because I was tagged by strangemessages... of course, unlike in my Straits Times interview, here I am under no compunction to pretend I'm intellectual.
Alison Bechdel's "Spawn of Dykes to Watch Out For". I wuv her lesbilicious soap opera comic.
2. One book you would want on a desert island
Mike Wilks's "The Ultimate Alphabet". Yeah, it's a picture book. It just happens to list everything from aardvarks to annelids to autogyros to aeolipiles to archeopteryxes under its "A" picture. Aeons of fun.
3. One book that made you laugh
Diana Wynne Jones's "Charmed Life". I used to reread the scene in which the young witch makes the stained glass saints in a cathedral get into fistfights and I'd make my belly ache with laughter.
4. One book that made you cry
J. M. Barrie's "Peter Pan". Seriously, it's heartbreaking for an adult to read.
5. One book you wish you had written
Wislawa Szymborska's "View from a Grain of Sand". Siiiggghhh. Pardon me while I cream.
6. One book you wish had never been written
Eowin Colfer's "The Artemis Fowl" series, because it's such poorly written children's fantasy that purports to be bad-ass when it so isn't. I actually don't mind the self-help books, especially regarding motivation - but "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series isn't self-help, it's utter pablum. (Although the ones on childbirth are pretty good.)
7. One book you are currently reading
Dante Alighieri's "Purgatorio". Also Nestor Capoeira's "The Little Capoeira Book".
8. One book you have been meaning to read
F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby", because my American modernism is so bad. Also Bob Dylan's "Chronicles".
9. One book that changed your life
10. Now tag five people:
1. mezzo
2. syntaxfree
3. cookiejar
4. quaskx
5. entwerp
4 comments:
I fucking love the Ultimate Alphabet! Am gonna go dig my ancient copy out tonight...
Erm,
I rather like Dante's Inferno. Who is this girl I'm marrying?
Alec
Well everyone likes Dante's Inferno, but Purgatorio is much blander. I mean, honestly... all the gory stuff is mixed in with exemplary virtue, so it doesn't even feel consistently sappy. Snore.
Hmm, you do have a good point sq21. I've made three or four forays into The Divine Comedy and always abandon the book somewhere in the middle of Purgatory. It's just seems so much less fun after all the ribald, sadistic fun of Hell. That being said, Purgatory does have a lot more 'meat' than hell. Dante stops playing around so much and instead concentrates on constructing a theological back bone to the epic. It's very interesting in itself, I just lack the knowlege and stamina to plough my way through it. I have the same sort of problems with Faust Part 2. (Alec shamelessly picks the name back up off the floor).
I'm hoping that as I grow older I'll mature into the juicier, meatier parts of both poems.
Alec
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