I’ve been tagged by Rob Spence and I really feel honoured by this.
Here are the results!(in the approved song-contest manner)
Number of books I’ve owned: around 3000, distributed among different flats/houses/countries. On average I read 2 books per week, but I've stopped forcing myself to finish books that turn out to be dull. About 90 % of the books are in English, the rest is mostly German non-fiction from the field of Sociology and Communication Sciences.
Last book I bought: Non-fiction: The Google-Society, by Lehmann/Schetsche – in German.
Last book I completed: Tokyo, by Mo Hayder. Very good.
Five books that mean a lot to me: That’s the real challenge, of course. Back to the essentials:
Ulysses (J. Joyce), Gravity’s Rainbow (T. Pynchon), The Songlines (B. Chatwin), The Invention of the World (J. Hodgins), Water Music (T.C.Boyle).
If it had to be eight books (who the hell determined it had to be five??) I’d add The Handmaid’s Tale (by M. Atwood), One Hundred Years of Solitude by G.G. Marquez and The Heart of Darkness by J.Conrad.
If it had to be ten books.. ok, ok...
Five bloggers to tag: A task unfeasible because all the people of my choice had been tagged before. Why do I hear such a big sigh of relief now??
But I’m watching out for newcomers ... Beware!
8 comments:
Well, I'm honoured you replied. Interested that you chose two of the modernist giants, and a pioneer postmodernist. The really impressive thing, though, is the rate at which you read. I think I might point this out to my students, who seem to think reading anything beyond this week's Heat magazine is an enormous burden.
Hi Rob, I'm really waiting for a new opus from T.Pynchon. Last thing I heard was that he lent his voice to an episode of the Simpsons.
Yeah, I happen to be a quick reader, but I forget a lot of details.
Please, don't provoke a nervous breakdown of your students ;-)by telling them about strange people like me ...
Hello ... your blog is quite interesting... I'm new to the environment, learning as I move forward...Mouse from Canada
Hi Mouse,
a hearty welcome, then!
Would be nice if you'd visit here on a regular basis :-)
But I want them to be like you - people who actually read! It's very depressing at the moment - we keep being told that book sales are high, reading groups are thriving, but I don't see much interest in literature among the young, even those who have chosen to do Eng Lit for their degree...
I'm sure you've tried out all the approaches of encouragement and motivation they try out over here (e.g. E-books). There's an article by Paul Trout you'll probably know on the problem here: http://www.findarticles.com/
p/articles/mi_qa3651/is_200004/
ai_n8878713
But still, they are students of EngLit, why are they?
Thanks for the link Francessa - I hadn't seen the article, which is an interesting one, with some thought-provoking ideas. I am taking a similar approach with one course, so maybe I should blog about how I manage.
Great idea! There should be a lot of response and discussion.
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