The Book Tower

Jack Pickard has tagged me for this bookish meme. I realised we did something similar almost a year ago with Jack’s Literary Meme, although it’s always good to revisit old themes (I mean memes).

Total Number of Books Owned

Jack estimates his own book collection as bordering on 1500. I’ve arrived at my own estimate based on the number of books on a typical shelf in my house which is 50 (possibly even more because we have taken to double-stacking our books). Using this as a guide I calculated roughly 200 books on the shelves at the top of the kitchen stairs alone. Add another 200-300 for the rest of downstairs and allowing for the books in the bedroom and those packed into the two spare rooms in the loft I could also comfortably estimate 1500. This is shelf space on three sets of floor to ceiling shelves put up by my good self and five bookcases.
Disclaimer: this meme does not equate for the amount of books in my daughter’s bedroom, which probably also fits the 50-on-a-shelf rule, and the boxes of old comics and papers that also fill our spare rooms.

Last Book Bought

As mentioned a few posts back, this was Darkmans by Nicola Barker. It’s an 800 page hardback, so will take up more shelf space when I’m done with it. The rucksack I take to work with me, which usually contains some bits of paperwork, a mobile phone and two pairs of specs, has just increased in weight tenfold.
Darkmans is part comedy part weird ghost story. I really can’t say any more than that at this stage because it’s taking its time to develop.

Last Book Read

One I can guarantee you’ve never heard of: Portrait of Soper by Donald Purcell. Researching my family tree last year I dicovered I was related to the socialist and pacifist Donald Soper. He caused some controversy when he accused Margaret Thatcher in her heyday of being un-Christian in her policies. Ian Paisley also famously threw a Bible at him.

Four Books That Mean a Lot to Me

I recently discovered the fiction of Cormac McCarthy and have read a few of his books this year, although the one that has had the most affect on me was his latest novel The Road. It’s a very dark and thought provoking story about a man and his young son on a journey across a post apocalyptic landscape. Not quite science fiction or horror, although many readers have certainly found it horrific. I was quite moved by it, and can’t really add much to my original thoughts.

This year I also reread Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut when I heard that he’d died. Don’t call me a meme cheat, but my original thoughts still stand on this one too. Sci-fi elements again, but not really sci-fi.

Mentioning Sebastian Faulks earlier brings Birdsong to mind, and this is a book I find myself always mentioning to people both online and off. This book couldn’t be more different to Slaughterhouse Five, although its anti war message is just as strong.

Another book I ought to recommend to people but forget to is Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. It has one of those endings that creeps towards you, punches you in the chops and then saunters off. It’s all been so brief but yet so dense and multi-layered. You’re left in a daze, thinking “eh?” or “but..” and have to go back to read it all again.

Four People to Tag

I don’t normally tag because the people who always spring to mind never do memes. So if you’re reading – and fancy a go – consider yourself tagged!

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Walking to the pub last night with some colleagues from work I noticed a life-sized Dalek staring at me. This is a part of Bristol I know very well, but I’ve somehow been blinkered to the fact that there’s a Forbidden Planet store practically on my doorstep.

I’ve fond memories of Forbidden Planet from when the comics store opened in Denmark Street in London’s West End in the late 1970s. At the time, Denmark Street was probably most famous for the Sex Pistols, but my father and I would travel there on the underground in search of comics and great artwork. At the time the British comic 2000 AD was still in its infancy and for once Marvel Comics had a worthy rival. Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog loomed large on the shop walls, facing off against Spider Man and the Hulk.

It’s interesting that I should discover Forbidden Planet again as I’ve recently been enjoying the BBC4 documentary series Comics Britannia, which is just about to get to the point where 2000 AD shook up British comics in 1977, rather when like the Pistols turned the music scene upside down in the same year really. As a kid I’d begun to tire of home grown heroes in titles such as Battle and Warlord (mostly wartime exploits against the dastardly Germans), Victor, Hotspur, Valiant and Lion. All now sadly forgotten. The most exciting comic of the time was called Action, which caused a great deal of controversy. Either the cover showing Adolf Hitler or the one showing football hooliganism at its most violent caused the comic to be withdrawn from the newsagent shelves. The people behind Action took stock for a while and returned with 2000 AD – an imaginative although no less controversial or violent British science fiction comic.

