Stolen shamelessly from Rol at Sunset Over Slawit…

1) Which author do you own the most books by?

It used to be Ed McBain but in a fit of absolute madness I gave the set of 87th precinct books to oxfam.  Dunno.  Fuck, I hate to say this, I’m not just being an arse, but I think it might be Shakespeare.

2) Which book do you own the most copies of?

I own three copies of Flicker which I’m sure is going to pop up again down here somewhere so I’ll leave it at that for now, other than to say that I approve of the idea of having a spare copy of books you love so you can lend it out and not worry about getting it back.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?

Absolutely not.

4) Which fictional character are you secretly in love with?

Ann Riordan, Paola Brunetti (obviously), Nicola Six (inevitably),

5) What book have you read the most times in your life? (Excluding picture books read to children.)

Dunno.  There’s lots of things I’ve read quite a few times but I really couldn’t guess.  I’ll copy Rol and name a few which are probably there or thereabouts – The Big Sleep, Leviathan, Breakfast of Champions, Flicker (ha!), Bloodtide.

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?

Swallows and Amazons (or one of them, anyway, probably Great Northern or Pigeon Post) or The Grey King (I’m reading The Dark Is Rising sequence to my elder daughter at the moment and really enjoying it again)

7) What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?

I also give up on books if I’m not enjoying them unless it’s one of those where you feel some sense of duty to somebody else to stick with it.  I read ‘The Secret River’ for a book group thing (and no fucker else did, they all decided they didn’t like it and stopped) and thought it was deeply dishonest and cowardly.

8 ) What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?

The Raw Shark Texts.  Well, actually it might be one of the older things that I’ve re-read now but Raw Shark is the best new thing.

9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?

The Raw Shark Texts, which is tremendously good fun.  Or Flicker which is also tremendously good fun. Or ‘The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break’ which…

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?

Here I’m going to cheat and just copy Rol’s answer word for word.

Here I’m going to cheat and just copy Chev’s answer word for word. Because I couldn’t agree with him more if I tried. (And I do try.)

Probably someone usually seen as beneath the purview, like Stephen King. I’ve yet to read any author with his felicity for the creation and development of honest, human characters. In all frankness, I can’t quite see why Ray Bradbury hasn’t already won it.

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?

Watchmen.  Or Taking Lives.

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?

I’m tempted to steal Rol’s answer again

I’m tempted to steal Chev’s answer again…

Most of the rest of them. Books are books, and films are films. I like it when the crossover works, but mostly it doesn’t.

…but instead I’ll opt for The Catcher In The Rye. Because you just know they’d get someone like Josh Hartnett or Zak Efron to play Holden.

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.

I don’t dream a lot these days, or at least I don’t ever remember anything.

14) What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?

I have a thing about books of tv shows which can be pretty dreadful and obvious.

15) What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?

I read a lot of non-fiction at the moment, mainly sciency things, and some of those involve me running off to look other stuff up to make sure that I understand what I’m reading. I only made it through about five pages of ‘the emperors new mind’ before giving up because it was much too complicated for me.  I read all of that maths book about the thing someone finally sorted (the fermat theorum? something like that… fermat’s last theorum, that’s it) and couldn’t decide whether it was just too difficult to understand or if it was just shit.

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve seen?

Coriolanus, maybe, which I like quite a lot.

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?

I haven’t read a lot of either.  Of other things that link up, Auster is quite French (I know what I mean here) so I might go with them.

18) Roth or Updike?

Roth definitely.  I absolutely love The Counterlife, just the nerve of it.

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?

I really really should have read some David Sederis by now but I haven’t.  I thought A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was an okay way to pass the time but I did used to like those short short stories that Eggers wrote for the guardian.

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?

Shakespeare.

21) Austen or Eliot?

Austen although only because I’ve read pride and prejudice but no george elliot at all.  I am aware that I don’t read many books by women.

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?

Don’t get embarassed about these things.  I kind of feel the biggest gap is a strange one, because if I set my mind to it I could probably read it all in a couple of hours, and that’s Heart of Darkness, which turns up as a reference point in a number of other things I really like.

23) What is your favorite novel?

Can anyone honestly do a ‘top one’ of just about anything?  I could do five, probably, but some at least of it would change a lot.  Flicker, London Fields, Breakfast of Champions, The Lady In The Lake,  Leviathan

24) Play?

The Dumb Waiter. Our Town.  A Dolls House.

25) Poem?

’somewhere i have never travelled’, or ‘i shall come back’, or ‘words, wide night’, or ‘prufrock’

26) Essay?

Something from The Undertaking, probably ‘Tract’.

27) Short Story?

Malamud or Bradbury.  The Magic Barrell, or The Bill, or Idiot’s First, or ‘Take Pity’.  Or ‘The April Witch’,  or ‘The Night’, or ‘The Fruit At The Bottom Of The Bowl’, or The Pedestrian’.

28) Work of nonfiction?

The Ancestor’s Tale which I’ve just read again, or Mrs Slocombe’s Pussy (serious book about british tv, just go with the title) or one of the Bill Bryson books (I’m easy).   Or Appetite by Nigel Slater.  Or The Undertaking although it’s really a book of essays which is certainly non-fiction but has just had its own category.

29) Who is your favorite writer?

*sigh*.  Dunno.  Lots of the people I’ve already mentioned above.

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?

JK Rowling.  Harry Potter is tightly plotted vacuous nonsense about nothing.

31) What is your desert island book?

Rol put ‘Robinson Crusoe’ as a bit of a ‘are we near the end yet’ answer. I have to say that the last time I went to visit somewhere which is almost a desert island that was indeed what I took with me and really enjoyed.  Otherwise it’s probably Flicker

32) And… what are you reading right now?

The River Cottage Fish Book, which is good but not as good as the Meat book, although I’m not absolutely sure why yet and it might just be differently organised.  And ‘Seeing and Believing’  by Richard Panek about telescopes.

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