Of Chain E-mails and Friends

Recently, I appear to have been swept away by a tidal wave of chain e-mail-esque requests: five favorite albums, fifteen books that changed your life, how long would you survive in a horror film. Okay, that's a quiz, but it functions the same. They're supposed to be interesting and revealing, but they actually provide basic information. If you're friends in real life, none of the items on the lists are surprising. Wouldn't you rather know why, the reasons behind the choices? Is it really that interesting to know that I'm listening to the Killers' "Dustland Fairytale"? Or is it more interesting that I can't stop listening to it because the bridge matches a well-known Chinese drama in a poetic way? Besides, how many books really change one's life? I offer the following list as evidence.

1. The Golden Peaches of Samarkand
2. The Broken Commandment
3. Bolshevik Women
4. Mulian Rescues His Mother From Hell
5. Ethan Frome
6. The Book of Ruth
7. Biographies of Exemplary Women
8. Second to None
9. The Complete Collection of Sherlock Holmes
10. The Makioka Sisters
11. An Injustice to Dou E
12. Chicago Manual of Style
13. Between God and Tsar
14. So Far From Bamboo Grove
15. The Right Women

These are 15 books that--according to Facebook and the lies told there--changed my life. Except very few of them did and those that did did so in minor ways. "The Golden Peaches of Samarkand" is a book on Tang exotica that provided scholarly reinforcement to the idea that Tang China was where it was at, historically speaking. "The Broken Commandment" is the first piece of Japanese literature I read. If you have any shred of human decency, it will leave you weeping and wanting to change the world. "Bolshevik Women" follows female revolutionaries from the late 1800s through the 1940s. Full of statistical goodness, it also makes excellent use of individual case studies. "Mulian Rescues His Mother From Hell" was the first Buddhist text I read and it is awesome! The depictions of Hell stick with you, I assure you. "Ethan Frome" made me love Edith Wharton, who subsequently is one of the few fiction writers I enjoy reading. The Book of Ruth is my favorite book in the Old Testament. The Biographies of Exemplary Women is a Chinese book written ~2,000 years ago. It's biographies of women of outstanding deportment, intelligence, wisdom, chastity, righteousness, and rhetoric. Oh, and there's a kicking chapter of bad examples.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point. Now either make a decent Facebook chain e-mail/quiz or stop sending them!