Reading Meme
Purloined… Haha, Loin… from Professor Scott
# What are you reading right now?
I, Claudius by Robert Graves, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, Dr Iain West’s Casebook by some nobody, Gravity’s Rainbow & The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon and Ulysees by James Joyce
# Do you have any idea what you’ll read when you’re done with all that?
I’ll probably want to die, if not, then I’ll find something easy, like a Robert Rankin to melt away my brain over my holiday in Edinburgh.
# What magazines do you have in your bathroom right now?
The last two months of SFX (The Bumblebee Cover and the Star Trek cover, or ‘The one in which I was horribly misquoted and still haven’t been contacted about my free bloody book). This month’s Sky magazine and one of the Evening Standard Saturday supplements with Kate Nash on the cover, sent to me by one of Rachel’s best friends, despite the one time I met her, I managed to make a bloody awful impression.
# What’s the worst thing you were ever forced to read?
Everything at school was an unbelievable chore, but I’ll single out The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood as the worst novel I’ve ever read, which has probably irrevocably damaged my perception of feminist literature from that batty, wizened old hag.
# What’s the one book you always recommend to just about everyone?
Snuff Fiction by Robert Rankin is the man’s magnum opus.
# Admit it, the librarians at your library know you on a first name basis, don’t they?
Sadly Lowestoft library has been turned into a wretched place where they try to encourages proles to read. As a consequence, it has a ‘Chillout’ zone, a ‘Chat Zone’, a ‘Teen Zone’ - various painted areas of the gloriously 60’s brutal open space, which means that I can choose to park my bum on any number of multicoloured sofas, flick through a meagre CD and DVD rack, or sod all else really, because there’s not one sodding book left in the place.
Not even excepting the time I found the fat mentalist wanking himself to death in the erotic section of Ottakars’ Norwich (Why are they always sandwiched inbetween the Sci-Fi and the Chick-Lit?), I have always enjoyed the visceral, audible experience of buying a book, clutching it as I go home and reading it, owning it and buying and constructing shelves to house them.
# Is there a book you absolutely love, but for some reason, people never think it sounds interesting, or maybe they read it and don’t like it at all?
I spent the bulk of my childhood failing to convince people to read Snuff Fiction by Robert Rankin, my adult life will probably be occupied with me trying to do the same with East of Eden by John Steinbeck
# Do you read books while you eat? While you bathe? While you watch movies or TV? While you listen to music? While you’re on the computer? While you’re having sex? While you’re driving?
No. I read on the throne.
# When you were little, did other children tease you about your reading habits?
Mercilessly. Either I was reading Robert Rankin novels, which I laughed so loud at that I was known as a weirdo, and obviously any Sci-fi in my hand banned me from polite society.
# What’s the last thing you stayed up half the night reading because it was so good you couldn’t put it down?
Probably ‘East of Eden’. But I was reading it during a night shift. I couldn’t go home and sleep at the time.
