Spam on books

Of all the topics I'd rather be writing about, Andy has saddled me with the task of responding to some questions about books. Don't get me wrong, I love books. But we are leaving for a week's vacation in Hong Kong tomorrow morning, and I'm not even packed yet! So this will be quick:

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

Any volume in the Collected Works of Lenin, because then I wouldn't feel bad about burning - no one would be reading me nowadays anyway.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Not on any fictional character from a book, unless you count books that were made into movies.

The last book you bought is:

Don Quixote in Russian - the Academia publishing house edition from 1932 in 2 volumes - which I bought not to read but because I collect books published by Academia and could not resist buying this one when I saw it. 2000 rubles (about $70) for the 2-volume set with dust jackets intact - I just saw a similar set selling on-line for $450. That is why I prefer to shop at the Bukinist store at 53 Ostozhenka.

What are you currently reading?

I finished Sixpence House by Paul Collins a couple of weeks ago; since then I've been reading relatively recent issues of the New Yorker magazine thoughtfully mailed to me by my mother. I'm optimistically planning to try to tackle Techenie Vremeni (The Flow of Time), a collection of prose by Andrei Platonov, on the plane tomorrow, but I can't honestly say I'm reading it yet.

Five books you would take to a desert island.

1) The Bible (is a link really necessary?) - I've always said I want to read it someday.
2) Any collection of Pushkin's works (in one volume, of course) that included Eugene Onegin and the Tales of Belkin, preferably also some other poetry and short prose - plenty of time on the island to memorize Evgenii Onegin; for the time being all I've got down by rote is the first stanza and the "pedal digression."
3) A family photoalbum.
4) The Norton Anthology of American Literature (Shorter Edition) - from Bradford's Plymouth Plantation to Fitzgerald & Hemingway (though not enough of the latter two), this book has it all. Plus, at 2800 pages, in a pinch it would provide a good supply of paper.
5) A blank journal - this isn't a way of getting around picking a 5th book, it's something I would definitely want to have (unless the island had broadband and I could blog instead).

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

This is the most difficult question of all. 3 people and they all have to be bloggers, otherwise it's no fun, right?

1) Bram of U Fanni Kaplan, because I think I know what some of his picks will be, and I want to see how predictable he is;
2) Veronica of Neeka's Backlog; and
3) Chris of Cyber-generation.

I was going to fob this off on Nathan of Registan.net, but he already did it.

I'm dumping this on Veronica and Chris because they seem like the sort of people who will enjoy the challenge and won't be too irritated - but if they are irritated by this, I encourage them to just blow it off. After all, there's no specific chain-letter-type threat. Now I need to go about emailing my victims...