| Product: |
Top Ten Non Fiction - General |
| Date: |
05.02.06 (135 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: I am a lineman for the county
Disadvantages: And I drive the main road
This is an old ‘challenge’ I missed out on first time round (set by MALU). As a conscientious dooyoo person, I should probably feel a twinge of guilt, as it’s hijacked a totally unrelated category. Although since it’s a ‘top ten’ category, it’s of minimal use to any consumers who happen to be passing, and loads of other people have done the same thing, so I guess that makes it OK.
(Or, to put it another way, I’m painfully close to getting my next amazon voucher, and I’m sick of waiting for my various product suggestions to be added. It was either this or the erotic ‘challenge’, and I doubt that anyone really wants to read about my… er… habits.)
Question: What is your favourite genre?
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Not really sure I have one. I’m very fond of comics, which aren’t a genre so much as a slightly different medium to normal prose fiction, but they do tend to be dominated by certain genres (science fiction, horror, superheroes), so I guess I read a fair bit of those.
Q: Do you read the classics, i.e., the great authors of the 18th and 19th century?
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That’s a slightly reductive definition of ‘classics’, but yes, I do. I love Dickens, Hardy, Austen (not to mention Shakespeare, Faulkner and Joyce, who weren’t 18th or 19th century, but are certainly classic). The best writers can get you past the rather old-fashioned language that they use. One of the books I’m currently reading is a collection of satires by Jonathan Swift. That, I must admit, is hard going, but I’ll persevere for at least another hundred pages.
Q: Are you interested in thrillers?
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Yeah, some. I like absurdly grim crime novels. James Ellroy’s probably my favourite (although he’s a bit over the top to be really gritty); I’m also very fond of Jim Thompson, and the often ludicrously nasty work of British writers David Peace and Derek Raymond.
I also have a fondness for old pulp fiction – stuff like Fu Manchu or Doc Savage. It’s rubbish, but it’s fun rubbish.
Q: What about horror stories?
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Yeah, although I prefer horror films. When I was younger I read a lot of Stephen King, James Herbert, Clive Barker etc, but really, they’re all a bit samey. What seemed impressively creepy in Salems Lot or The Shining gets a bit tired ten books later. Nowadays I read a lot of older stuff, short Victorian ghost stories and the like. MR James is superb. His characters are all the same, and so vaguely sketched as to almost not be characters, and he can’t really write fear very well. But pretty much every story has at least one moment of genuinely creepy, and often surprisingly physical, horror.
There are also some very good horror comics, although you can’t do proper suspense/shock moments very well in a static visual medium. But I’d recommend Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing stories and, if you have a strong stomach, his huge Jack the Ripper re-telling, From Hell (with excellent art by Eddie Campbell). Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron, by Dan Clowes, is one of the most bizarre and sinister things I’ve ever read, but it’s also hilarious, so may not be horror, strictly speaking.
Q: Do you read science fiction?
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Not so much – don’t really get on with science fiction. I was a big Dr Who fan as a kid, so read all the novelisations. And I quite like Philip K Dick, although if you’ve read one you’ve read them all.
But again, I do read quite a few sci fi comics. Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson, and The Invisibles by Grant Morrison are both very good, and Bryan Talbot’s Luther Arkwright stories are superb. I think I end up reading comics in genres I don’t normally read because there are so few comics that are actually any good – given the choice between a good comic in a genre I don’t normally like, and ten rubbish comics about Batman hitting people, I’ll always go for the good one.
Q: How many Harry Potter books have you read?
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None. They just don’t interest me. Sorry if that makes me bad in some way.
Q: Have you ever read and enjoyed biographies or autobiographies?
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Not usually autobiographies, as they’re (obviously) not that objective. But biographies, yes. Looking at the top shelf of my bookcase, I see biographies of Joe Meek, Richard Nixon, Rasputin and Aleister Crowley. (I’d like to imagine they’re having a very unsatisfying game of bridge together in a suitably punitive afterlife.)
I probably read more history than anything else at the moment, and biographies are history. I like to read biographies of people who feature as supporting characters in history books I’ve been reading (I bought the Rasputin book after I read a general history of the Russian Revolution, for instance).
Q: Do you remember any of the books you read and loved as a child?
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Yeah. All those Dr Who books, for a start (my favourite was The Daemons, by Barry Letts). And there was a series of ‘Adventure’ books written by Willard Price, in which a couple of rich American kids travelled the world capturing animals for their dad’s zoo. Looking back on it, they’re a bit dodgy (especially Whale Adventure, in which they spend an entire book killing whales), but I loved them at the time.
When I was a bit younger, I liked Winnie the Pooh, Asterix and Where the Wild Things Are, which is the best kids’ book ever (unless you’re a girl, possibly).
Q: Have you re-read these books as a grown-up?
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No. I prefer to remember how much I enjoyed them when I was little. If I re-read them now, as an adult with adult standards and sensibilities, it would probably spoil it. Some things you can’t go back to. No man steps in the same river twice. Et cetera.
Q: Is there a book of which you can say it has influenced you?
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Well I guess every book I read influences me to some extent. When I was in my mid to late teens, and starting to get quite into horror films, the book Nightmare Movies by Kim Newman certainly made an impact, as it was the first book I’d read that took these films seriously, and also gave me a good grasp of horror film history from the late 60s onwards. A lot of my subsequent viewing habits came from that book, which I still think is very good.
Q: Which are your favourite authors?
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Oh, there are loads. Shakespeare’s the best, probably, although it’s perhaps better to see his work performed than to read it. Other favourites that I haven’t already mentioned are Pinter, Pynchon, Angela Carter, maybe Iain Sinclair. Alan Moore, who mostly writes comics, is one of the best living writers in any medium. And some of Michael Moorcock’s recent novels are superb, although I don’t really like his older, science fiction stuff, so don’t know if I can count him as a favourite.
Q: Which book would you take with you on a desert island?
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God knows. Something long. Proust, maybe, as I doubt I’ll ever read it otherwise. Or Finnegans Wake. Something like that. Unless there are other people with me on the desert island, in which case the complete works of Shakespeare, so we could act out all the plays until we died of starvation and got eaten by the parrots.
Q: What is your attitude towards translations?
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I can only speak English. So they’re kind of essential.
Q: Do you buy your books/get them from the library/borrow them from friends/steal them?
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Buy, generally. I used to go to the library, but got out of the habit. I don’t borrow books, as I tend not to read them for ages (I still have one book that was lent to me about four years ago).
Q: When you buy books, do you prefer hardcover editions or pocket books?
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Paperbacks are more convenient, but I sometimes buy hardbacks if I have an amazon voucher.
Q: Have you ever tried Audio Books?
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No, never really occurred to me to do so.
Summary: Searching in the sun for another overload
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UKRushbrook - 16.03.06 I find people's choice of books interesting. It gives a lot of information about a person. Good stuff and nice review. |
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