I wish I was the same. I just stare at our book cases and I'm overcome with a sense of self-loathing at all the unread books staring back at me. The bastards are taunting me.
Showing posts with label Book Meme. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book Meme. Show all posts
Friday, March 30, 2018
Friday, December 07, 2012
FourFourTwo's Top 50 football books
I've got a soft spot for FourFourTwo footie magazine, subscribing to it when it was first launched back in '94, so their 2008 list of the Top 50 football books caught my eye recently when I was doing in-depth research into the man and myth that was Jimmy Sirrell.
As I'm going through a football book reading kick at the moment, I thought I'd use it as a meme for the blog. The usual ritual; if it's scored out, I've read it.
(50) The Fashion Of Football by Paolo Hewitt and Mark Baxter (2004)
(49) Out Of His Skin: The John Barnes Phenomenon by Dave Hill (1989)
(48) Steaming In by Colin Ward (1989)
(47) The Beautiful Game: A Journey Through Latin American Football by Chris Taylor (1998)
(46) Steak... Diana Ross: Diary Of A Football Nobody by David McVay (2003)
(45) Back Home: The Story Of England In The 1970 World Cup by Jeff Dawson (2001)
(44) The Way It Was by Stanley Matthews (2000)
(43) Barça: A People’s Passion by Jimmy Burns (1999)
(42) The Billy The Fish Football Yearbook Viz Comics (1999)
(41) Left Foot Forward by Garry Nelson (1995)
(40) Walking On Water by Brian Clough (2002)
(39) The Mavericks by Rob Steen (1994)
(38) The Story Of The World Cup by Brian Glanville (1980)
(37) Ajax Barcelona Cruyff: The ABC Of An Obstinate Maestro by Frits Barend and Henk Van Dorp (1999)
(36) The Football Grounds of England and Wales by Simon Inglis (1983)
(35) Morbo: The Story of Spanish Football by Phil Ball (2001)
(34) England v Argentina: World Cups and Other Small Wars by David Downing (2003)
(33) Kicking And Screaming by Rogan Taylor and Andrew Ward (1995)
(32) The Greatest Footballer You Never Saw: The Robin Friday Story by Paolo Hewitt and Paul McGuigan (1998)
(31) El Macca: Four Years With Real Madrid by Steve McManaman and Sarah Edworthy (2004)
(30) Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life by Alex Bellos (2002)
(29) Managing My Life by Alex Ferguson (1999)
(28) White Angels by Jon Carlin (2004)
(27) Ajax, The Dutch, The War by Simon Kuper (2003)
(26) Keane by Roy Keane and Eamonn Dunphy (2002)
(25) Tackling My Demons by Stan Collymore (2004)
(24) A Season With Verona by Tim Parks (2002)
(23) Passovotchka: Moscow Dynamo in Britain 1945 by David Downing (1999)
(22) Those Feet: A Sensual History of English Football by David Winner (2005)
(21) The Football Man by Arthur Hopcraft (1968)
(20) Dynamo: Defending the Honour of Kiev by Andy Dougan (2001)
(19) Football: The Golden Age by John Tennent (2001)
(18) Addicted by Tony Adams (1998)
(17) The Far Corner: A Mazy Dribble through North-East Football by Harry Pearson (1994)
(16) The Beautiful Game? Searching for the Soul of Football by David Conn (2004)
(15) The Boss: The Many Sides Of Alex Ferguson by Michael Crick (2002)
(14) Only a Game? by Eamon Dunphy (1976)
(13) Niall Quinn: The Autobiography by Niall Quinn & Tom Humphries (2002)
(12) The Miracle Of Castel Di Sangro by Joe McGinniss (1999)
(11) The Glory Game by Hunter Davies (1973)
(10) Puskas on Puskas: the life and times of a footballing legend by Rogan Taylor & Klara Jamrich (1998)
(9) Football In Sun And Shadow by Eduardo Galeano (1997)
(8) Tor! by Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger (2003)
(7) Full Time by Tony Cascarino & Paul Kimmage (2000)
(6) Keeper Of Dreams by Ronald Reng (2003)
(5) A Strange Kind Of Glory by Eamon Dunphy (1974)
(4) Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius Of Dutch Football by David Winner (2000)
(3) All Played Out: Full Story Of Italia 90 by Pete Davies (1990)
(2) Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby (1993)
(1) Football Against The Enemy by Simon Kuper (1994)
Only 12/50? This was one book meme where I thought I would be in the high twenties at least. I guess it's only me that holds the 1979 Shoot in such high esteem. I know I'm making a rod for my own back but by this time next year, that total will be at least 26/50. I set myself a target . . . and I fall short. Just like Celtic in the league this year.
