Book meme

Promise I'll stop with the memes but could not resist this lovely book meme from the witty and handsome Tim:

1. One book that changed your life
Well, not so much my life as my mind, which is quite a powerful thing for a book to do - Toni Morrison’s Beloved, which has as a dedication ‘60 million and more’. As a Jew this took my breath away as it seemed needlessly offensive but by the end of the novel you totally take her point - that slavery was a holocaust that has still not really been acknowledged by history.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. Genius, just genius. Satire with a happy ending. She takes very accurate and hilarious potshots at everyone, journalists, writers, film-makers, country folk, city folk… I wish I hadn’t ever read it so could have the pleasure of reading it all over again. I would like to quote the passage on games and the heroine Flora’s habit of ‘running away from the ball’ which beautifully sums up my feeling about sport, but don’t have a copy to hand. (oh, and to add a new category “Character you most identify with’ - Great Aunt Ada Doom.)

3. One book you’d want on a desert island
Ooh, Ullyses or maybe War and Peace, because then I’d finally sit down and read 'em. Or one of those 'learn the guitar the easy way' books. If there was also a guitar on the desert island, otherwise it would just be frustrating. (Or maybe a huge atlas type book which I could then turn into a raft and sail off the desert island on.)

4. One book that made you laugh
Hmm, already told you about Cold Comfort Farm... Tim's already done Douglas Adams... okay then, Mr Tickle, by Roger Hargreaves, always accompanied by some great tickling action.

5. One book that made you cry
I’m pretty stony-hearted usually but Matthew Kneale’s English Passengers made me cry. It’s the kind of book I’d never usually pick up (thought from the cover that it was about boats) but read it in Spain because of the lack of English books. Can't begin to tell you the storyline, it's well complicated. It is a technical tour-de-force, he writes from the point of view of 20 different characters but never loses his grip on the story. Bitterly angry about the effects of colonialism, he really makes you feel the injustice.

6. One book that you wish had been written
Did Mae West ever write an autobiography?

7. One book that you wish had never been written
Blimey, what a bizarre category. Okay, when I worked in bookshops I was always a bit perturbed by the true crime genre. (This was also the most shop-lifted genre, funnily enough. People used to attempt to go out with the contents of a whole shelf of books stuffed down their trousers. Twats.) I mean, what is the appeal of reading about serial killers etc? This kind of curiosity is an ugly side of human nature.

8. One book you’re currently reading
East End Chronicles, by Ed Glinert, a splendid history book all about the dark and dangerous underbelly of London that I currently live in. Medieval Londoners were batshit crazy.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read
Boswell's Life of Johnson. I’ve been to his house, you know.

And you, gentle reader? If you don't fancy the meme, you could tell me what fictional character you most identify with and why...


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