I hate the word "meme" with a violent passion, so even though I accept Telecommuniculturally's challenge, I'm going to call it a questionnaire. Which is my right, since it is one.
1. One book you have read more than once
I am reminded of Jesse Sheidlower quoting Umberto Eco about his library, "when people ask if I've really read all these books, I say, some of them more than once." It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it.
So I'll say Winter's Tale, by Mark Helprin, which in 10th grade or so I would read to the end and then immediately start reading again. There have only been a few books I can say that about, and certainly Winter's Tale was the first. Helprin did a reading for his latest in Park Slope recently, and if I'd been in town I would have been tempted to go and say "I could not disagree with your politics more profoundly on a bet, but I love your fiction."
2. One book you would want on a desert island
The best answer I've seen for this one is Robinson Crusoe, for the survival tips! Right now, it would be Infinite Jest, since I'd like the uninterrupted time to actually finish the thing, and it would be neat to go back to it now that we're up to the time in which the book takes place. I've been on a bit of a DFW kick lately, what with his Federer piece in the Times and having a bit from The Broom of the System stuck in my head most of the early part of this week.
3. One book that made you laugh.
Joy in the Morning, by P.G. Wodehouse. Really, anything by Wodehouse will do.
4. One book that made you cry.
I rarely cry at books, at movies, TV, any of that, but The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay just made me weep.
5. One book you wish you had written.
Emma. Or, as John Ramsburgh once called it, in full Kowalski-voice, "EMMMMAAAAAAAAAAA!" So sharp, so funny, so beautifully constructed. Read it once, and then read it again to really get all the jokes. Sigh.
6. One book you wish had never been written.
Oh, hm. Mein Kampf is too easy, isn't it? Spengler's Decline of the West, then, without which Germany wouldn't have been ready for the creepy little Austrian anyhow.
7. One book you are currently reading.
Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction, by Paul Dourish. I'm so lame. But I do groove on the way that the importance of thinking of the user as embodied actor moving in historically specific space(s), the pleasures and limits of embodiment, is starting to grab hold in interaction design, if only because I've already done so much of the reading already.
8. One book you have been meaning to read.
I'd like to re-read Mason & Dixon before the new Pynchon comes out. At Powell's last week, I bought Rory Stewart's The Places In Between, David Chinitz's T.S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide, Alison Bechdel's memoir Fun Home, Where The Action Is, and a UI patterns book. Oh, and Special Topics in Calamity Physics, which I'm looking forward to.
9. One Book That Changed Your Life.
Richard Powers's Galatea 2.2 didn't so much change my life as bring my life into clearer focus for me, which helped me change it, mostly for the better. Computers, literature, the difficult importance of being in the world rather than just observing it... what's not to love?
10. Now tag five people
This is always the part of these things that make me cringe, so as much as I'd love to see, say, Amy, Terri, Harry, Shana, and David answer this, I refuse to insist, especially since I know David doesn't read anything other than instruction manuals.
(Note: edited 10/16/06 to correct the Eco quote (thank you, Jesse) and the Powell's haul list.)