PS - Where the hell is Gary Imlach's 2005 classic 'My Father and Other Working Class Football Heroes'? That should be on everyone's list.
As I'm going through a football book reading kick at the moment, I thought I'd use it as a meme for the blog. The usual ritual; if it's scored out, I've read it.
Only 12/50? This was one book meme where I thought I would be in the high twenties at least. I guess it's only me that holds the 1979 Shoot in such high esteem. I know I'm making a rod for my own back but by this time next year, that total will be at least 26/50. I set myself a target . . . and I fall short. Just like Celtic in the league this year.
PS - Where the hell is Gary Imlach's 2005 classic 'My Father and Other Working Class Football Heroes'? That should be on everyone's list.
Monday, April 04, 2011
Revisiting A thru' Z
Just stumbled across this old book meme on the blog and I thought I'd give it a second go. First time round was nearly three years ago, and I have caught the reading bug again in recent years.
A recap of rules for those too bastard lazy to click on the above link:
"A book meme - I guess - that I shamelessly nicked from Normski over at Normblog. It "involves going through the alphabet and picking, for each letter, a novelist and one of his or her novels that you've read.""
Take a Q:
Archer, Jeffrey - First Among Equals Bainbridge, Beryl - Young Adolf Calvino, Italo - The Path to the Spiders' Nest Doctorow, E.L. - World's Fair Ellroy, James - L.A. Confidential Fante, John - Ask The Dust Gibbon, Lewis Grassic - Spartacus Hird, Laura - Born Free Irving, John - Trying to Save Piggy Sneed Jenkins, Robin - The Thistle and the Grail Kelman, James - The Busconductor Hines Litt, Toby - Beatniks McCabe, Brian - The Other McCoy Nobbs, David - Second From Last in the Sack Race Owens, Agnes - Gentlemen of the West Pennac, Daniel - The Fairy Gunmother Q - passed (again) Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet On The Western Front Spence, Alan - The Magic Flute Tey, Josephine - The Daughter of TIme Unsworth, Barry - Sugar and Rum Vonnegut, Kurt - Hocus Pocus Williams, Gordon M - From Scenes Like These X - passed (again) Yurick, Sol - The Warriors Z - pass
Once again I fail with the letters Q and X. There are about 20 Quinns' listed over at Fantastic Fiction. I'll just have to do a smash and grab. And the only way I'll be able to fill out the X if and when I do the meme for the third time - pencilled in for sometime in 2014 - is if I develop a taste for Chinese literature between now and then. The Z is sorted. Just have to hunt down a copy of The Islanders.
I'd love to tag someone with this meme but everyone's buggered off to Facebook or have the attention span of a tweet. So it goes.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
The Stephen King Books Meme
Just spotted this book meme over at A Very Public Sociologist.
I'll let AVPS Phil do the explanation bit 'cos it's going to take me at least one side of That Petrol Emotion's Chemicrazy - Sides? I'm so 1970s. It must be the Cemetery Junction effect. - to format this bastard post:
I'll let AVPS Phil do the explanation bit 'cos it's going to take me at least one side of That Petrol Emotion's Chemicrazy - Sides? I'm so 1970s. It must be the Cemetery Junction effect. - to format this bastard post:
"At the back of the book, [Stephen King's 'On Writing'] King provides a bibliography of best books he read during the composition of On Writing, From a Buick Eight, Hearts in Atlantis and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. This sounds like ideal meme fodder to me.
