Category: lisa

My 10 favourite books

My good friend Lisa (the one who looked so delighted at throwing ice water over me) challenged me to do the 10 favourite books list.

Now, my life is run almost entirely by lists. I have a list of things to do today, of which writing this is on it. It almost certainly wouldn’t get done if it wasn’t on the list.

I can also get quite obsessive about lists as well. Coming up with my 10 favourite movies took the best part of a couple of months. You’ve got to get these things right. Well, I do.

“Books, records, films… these things matter.”

It’s seriously the sort of things that will bug me if I get it wrong, so you may well see this list edited at some point in the near future.
So, I would like to thank Lisa for challenging me and taking up a large part of my weekend as she knows I’m crap at backing down from a challenge. However, as it has been spent thinking about something that I love, it’s really not all bad.
I’ve been reading since as long as I can remember. One of my first memories is attempting to read the Narnia books and having to stop frequently to go to ask my parents what a certain word meant. I never did make it all the way through the whole series. 
I really enjoy being able to hide away in my own little world with a book. Or rather, to hide away in someone else’s little world which we are sharing for however many pages the book covers.

I am perhaps far too excited about the fact that my new job means commuting for 2 hours a day which I will be able to dedicate to reading. 

Reading is important to me. When I was in Porto recently, I went to a very pretty bookshop called Livraria Lello. (The picture here is someone else’s as you can only take photos for 1 hour a day). I chose this over more traditional tourist attractions – although admittedly Porto is slightly lacking in them as the train station is number 6 on Trip Advisor’s list – because there is a certain beauty about books and visiting a pretty bookshop is something that appeals to me.
This is even though I’ve only bought one or two physical books in the last two years. The year that Amazon went really heavy on their promotion of the Kindle, I was suckered into buying myself one for Christmas. 
I thought I would hate it as books are really pretty and smell nice. I was wrong. I absolutely adore it and it is one of the best purchases I have made. Not only for the fact you can get lots of classics for free or close to it, but for the fact you can carry around with you hundreds of books effortlessly. It has a built in dictionary so I look up more words (even the effort of picking up my phone to search the internet for a word’s meaning is enough to disrupt my flow when reading a book). It is really lightweight and much easier to hold than a weighty tome. If I want a new book, I can get it in seconds.  The main downside is being unable to share books with people, but I’m sure I can cope with that. 
I am currently reading a proper book (A Child of the Jago, since you asked) and it is nice to do so occasionally, but I feel that by the time I retire they will be almost obsolete.
Anyway, in alphabetical order (because attempting to put them in order of preference would take another week), here are my 10 favourite books:
Bill Bryson – Notes From A Small Island

Bryson’s writing helped ignite a love of travel in me. This book in particular made me realise that there are awesome things around me and is possibly part of what prompted me to go driving around England last year.
Douglas Coupland – Girlfriend In A Coma

Chosing a Coupland book is hard because the older stuff is in my opinion superior to his recent output and I read it all quite a while ago now. I picked this one simply because it is what inspired my screen name monkeyinacoma.  

Roald Dahl – George’s Marvellous Medicine

Dahl is one of my favourite authors and it is difficult to narrow it down to one book, however this is the one that I read over and over as a child, so much so that it fell apart.
Nick Hornby – High Fidelity

Sometimes, a book will become a favourite due to the time of your life when you read it. I think this is one of those books. It made me feel like I was actually coping quite well with my life in comparison whilst at the same time wanting to be Rob Flemming. 
Aldous Huxley – Brave New World

This was a toss up between Brave New World and 1984. I read them both for my A-Level English and was amazed at how much better they were than anything we had been made to read in English previously. I really enjoyed the dystopian themes in both novels which appealed to the moody teenage version of myself. I think these two books are what made me fall in love with reading again after spending many of my teenage years focussed on computer games. I prefer Orwell’s writing overall but Brave New World is in my opinion a more attractive piece of writing. 
Rachel Joyce – The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

An old man writes a letter to a former colleague. On the way to the postbox, he decides to hand deliver it and begins a journey from Devon to Berwick-Upon-Tweed. I found this book so instantly likeable and there are themes of reconciliation and rejuvenation and finding a sense of purpose running through it that just seemed to resonate with me. 
Andrew Kauffman – All My Friends Are Superheroes

