Results of the Still In The Stream Reader Survey

Date results last updated:
April 14, 2007
Number of invitation to participate in the survey sent by e-mail: 101
Number of people who have filled out the survey to date: 43
If you havn't taken the survey yet you can take it by clicking here: Readers Survey
           
Questions
     Answers    
  Yes No      
Are you an avid reader?
 39 4      
Do you belong to a reading group?
 9 34      
Do you keep a diary or journal?
 23 20      
Do you write stories, articles, or books?
 32 11      
Do you belong to a writing group?
 16 27      
         
How many books do you read a year?
 Less than 5 5 - 10 12 12 - 24 24+
3 8 8 24
         
         
Which genre of books do you read most?
 Literature Poetry Classics Romantic Fiction Assorted Fiction
7 3     8
Science Fiction Fantasy Mystery Business How To
3   2 1  
Self Help Religious or Inspirational Biography & Autobiography History Science
1 6 1 1 1
Academic Personal Interest Other Historical Fiction  
2 3 2 1  
Most Important book if stranded on a desert island:
  • The BIble (7 votes)
  • How to Survive on a Desert Island - This book does not actually exist but people like to be funny(3 votes)
  • Tao te Ching - Lao Tzu (2 votes)
  • The Art of Living - Epictetus (Sharon Lebell translation)
  • Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
  • Invitation to The Game - Monica Hughes
  • Dictionary of Cultural Literacy - E.D. Hirsch Jr., Joseph F. Kett, James Trefil
  • A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith
  • The Psalms - King David, etc.
  • Course in Miracles - Foundation for Inner Peace
  • Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
  • The Silver Chair - C.S. Lewis
  • The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
  • Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche
  • The Cloister Walk - Kathleen Norris
  • The Shipping News - Annie Proulx
  • How to Find Fresh Water
  • King James Bible
  • Disturbing the Peace - Caroline Woodward
  • The Best of Robert Service
  • Culloden - John Prebble
  • Love is Letting Go of Fear - Gerald G. Jampolsky
  • Roget's Thesaurus
  • Tam Lin - Pamela Dean
  • Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
  • Be Here Now - Ram Dass
  • Zen Mind, Beginners Mind - Shunryu Suzuki
  • Walden by Thoreau
  • Wabi Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers by Leonard Koren
  • A Blank Journal
  • Local Field Guide to Edible Plants
  • Zen and Art of Knitting - Bernadette Murphy
  • Narrow Road to the Far North - Basho
  • SAS survival handbook :how to survive in the wild, in any climate, on land or at sea


         
Second most Important book if stranded on a desert island:
  • Complete Works of William Shakespeare (5 votes)
  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (2 Votes)
  • Collected Poems - Wystawa Szmborska
  • The Bible (2 votes)
  • Six Directions: Haiku and Field Notes - Jim Kacian
  • New Seeds of Contemplation - Thomas Merton
  • The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey
  • Perelandra - C.S. Lewis
  • The Narnia Chronicles - C.S. Lewis
  • How to on Surviving on a Desert Island
  • A Soldier of the Great War - Mark Helprin
  • Art of Happiness - Dalai Lama
  • Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - J. K. Rowling
  • Norton's Anthology of Poetry
  • The Upanishads
  • The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Edible Plants
  • The D-I-Y Manual - Readers Digest!
  • Shogun, - James Clavell
  • Outlander - Diana Gabaldon
  • The Hours - Michael Cunningham
  • Stones from the River - Ursula Hegi
  • Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
  • Course in Miracles - Foundation for Inner Peace
  • A Path with Heart - Jack Kornfield
  • Winnie The Pooh - A. A. Milne
  • Zen Flesh, Zen Bones - Paul Reps
  • The Gift of the Sea - Anne Morrow Lindbergh
  • Haiku Handbook
  • Oxford English Dictionary
  • God Makes the Rivers to Flow by Eknath Easwaran
  • Local Nautical Navigation Charts
  • Plain Living - Catherine Whitmire
  • The Haiku Anthology
  • The collected poems of W.B. Yeats
         