Of his list of 93 books how many have you read? Those inboldred are books I've read. Those in italics are books I own. And if they're bold and italicised, well. I think you can work it out."
I've read
It's strangely reassuring that there is no book on the list that I own but have yet to read. And who is Peter Abrahams, btw? Surely it's not the same Peter Abrahams who co-wrote a couple of books on Orwell a few years back? I read those books during my last Orwell phase. Wiki will no doubt reveal all.
Phil tags people with these memes but, then again, Phil has readers. I just have people who stumble across the blog because they want to know more about Kevin-Prince Boateng's tattoos. It's official: Boateng's tatts are this year's 'Kika Markham + nude'. If that footie fan in Ulan Bator wants to take time out from poring over Boateng's upper torso - and wondering what the hell Viz is - please feel free to take the meme.
Phil tags people with these memes but, then again, Phil has readers. I just have people who stumble across the blog because they want to know more about Kevin-Prince Boateng's tattoos. It's official: Boateng's tatts are this year's 'Kika Markham + nude'. If that footie fan in Ulan Bator wants to take time out from poring over Boateng's upper torso - and wondering what the hell Viz is - please feel free to take the meme.
Now back to Stevie Mack singing vandal over and over and over again.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Desert Island digressions
Funny the things you stumble across on the net when you're looking for something else (in my case, the jpeg of a particular Orwell book cover).
I've read nine ten of the listed books, but which nine ten?
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Top 100 Book Meme
AVPS Phil has passed on the following book meme to me. These book memes always kill me because it only goes to confirm my long held suspicion that I haven't read nearly as many 'classics' in this life as I should have.
The sticking point for this particular meme is that a lot of the books listed are books that you've supposed to have read as a child, and I only really got into the habit of seriously reading novels when I first went to Lancaster and discovered that I didn't have a TV in my room. The other things that bites is that there are five or six authors in the 100 who I have read, but not the book that is included on the list.
Phil provides the following blurb with the meme:
“The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them
I would add that 'read' means read, not flicked through or given up half way to the end. It's cover to cover or nothing.
Here goes:
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling (I've read the first book in the series. Cut me some slack.)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (Again, I've read one and a half books of Pullman's trilogy.)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
I guess 16/100 isn't too bad. Not too bright either. Phil snaffled the meme from a Liberal Democrat, and one of her blogging mates had the following red letter day when he took the meme. It's amazing what one can achieve in life when you don't have broadband.
I'm happy to pass the meme onto anyone out there who wants to take it. I won't name names (but if Sarah Silverman is looking in, it would be a pleasure and an honour if you picked up the blog meme baton) but do let me know if you do take the meme. Don't let me know if you read more than thirty of the books listed.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
What about Memes, Mac or Mc?
A book meme - I guess - that I shamelessly nicked from Normski over at Normblog. It "involves going through the alphabet and picking, for each letter, a novelist and one of his or her novels that you've read."
It's a personal bugbear of mine that I'm not reading as much as I once did. No excuses at my end. Just the realisation that I can feel the brain cells bailing out of my left ear each and every day I get further and further away from picking a book off a bookshelf . . . any book . . . any bookshelf.
Allen, Walter All in a lifetime Barker, Pat - The Eye in the Door Carr, JL - A Month in the Country Dostoevsky, Fyodor - Notes from Underground Ellroy, James - Brown's Requiem Friel, George - Mr Alfred M.A. Greene, Graham - Brighton Rock Hamilton, Patrick - The Slaves of Solitude Irving, John - The World According to Garp Jones, Lewis - Cwmardy Kundera, Milan - The Joke Legge, Gordon - I Love Me (Who Do You Love?) Mina, Denise - Garnethill Nasrin, Taslima - Shame Orwell, George - A Clergyman's Daughter Piercy, Marge - Vida Q - pass Rankin, Ian - Black and Blue Serge, Victor - The Case of Comrade Tulayev Tressell, Robert - The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists Upward, Edward - The Rotten Elements Vonnegut, Kurt - Slaughterhouse-Five Williams, Nigel - Star Turn X - pass Yourcenar, Marguerite - A Coin in Nine Hands Zamyatin, Yevgeny - We
A bit of an obvious list, though some of the usual suspects are temporarily missing. I can honestly say that I enjoyed reading all the books listed, though Edward Upward's novel was probably a bit of a struggle at the time.
