New Age Peer Pressure
Well there seems to be something going around tagging people and getting them to answer questions about literature on their blogs... Well at the sounds of the words 'literature' and 'blogs' I would normally have leapt at the chance. Unfortunately I had my ankles tied together with chicken wire so I fell flat on my face when I tried to leap. But nonetheless, I am susceptible to peer pressure and so who was I, really, to refuse this feast for the bored little mind?
Total number of books I've owned: What a quite amazingly stupid question. That's like asking 'how many minutes in your life have you spent asleep?' But in reality, two. You believe me? Then stop asking ridiculous questions.
The last book I bought: "For the Good of the Cause" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Cheap bargain, really.
The last book I read: "Lady Chatterley's Lover" - D H Lawrence. Didn't really care for it. It was like a strangulated modernist book, it was straining too hard to break through social taboos and as such lacked depth in plot or character and there was absolutely no chemistry between Connie and Mellors.
Five books that mean a lot to me:
1) "The Satanic Verses" by Salman Rushdie - My first taste of the greatest living novelist and still the best. It changed the way I saw literature, the world and my own writing... Especially when I noticed how similar my and Rushdie's styles are, no joke.
2) "The Liar" by Stephen Fry - This used to be my read and re-read book for a long time in high school. It also first inspired my curiosity with Victorian pornography, which I have harboured for a combined total of three seconds or so. It also in no small part inspired my pretentious way of talking and ranting.
3) "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" by Roald Dahl - Need I say more? It's a classic!
4) "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" edited by Steven Jay Schneider - This book singlehandedly gave me a purpose and goals in life. I know now what I must do before I can die a happy man. Sure, so 80% of them aren't available in this country at all, and a further 20% of that 80% aren't available anywhere, in the known universe, except possessed by the great-grandson of John D Rockefeller who was able to lay his hands on the original reel which would disintegrate if anyone ever actually tried to play it. But I'm on my way anyway... If I bothered to count, I've probably seen about...100? Maybe? So that's halfway there...
5) "Dirt Music" by Tim Winton. Because it finally added support to my hypothesis that Australian literature is shit.
Tag five people and have them fill this out on their blogs: Yeah, cos that's going to happen. When are you internet people going to learn that chains die with me, MWAHAHAHAHA!!!
Total number of books I've owned: What a quite amazingly stupid question. That's like asking 'how many minutes in your life have you spent asleep?' But in reality, two. You believe me? Then stop asking ridiculous questions.
The last book I bought: "For the Good of the Cause" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Cheap bargain, really.
The last book I read: "Lady Chatterley's Lover" - D H Lawrence. Didn't really care for it. It was like a strangulated modernist book, it was straining too hard to break through social taboos and as such lacked depth in plot or character and there was absolutely no chemistry between Connie and Mellors.
Five books that mean a lot to me:
1) "The Satanic Verses" by Salman Rushdie - My first taste of the greatest living novelist and still the best. It changed the way I saw literature, the world and my own writing... Especially when I noticed how similar my and Rushdie's styles are, no joke.
2) "The Liar" by Stephen Fry - This used to be my read and re-read book for a long time in high school. It also first inspired my curiosity with Victorian pornography, which I have harboured for a combined total of three seconds or so. It also in no small part inspired my pretentious way of talking and ranting.
3) "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" by Roald Dahl - Need I say more? It's a classic!
4) "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" edited by Steven Jay Schneider - This book singlehandedly gave me a purpose and goals in life. I know now what I must do before I can die a happy man. Sure, so 80% of them aren't available in this country at all, and a further 20% of that 80% aren't available anywhere, in the known universe, except possessed by the great-grandson of John D Rockefeller who was able to lay his hands on the original reel which would disintegrate if anyone ever actually tried to play it. But I'm on my way anyway... If I bothered to count, I've probably seen about...100? Maybe? So that's halfway there...
5) "Dirt Music" by Tim Winton. Because it finally added support to my hypothesis that Australian literature is shit.
Tag five people and have them fill this out on their blogs: Yeah, cos that's going to happen. When are you internet people going to learn that chains die with me, MWAHAHAHAHA!!!
posted by Sean's Beard at 3:32 PM
4 Comments:
I thought I would write in support of Tim Winton... Dirt Music is a great book! Good sense of place, great character development, simple yet elegant language... Can be read and reread and so on. Hmph.
Meh, what can I say? Don't care for Aussie literature... DM was no exception.
I've never read it. But the word "dirt" being in the title lends credence to Sam's argument, from my not-biased-by-having-ever-read-the-book position.
Yeah, I saw "Dirt" on the cover and immediately judged it as shit too.
Good to see this answered. Roald Dahl seems to be getting quite a rap about the place in this survey. He had a big influence, it seems.
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