1. Name one book that changed your life.
I can't say that a book ever has. I guess Animal Farm had an effect on me as a teenager whenI read it at school, as it confirmed all my gut instincts about socialism. Latterly, In the Arena by Richard Nixon was an inspiration to me. Before anyone pokes fun at that, read the book.
2. One book you've read more than once.
Watership Down by Richard Adams. As a child I used to read and re-read The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton over and ovcer again.
3. One book you'd want on a desert island.
The seven volume biography of Churchill by Randolph Churchill and Martin Gilbert. It's the only time I would ever have to read it.
4. One book that made you laugh.
Frank Skinner's autobiography & I am an Oil Tanker by Fi Glover. Ok, that's two.
5. One book that made you cry.
Being Gazza, by Gazza. OK, you may laugh, but it is quite a harrowing read.
6. One book you wish you'd written.
The Aachen Memorandum by Andrew Roberts. A brilliant Eurospectic novel.
7. One book you wish had never been written.
Mein Kampf. It would have meant Hitler had never existed.
8. One book you're currently reading.
There's Only One Neil Redfearn: The Ups and Downs of My Footballing Life by Neil Redfearn.
9. One book you've been meaning to read.
Helmut Kohl's memoirs - in the original German!
10. Now tag five people.
Niles, Jonathan Sheppard, Tim Montgomerie, Alex Hilton, Bob Piper
BOOKS THAT CHANGED MY LIFE
ReplyDeleteMajor british Poets, ed Oscar Williams, bought in San Francisco 1966 during a bout of homesickness. Still have it. Became a crash course on poetry and serious literature.
READ MORE THAN ONCE
On the Road, Jack Kerouac. Exhilarating cure for the blues.
MADE ME LAUGH
Jazz Annecdotes: Bill Crow
Jazz musicians are funny people.
Mad Frankie: Frank Fraser
Criminals are funny too.
BOOK YOU WISH YOU'D WRITTEN
Catcher in the Rye: JD Salinger
Any volume of poetry by Philp Larkin.
A collection of the stories I've told to children over the years.
1. Name one book that changed your life.
ReplyDelete1984, Orwell
2. One book you've read more than once.
Brave New World, Huxley
The most modern, fore-sited, foreboding book, actually much more realistic than 1984 - the other BB is in this book, written over 80 years ago!
3. One book you'd want on a desert island.
The History of The English Speaking People
4. One book that made you laugh.
Unreliable Memoirs - Clive James
+ Diaries - Alan Clark
5. One book that made you cry.
The Face Of Battle - John Keegan
6. One book you wish you'd written.
The Search - John Battelle
7. One book you wish had never been written.
Bridget Jones's diary-
left all the women in the UK with their gun's pointing in the wrong direction!
8. One book you're currently reading.
The Zimmerman Telegram - Barbera Tuchman.
-not a forgery after all, funny that.
9. One book you've been meaning to read.
The History of the Decline and Fall Of the Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon
10. Now tag six(!) people.
Helen, Sarah, IDS, Powell, Alan Turing, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, Admiral Sir William Reginald Hall.
I'm surprised that you didn't read "The Hobbit, or the Tales of there and back again" by J.R.R. Tolkien more than once in your teens. It seemed to be standard fare up here in Geordieland!
ReplyDeleteChurchill's Biography by Martin Gilbert, or Churchill's The Second World War, "make the time" to read them, you won't regret it!
ReplyDeleteWell, I see I didn't get tagged.
ReplyDeleteOne book you'd want on a desert island.
ReplyDelete-- a MacBook Pro, with broadband satellite link and (solar panel?) power supply.
Everything else follows.
(Is that cheating?)
So no-one goes for the Koran at no 7 ?
ReplyDelete1. Book that changed your life: "One flew over the cuckoo's nest"
ReplyDelete2. One book you've read more than once. "Catch 22" - Joseph Heller
3. Book you would want on a desert island. "SAS survival handbook"
4. book that made you laugh "Spike Milligan's War Diaries"
5. One that made you cry "Captain Corelli's Mandolin"
6. Wish you had written "Da Vinci Code" dan Brown - for the profits
7. Wish had never been written "Mein Kampf" A Hitler
8. Book You are currently reading. "Never Let me go" Kazuo Ishiguro
9.Book you have been meaning to read "War and Peace" Tolstoy
1. Name one book that changed your life.
ReplyDeleteI can't say that a book ever has, either. Certainly my life would have been poorer without 'I, Claudius' by Robert Graves and 'Europe: a history' by Norman Davies, as much as any books I can think of.