Not so much for the novel itself, but for its painful honesty. To be in the same Party branch as Alan Sebrill (Edward Upward's fictionalised self) would have been my idea of hell.
With regards to the gaps in my alphabet, I get not reading an author with the surname beginning with X, but Q? I'll have to look out in future for an author to fill that particular gap. A David Quantick novella will suffice.
Do people still tag people when doing these memes, or was it finally rumbled years ago that memes are just a ruse to compel people who otherwise wouldn't be caught dead looking at your blog to have to give you the blogging time of day? I think I'll have to test that hypothesis out.
Kara; Cactus Mouth Informer's Highlander; FDTW's Stuart W; The Scottish Patient's Kevin W; Richard Curmudgeon; & Snappy Kat have been duly tagged.
Take your time comrades . . . I'm just finishing the start of this book in my hand.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Trying To Look Bookish
A book meme nicked from Lisa for no other reason than the fact that I haven't been reading enough lately.Total number of books owned In Brookyn? About 80. I feel intellectually naked. Back in Britain? About 1500. I still feel intellectually naked.
Last book bought Ramor Ryan's 'Clandestines: The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile'. Stuart thinks he sounds like a bit of a wanker. (It's a long story from a short FDTW post.) I'm reserving judgement for a change.
Last book read Elmore Leonard's 'Freaky Deaky'. Disappointing. Picked it up second hand in a book store in Park Slope, as I was intrigued with the idea of Leonard doing sixties radicalism souring into the eighties 'me generation'. The story seemed incredibly slight, and ended too abruptly for my liking. Not one of Leonard's best, so I'm surprised to read that it's being adapted for the screen. Call it a hunch, but I don't think George Clooney will be playing Chris Mankowski.
Currently reading Denise Mina's 'The Last Breath'. It's not being published in the States until February of next year, so I had to sell a kidney - don't worry, it was someone else's - to get a hold of the third novel in the Paddy Meehan series. Being set in Glasgow in 1990, there are, of course, the passing references to Glasgow being the City of Culture that year but James Kelman and Farquhar McLay have yet to turn up with their denunciations. Already half way through the novel - I have to finish it by the weekend otherwise Kara's threatened me with violence. She also likes Denise Mina's work - and I'm already thinking that it is my favourite in the series. I'm glad that's the case 'cos even I was getting sick of my constant whining at Denise Mina's refusal to write another Maureen O'Donnell novel.
Five books that mean a lot to you As I stated above, I haven't been reading a lot lately so I can't say hand on heart that there's been a book (or books) that has really impacted on me in any particularly grand fashion since I last took this meme. More's the pity.
Next tagees: The usual suspects: The Dalai Lama; Freddy Eastwood; Sarah Silverman; Howard Kirk and Elisabeth Hasselbeck.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Double Booked
SPECIAL ADDENDUM (IAN WALKER RELATED) - added 4th August, 2011Stuart of From Despair To Where has thrown me a book survey meme. I've been looking longingly ay this survey doing the rounds in blogland for a few days now, but no bugger up to now had the good grace to think of me when passing it on. I'll remember you bastards when I'm Commissar of Catchcart.Hello there.
Nice of you to drop in. Enjoy the stay - however brief it may be.
I'm second guessing that you've found this six year old post because you've been looking on the net for information about the late, great British journalist Ian Walker.
First of all, I'd like to congratulate you on your excellent taste in journalism. However, I know, I understand, there's not a lot out there about him or his work on the net.
Fret no more. Click on this link for a selection of Ian Walker's journalism from the pages of New Society. Also, if you scroll down to the comments on this post, you'll find further information about Ian Walker's life and work.
Enjoy.
