The Burning House Book List

Yesterday, I asked readers to respond to one very basic, maddeningly difficult question:

 If your house was burning, what book would you take with you?

1. Neither Wolf Nor Dog, by Kent Nerburn

2. The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald and J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye

3. Standing Still and Walking, by Frank O'Hara. It took me forever to get a copy. That or my journal. Everything else is replaceable.

4. Moby-Dick and Blood Meridian

5. Three Day Road, by Joseph Boyden and Homestead, by Rosina Lippi

6. Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens and Take a Girl Like You, by Kingsley Amis. Oh, I suppose I should take my vellum, signed copy of John Galsworthy's A Modern Comedy.

7. American Red Cross Northern Minnesota Region - We have a revised question: what book would you put in your emergency kit? You could read it by candlelight as the storm passes overhead or power is being restored or you need to take flight for emergency shelter with friends. For sure, if your house were on fire, we'd want you to run like crazy out of the burning building!

8. Common Good Books - Touche, American Red Cross. Tou-che. Now back to the question at hand.

9. Anne of Green Gables

10. My original copies of the three Lord of the Rings books

11. The short stories of Flannery O'Connor.

12. I'd grab my Kindle.

13. I'd take my Quadrupeds of North America, signed by John Bachman. (No, it is not for sale)

14. Desert Solitaire

15. Once There Were Castles, by Larry Millet

16. That is a very mean question.

17.  My red leather Bardeker's of Italy from 1909. It's beautiful and has tons of stuff to read in it and maps to study.

18. My cloth-bound copy of Gone With the Wind which I read over a dozen times as a teenager and which my father gifted me when I got a home of my own. 2. My worn Babar the Elephant book I received as a child.

19. Shepherd of the Hills, by Harold Bell Wright, and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

20. Isn't a book! But a reminder that it's not too late to add you're most prized bound possession to the list on our facebook page.