Mememememememed again

Maryanne has memed my ass 'cept I already done it last year and, to be honest, I ain't become no more interesting since then.

Still, Maryanne is a nice lady so go read her blog an' shit.

And, no, I haven't the faintest idea why this post is written in such a curious vernacular.

More hot meme action

The delectable Suw has tagged me with the following all-action meme thingie:

1. Grab the book closest to you.
2. Open to page 123, go down to the fifth sentence.
3. Post the text of the next three sentences on your blog.
4. Name of the book and the author.
5. Tag three people.

So, here we go...

He hesitated, watching the technicians lift the plastic motorcyclist - 'Elvis' - on to his machine, and then strode on towards us, beckoning to Helen Remington and myself. He scanned the visitors with a somehow offensive gaze. Once again he struck me as being a strange mixture of personal hauntedness, complete confinement in his own panicky universe, and yet at the same time open to all kinds of experiences from the outer world.

- Crash by J. G. Ballard

There you go. It took me a few minutes to decide if Crash was hanging over the edge of my bookshelf a little more than Jack Womack's Random Acts Of Senseless Violence (a wonderful book, by the way, which you should all read).

Right, I think I'll tag Jai, Kathryn and Em. Job done.

Another bloody meme

Er, I mean another fascinating probe of my psyche in meme form. Kathryn has charged me with listing eight interesting factlets about myself. I've been thinking about this for two days now... Never mind, here goes:

1. I am a descendent of Rob Roy courtesy of my maternal grandfather (who was Scottish). I have never actually seen any proof of this but I have been assured that somebody in my granfather's family did trace the family tree back to Mr. Roy. However, I doubt that I am related in any way to Liam Neeson.
2. When I was two years old I had an operation to correct a squint in my left eye. Or was it my right? No matter: this means that I can go cross-eyed in just one eye... although, technically that would mean that I wasn't going cross-eyed but... oh, you get the point.
3. I once met Jimmy McGovern (he of Cracker fame) at a creative writing class. It was the one week when I had suffered writer's block and had been unable to produce anything worthwhile, thus I blew my chance to impress one of Britain's most esteemed writers for television. Bollocks.
4. When I was five years old I shut my bollocks in a drawer.
5. I had an orchiectomy when I was fifteen and now have only one testicle.
6. My friend's dad was bullied at school by Robert Plant so my friend's dad's best mate beat up Robert Plant. This fact isn't really about me at all but I'm struggling here, OK?
7. Fuck it, I'm just not that interesting...

I should now tag some other poor bastards with this thing but, frankly, I'm too depressed about how boring I am and can't be arsed.

Another book meme thingie

I has been tagged again for one of them meme thingies, this time by Kay Sexton. So, here we go:

One book that changed your life.

Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5. This novel was pivotal in the transition between my early teenaged reading habits (Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, lots of hard sci-fi) and the wider world of serious literature. Slaughterhouse 5 was so important because it showed me that literary fiction could be funny, sad, thoughtful, playful, experimental yet accessible all at the same time. Vonnegut's writing taught me the most valuable lesson that any aspiring writer can learn: anything, absolutely anything goes.

One book that you’ve read more than once.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - all five books in the inaccurately labelled "trilogy". Douglas Adams was just so damn funny and had a gift for using language to spin out increasingly absurd flights of fancy. He left us too soon, goddamnit.

One book you’d want on a desert island.

Hmm, tricky. I think if I was on a desert island then I'd want something really meaty and long, a novel that I'd have to return to again and again in order to work it out. In which case, I could do no worse than James Joyce's Ulysses. I haven't even read it yet but its reputation precedes it. It is sitting atop my bookshelf as we speak, drumming its fingernails, arching its eyebrows, silently questioning me as to when exactly I intend to finally gather myself and start reading it.

One book that made you laugh.

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien. A beautifully absurd book. Whenever I am feeling blue, I flick to the part about how atoms are swapped between men and their bicycles. Just hilarious.

One book that made you cry.

Martin Amis has a reputation for being a bit of a literary brat, a writer whose outstanding prose style outweighs the intellectual or emotional content of his books. However, his 2001 memoir Experience managed to be both typically stylish and emotionally engaging. Amis Jr. writes candidly about the loss of his cousin Lucy Partington, who was a victim of serial killer Fred West, and also about emerging from the shadow of a famous literary patriarch. I do love Martin Amis' novels but Experience may be the best thing he has ever written.

One book that you wish had been written.

The sixth book in the Hitchhiker's trilogy.

One book that you wish had never been written.

As much as I despise Frankenstein, there is no denying its influence on the horror and science fiction genres and its place in literary history, so I will say Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch

One book you’re currently reading.

Deadfolk by Charlie Williams, ennit.

One book you’ve been meaning to read.

Apart from Ulysses, another big ol' brick of a novel sitting on my shelf waiting to be tackled is Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. I did once start reading it but gave up after 75 pages. This will not do. I've read other books that have a reputation for being hard work or "difficult" so I simply cannot allow this novel to defeat me. Even if I never grasp what the hell the thing is about, I am determined to finish it one day.

Wasn't that fun? I suppose I'd better tag somebody with this now, as is the convention. Very well, I tag the Sleep Evangelist because I know she welcomes any aid to procrastination and Jai Clare (although she is an extremely busy woman and may never get around to doing it).

That book list meme thingie addendum

The Sleep Evangelist wishes to be tagged on that book list meme thingie so, um, consider yourself tagged, Miss Sleepy.

One of them list thingies

The lovely Kathryn has tagged me with the following meme thingie:

Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you might read, cross out the ones you won’t, underline the ones on your book shelf, and place (parentheses) around the ones you’ve never even heard of.

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the HalfbyBlood Prince by J. K. Rowling
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story by George Orwell
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightbytime by Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
1984 by George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Atonement by Ian McEwan
(The Shadow of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon)
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Dune by Frank Herbert
Sula by Toni Morrison
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

And for good measure, which books would I add to the list?

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
Don Quixote by Cervantes
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
Illywhacker by Peter Carey
The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
if on a winter's night a traveller... by Italo Calvino

I've also got to tag some folk with this 'ere meme so I tag...

Charlie Williams
Roger Morris
Carol Novack
Myfanwy Collins

They may or may not ignore this entirely.