Books

by | Jun 7, 2005 | Culture, Arts and Popcorn | 2 comments

I’ve been tagged. Not in the Alex sense, but in the “You’re it, sucker!” sense.

(I act all grumpy about it, but it’s kinda nice to feel included. Sniff. Thanks, JB.)

So, the book meme.

How many books do you own? A lot fewer than I once did, but at a rough guess, 200. (Three are currently holding up a bookcase, though.)

What’s the last book you bought? Heh. Held off on answering this one until my latest trip to the bookstore. Roz Chast’s “The Party After You Left”; a flip book of ocean critters for the young ‘un; Joe Trippi’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”; and “Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose (8)” by Sandy Balfour.

What’s the last book you read? “Number 10” by Sue Townsend. It was fun and light enough, but she does much better at evoking the dead-end hopelessness of poverty than at delivering the promised hilarity or a convincing conclusion.

Name five books that mean a lot to you.

“Fall On Your Knees” by Ann-Marie MacDonald. How could a book that peels back the layers surrounding a single day of tragic horror leave me feeling so hopeful?

“Cryptonomicon” by Neal Stephenson. He taught me that a little well-placed, honest self-indulgence can make a good book many times better.

“The Annotated Sherlock Holmes” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, edited by William S. Baring-Gould. I devoured this the first time, and returned to it many times over. It means so much to me mainly because it was a Christmas present from my parents.

“The Concise Oxford English Dictionary.” Settler of arguments and sparker of conversations with my dad.

“Turn of the Century” by Kurt Andersen. The sort of book that you might take turns reading to each other, or even excerpt for your wedding ceremony.

Special bonus book: “Goodnight Moon” by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Clement Hurd. Just looking at the cover, I can hear my daughter’s voice: “MoooOOOoon!”

Tag five people to provide their own lists. Hah. That would be Alexandra Samuel, Ian King, Shannon Phillips, Kris Krug and d-p-u. (Ish, if you don’t want to use Straight Goods for your list, feel free to e-mail it to me or use the comments.)

2 Comments

  1. JimBobby
    JimBobby on 8 Jun 2005 at 13:09

    Whooee! Thankee fer playin’ the game, RobFeller. Them’s sum interestin’ titles yer talkin’ ’bout. I’m an ol’ Sherlock Holmes fan, too. I reckon I’ll keep an eye out fer that there annotated version.

    Speakin’ o’ polyticks [;-)], yer Dippers is doin’ good in Ottywa an’ I reckon they’ll do okay whenever we get t’ votin’. Ol’ Laydown’s lookin’ sharp alongside o’ them other numbnutses. That ain’t sayin’ much, mind you. Harpoon may as well fall on his spear, sez I. Here in Ontariariario, the Decima poll sez the HarpoonTosser’s bunch is damn near decimated. They’re running behind the Dips. I think it was LPC 48%, NDP 24%, CPC 21%. Yeow!

    Yores trooly,
    JimBobby

  2. Rob
    Rob on 8 Jun 2005 at 16:31

    Yep. Timmy says it very nicely:

    What has really happened is that the NDP has remained mired, to use the word normally associated with the CPC, at 20 percent, while the CPC is conducting experiments to determine if there really is anything on the planet lower than whale shit.

    ….It is a bitter pill to swallow that a party run by a gang of slavering, half-rabid fools and employing a communications staff composed chiefly of baboons, a party which has embarrassed itself at every turn with its manifest incompetence, and a party which has snatched ignominious and final defeat from the jaws of victory with a few badly edited tapes is somehow neck and neck in the polls with the only party in Parliament that counts adult Homo sapiens among its MPs.

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