Books

In response to kek's shout... the book meme that's running like Ebola through the nether regions of the super-information webway...

1) The Fahrenheit 451 Scenario.

Since I'm unfortunately exactly as intelligent as I look (and I look a little retarded) I'm still not entirely sure what this question meant so I'll go along with a book I'd like to see burned:

Automated Alice by Jeff Noon because, having read Vurt and Pollen I thought it was going to be really good and it just wasn't; it sort of aspires to be cyber-(K)Dick cool and misses almost every mark, ending up dull and inspid and lifeless; the literary equivalent of the grey John Major on Spitting Image.

A book I'd like to see plucked from the fire and saved for all eternity is the Comte de Lautreamont's Maldoror because 100 years on it's still the creepiest, most surreal, downright uneccesary novel in any language and everyone ought to have the chance to be appalled by it. Besides, my favourite literary genre is the Sex with Sharks and Shopping novel and this guy practically invented it.

2) Have I ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Yes. The girl from the Battle of the Planets cartoon. Sissy Hankshaw from Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Lila from Lila: an enquiry into morals though the misnomer of a subtitle put me off a little bit.

Almost every girl character is every book from the ages of around 13 to now figures a little bit here, except perhaps the one in The Wasp Factory

3) The last book I bought?

Rudy Rucker - The Fourth Dimension (and how to get there) - a sort of guided tour through theories and ideas about the existence of other dimensions, mixing in time-travel, excerpts from novels, poems, Ouspensky etc. It's all done with a feather-light touch (my science generally has to come feather light - i nearly always read about three quarters of science books (especially Quantum Physics ones) - stopping when I get to the phrase: "This is best explained by the following equation..."

The kind of book that makes you feel a little cleverer and helps me understand why the Science bods at my workplace never seem to see any daylight.

4) Last book I read?

Angela Carter's The Passion of New Eve - multi-breasted desert Goddesses, gender shenanigans, road races and ridiculous plots combine to form a squelchy adventure story for the kind of people who seriously think about what's called in these parts "popping an Orridge.

5) Currently Reading?
Re-reading Riddley Walker because it used to be one of my favourite books and I like to check my memory every now and then.

6) Five Desert Island Books

Five is about 73 too few but...

Jonathan Meades - Pompey

Everytime I read this it makes me laugh and it has the best pygmy hunt ever committed to paper. And any book with sympathetic cannibalism is okay by me.

Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicron

Nice n big n bouncy: a multi-channelled adventure into Hacking, Cryptography, World War 2 and big business... (no, honestly, it's amazing). One of the only books I've read that I genuinely didn't want to finish.

Michel Houellebecq - Atomised

Nasty, spiteful, bitter, rollicking: sort of like Erasmus with knobs in. Like meeting up with unsuccessful friends after many years, this makes me feel better about myself.

William Burroughs - The Western Lands

My favourite Burroughs, mostly because it was the first thing by him I read and because I read it while pretending to be an office cleaner at Westlands Helicopters Ltd. Love them door dogs. One of the few novels that has so many ideas you don't realise that there's a gaping hole where the plot should be.

David Keenan - England's Hidden Reverse

Coil, Nurse With Wound, Current 93. Because if I'm on a desert island it would be nice to imagine some music. This book is all the better (actually, I've worked it out - it's exactly 7 times better) for completely obliterating the dull Death in June angle.

7) Three people to pass this quiz onto

Mmm... Farmer Glitch; Worlds of Possibility and Nick Gutterbreakz though am I alone in worrying like hell that it's already been passed onto these guys and that this will therefore seem like a ActuallyIhaven'treadyourbloginawhile slight?