1. Total number of books I own.
Tricky one. 'cos they are in at least three different locations. I would guess at about 1200. Like everyone else that has done this meme, I do try and do a cull every once in a while. That usually means that unless it is a novel that I especially like, I will pass on a lot of my fiction onto the nearest charity shop. Strange that I think it is more acceptable to get rid of fiction over factual books - especially when I consider that it is particular novels and collections of short stories that have had the greater impact on me down the years, but I guess I rationalise matters by thinking that I will always be more likely to find those books again on my travels, either in libraries or secondhand bookshops. I can't say the same for some of the more obscure lefty stuff.
I also used to collect political pamphlets and journals, and I have about 500 knocking about but I'm not obsessive about these things, and now that so many of these texts are online, I don't feel the need to get my grubby little mitts on the hard copies.
2. Last book I bought, and why.
John Sutherland's 'Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet? Further Puzzles In Classic Fiction'; 'A Spiel Among Us: Glasgow People Writing'; & 'Edinburgh Review: Tom Leonard Number' (Has an interview with Mario Vargas Llosa in it.). Why these three books? Three ex-library books for a pound from my local library. God bless the non-reading public of Fife.
3. Last book I read.
I recently relocated a load of books from there to here, so I have been indulging in the pastime of re-reading old favourites. One of those books being 'The Other Britain', edited by Paul Barker; published in 1982, it is a collection of articles that originally appeared in the now defunct New Society magazine. A wonderful, wonderful book that I have read many, many times over the years. Featuring such inspiring writers as Jeremy Seabrook, Angela Carter and the late - and truly great - Ian Walker, as the blurb on the back of the books says: "This collection of social observations and reportage is written by some of the best of the younger generation of descriptive writers. All are associated with the magazine New Society in whose pages the essays first appeared and whose 20th anniversary is marked by the publication of this book. Together they document the way we live now, not just describing the 'problems' but celebrating the strength and variety of Britain and its people."
4. Five books that mean a lot to me.
Like Stuart, I probably covered a lot of this when I did this survey. I would in all probability include both Bulgakov and Gaitens in my top five, but rather than repeat myself, I will list five different books that mean a hell of a lot to me.
i) The Monument: the Story of the Socialist Party of Great Britain by Robert Barltrop
Stuart's already listed this - Christ, it was me that sold him his copy. He could have namechecked me ;-) - but there is no denying that reading this book had a formative influence in my becoming a member of the SPGB. It's a strange thing to admit, because in no way could it be described as a polemical or analytical work that can somehow prompt a person into becoming a revolutionary socialist. However, I do think that it contributed to me looking at the SPGB in a light in which I thought that this was an organisation I could be a part of. Barltrop is a wonderful writer - his biography of Jack London is also recommended - and though I've since learnt the strange history of the manuscript, and how it was the case that he was settling a few scores in the book along the way, I would have no hesitation in recommending the book to anyone wanting to get some sense of what the SPGB is, and the people who made it. Just bear in mind the subheading of the book; it's a 'story' rather than 'history' of the SPGB.
ii) The Zoo Station by Ian Walker
I love Walker's writings. As mentioned above, I discovered them via The Other Britain, and then spent many an afternoon going through old back issues of the New Society in college libraries when I should have been studying. I admired Walker's writings so much that years ago, when I had some spare money, I paid an arm and a leg for a load of old copies of seventies radical magazine, The Leveller, because I knew that he had been one of its star writers. I'd read about Zoo Station, his account of his time spent living in the divided Berlin in the early eighties, but I had never been able to get a hold of a copy until I found it on sale for fifty pence in Watford Market about ten years ago. Just the opening paragraph gives some flavour of his writing style:
"The maroon-and-caramel train ran all day back and forth between the systems, capitalism-communism-capitalism-communism the rhythm of the iron wheels lent itself to any number of repitive lyrics. I looked out the dirty window. A girl was waving. I waved back. There was something about trains that caused children to wave spontaneously at the passing faces, some idea that the strangers at the window were bound for adventure or romance, some idea about stories starting in trains."
Sadly, I couldn't find much on the net about either the book or Walker himself, but the link provided above - and the contrasting views about the book - give some sense of the book and Walker's style of writing. I think it was Walker's humanism - to borrow a term from Orwell, his "essential decency" - that resulted in Walker impacting as much as he did on me when I first read him.
