Books etc
I was asked to do this by lots of people, and managed to avoid it, but then the person I planned to ask to do it if I did it went and did it without me asking, so I thought I'd better do it myself.You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
Much like Peter I had no idea what this meant. But I asked Nick so I do now. So let's say Animal Farm. People seem to like it, and it's very short.
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Not really. Unless Columbo counts, in which case it's more an ongoing love affair.
What are you currently reading?
Oxford Junior Encyclopeadia (1950) - "The Home" section. I picked it up at a car boot sale in Canterbury.
The Code Book, by Simon Singh - I went to a wedding nr Bletchley and had a half-price coupon to visit the house/huts/etc. Felt guilty using it after they told us how broke they were I felt I should buy something. Like all code-breaking books it's interesting exactly up to the point where you might learn something, and then the effort's too much.
England under Hitler, by Comer Clarke - Fiction based on fact about England under Hitler. Bought at same car boot sale.
Experience, by Martin Amis. I've read it before, and greatly enjoyed it, but this time I was looking for that bit where Christopher Hitchens (for younger readers a left-wing commentator of the 1990s) causes a scene at Saul Bellow's. Both of them are now dead, but Bellow only this week.
The last book you bought is:
The Guilty Madmen of Whitehall, by Andrew George Elliot. This is a populist right-wing polemic from the late 1960s, which sounds exactly like any right-wing criticism of the government today (which does, of course, not make it wrong). It has a foreword by J. Enoch Powell, which concludes, 'Make no mistake about it, either: hundreds of thousnds more, maybe millions, are thinking and talking much as he is. These are some of the notes in which the rising anger of a nation becomes audible. It is a sound I like to hear'. I intend to give it to Peter when I've finished.
The last book you read:
Stiff, by Mary Roach. A fascinating (for a while, it's a bit long) account of what happens to the human body when it dies and the social and political history of dealing with dead bodies.
Five books you would take to a deserted island.
I think i'd go for weighty non-fiction tomes too.
History in Fragments: Europe in the Twentieth Century, by Richard Vinen - The most readable single-volume history of post-war Europe I've read, I would say
Classes and Culture: England 1918 to 1951, by Ross Mckibben. Probably the most educational book I've ever read on British politics.
Berlin: The Downfall, by Anthony Beevor. Good read, make you feel a bit less unhappy with your plight on the island too.
Hubris/Nemesis, by Ian Kershaw. Ditto.
and probably The Time Out Travel Guide to Deserted Islands, if there is one. I'm a big fan of the series, the only problem being the way they are written means they are out of date in a few years.
posted by Matthew @ 4/09/2005 07:40:00 AM
Comments: 0
