Saturday, August 12, 2006

ex libris


Spring is imminent - Lovergirl's irises are blooming in the garden and whenever I leave the door open the study fills up with mosquitos, those annoying heralds of summer. We are having debates about whether to light the fire at night, rather than huddling around it as soon as the sun slips behind the Nightcap ranges.

Susoz from Personal Political has 'tagged' me with a' meme'. This is a whole rite of passage and indicates that I am leaving the constraints of the bio-world and launching into the blogosphere. (At the moment I only inhabit the lower altitudes). The netiquette of the occasion warrants some explanation for non-bloggers.

Glossary:
Tag -
Seems to be like playing tag, as in someone points at you, blogwise, and it is your turn to do whatever.
Meme- I think the term is borrowed from evolutionary science, that is, the way units of culturally accepted practice get passed on. In blog world it is usually a little verbal game of some sort.
Blogosphere - where those of us who blog reside, electronically speaking.

At the end of this I have to tag five more people, which is going to be difficult as any readers I have are blogless lurkers.

Lurker - Person who reads blogs without ever commenting. It's neutral, even polite to lurk for a while before you join the conversations already happening. And far better than being a troll, who is a person who invades blogs especially to be annoying, vindictive, puerile and insulting.

So here it is (I feel a pull to list highly literary books, but will resist and reveal my shallow soul...)

1. One book you have read more than once
Oh, nothing would come close to the number of times I have re-read my Narnia books.

2. One book you would want on a desert island

A big book so I could get some shade from it...and something incredibly long and fat that I would never otherwise read. War and Peace, perhaps - that would keep me going until the rescue boats arrived.

3. One book that made you laugh

This is the one I'm anxious about - what makes one laugh is an indication of so many things - intelligence, politics, cultural norms...anyway here goes

Jane Austen makes me laugh - she's so spot on with her observations of social manoeuvrings. (i.e. Mikhela is shallow and frivolous)
Also Oliver Sacks' "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat" (i.e. Mikhela laughs at people with disabilities)

4. One book that made you cry

The Tyrant's Novel by Tom Kenneally. I read it on a 24 hour bus trip from Port Hedland to Geraldton, and cried until at least Karratha. I figured the people on the bus must have thought I was escaping domestic violence or something.

The Kite Runner was also devastating.

5. One book you wish you had written

Oh...some thought-provoking social commentary like 'Writings on an Ethical Life" by Peter Singer.

6. One book you wish had never been written
Malleus Maleficorum, the handbook for identifying and interrogating witches. I think men hated/feared women well before this, but for sheer destructiveness it was pretty impressive, and still reverberates today.

7. One book you are currently reading
At the moment I'm reading Freakonomics, by Stephen someone. It's fascinating, believe it or not, using economics to analyse things like crime rates and cheating in high schools and the impact of your name on your social class. I don't trust him; he says some things that are pretty outrageous. But I'm enjoying finding out how economists think, given economics carries such weight in our society.

8. One book you have been meaning to read

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst. A friend lent it to me, it's been sitting on my shelf for ages. I tried it once but really didn't warm to the lead character.Everyone tells me it's fantastic, so I'll have to try again.

9. One book that changed your life

I somehow fell in with a feminist crowd at uni and read a bunch of books that collectively changed my life. Some of them are Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercey; The Women's Room - Marilyn someone; and Man-Made Language by Dale Spender. I was a very conservative, obedient child and these books opened up a whole new way of seeing society.

10. Now tag five people:

Okay lurkers - feel free to post yours in my 'comments' section (all you have to do is click on the little 'comments' below, try it and see)

Katya
Mel
Hilary
J in Mullum - you don't have a pseudonym yet - Jessica? Jodie?
Zedd

1 comment:

Stegetronium said...

huh - that's one emphatic vote for and one equally emphatic against