscathed but so what? It would be riveting reading.

7. One book you wish had never been written?

Tough one. I wish Whittaker Chambers never translated Bambi into English. The world could definitely have done without Dave Eggers’s novel They Shall Know Our Velocity.

8. One book you are reading currently?

Anne Hendershott’s The Politics of Abortion, for a review. For a sociologist, she sure can write.

9. One book you have been meaning to read?

Confessions of a Crap Artist, by Philip K. Dick. Because.

10. Optional tag: If the three non-missing pundits would like to give their answers, then I tag W. James Antle III, Joel Miller, and Doug Bandow.

UPDATE: The ‘Dredge wrote to say, “I know there’s some book that made you cry.”

From physical impact maybe.