Published on 12 January 2010
in meme and books.
There haven’t been many blog memes lately. I think they’re all on Facebook, or, to a lesser extent, Twitter. This is an old one but recently rejuvenated by Steve Lawson. It’s a meme and about books, so how could I resist? Also I don’t think I did it when it was popular, back in 2005.
I’m not sure if I will be able to think of 15 statements about me and books, but here goes:
- I love books. NB: This is not the reason I became a librarian. But that’s another story.
- I don’t remember being taught to read, but I do remember the day I realised I could read. I was 4 or 5 years old and was gazing at the newspaper when suddenly I realised I was reading the day’s tv guide. That was the beginning of the beginning. This also meant that my first day at school was excruciatingly boring. I remember the teacher spelling the words k-e-r-u-s-i (”chair”), m-e-j-a (”table”) and c-i-k-g-u (”teacher”) and me wondering when we would do some real reading.
- Growing up, we always had books at home - lots of Enid Blyton and the usual classics like Black Beauty, Robin Hood, Tom Sawyer, King Arthur and so on. I remember a children’s science reference collection, which was “precious” and kept on the top shelf of the bookcase, out of everyday reach. My dad also had an extensive (spanning many years) collection of Reader’s Digest. I remember I used to keep track of and rate the books I read. I wish I still had my childhood diaries!
- That big red book of animals that belonged to my dad had a number of pictures in it that used to give me nightmares.
- A favourite treat when I was a child was a trip to the bookshop. We didn’t have a lot of money so we didn’t tend to buy many books. I remember my mother urging me to buy Malay language books, to encourage me to read in the language (and improve my language skills). I relish being able to indulge now.
- Even now, going to a bookshop is special. Fun, relaxing and exciting all in one. (I don’t know why but I don’t tend to have the same feeling when I go to a library. As a librarian, should I be admitting this?)
- I consider myself very fortunate in that I have always been able to read in English and Malay. An early enjoyment was reading Enid Blyton works in Malay translation, then comparing these with the works in the original English.
- I will read almost anything. I have noted however that the genre I least enjoy in English, romance, I enjoy in Chinese. I don’t know why, particularly. I also enjoy horror in Malay more than I do in English. I suspect this has something to do with the cultural setting. (E.g. Pontianak don’t tend to feature in English language horror.)
- I’m working on my Chinese language reading skills - I read very slowly in Chinese - but I fear this is going to be a lifelong exercise. My other languages have had a headstart.
- Although I have a large collection of books, I don’t tend to care about first or special editions. For me it’s definitely the content that’s important.
- Unlike some, I am not particularly careful with my books, even if I’ve bought them new. For me books are for reading, and the reading experience is all about comfort and enjoyment. If I have to be careful not to leave creases in paperback spines that detracts from the experience for me. I don’t dog ear pages though. And of course, if I am reading your copy of a book I do my best to treat it with care and definitely won’t read it while sitting in the bath.
- A major highlight of any trips to Singapore or Sydney is my (numerous) visits to Kinokuniya. In Sydney Gleebooks is also a favourite. My favourite bookshop in Perth is Planet Books.
- I usually write my name in my books. I also have a name chop that I sometimes use.
- I don’t tend to scribble in my books though. I use slips of paper and or make notes elsewhere.
- I can’t imagine ever giving up paper books. Mind you, this is probably just a deficiency in my imagination rather than anything else. I remember that when I started using a wordprocessor in the late 1980s I thought it was horrible and I swore I would never give up drafting things using a pen and paper. These days I haven’t given up on pen and paper but the bulk of my writing is done using a computer. I imagine that I will be reading a lot more novels and texts in electronic format in the near future. (See #10)
This was surprisingly tough to do and I had to think up the 15 things over a few days.
This was a Facebook meme I got tagged for. While I like doing these sorts of things, I don’t like doing them on Facebook, so I’ll do this here.
These are the instructions as posted on Facebook:
Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?
Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so i can see your responses!
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - x
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - x
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - x
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - x
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - x
6 The Bible - haven’t read the whole thing so not counting it!
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - always get bogged down after a couple of pages, and then I stop.
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - x
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - x
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - x
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - x
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy -
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller -
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - now how many people would have read the complete works?
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier -
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - x
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk - x
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger -x
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger -
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot -
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell -
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 -
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky -
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck -
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - x
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame -
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy -
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - x
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - x
34 Emma-Jane Austen -
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen -
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis -
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - x
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres -
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden -
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne -
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell - x
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - x
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - x
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving -
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery -
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy -
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood - x
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - x
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan -
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel - x
52 Dune - Frank Herbert - x
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 - Mark Haddon - x
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 - x
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - x
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 - x
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie -
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville -
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens -
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - x
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett -
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson -
75 Ulysses - James Joyce -
76 The Inferno – Dante -
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -
78 Germinal - Emile Zola -
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray -
80 Possession - AS Byatt - x
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens -
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell -
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker - x
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro -
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert -
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - x
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - x
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom -
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - x
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton - x
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad -
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery -
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks - x
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 - x
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl -
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo -
Thirty six. So many of these are in my To Read list…
Published on 8 August 2009
in meme.
If you had to choose from all your possessions, what ten would you absolutely need for a year? Normblog asks this question, via the Guardian’s Leo Hickman. Leo’s “rules” are that basic items of clothing – “shirt, a pair of trousers, underwear, T-shirt, coat, pair of shoes” are not included, “nor am I including the basic, shared utensils, furniture, appliances and sundries you would find in most homes – chair, bed, saucepan, knife and fork, towel, loo roll, cooker, fridge etc”.
- Glasses - I think I could function without these, but not very well. I can read without them but probably wouldn’t be able to read signs, for example. People’s faces, at a distance, might also be problematic.
- Fountain pen - do I have to pick just one?
- Bottle of Parker Quink washable blue ink. I’m pretty sure it would last a year.
- Internet-enabled computer. The Internet isn’t a “possession” I don’t think, but I thought I’d be specific. This week we went one day without net access at home when we switched to ADSL2. It was harrowing. The computer would also give me access to my music.
- Books - all the ones I have here, over 3000 of them. Feels like I’m cheating a bit. I assume I wouldn’t be buying any new books for a year…
- Mooncup.
- Journal - I might have a computer but I still have a need to write things down (see #2 and #3).
- Mobile phone - I really debated with myself over this one. I wanted to add a digital camera and a radio to the list then realised if I just had my mobile I would have a camera, alarm clock… I’d even have a radio, actually!
- Sunglasses - prescription ones. Living in sunny Western Australia I like some protection from the glare, and I think sunnies are essential in summer.
- Tinderbox sandalwood rub on - one might argue that a perfumed unguent is not exactly essential, but my justification is that some little niceties add to life’s enjoyment.
This was quite hard to do and I can’t help but feel that I have probably forgotten something. This list would be quite different if we had to consider the “basic utensils” of life!
What would your ten possessions be?
