I've been tagged by the GG for the book meme that I suspect is mutating from punditry to inventory. If this is the case at least I don't have to choose between Tolstoys and melways, except for question 4 - and there such classics are taken as read.
1) Total number of books I've owned:
A damn lot. (/sedgwick)
Same. It came from living too close to the Salvo's Thrift Emporium once upon a time. I would walk past this place every day with my dog, tie him to a tree outside while I browsed. Half an hour later I would emerge with half a dozen books and find Doug wound around a bottle-brush.
2) The last book I bought:
At Mt Thomas Salvo's I picked up As good as a yarn with you. For $2.
3) The last book I read:
Selected Poems Philip Hodgins
4) 5 books that mean a lot to me:
Still copying off Sedge but:
Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut.
(in a bleak period of my life, a friend and mentor gave this to me saying "You need some laughter " I laffed and laffed. And while I think about it, he also gave me the next two titles:
The Warriors: Reflections of Men in Battle. J Glenn Gray.
Ah, Mischief - but of all the writing books I have acquired I think
Playwriting in Process was the best for teaching and writing...
Physiognomy -
A book to represent the Born Free shelf would be one I borrowed from the library:
The Deluge and the Ark
5) Tag 5 people and have them fill this out on their blogs
First five callers go into the barrel.
Comments: book meme
I traced it back to may 9th in an LJ from Knoxville Tennessee, where the meme is unchanged (the trail disappears before that, damn friends-only LJs). Seven steps later it is here...
Posted by Kent at May 18, 2005 04:27 PM
Good tracking, K.
I would have guessed it was earlier than that - just shows you that a week is a long time in the b'sphere.
There was a big book meme last year, and a great bit of detective work in tracking it -
http://boynton.ubersportingpundit.com/archives/005571.html
Also- by not tagging, I'm breaking it, which is possibly a sin.
Oh well, maybe if no-one volunteers to go into the barrel, I'll give in and list.
Posted by boynton at May 18, 2005 05:03 PM
i think meme is dreadfully abused and overused and misunderstood term
Posted by Francis Xavier Holden at May 19, 2005 12:00 AM
And why fuck aound with other blog-transmitted memes when you can start yer own much more interesting.
Eg:
Which book, film, piece of music, painting or other work of art best evokes your most embarrassing personal moment? (the beauty of this meme is you don't have tell all, just get others to think it).
What's yer blog's theme song?
Your final blog post. What will it NOT be about?
What colours do you see various comments on yer blog in?
What word do you enjoy typing out most in yer posts? And why?
What's the one question you wouldn't pass onto other bloggers?
You can take only one tangible, fungible and reproducible image to a desert island. And it is ?
What's the state capital of North Dakota?
Posted by nabakov at May 19, 2005 03:50 AM
In more than a tentative abstract way I do honestly feel that I own the books in the public library, own them as what books really are. Not as commodities, items of retail commerce, or as status markers, but as little sealed vessels of all that tumbles out from them. I can go there to the library and get them and bring them home, I can reread them, and the only major difference is that it's a longer stretch to where they are than reaching up to the shelf by the bed or walking to the bookcase in the living room to get one.
Posted by Ajax at May 19, 2005 06:05 AM
I like Nab's question - what will your last blog post be about? Looking at recent history most bloggers last posts are along the lines of..."oooh, I'm too tired and I'm not inspired so I'm just gonna stop. Bye" . Sounds like a menopausal old dear going down to RSL to play pokies...
Posted by Russell Allen at May 19, 2005 03:52 PM
FX - language is a virus?
Nabakov - Hmm, might just have to consider some of those questions for a dedicated post.
Unless I stop.
Funny you should mention it ...
And then (to agree with Russell) it would NOT be along the blogapathy lines, or indeed anything personal about one's lifelessness and/or the lure of the Pokies or Scratchies.
And it would NOT even be:
WHERE is everyone? ;)
And it would not even be
Oh, and Ajax, I agree. I've only recently renewed my Library activity. A good balance to the ad hoc op-shop collecting. Agree about the shift from commodity to content?
btw - I realise I exaggerated terribly.