Third most Important book if stranded on a desert island:
  • The Bible (3 votes)
  • The Journey is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon - Dan Eldon, Kathy Eldon (Editor)
  • Fabric of the Universe - Brian Greene
  • Halo: The Fall of Reach - Eric Nylund
  • The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac
  • Twopence to Cross the Mersey - Helen Forrester
  • A Life-Giving Way: A Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict - Esther de Waal
  • Memoirs of Cleopatra - Margaret George
  • A Collection of Poems - Various Authors
  • Short Stories of Somerset Maugham
  • Haiku Anthology - Cor Van Den Heuvel
  • The Complete Collection of Sherlock Holmes
  • The Distinctive Voice (poetry collection)
  • Anything by Rita Moir
  • Norton's Anthology of English Literature
  • Being and Nothingness - Jean Paul Sartre
  • Selected Poems - Seamus Heaney
  • The Thomas Covenant Trilogy
  • Complete St. John of the Cross
  • Moby Dick - Herman Melville
  • Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
  • The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Third Edition
  • The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. - Sandra Gulland
  • The Chrysalids - John Wyndham
  • Women Who Run With the Wolves - Clarissa Pinkola Estes
  • A Daughter of Time - Josephine Tey
  • Blank Sketch Book
  • The Four Agreements Workbook - Don Miguel Ruiz
  • Poems - Pablo Neruda
  • The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
  • Robinson Crusoe - Defoe
  • The Golden Treasury of Poetry
  • Survival Guide
  • I Ching
  • Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Sunryu Suzuki
  • Boat-Building and Boating by Dan Beard
  • Walden - Thoreau
  • The Tao of Zen - by Ray Grigg
         
#1 Wabi Sabi books:
  • Winnie The Pooh - A. A. Milne (3 votes)
  • Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
  • Haiku - one breath poetry - Naomi Wakan
  • Invitation to the Game - Monica Hughes
  • Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
  • A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - by Betty Smith
  • The Raging Quiet - Sherryl Jordan
  • Yesteryear - Fern Michaels
  • Quite a Year for Plumbs - Baily White
  • Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein
  • Stones from the River - Ursula Hegi
  • Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
  • Haiku Anthology - Cor Van Den Heuvel
  • The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
  • Survival Gear
  • Atonement - Ian McEwan
  • Upanishads
  • Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
  • Shipping News - Annie Proulx
  • Bones Would Rain from the Sky - Suzanne Clothier
  • Kristin Lavransdatter - Sigrud Undset
  • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
  • The Greenlanders - Jane Smiley
  • The Bone Woman - Clea Koff
  • Love is Letting Go of Fear - Gerald G. Jampolsky
  • Emma - Jane Austen
  • The Complete Adventures of Curious George by H. A. Rey
  • The Color Purple - Alice Walker
  • Be Here Now - Ram Dass
  • Mark Twain's Books
  • The Jungle Book Rudyard Kipling
  • Wabi Sabi Simple by Richard Powell
  • The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
  • Tao Teh Ching
  • The Immense Journey - Loren C Eiseley
  • Our Man in Havana - Graham Greene
         
