Ironically, I am on my way to a desert island today for two weeks! Well, okay, maybe more of a tropical island, but you get the idea.

In England, there’s a program called Desert Island Disks on the radio. Every week, a celebrity or cultural figure is interviewed, and asked for a playlist of albums they would take to a desert island. Then, at the end of the program, they’re asked which book they would take after The King James Bible and The Collected Works of Shakespeare. It’s a great program.

Anyway, here are my book choices, after the Bible and Shakespeare, which, of course, you’d have to have:

1.The Diary of Sameul Pepys. It’s long, it will keep you entertained.

2. Middlemarch. The perfectly balanced novel.

3. My book (just kidding)

4. The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany–please don’t make me choose

5. How To Cook Everything. Because if you’re on a desert island, chances are you’re going to need this book.

6. A book of survival skills. I’d want to know how to cut down trees and build myself some stuff. Like a boat, maybe. Unless I had my husband along. Then I’d just give him this book while I whipped us up some grilled fish and coconut beer.

7. The Happy Book, written by my eldest daughter, age seven, and dedicated to me. I couldn’t be prouder.

8. All of the Greek myths, plus Oedipus the King and Antigone

9. Jane Eyre. Reader, she marries him.

10. Orlando, by Virginia Woolf. Who knew Woolf was so funny?

I hope you all are having good summers, whether on islands or no. Enjoy the last remnents of vacation and read something good!