Round and Round it Goes

Well I swan! Evidently the party never ends around here, sportsfans. Sarcastro has tagged me with a book meme, and I’m finally getting around to passing this potato. Chin Chin!

[1] Name 5 of your favorite books

1. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig - If it’s ‘Quality’ you want, then it’s ‘Quality’ you shall have – all wrapped up in a handy dandy travel story, or ‘Chautauqua’, if you will.

2. The Dharma Bums by Kerouac - A polite fuck-you, Mr. Elliott, sir. For Jack’s life will not be measured out with coffee spoons. Nay! Let it be measured with empty port bottles, and wild naked roarings, and Diamond Sutra chantings and Diamond Sutra rantings. Rantings, chantings, and climbings. Chanting like madmen all the way down, down the downy mountainside.

3. The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson - The guiltiest of sick pleasures I’ve found. Oh sure fnord, Wilson is a Pynchon wannabe. fnord But aren’t we all? What Wilson gets is fnord the sickness. He taps into fnord the psychotic feeming tantrum of our spiritual quest fnord. He understands the paranoia fnord, and dishes it out to us fnord with musky gusto. Whenever I need a fnord good head-fucking wake-up-call fnord, I always reach for my IT. *Warning* do not attempt to seduce Discordia without the proper tools: psychotropics, monkey fur saddles, and/or pink alluvian fungi. fnord

4. Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco - Conspiracy is afoot, and what else does one do about it? Why, join the Masons, of course. Well, it’s what I did. Yes, this is the book that convinced me that I needed to look into a few things for myself. Unfortunately, the book was infinately more intriguing than what I would later find for myself. To me the best books are gateways to hidden worlds. This one is chock-a-block full of them.

5. Siddartha by Hemann Hesse – Sublime.

[2] What was the last book you bought?

· Mary Shelly’s: Frankenstein – ‘A little research now and then is cherished by the wisest men’…

[3] What was the last book you read?

· Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins – Have a hearty belly-laugh at the mandacity of death (and life), mortals. Laugh with me, and enjoy a beet or two, right along to the beat of each footfall in time… Great God Pan! Why the hell haven’t I read any Robbins before now!?!

[4] Name five books that have particular meaning for you.

1. Elric of Melnibone by Michael Moorcock – Actually, this entire series is what put me onto books. I read this entire series on a family camping/road trip from Birmingham to Yellowstone and back in the summer between my sixth and seventh grades. I highly recommend a steady thundering of early eighties death metal maddness as background acompanyment – most especially Iron Maiden’s Powerslave. Oh sure, I read plenty of other books before this one: here a little CS Lewis, there a Lloyd Alexander, yes even some Tolkein, but they were the recommended books, the books to read from the school library list. Elric was my first ‘real’ book. The book that I picked out for myself. …and I haven’t been the same since.

2. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Got Gumption? Get it! Well, I dare say, it helped me.

3. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault - Because you can’t handle the truth. Yes, because it will always be constructed via the discourse with which you approach it, silly rabbit.

4. Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse - Somehow, it helps to know that there has been another freak out there just like me. Hesse gets me. He really gets me.

5. Thus Spoke Zarathustra : A Book for Everyone and Nobody by Friedrich Nietzsche - The Superman be praised! I am eternal recurrance. I am. All men. All women. amen.

[5] Three books you are dying to read but just haven't yet.

1. If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino – Aunt B. recommended this to me, and I went out the very next day and bought it. Unfortunately, I was working on a couple of other books at the time. Soon, very soon.

2. Cloud Atlas: A Novel by David Mitchell – I started reading this last year and got sidetracked. I’ve got to get back to it. Mitchell is a historical chameleon. He is able, like no other author I’ve read, to time warp on a dime, and totally sans anachronysm. Genius. Oh, for more time.

3. The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell – I’ve been wanting to read this for years. It’s one of those books that is always at the back of your mind when you walk into a bookstore. I can never remember to remember it.

[6] Tag five people to go through this same ordeal.

1. Jon
2. The Knucklehead
3. Newscoma
4. Saraclark (yes. I'm picking on you)
5. TheoGeo (because I can't bear to lose you, Memphis)