If I could mind your read

I got tagged by Chris who got tagged by kfan who got tagged three years ago with this book meme. Three years ago, it would probably have been easier to answer the questions.

Total number of books I’ve owned:

500+. I’ve been trying to get rid of them. They take up too much space, all my shelves are double stacked.

 The last book I bought: 

Here’s the thing. I’m not buying a lot of books anymore because I’m not reading a lot of books anymore. Two reasons. I no longer have a train commute, which was the only time of the day I could read. The second reason is the fact that since (and for some time before) I got diagnosed with diabetes, I tend to fall asleep the minute I start reading. Whether on public transport, or sat on the couch, my eyes close very quickly. I used to read in bed for hours, but I can’t do that anymore either.

The books I buy now are mainly photography related. Scott Kelby’s Digital Photography book (1 and 2), Bryan Peterson’s Understanding Exposure, a some more I wouldn’t recommend. Others are written by friends and bloggers: Walter van den Berg‘s West and Merel Roze‘s Fantastico, and I’ve just ordered ‘Things I Learned About My Dad’, which was edited by Heather Dooce.

Other than that my main reading material these days, believe it or not, is comics. I’ve got a subscription for all issues (and all covers) of Dark Horse‘s Buffy Season 8 and IDW‘s Angel – After the Fall as well as the Firefly/Serenity comics. I’ve also been reading Marvel‘s Runaways TPB 1-7. I never thought I’d be reading comics, but some of the characters from the Jossverse have stuck with me and I want to know their story. (Unfortunately, my favourite characters aren’t the ones the focus is on.)

The last novels I bought are still sitting on my shelves, unread: Robert Little’s The Company, Pullman’s Northern Lights, H.G. Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights.

The last book I read:

Today I picked up Angel – After the Fall #7 and Buffy – Season 8 #14 and read them at A-Fusion, a Chinese bar/restaurant I go to a lot. It’s two doors up from the comic shop. I don’t remember which novel was the last one I read. It may have been  John Banville’s The Sea, or Marc Almond’s In Search of the Pleasure Palace. I know I never finished Adriaan van Dis’ De Wandelaar. The last book I really enjoyed reading was Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife.

Five books that mean something to me:

I enjoy books, but they don’t really ‘mean’ a lot to me other than ‘that was a bloody good read.’

John Banville – The Untouchable.
Ursula LeGuinn’s Earthsea series.
J.J. Voskuil – Het Bureau series.

Roger Zelazny – Amber series.
Can’t think of #5.

Tag five people and request they fill it out on their blogs:

The last time I tagged people nobody did anything with it, so I’m going to save myself the embarrassment.

My Week in Media

Oh dear, I’ve been tagged for a meme by Meg, who got it from Neil, who got it from James. It’s been a while. It’s 3AM as I notice this. I must brood on it over the weekend.

Alright, I’m done brooding.

What I read
I haven’t read a book in ages. I still buy them, though not as often as before, but they sit on my shelves unread. I canceled my subscription to NRC Next because I no longer have a commute, at least not one long enough to read anything, my tram ride lasts about five minutes. The only magazine I currently subscribe to is The Word, formerly known as Word. I never read them when they arrive, but I keep them for when I travel or when I finally get tired of the internet. Is it me, or is Word slowly becoming more like Q magazine? It doesn’t seem as decidedly different from the mainstream music mags as it used to do. Over the Christmas holiday I did spend some time reading an issue on the couch and promptly fell asleep. At work, I try to start the day reading our own newspaper, DAG, but there’s usually some other pressing matter concerning our tv guide to attend to.

What I watched
I watch so many tv shows I hardly ever get round to films. But as my favourite shows are either on strike or suspended over the Christmas break, I caught up on some films. I checked the Times Online’s 100 best films of 2007 and picked The Last King of Scotland, Atonement, For Your Consideration, Bridge to Terabithia and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. All of which I enjoyed to varying degrees, but none of them blew me away as much as my favourite film of the year, Babel, which I would have liked to see again. It’s on my iPod, lacking essential subtitles. I watch quite a bit of video on my iPod in bed, over the last couple of weeks I have been falling asleep watching entire seasons of Battlestar Galactica. (Gaeta is so the fifth remaining Cylon.)

I wish I’d seen all of The History Boys on the BBC, I had planned on watching it, but forgot and only caught the second half. I liked it, but half expected the boys to break into song, it had that kind of stagey rhythm to it. Talking about singing… When Joseph met Maria was a lot less engaging than Lord Webber’s actual competition was and it just reminded me that the blandest candidates won. Bland… yeah, I’ve never liked Tom Hanks much and he didn’t do anything to impress me in the awful The Terminal, which I also managed to see half of.