A quick review of the figures tells me I couldn't have possibly bought 6 books per day for 13 plus years! On the odd occasion I'd find six books, and then was it even a bottle-brush?
And thanks all for being the first 5 callers...
Posted by boynton at May 19, 2005 05:48 PM
Bugger!! I walked into that one. Oh well, I have kept the link going...curse you all with your chain letters!
Posted by Russell Allen at May 20, 2005 02:06 PM
cheers, Russell. Glad the curse of the broken link is not on me.
(Lucky I didn't say: first 5 callers win a car.)
Posted by boynton at May 21, 2005 12:46 PM
Ms Boynton if I may use your place to speak to Mr Nabokov:
as we have all read evidence of your superior wit and intelligence, the lack of it is not the reason you use the word 'fuck' (in comment above) when communicating ( and what an excellent word it is, which is precisely my point).
Because I have paid a $1000 fine to the court of Mr Justice Patrick Street SM (May 1981) for displaying obscene articles for sale, to wit copies of Too Drunk To Fuck by The Dead Kennedys, and because he wrote a FOURTEEN-page summary of why this was Such A Bad Thing; I have to tell you I am wondering why a person (yourself) clearly smarter than Paddy Street, would be using this word. love, Brownie.
Posted by Brownie at May 22, 2005 10:07 PM
Well Brownie, it's like this.
When I'm pissed, I have a saucy mouth. And when I'm pissed, I sometimes comment on blogs. So more than few of my blog comments originate from a saucey source on the sauce. In vino fucking veritas.
Also, we all have to one degree or another a public persona, partly etched from who we are inside, and partly limned with a highlighter from how we'd like others to see us, that manifests itself in different ways and means depending on the occasion and mood.
What goes through your head about your perception of yourself when you stand in extravagent new shoes in front of a mirror before heading off to a party where an ex-lover could well be there? The Yanks call it attitude but it's more subtle than that.
Our host here has met me few times and would probably agree that, in person I'm a loud, arrogant, unselfconscious but yet very smart, worldly and politesse-aware 18th century, roundly damning the world while shouting drinks for all, gentleman. And there's a basic truth to that persona, even when I amp it up to enter a public arena, whether online or in the flesh. I like being that kinda person when I can. But that does involve me getting twizzled and saying "fuck" a lot - a pungent, funny, provocative, earthy yet amazingly descriptive word.
Also "fuck" is easy to type, physically fun to say (a plosive expletive), adds THX sound to otherwise flat exchanges and as a bonus, it can still sometimes epater le bourgeois. That's a lotta mileage out of one little unpretentious horny-handed anglo-saxon syllable.
Basically brownie, who I am, and how I'd like others to see or hear me when I feel like being seen or heard, does involve me getting pissed and saying fuck a lot - 'cos I like it. And I've found through trail and error that if I really like what I'm doing, then others like me more, as opposed to when I don't like what I'm doing.
Or as one of my homies put it.
"Oh, but the world will take offense hereby!
Why then the world shall suffer for't, not I".
That was Lord Rochester. This however is me.
"That if you should claim I ducked a fuck
'cos my tongue was sorely fucked.
Why then imply I fucked a duck
When t'is only my rhyme that got stuck?"
Posted by Nabakov at May 24, 2005 01:13 AM
Hmmm, OK that should read...
"That if you should claim I ducked a fuck
'cos my tongue was sorely fucked.
Why then imply I fucked a duck
When my only crime was a rhyme that got
stuck"
How the fuck did did those ancient poet guys manage without computers?
Posted by Nabakov at May 24, 2005 03:00 AM
trust you feckers are conversant with the etymology?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuck
(includes link to that swf on ef)
Yes I agree, you are an eighteenth century gentleman , Nabakov.
I think I swing b/w the nineteenth century somewhere and mid 20th myself, so make mine a Madeira or a Pimms, please. ;)
Cheers.
Posted by boynton at May 24, 2005 06:12 PM
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