#2 Wabi Sabi books:
  • Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien (4 votes)
  • Shipping News - Annie Proulx (3 Votes)
  • A Thousand Acres - Jane Smiley (2 votes)
  • Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Betty Edwards
  • Curious incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
  • Star Wars: Traitor - Matthew Woodring Stover
  • A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole's
  • The Green Years" - A.J. Cronin
  • L'Ile des Gauchers - Alexandre Jardin
  • The Wheel on the School - Miendert Dejong
  • The Fresco - Sheri Tepper
  • To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
  • Folly - Laurie King
  • The Art of Living - Epictetus (Sharon Lebell translation)
  • The Bean Trees, PIgs in Heaven, Animal Dreams, - Barbara Kingsolver
  • Emily of New Moon/Climbs/'s Quest - L. M. Montgomery
  • Shaowds of the Mind - Roger Penrose
  • Wild Geese Calling - Stewart Edward White
  • In Our Time - Ernest Hemingway
  • Seven Words for Wind - Sumner MacLeish
  • Don't Fall Off The Mountain, by Shirley MacLaine
  • Emma - Jane Austen
  • Tuesdays With Morrie - Mitch Albom
  • Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
  • She's Come Undone - Wally Lamb
  • Paul Matthiessen's Books
  • Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift
  • I Maximus, by Charles Olson
  • The Little Prince
  • Wabi Sabi Simple - Richard R. Powell
  • Narrow Road to the Interior - Basho
  • Tortilla Flat - John Ernst Steinbeck
         
#3 Wabi Sabi books:
  • Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien (3 votes)
  • For the Time Being - Anne Dillard (2 votes)
  • Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell (2 votes)
  • Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
  • The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
  • Bridges of Madison County - Robert James Waller
  • Homecoming - Cynthia Voight
  • Silas Marner - George Elliot
  • God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
  • The Blue Adept - Piers Antony
  • The Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood
  • Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
  • The Golden Pine Cone - Catherine Anthony Clark
  • A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
  • Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
  • The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Parable of the Sower - Octavia E. Butler
  • The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Close Range - Annie Proulx
  • The Treatment - Mo Hayder
  • Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
  • Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller
  • Women Who Run With the Wolves -Clarissa Pinkola Estes
  • Roger Brook (?)
  • The Bean Trees - Barbara Kingsolver
  • Winnie the Pooh -A. A. Milne
  • Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
  • 3 Howl, by Allen Ginsberg
  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
  • Wabi Sabi For Artists,Poets, & Philosophers - by Leonard Koren
  • Beach Music - Pat Conroy
  • Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
         
Wabi Sabi authors:
 Annie Dillard(3 votes), Annie Proulx(2 votes), Carol Shields(2 votes), Alice Munro, C.S. Lewis(2 votes), J.R.R. Tolkien, Alexander Dumos, Guy Vanderhaege, Monica Hughs, Farley Mowat, Matthew Stover, Timathy Zahn, Jack Kerouac, Cynthia Voight, Dick King-Smith, Sheri Tepper, Orson Scott Card, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Wayne Dyer, George Elliot, Charles Dickenson(2 votes), Anne Tyler, John Steinbeck, John Irving, Wally Lamb, Theodore Roethke, Rita Moir, Margaret Thompson, Ian McEwan, Christine Marion Fraser, Ursula K. LeGuin, Stephen R. Donaldson, Yann Mattel, Jane Smiley, Kingsolver, H Rider Haggard, Marge Piercy, Albert Payson Terhune, Alice Munro, Graham Greene, Tobias Wolff, Robert Stone, Wilbur Smith, James Clavell, Maya Angelou, JK Rowling, Charles de Lint; C.J. Cherryh; Guy Gavriel Kay, L. M. Montgomery, Dr. Suess, Denis Wheatly, Barbara Kingsolver, Lee Smith, Marilynn Robinson, Alice Adams, Steinbeck, Chatwin, Abbey, Gary Snyder, Ruskin Bond, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, Alice Walker, Richard Francis, Ann the Word, Thoreau, Krishnamurti, Geoge Fox, David Budbill,Richard R. Powell, Jane Austen, Pat Conroy, loren eiseley, Lee Gurga
         