2. One book you've read more than once.
So many of them... if I love a book, I read it again and again, and I can discover new things in it every time. One which I picked up again for the bazillionth time recently is 'Lords of the horizons: a history of the Ottoman Empire' by Jason Goodwin. Not written like a 'normal' history at all; more like a novel or a play, with a cast of bizarre characters and humorous, macabre anecdotes, not chained too tightly to chronology, but leaving you with a genuine feeling of having lived through a human experience.
3. One book you'd want on a desert island.
'The Isles', another Norman Davies history. I only understand Britain and England (two different things) when I am far away from it. And Davies' writing talent makes his books endlessly re-readable.
4. One book that made you laugh.
'Humorous' authors I like, such as P J O'Rourke or Hunter S Thompson, are just as often downright astonishing and occasionally deeply serious. For sheer fun, I like Bill Bryson's 'Notes from a small island'; this American lived in Britain for 30 years, and retains a sense of how lovably absurd us Brits can be.
5. One book that made you cry.
'Margrave of the marshes' by John Peel; this witty, unpretentious, sweet guy dominated British music for 40 years. Why do the best people always die before their time? Also 'Wild swans' by Jung Chang; how brutal life in China has been for most of the past 100 years.
6. One book you wish you'd written.
'Foucault's pendulum' by Umberto Eco; such a mix of ideas, humour, intellectual challenge, and (a nice change from this author) some characters I can identify with. If I could do something like this...
7. One book you wish had never been written.
Anything 'written' by a reality-show contestant or a model, for starters. :) Otherwise hard to think... even reading 'Venus in furs' by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch or 'Juliette' by the Marquis de Sade, though extremely morally challenging and at times repulsive, serve the function of making us go into the darkest and most dangerous hidden corners of our personality. If you want to read something you probably wouldn't normally want to read, try 'Chopper' by Mark Read; a former hitman from the Australian underworld details his crimes - but more importantly, subjects himself to rigorous self-examination as to why he (and others) behave in such a way.
8. One book you're currently reading.
'Collapse' by Jared Diamond; how human behaviour affects environmental change, and vice versa. And 'The golden age of myth and legend' by Thomas Bulfinch, a collection of the Greco-Roman myths (with others) from the Victorian period which greatly influenced that time's literature and thinking.
9. One book you've been meaning to read.
'Don Quijote' by Cervantes; lying around in both English and Spanish for years, I can't quite get started with it.... And 'American gods' by Neil Gaiman - all the evidence indicates he's one of our era's best storytellers. I must finally find out for myself.
- The 48 laws of Power
ReplyDelete- The 33 Strategies of War
Written by Robert Greene.
His blog ...
http://www.powerseductionandwar.com
This is a nice game
ReplyDeleteChanged my life: The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene.
Set in West Africa, and read by me aged 21 while in that part of the world. All Greene novels are about moral dilemas and the understanding that part of adult life involves grappling with such issues was brought home to me
Read more than once
a)How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers won the FA Cup by J L Carr. The ultimate comfort read and the best book about football. Eat your heart out Nick Hornby. Quintissentially english and a literary Ealing comedy
b)The Clydesiders - RK Middlemass. The story of red Clydeside up to 1945. The central character is John Wheatley, Housing Minister and only success of the 1924 Labour government. You learn alot about how to marry radical principle with pragmatic action
Wish I'd written / Made me cry
The Last English King by Julian Rathbone
A fictionalised account of Harold, portrayed as a noble english hero as told by one of his house carls who survives Hastings. You know what happens in the end - he cops the arrow in the eye. You turn the last few pages increasingly slowly, wanting to put of the inevitable.
Oops. Forgot to add
ReplyDeleteBook I am currently reading
(to be said with the voice of Jimmy Mulville in the Fast Show)
This week I am currently reading
Lynn MacDonald - To the Last Man - the story of the German offensive in 1918, as usual with MacDonald it is dominated by extracts from the participants of all ranks. You always end thinking "Crikey, what would I have done - kept my head down probably, if I'm honest"
Hi Iain,
ReplyDeleteI finally answered.
Niles