Sadly he died much too young, and tragically just when he was about to reach a much wider audience. I remember that when Roy Greenslade took over as editor of the Daily Mirror in the late eighties or early nineties he hired both Walker and the late John Diamond as columnists. Walker died within weeks of penning his first column, and for reasons I now forget, Greenslade was removed as editor of the Mirror soon after. Shame that, I think that the Mirror would have been much the better paper for writers such as Walker, Diamond and Greenslade. I did have the cutting of Walker's obituary that appeared in the Mirror somewhere amongst my papers, and if I ever come across it again I will be sure to scan it in and place it on the blog. He is a writer that should be remembered by more people.
iii) Catch-22 by Jospeh Heller
Cue violins - we didn't have a lot of books in the house when I was growing up. I seem to remember a sideboard where in amongst the liquors, the ornaments and the LPs, there was a wee section given over to books. In amongst the handful of books, there was a biography of Elvis, a couple of Time Life books on Cowboys and Indians and a couple of Kojak novels that were obviously tie-ins with the TV series. I got into Orwell big time around about 1985/86, 'cos a lot of his books were republished after 1984 but, aside from Orwell, the number of novels I read before the age of 16 I could count on the fingers of one hand.
One of those five books I was fortunate enough to read was Heller's Catch-22. My sister's boyfriend of the time had bought it for her, and I ended up picking it up after she read it. I can't claim to have fully understood Helller's biting satire first time round, but re-reading it two times since I've come to enjoy the novel more at each time of reading. I'm always a bit wary when someone describes a book as 'anarchic', but in this case the label fits.
I can still remember laughing for ten minutes solid after reading a passage in the book that featured Doc Daneka. I mean real tears of laughter, where I ended up aching with pain. I don't usually laugh for that length of time unless it is one of my own jokes, so it must have been a good one.
iv) A Month In The Country by J.L Carr
I would recommend all of Carr's books, but I have a real soft spot for this novella because of its final few pages. I can't remember being affected so much by any other piece of writing before or since. The film adaptation isn't bad but it isn't a patch on the book itself.
v) Non-Market Socialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century, edited by Maximilien Rubel and John Crump
An excellent primer on the majority of the currents that make up, in the late John Crump's words, "the thin red line of revolutionary socialism". Betraying its Eurocentric roots, there is no chapter on De Leonism or the Revolutionary Unionism of the IWW but, for all that, a very readable and accessible introduction to ideas that have hitherto been consigned to the footnote of history.
(Apparently it's for sale on Amazon for a minimum of $78 - the Monument not much cheaper. I think I have finally found my pension plan.)
5. Tag five more people
Fellow SPGBer, Piers, at Border Fever. It will be nice to meet you at the G8 thingymijig; Kevin the Scottish Patient. If he can't do this meme, he should hang his laptop in shame; Harry at Harry's Place. Not because I think he will get round to doing it but because he may mention me in passing un his blog - "An ultra-leftist is harrassing me. Call the cops." - and I could do with the hits. Glaikit Feartie as my random act of blogging kindness. No idea who they are, but I love the name of the blog; and, as an innovation, I'm going to offer a guest blog to Julian from the World in Common group. The bugger did have a blog, and it looked like a goodie but he came up to the notorious: 'Fourth post writers block syndrome'. Myself and others who have been through the same process tried to advise him on how best to get through the pain barrier: "Just link to a Steve Bell cartoon for chrissake." - "Lift a quote from Oscar Wilde, and call it your 'Thought for Today'." "Do a sub-Hornbyesque post where you recount in great detail your feelings when Terry Fenwick scored that goal for QPR in the 1982 FA Cup final." But to no avail, he's happier in his procrastination by reading - and understanding, the freak - John Hollway's writings; listening to sub Sub Pop records; and propping up bars in West London, where for a white wine and some pork scratchings, he will regale you with a stream of consciousness on where he was when Terry Fenwick scored that goal for QPR in the 1982 FA Cup final.
The blog floor is open to you, Julian.
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