I also caught Catherine Tate’s Christmas show – and was a little taken aback by her ‘Northern Irish Christmas’ sketch, but George Michael made up for it with his scarily effective Shane McGowan impresssion. I also saw the Extras Christmas special, which I thought was just a rehash of one of the regular episodes. I caught bits and pieces of Dara Ó Briain’s stand up gig on the Beeb. I can’s stand him when he’s on panel shows like Have I Got News For You, but didn’t mind him that much on his own.

I almost forgot the Doctor Who Christmas Special. Maybe that’s because I didn’t find it too memorable. Kylie and Tennant worked well off each other, but the story was a little is that all there is. I hope the much hyped start of Torchwood’s second season (January 16) will be more exciting.

What I listened to
I don’t listen to the radio, haven’t really since college. Since I got the iPod a few weeks back, I have set up an elaborate playlist which ensures I won’t hear a track twice. I’m doing this because there are way too many songs in my collection that I’ve never listened to, because I tended to put favourites on repeat before. I’ve exported my playlist from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Eve for your perusal: listened.txt

Other than that, I spent many hours transferring some of my own old DAT and MD bootlegs to hard disk, splicing them up in tracks and uploading the full shows to a private tracker. I made a handful of people very happy and I enjoyed reliving the memories that go with the concerts and the friends I went with. Precious moments.

As for albums, that dying breed of a format, the new Einstuerzende Neubauten ‘Alles Wieder Offen’ is really, really good. If you’re the kind of person who dismisses them for being German, or ancient, or just… ‘weird’, now’s the time to actually listen to their new work. It may surprise you. Or, you know, confirm your suspicions. If the single Weil, weil, weil puts you off, give Nagorny Karabach a go.

What I surfed
My usual haunts. Television Without Pity for my daily portion of undiluted snark. Our own Whedonesque, of course – things got rather heated over Christmas. I still visit Metafilter though not as often as I used to. I checked out Derek Powazek’s new magazine blog Magazineer.com. I also spent time on various tapers related forums like taperssection.com, looking for information on the hardware I use to record, or to find out the best ways to reduce hiss and remove pops and clicks. Most of the time, though, I was probably reading what folks were up to on Twitter.  

What I played
Meg added this one to the list of questions. I’d really love to have more opportunities to play board games, like we used to in college. On New Year’s Eve I played one round of Trivial Pursuit which I enjoyed a lot. It’s probably the only game I have some chance of winning as I’m useless at all tactical games like Risk.

Who I tag
Please feel free to join in, or not: Derek Powazek, Hydragenic, maybe I can wake Reluctant Nomad from his slumber and I know it’s not going to happen, but I’d love to read what Stephen Fry’d make of this meme. Last but not least I’m going to try to infect the Dutch blogosphere (oh god no, I’m using the b word) and that’s why I tag Erwin Blom, who doesn’t visit here I’m sure, but if you all click on the link a few times he might get the idea.

I’m it

Crikey, looks like I’m going to flex my withering writing muscle. I’ve been tagged by Mr Hg with The Book Title Meme.

(update: It’s taken me a month to get it together.)

1. Briefly describe an aspect of your life for which ‘The Dying Of Delight’ would be an apt title.

Delightful aspects have been sadly missing from my life. No dying, no death, not even little ones. Not a whole lot gives me pleasure at the moment. Even my appetite is lacking, so the pleasure of food has diminished somewhat. I blame the diabetes. It’s good to have something to blame.

2. Pick another book whose title has some resonance in your life, and write a little about it.

I could pick ‘The Light and Dark‘, but that would be too self-centered, even for me.

Looking at the books on my shelves, nothing really resonates until I hit Brendan Kennelly’s epic ‘Poetry my arse‘.

But I don’t want to make things too easy for anyone who picks up this meme from me, so I’ll choose MeFite John Bennett’s ‘Sea Otters gambolling in the wild, wild surf, which is the type of book you’d tell anyone they ‘must read’, because it’s dead funny and it might give them a few hours of that elusive thing, delight’.

Whatever.

I hear the Dutch title of this book will be ‘Dartelende zeeotters in de wilde, wilde, branding’, and it will be out in September this year. That’s for the benefit of any Dutch readers I might have.

3. Write one more short personal piece – one which matches the book title chosen (in part 2) by the person who tagged you.

So that would be ‘Saturday Night & Sunday Morning’.

That title means nothing to me. They’re just days. Parts of the weekend. Only slightly different from weekdays for the fact that I usually do not have to work. But sometimes I do.

I’m sure couples have their weekend rituals and younger folk are all about the Saturday Night out, and the Sunday Morning hangover. I’m too old for that now and every day is like Sunday.