Kauffman has a very definite voice and it is one I am envious of. His brain is also full of brilliant ideas that I wish I had. This is an exceptionally cute story where all the characters have a superpower (of sorts) and I was hooked from pretty much the first few sentences.
Frank Miller – The Dark Knight Returns

Batman is far and away my favourite superhero. He has been since I was 8. I’m not sure exactly what it is that attracts me to the character other than that I really want to be him. This was the first Batman graphic novel I read which was – to my shame – only a few years ago. I have since read a large number although none compare to this one. There are almost Shakespearian themes running through it with Batman and the Joker’s stories seeming to mirror each other in some way. I cannot recommend this highly enough.
Chuck Palahniuk – Choke

I tend to binge on things. Last year, I read through Palahniuk’s back catalogue having previously only read Fight Club and Choke. Sometimes he can be a bit hit and miss (Pygmy being especially hard to make it all the way through). He has his thing of repetition and this can sometimes be awesome and sometimes a bit too predictable. I like author’s who have their own distinctive style and Chuck usually manages that. I picked Choke as it’s the only one of his books that I have read twice so far and there must be a reason for that.
Kurt Vonnegut – Welcome to the Monkey House

I only read this last month but it has made such an impression on me that it makes the list. It’s the first Vonnegut I’ve read and is actually a collection of short stories but even after reading the introduction, I knew I would enjoy it. The way Vonnegut talks about himself in that introduction made me warm to him instantly and the wit and charm in that introduction pervades through his writing which still seems fresh and original around 50 years later.

Bucket list item #16 : Win a gold medal at the Lukelympics

Once every two years, the world’s elite athletes descend on Folkestone’s East Cliff to compete in some of the most dangerous and extreme sporting events known to man.

The event is so top secret, even Sky Sports don’t know about it and what video footage and photographs are available after the event are usually taken on camera phones by competitors or the few fans lucky enough to gain access to this exclusive event.

For my friend Luke (known henceforth as The Committee)’s birthday, we form ourselves into loose collectives based on some vague theme and argue amongst ourselves about who is the best horse or who is the best at running blindfolded and then send forth our gladiators into the arena.

This year was the fourth edition of the games and only the second which I had been able to attend in full. I formed a team of the best athletes I know and Bass who then argued for about three days as to what our team name would be. Eventually settling on “It’s my birthday” so Bass could make endless jokes when Luke read out our team name, we made our way to the arena complete with party hats and blowers.

After Bass’s blindfold fencing style – which largely resembled attempting to play cricket and then rolling on the floor – earned us a silver medal in the first event, it looked like we were on for a good day.

I didn’t compete until the Four Legged Hurdles event when me, Lisa and Natalie felt confident after literally minutes of training. Despite even giving hints to our opponents in the heat (two thirds of whom hadn’t yet reached their eleventh birthday) we mercilessly beat them with our athletic prowess.

In the final, we went up against Team Gin B who had a couple of McNeices as ringers on their side. We were less confident but after going neck and neck down the first straight we took them at the turn before getting over excited and almost losing our rhythm as we stormed home to victory to set the world record of 38.03 seconds.

We managed to hold back the tears during the medal ceremony but our joy was evident. We also learnt a valuable lesson: don’t let Bass play. This was reinforced when during the Piggyback Equestrianism event he did 5 of the set moves rather than the three which he was supposed to do. He’s a loose cannon.

I had considered not entering any more events to maintain a 100% winning record but I felt I owed it to the team to try to win more for us. Unfortunately it was not to be. In the Blindfold Biathalon underhanded instructions shouted from a rival team member (don’t worry, Katie, I won’t tell anyone it was you) lost us valuable seconds and in the Water Balloon Shot Put, it turns out that I don’t know my own strength and I crushed a balloon in my bare hands before launching it down the course.

Despite the fact that our team finished last overall, we were the smallest nation entering and I feel we can be proud of our performance. We now have two years to get in training for the next one to build on what we have accomplished.