Favorite books:
  • On the Road - Jack Kerouac
  • The Art of Living - Epictetus (Sharon Lebell translation)
  • A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith
  • A Life-Giving Way: A Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict - Esther de Waal
  • Memoirs of Cleopatra - Margaret George
  • Your Life: Why it is the way it is and what to do about it - Bruce McArthur
  • Invitation to the Game - Monica Hughes
  • The Last Crossing - Guy Vanderhaege
  • Complete Collection of Sherlock Holmes Tales
  • A Soldier of the Great War - Mark Helprin
  • The Women's Room - Marilyn French
  • Daybreak - Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Cloister Walk - Kathleen Norris
  • Shipping News - Annie Proulx
  • Bones Would Rain From the Sky - Suzanne Clothier
  • Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
  • Disturbing the Peace - Caroline Woodward
  • The Princess Bride - William Goldman
  • Screen Play "Witness"
  • Love is Letting Go of Fear - Gerald G. Jampolsky
  • Zen Mind, Beginners Mind - Shunryu Suzuki
  • Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
  • The Distances by Charles Olson
  • The Luck Factor
  • Tao Teh Ching
         
What is the main reason you read?
To learn facts
 2      
To lose myself in a story
 7      
To be inspired
 7      
To gain insight
 7      
To see things from a different perspective
 9      
To be challenged
        
To be motivated
 1      
To relax
        
To laugh
        
To feel a certain way
 2      
To provoke thought
 1      
To improve a skill
        
To stay on top of my profession
        
To improve myself
 2      
To stay informed
        
To satisfy my curiosity
 1      
To get to know the characters in the story
        
To experience an adventure
        
To understand a person, place, or time
 2      
         
         
Ages:
 13, 23, 27, 27, 34, 39, 41, 42, 42, 44, 45, 45, 46, 46, 46, 48, 49, 50, 50, 51, 53, 53, 56, 56, 56, 54, 57, 57, 58, 61,61 62, 63, 66, 70, 76, Ancient        
         
Other books recommended by readers:

"My favorite books on writing:
Indirections for Those Who Want to Write by Sidney Cox, David R. Godine Publisher, 1981, originally published 1947 by Knopf.

It's out of print now, but try to find a copy.
It's quite wonderful."

 
When I was six, I loved Beverly Cleary books;
when I was eight, it was Nancy Drew; when I was 10, Jane Eyre and Daphne DuMaurier. The same thing is still happening. In the early 1970s, I loved The Women's Room, it changed my life, but looking back on it, it seemed a long time ago. I didn't like Paulo Coelho's The Valkyries, but loved The Alchemist.
I couldn't live without a dictionary, but it's not my favorite book. I love looking at atlases and maps, but don't want to call them my favorite book.
You get the point--who could choose poetry over biography; autobiography over history; fiction over nonfiction? I can't. There is something in each book that I finish that I love.
"There are many books that I love and that inspire me such as The Prophet by Kahil Gibran, The Essential Rumi, The Bible, The Power of Intention by Wayne Dyer etc."
At The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, The Wind in the Willows said, "Fall on
Your Knees or you'll be Gone With the Wind. There's Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You, and it won't take those Diviners who turned up at Larry's Party for The Woman in White to show you where To Kill a Mockingbird. It's The Bone People, not The Cadillac Kind who'll explain why Cereus Blooms at Night. It's The Robber Bride, whiling away The Hours engrossed in The Shipping News, who'll tell you who's Disturbing the Peace, who's in need of Survival Gear. After all, there's No Great Mischief in looking at things slightly out of Kilter."
 When I began writing my novel, a writer friend suggested I
learn the three act structure. I will always be grateful.
As suggested in Linda Segers "Making a good script great" I watched the movie "Witness" over and over. Until I was able to recognize each example of the structure and writing techniques. It stuck like glue in my feeble brain. A most enjoyable learning process and I will never cease to enjoy the perfectly scripted movie.In all my reading I unconsciously use the process to evaluate the book.		 Olson is a great American poet and The Distances captures the essence of American life as an epic and existential journey.
 Actually, I love books, in general -- just the thought of sharing another's thoughts/feelings/impressions, the human connection throught writing is a wonderful thing.
The Luck Factor takes familiar situations and examines the array of underlying assumptions that
leads to different outcomes and demonstrates that change is possible. It startles and surprises and has practical exercises. It ties together threads of David Allen's Getting Things Done, books on meditation, Blink, and adds science studies.