I loved 2000 AD for its imagination and dare; it seemed to push the boundaries of comics in all directions. Judege Dredd was uncompromising and unforgiving; a horrible vision of a post-apocalyptic future where he would act as judge, jury and executioner in the huge, dome-covered Mega City One that sprawled across the entire east coast of America. Dredd showed no emotion, you never even saw his face. His catchphrase was “I am the law” and you believed it. It was totalitarian, dystopian and the rest. A horrible premise, but exciting all the same.

Walking back through Forbidden Planet doors this afternoon, I was again greeted by giant Judge Dredds and Hulks, although the world of science fiction has moved on at an incredible pace even for a time traveller going 30 years forward. The amount of titles, both traditional comics and graphic novels, is phenomenal, as is the amount of popular sci-fi culture around today. The new Doctor Who and Heroes take up entire sections but there’s also the product of those 30 years of thinking and writing about this stuff. There’s not just 2000 AD on the shelf but books on the history of 2000 AD…

But I didn’t stay in Forbidden Planet as long as I’d planned. It was all too much, it had all gone too far. There was even a section for erotic comics. Where was the old 2000 AD with the cuddly Tharg? Where were the rangers hunting dinosaurs for their flesh? Where were the ABC Warriors? I just found endless new versions of the old favourites. It was like walking into the Virgin Megastore and hearing all the modern and indecipherable bands sounding like Joy Division, my reference points being far back in time.

And now the Pistols have got back together again. Arggh…

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Even though it was thirty-odd years ago, I still have vivid memories of my teacher at junior school reading Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to the class. In all the intervening years I’ve never read the book myself, but was recently tempted to buy a copy for my daughter when I saw that the edition with illustrations by Quentin Blake was back in the shops.

Although Dahl’s books have lasted well (Charlie was published in 1964), and will no doubt continue to last for longer still, I have always thought that he belonged in an older, simpler world. This is possibly something to do with memories of him on Saturday morning television, grumpily obliging to review the latest pop releases. We also have a couple of audio books at home – read by Dahl himself – and his accent and tone of voice belongs in an older time, confidently using words like ‘perambulator’ without fear of being queried.

Some of Dahl’s ideas, and sources for humour, could be questioned by today’s most politically correct. He’s fond of grotesques, especially fat people, and there are many in Charlie. For Dahl, the overweight are overindulged and spoilt; where the half-starved and poor (the Bucket family) are good and noble. There’s something of this attitude or approach surviving in Harry Potter I think; Rowling paints the Dursley’s as fat, overindulged and ugly, with the poor and undernourished Harry surviving in the shadows.

Dahl also likes to push things to the extreme; Grandpa Joe isn’t just old, at ninety six he’s positively ancient, as are the other three grandparents he shares a bed with. When Charlie’s father loses his job in the toothpaste factory the family are instantly plunged into a Dickensian nightmare of poverty, complete with a thick blanket of snow on the ground. Charlie has to leave the house for school extra early, walking slowly to conserve his draining energy.

Then there are the Oompa Loompas, rescued by the eccentric and positively sinister Mr Wonka from the jungle – every man, woman and child – to gladly work in his factory. There’s something slightly unsettling about the presence of Oompa Loompas in Wonkaland, but the book was written in 1964 so it’s foolish to look into it with a too discerning eye.

My daughter loved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – possibly more so than any other book she’s been exposed to – because Dahl is such a skilled storyteller. At times he’s up there with Dickens (and perhaps Rowling is up there with them both too). The early chapters are cleverly paced and very exciting, even when a child knows the outcome. His characterisation of Wonka, just the other side of sanity, is perfectly measured and I guess – pc or not – the grotesques get their just desserts. After all, it’s just a fun story and nobody can doubt the power of the man’s imagination. There are parts that made me laugh out loud, such as Wonkas’s mad inventions, including the square sweets that look round. Yes, square sweets that look round.

Some of the more obvious warnings in this book now more firmly belong to my parents’ generation, or Dahl’s. He was grumpy on Saturday morning television probably because he he was a book lover and he hated television; who can blame him for that? At least I get this impression by the Oompa Loompa’s reaction to the fate of Mike Teavee:

So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.

And a word about Quentin Blake – his drawings are fantastic, the acid test being my daughter asking “is there a drawing?” for every scene that suggests an accompanying illustration. Blake gets it right every time.

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