A Life in Memes

Saturday December 20, 2008

From The Pickards. A short trawl through the archives and a handy list of memes from the last year.

  1. Six Not Very Extraordinary Things About Me (26 February)
  2. Six Word Memoir (1 March)
  3. Cover Versions (27 March)
  4. Films I Haven’t Seen Meme (27 June)
  5. Holidaytime Memetime (12 August)
  6. Library Days (21 August)
  7. Are you a Goldilocks Kind of Reader? (6 September)
  8. Page 56 Meme (8 November)
  9. Time for the First Lines Meme (1 December)

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Time for the First Lines Meme

Monday December 1, 2008

Time for the first lines meme. This is the meme where you quote the first sentence from your first post for every month of the last year.

January

David Thewlis is a British actor who has appeared on screen in Mike Leigh’s Naked, the violent thriller Gangster Number 1 with Malcolm McDowell and the ill-fated The Island of Doctor Moreau with Marlon Brando.

February

Since closing the last page of Cold Mountain I’ve been considering quietly forgetting this book, leaving a small gap and then swiftly moving onto the next.

March

A meme to keep things ticking over – if you’d like to join in.

April

Browsing in a second hand bookshop, I overhead a customer making an unusual enquiry.

May

Then we Came to the End by Joshua Ferris gave me one of the strangest reading experiences of recent years.

June

Devil May Care is a new James Bond novel written by Sebastian Faulks to mark the centenary of Ian Fleming’s birth.

July

Unusual for a music autobiography, Alex James hasn’t used a ghost writer for his memoir Bit of a Blur.

August

Inspired by Simon’s post I’ve been giving some thought to my holiday reading this year.

September

Call me unusual, but I found Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44 perfect summer reading.

October

It’s October time again so my choice in fiction is already turning towards the dark, haunted and peculiar.

November

Beware.

December

Time for the first lines meme.

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Page 56 Meme

Saturday November 8, 2008

From The Pickards.

  1. Grab the nearest* book.
  2. Open the book to page 56.
  3. Find the fifth sentence.
  4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

*Note: nearest means the one which is closest to you, as opposed to that one on your shelves which is really cool or will make you look clever.

The nearest book to hand is How to Train Your Viking by Cressida Cowell. Page 56 line 5 is this:

What are we going to DO???

To put things squarely into context, this note of panic is raised by a character called Fishlegs to their associate Hiccup. And, worryingly, Hiccup’s reply is this:

There’s nothing we CAN do…

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Library Days

Thursday August 21, 2008

From Booking Through Thursday:

What is your earliest memory of a library? Who took you? Do you have you any funny/odd memories of the library?

My mother used to take me to the library. I remember it being a very long walk, across the iron bridges that crossed the railway, down an endless leafy street, through a park and past the milk depot. A really, really long walk for a child but one that planted a desire for books within me (like a thirsty man crawling across a desert towards an oasis, I knew that there was something worthwhile at the end of my trek).

I was always deposited in the children’s library as my mother disappeared into the main section. Left to my own devices, I would usually drift towards the work of Spike Milligan and Dr Seuss. I went for humour in those days and these were my favourites. My mother would, on returning to collect me, urge me to borrow the Just William books that she’s enjoyed in her childhood. I sometimes did, and enjoyed them too. My only other earliest memories are factual books, the inevitable dinosaurs and astronomy. I remember being particularly fond of one giant textbook entitled What Makes it Go.

Taught exemplary library manners, I would present my borrowing selection to the librarian (four at any one time I recall) all neatly opened at the correct page and ready for stamping. Other library etiquette, such as keeping quiet at all times, appears to have come to me instinctively. This seemed to put me in good stead as, ten years or so later, I applied for and was accepted as a Saturday assistant in the same library. I didn’t work in the children’s library, and was instead left to deal with the pensioners and their hardback mysteries, and the Dads of schoolmates who would sometimes recognise me. It was a pretty laid back job, although I always fell down on one thing. People returning their books late were subject to fines but I always felt awkward making them pay. People penalised to savouring their books just a little bit too long? It didn’t seem fair.

These days I’m a slave to Amazon. I visit a library only rarely and I sometimes feel a pang of guilt; I should browse and I should borrow. Although I suspect I would over-borrow, take too long to read and end up being fined. I did introduce my daughter to the library in her early years and admit being put off by the shelves of DVDs that have the habit of enticing children away from books. And because of this we now tend to treat our local Waterstones as library-ish. You can’t borrow, but you sure can spend a long time hiding in a corner and reading.

Comments [7]

Holidaytime Memetime

Tuesday August 12, 2008

Time for a meme. I haven’t answered all of the questions because I’m lazy. You can find the full set at Bloody Hell, It’s a Book Barrage!

  1. Have you ever smoked a cigarette? Yep, but not for eight years.
  2. Do you own a gun? No, although I hear that happiness is a warm one.
  3. Do you like hot-dogs? Yes, I stupidly tend to go for all types of fast food.
  4. Favourite Christmas Song? I’ll save that for the Christmas memes.
  5. What do you prefer to drink in the morning? Tea.
  6. Can you do push-ups? Haven’t tried this for years. So probably no.
  7. What’s your favourite meal? Fish and chips by the seaside.
  8. Do you work with people who idolize you? I doubt it.
  9. Name a trait that you hate about yourself? Attraction to memes.
  10. Favourite place to go? Cornwall.
  11. What is your most recurring dream? Sitting an exam and realising I haven’t revised the subject (or being in a play and realising I haven’t learnt the lines). Another weird dream is that it’s my wedding day and the police have just turned up looking for me – and I’ve just remembered the blood-stained rag in the back of my car.
  12. Introvert or extrovert? Extrovert-Introvert.
  13. What songs do you sing in the shower? Kurt Weill.
  14. What’s in your pocket right now? Hanky, keys, memory stick, £1.47 in change.
  15. Last thing that made you laugh? My daughter’s impersonation of her mother.
  16. Bed sheets as a child? Rupert.
  17. Worst injury you’ve ever had? Stab wound (accidentallly self-inflicted).
  18. Do you love where you live? Yes.
  19. What is your favorite candy? Do you mean sweeties? Cola bottles.
  20. What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up this morning? Get rid of the blood-stained rag.

Comments [3]

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