Coyote Blog

One of the most common survey questions, and one that has become a staple of everything from Presidential elections to college interviews, is "What is your favorite Book."  This is a question that you and I might (or might not) answer honestly with a friend in a bar, but almost no one answers honestly for publication.    The vast majority of the answers are public posturing, selections made to make one look bright or engaged or intellectual, and not honest answers.   Presidential candidates get asked to provide their current reading list and I would bet $100 that they have staff members huddle around working on the list that portrays their candidate the best.   I would be shocked if even 20% of these 50 answers at the link were honestly their favorite books.

I am not sure there is a way to get an honest answer, but if I had to ask the question, I would ask, "what books have your read more than once?"

PS - I do have to recognize Robin Williams choice of the Foundation novels and in particular his statement that the Mule was his favorite character in fiction.  For those who know the books (and the Foundation is definitely on my list of books I have read more than once), the Mule is a fascinating choice for Robin Williams to have made.

When I was in college, I went to see Robin Williams in concert, and he was hilarious (and just as obscene as Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy, though he did not really have that reputation publicly).

That is not the story.  The story is in the fact I went to see him a second night in a row.  This seems a dumb thing to do, to go to the same show twice in two nights, but I was chasing after this girl and she wanted to go.  At the time, for the right girl, I would probably have gone to a 3-hour Uruguayan poetry reading.

Anyway, the amazing part was... it was not the same show.  Yes, the basic structure was there, but huge masses were different.  That is when I realized that he was just making it the hell up as he went along, and he was hilarious doing it.   I had known intellectually that he had a reputation for improvising way off his scripts, but to actually see it in real time was amazing.