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They pick a subject and I interpret it how I want. So this week…
- You are walking down the road and you look down. There is a bug. Do you step on it? – No, absolutely not, bad karma.
- What is one fantasy that you want to come true more than any other? – No, you aren’t going to get me to admit that, not in polite company anyway….
- Someone knocks on your door. Do you look out the window to see who it is before you open it? Do you open it regardless of who it is? – Well our door is at the side of our town house and the accessible windows are at the front, so I either entirely ignore the doorbell and have a sneaky look as they’re walking away, or I go downstairs to open what is a glass door, so by that time they’ve seen me too and I can’t get away with anything other than opening it. But mostly I just hide in an antisocial way.
- Have you ever eaten Play Doh? – No but my brother has (he’s 41 now so I can say these things without fear of retribution)
- What was your favourite Saturday morning cartoon as a child and why? – Tom and Jerry, closely followed by Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck; I liked the absurdity.
- Are you a “people watcher”? – Oh yes….. and I have the restraining orders to prove it.
- I have a bowl of fruit. There are apples, oranges and pears. You help yourself to one – which one do you choose? – Apples every single time. Pears at a pinch. Never oranges; I don’t like the texture.
- What is your pet peeve in the blogging world? – All the shorthand stuff – YMMV, for example, but mostly LOL – yes definitely LOL. I’m the kind of person who writes text messages in full sentences with proper punctuation.
- What is one religion that you could just never see yourself joining? Any of them.
- What word do you use far too often? – Cool
- How long do you spend in the shower? – Depends on how slow and tired I am but probably 15 minutes; it’s a good place to think about work.
- If you were to write a personal ad about yourself what would it say? – A variation on the profile in my sidebar (presumably without the happily married bit) but honestly I can’t see myself doing it at all.
- Your favourite flavoured soup is – carrot & butterbean, closely followed by pea & ham – Baxters, obviously.
- You are sitting on a bench in the park and a bug walks in front of your feet …. do you squash him? – In the unlikely even that I noticed him at all (because I’d probably have my nose in a book) I would let him be – see the bad karma thing mentioned above.
Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings saw this meme on another blog and did it himself for fun, and I thought at the time that I would do the same but it’s taken me a little while to get round to it.
Like Carl I was really surprised by some of the titles listed as sci-fi or fantasy but I rather like that as I’m always amused (and slightly annoyed) by authors who write sci-fi books and try to pretend they haven’t.
Anyway, herewith the list with those I’ve read in bold and those I have tbr in italics.
- Douglas Adams: The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
- Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958 )
- Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)
- Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)
- Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)
- Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984) – wonderful!
- Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987) – not my favourite of his sci-fi works
- Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)
- Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)
- Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)
- Greg Bear: Darwin’s Radio (1999)
- Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)
- Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992) – I’d have classed this as horror myself..
- Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)
- Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)
- Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
- Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)
- Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)
- William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
- Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979) – on my wish list though!
- Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)
- Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)
- Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988 )
- Lewis Carroll: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
- Lewis Carroll: Through the Lookin-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)
- Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)
- Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
- Arthur C Clarke: Childhood’s End (1953)
- GK Chesteron: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908 )
- Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)
- Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)
- Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998 )
- Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000) – I found this really, really unsettling
- Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)
- Samuel R Delaney: The Einstein Intersection (1967)
- Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968 )
- Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
- Umberto Eco: Foucault’s Pendulum (1988 )
- Michael Faber: Under the Skin (2000)
- John Fowles: Tha Magus (1966)
- Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)
- Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973)
- William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915)
- William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
- Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)
- M John Harrison: Light (2002)
- Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
- Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)
- Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943) – one of my absolute favourite novels
- Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980)
- James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justifies Sinner (1824)
- Michael Houellebecq: Atomised (1998 )
- Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
- Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)
- Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
- Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898 )
- PD James: The Children of Men (1992)
- Richard Jefferies: After London; or Wild England (1885)
- Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)
- Franz Kafka: The trial (1925)
- Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)
- Stephen King: The Shining (1977) – more horror!
- Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)
- Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
- Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)
- Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
- David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
- Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008 )
- Hilary Mnatel: Beyond Black (2005)
- Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)
- Richard Matheson: I am Legend (1954)
- Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
- Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)
- Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)
- Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)
- China Mieville: The Scar (2002)
- Andrew MIller: Ingenious Pain (1997)
- Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibwitz (1960) – long overdue for a re-read I think
- David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)
- Michael Moorcick: Mother London (1988 )
- William Morris: News from Nowhere (1890)
- Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)
- Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)
- Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)
- Audrey Niffenegger: The Tine Traveller’s Wife (2003)
- Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970)
- Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993)
- Flann O’Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)
- Ben Okri: The Famished Row (1991)
- Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
- Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818 )
- Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946)
- John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)
- Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)
- Francois Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)
- Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
- Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)
- Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
- JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997)
- Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988 )
- Antoine de Sainte-Exupery: The Little Prince (1943)
- Jose Saramago: Blindness (1995)
- Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)
- Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818 )
- Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)
- Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)
- Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)
- Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
- Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
- Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)
- Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court (1889)
- Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)
- Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)
- Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)
- Sarah Waters: Affinity (199)
- HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895)
- HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898 )
- TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938 )
- Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)
- John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)
- John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
- Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)
I’m quite pleased with the number I’ve read, given that the inclusion of some of these on the list seems a little odd to me, and appalled as always by the number I have on my tbr pile.
Bride of the Book God 