4. Take your favourite little-known book and plug it to your readers. Authors need incomes, and word of mouth is one of the best ways to sell books.

John Banville may have won the Booker Prize for ‘The Sea’, but he isn’t particularly well known here in the Netherlands. ‘The Untouchable‘ is quite possibly my favourite book in the whole wide world. can’t say that everybody should read it, it’s not that type of book. If you identify with aging men (and for some reason I do), it may appeal. ‘The Untouchable’ is based on the life of Anthony Blunt, one of the Cambridge spies, and it deals with betrayal. Of country, of marriage, of friendship, of self.

5. Sit back and marvel at the magnificence of this meme. It was brought to you by an out-of-breath author, reduced (on account of her publisher* having expired) to trundling copies of her book across the internet on a rusty old trolley with one wheel missing, sweating and shouting “Buy me book, Gov?” Now visit www.TheDyingOfDelight.co.uk and see if you’d like a copy for yourself. I

There is something about this viral/meme that makes me uncomfortable and that’s probably why it took so long for me to finish the questionnaire. This last bit, #5, just annoys me a little. With apologies to the original author. I have no idea who you are. Please forgive me for not having the energy to find out. If I knew you, I might like the meme better, but perhaps this is one that doesn’t work beyond a blog’s regular readers. Or maybe it does and I’m just being my usual misanthropist self. Anyway, thanks for dropping by earlier.

6. Tag five people with this meme.

Nah. But anyone who reads me who hasn’t already done this, please, meme on.

Progress

Ten years ago, when I built one of my first websites, it got mentioned first in the Irish Times, then in The Guardian. It was featured on the BBC, as well as appearing in most Internet magazines and books on the shelves at the time.

I’ve come a long way since then. Everybody I knew online back then has gone on to bigger, better, greater things. But none of them can boast this, I’m sure:

Whedonesque appeared in The Sun today.

My uncle’s ‘book without a title’

Last year my uncle featured in a TV show about ‘miracles’. He told the story of how he found a photograph of himself in a book he picked up from an antique shop, while on holiday in England. It’s a true story. This month the show is letting viewers decide which stories should be repeated in a clip show to introduce the new series.

Do me and my kin a favour and vote for ‘De foto’ on the ‘Wonderen bestaan’ website. You’ll find the poll on the right hand side and ‘De foto’ is the last option in the poll (which doesn’t give it much of a chance of winning!).

It’s a great story and my uncle, who is an author and lyricist, does a great job of telling it (well, duh, he does readings and theater shows for a living). In short: About 20 years ago he was on holiday with his girlfriend L. and another couple. It was a miserable day and he hadn’t even wanted to go to England anyway. When they stopped for lunch, they came across an antique shop.

My uncle had a thing about ‘a book without a title’. He had been talking about this obsession during the trip, of wanting to find this ‘book without a title’. His friends had said books without titles didn’t exist.

Looking through the books on the shelves in the antique shop, he didn’t find anything he wanted. But there was one more book, sitting on a table. Picking it up he saw the book’s cover didn’t have any marking or lettering. It was a book without a title! And when he opened it, he found a picture of himself taken when he was a young man.

Cue theme of the Twilight Zone. Vote now. Vote often.

Mr Butcher, dirty bollocks

Utrechtsestraat, Saturday afternoon. I’m in search of pork belly but the luxury butcher is all out of pig.

‘We had to send it back, it wasn’t right.’

Poor piggie. Murdered to death and then discarded.

I try my luck at the butcher on the other side of the road. Inside, it’s like going back to the very early 70s. Knorr products on the shelves, the packaging bleached by the sun, sparse cuts of pale meat on show. A little dusty. Very open air museum. This is the Holland you want to forget.

The butcher looks more like a penny-saving grocer. Protestant and painfully repressed. One manky eye looks sideways, while the other stares straight ahead. He helps another client, taking his time. I’m in no hurry, so I wait while he makes their cut meat sandwiches. Finally, they’re done.

“Do you have any pork belly?” I ask.

“I do,” he says and makes for the storage room, then returns. “You’re going to make babi pangang, aren’t you?”

Balls. He’s cut the skin off. I’m not making the chinese roast pork dish he’s referring too, but I do need the meat uncut for my epaisse tranche de lard dans son jus. Should I slap his wrist for assuming an Asian-looking woman must be cooking Chinese food?

“I’ve cut the skin off, you see.”

I see.

“I cut the skin off the minute I get it in, before I store it,” he says in a way that there’s no mistaking… cutting the skin off is. the. right. thing. to do.

Oh.

“You have a better chance finding some at the Albert Cuyp market. The butchers there…” he sniffs, “I call them dirty butchers.”

I smile thinly and thank him. He’s sorry I had to wait so long. I’m sorry I ever met him.