Saturday, May 24, 2003
Party. Yes well :) Um. Mike and Charlotte both wrote about it... I didn't really take any pictures in the end, but as soon as other people send them to me I'll put them up :)
The world is pretty fucked up at the moment, huh? Our lovely government is planning to introduce identity cards. Meanwhile Bush wants to fuck with the world some more, in many interesting ways. Fucked up, fucked up, and I'm sure there's more going on but I'm too depressed to find out :)
BAD MOOD ¶ 5:51 PM
Friday, May 23, 2003
Some pictures me and Mike took on our pre-Matrix walk yesterday:
¶ 3:59 AM
Thursday, May 22, 2003
So, we went to see this second Matrix film thing last night. It was pretty appalling. Mike goes into how TERRIFYINGLY BAD it was in all the gory detail but I can't face it myself :) Well, at any rate it proves that the Wachowski brothers were LYING when they said they planned a trilogy all along. What a load of bullshit.
Sigh.
On the other hand I had a nice night overall: me and Mike went walking all over London, and got lost. We had some REALLY nice Lebanese food in China town. Chatted, and then hung around for an age to watch the fucking Matrix film. Grrr.
But I read most of Palestine by Joe Sacco. His drawings are so real, and he is so willing to let people into his experience. The honesty, the humour of it is stunning: like, he won't shy away from showing himself having difficulties, wishing he wasn't there, all of that. And somehow that takes you along with him all the better, because WE his readership are also from that other world that shys away from really understanding or having contact with these issues (hence we're reading his comic not going to visit Gaza ourselves maybe, but still :) ), of poverty, war, conflict, hate: what a HUMAN way into the subject. And it will break your heart. I just got to the part where he is staying in the refugee camps in Gaza. At first he only visits the camps on a guided tour: wizzed through in a van or whatever, stopping where he wants to get out and interview people. Then he's asked by someone he meets to come and stay with him in the camp. So he does. No news reporter who might (rarely) report on these camps or this issue does this. I think everyone should read this graphic novel. Even though it was written a while back, it really seems very relevant for understanding what's going on today. ¶ 3:37 PM
Tuesday, May 20, 2003
Check out DC Mike's heartbreaking new blog.
¶ 6:17 PM
Sunday, May 18, 2003
It's kind of a bit too much effort to work out my own top 100, but here are my top 10 best ever reads (in no particular order) Some of these are on that list, but others are not :) Based soley on READIBILITY rather than greatness: and only novels, because that seems to be the idea from the original list, although it doesn't explicitly say so...
Catch 22, Joseph Heller. Without a doubt my favourite book of all time. And still important today.
Emma, Jane Austen. What a seductive book: by the end, I was actually so wrapped up in the world that I thought Austen might have had a point... Sign of a truely brilliant book, considering my actual feelings about the things she writes about.
Waverley, Walter Scott. Fucking amazing book: it has everything you could possibly want, adventure, tragedy, heroics, romance, politics.
The Wild Sheep Chase, Haruki Murakami. Sheep men. Craziness. Murakami's downplayed style.
Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. A gutting, heartrenching, beautiful book.
Sombrero Fallout Richard Brautigan. Actually, pretty much anything that guy ever wrote...
The Joke, Milan Kundera. Although it was his first, I don't think he outdid it
Magician, Feist. Dragons and elf armour and all that ;)
His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman. It's all about the armoured bears and Blake quotes...
The Fencing Master, Arturo Perez-Reverte. Great book.
I'm not sure that is DEFINITIVE: maybe if I spent more time thinking about it, or I did it when I hadn't just read the BBC list, I would write a different one... But, for the moment there you go. Go out and read them or whatever ;)
Some thoughts though: it seems like the list AUTOMATICALLY assumed that the best reads would all be novels. Now, I just don't buy this. There are plenty of short stories, poems, plays, graphic novels, not to mention non-fiction, that rank just as highly or higher on my personal readibility scale than these books... Hmmm. ¶ 7:11 PM
So, this top 100 reads business, huh? I'm not sure I agree with it. Most of the books on it seem to be vaguely popular books of the last five years. And Terry Pratchett having so many books on there is UNFORGIVABLE! Well, these are the ones I have read on the list. Most of them wouldn't come close to being in my top 100 list. Some notable exceptions though, that's I've put in bold or whatever.
1984 - George Orwell
The Alchemist - Paul Coelho
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Animal Farm - George Orwell
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
The BFG - Roald Dahl
Black Beauty - Anna Sewell
Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres
Catch 22 - Joseph L Heller
Charlie & Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
The Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchett
Crime and Punishment - Fyoder Dostoyevsky
Emma - Jane Austen
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
Goodnight Mr Tom - Michelle Magorian (This one took some thinking about, because I'm not actually sure it's that good. But it left a HUGE impression on me when I was a kid
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - JK Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - JK Rowling
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - JK Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - JK Rowling
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
Holes - Louis Sacher
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe - CS Lewis
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
Love in the time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Magic Faraway Tree - Enid Blyton
Magician - Raymond E Feist
Matilda - Roald Dahl
Middlemarch - George Elliot
Mort - Terry Pratchett
Nightwatch - Terry Pratchett
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Perfume - Patrick Suskind
Persuasion - Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
The Twits - Roald Dahl
Watership Down - Richard Adams
The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
¶ 6:42 PM