I was tagged for a literary meme.

1. One book that changed your life

I’m struggling a bit to think of anything, but if I had to nominate something, I’d probably say Ben Elton’s Gridlock. It’s not an earthshattering philosophical work, but I think it (subconsciously) triggered a lot of my thinking about issues I’m now actively involved in campaigning on. (Where I talked about it previously)

2. One book you have read more than once.

Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers books.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island.

Something long, engrossing, and thought-provoking.

4. One book that made you giddy?

Christopher Koch’s Year of Living Dangerously. There’s nothing like reading a well-regarded text and realising that what you’ve been told is true — one of the characters really is based on your own father. (My review)

5. One book that you wish had been written

I’d love to read a history of my family on my father’s side. Okay, so it’s very personal, but I think it’s sad that so few people know the personal details of their own ancestors. (There’s already been a history written of mum’s side.) I think my uncle is working on something, though I don’t know how much detail there’ll be. It leaves me wanting to ensure that what I write in this blog is kept for my descendants to read.

6. One book that wracked you with sobs?

I’ve read some moving books, but I don’t recall any that had that effect on me. Unlike, say, the Father’s Day episode of Doctor Who the first time I saw it. As its author, Paul Cornell recently wrote: Drama isn’t your puppy, it’s a tiger. It’s not meant to make you comfortable. It’s meant to make you feel alive. Something applicable to books as well as TV, I reckon.

7. One book you wish had never been written

Having sampled , I can honestly say the world would be no worse off if Dan Brown hadn’t bothered. (My review)

8. One book you’re currently reading

Doug Grant’s Incompetance. It’s amusing enough, but there’s little thought-provoking or devastatingly intelligent about it.

I’ve just read the bit with the railway station that was served by no trains. As ridiculous as it sounds, in outer-SE Melbourne there’s a hospital with a bus stop which is served by no buses. (They’re fixing it sometime soon.)

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read.

Three books really: Neal Stephenson’s Baroque trilogy is high on my list.

10. Now tag five bloggers

I’ll go for (hopefully) a variety of reading tastes: My lovely Marita. Beth. Tony. Konrad. Erm.. one more… one more… who else wants to have a go?

Arthur And George (Julian Barnes) — not quite historical novel, not quite biography, following the true story of Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji. Somewhere in between, perhaps. Really well written, I thought (no wonder if was on the 2005 Booker shortlist), getting inside the heads of the main characters using language they’d probably use themselves. And a very intruiguing story, which although it has a main plot that kind of fizzles out, remains interesting right to the end.

(Having just finished reading the book, I found it interesting to see that Arthur’s house, Undershaw, is the subject of some controversy at the moment.)

Lego Star Wars — The retail life of a video game goes roughly like this: It starts at $80-100, which is a ridiculous amount of money to pay for a game, if you ask me. But if it’s good, the early-adopters grab it. The price gradually falls to a half-decent level, then a very-decent level. And then, particularly if the reviews are pretty good, and I think my kids will like it, I’ll buy it. $20 (at Target), as it turns out, is a very-decent level for Lego Star Wars, which turns out to be a helluva lot of fun. A good variety of (Lego) characters, plus some spaceship flying, plus podracing, plus co-operative two-player mode, plus some terrific visuals adds up to a very enjoyable game. Perhaps not a big challenge for hardcore video gamers, but certainly a lot of fun for everybody else.

And by the way, I reckon those Lego characters are better actors than Hayden Christiansen.

Jyndabine — Comparisons with Ray Lawrence’s earlier Lantana are inevitable. While this one also looks closely at human emotions and death (and bloody noses), this film has less of a claustrophobic, mystery feel to it. People familiar with the Raymond Carver short story or Paul Kelly’s Everything’s Turning To White will know the basic story, but this telling sees the four men slip almost accidentally into the actions they are later condemned for, and the subseqent events are very believable, helped by seemingly flawless acting that left the entire cinema silent and thinking right through the film. Terrific stuff.

Walk The Line — The story of Johnny Cash, and in particular his drug addiction and relationship with June Carter, based on his autobiography, which doesn’t paint him in entirely a good light. Interesting to see where some of his better-known songs, such as Folsom Prison Blues, and Walk The Line, come from. Really good. Not surprised it won an Oscar.

A City Lost And Found - Whelan The Wrecker’s Melbourne — I certainly remember seeing Whelan The Wrecker signs around Melbourne when I was growing up, letting the passing populace know that another building was being flattened. They don’t exist anymore as a family firm, though the brand name was bought. The book covers their century-long history, and with it the history of many of Melbourne’s best-known buildings of the past and present, with plenty of anecdotes along the way. A fascinating book for anybody interested in Melbourne’s history.

• State Library: Whelan the Wrecker, with Robyn Annear talking about how she wrote the book.
• Museum of Victoria: Whelan the Wrecker

Word on the street is that if you want to see any movies, do so this weekend, because by the following weekend they’ll have all been swept away by blanket screenings of the bloody Da Vinci Code.

On the train, which do you think there’s more of? Dan Brown books, or iPods?

Dan Brown books are still selling well, but market growth is probably slowing, as just about everybody who would be inclined to read it must have just about finished it by now. Of course, those who weren’t put off by what they read (like I was) might go and buy another one.

iPods are still growing rapidly in number though, and I would think would have a better longer-term outlook.

There don’t seem to be that many people reading Dan Brown while listening to an iPod, though.

Saw a guy on the train with an old-style portable CD player. ‘Cos, you know, digital music from real CDs have a warmth that MP3/AAC on iPods just can’t match…

Watched WarGames again the other night. As Marita commented, no wonder geeks like it — geeks get to save the world. (Though they almost destroyed it in the first place.) Call me slow, but I hadn’t noticed before that one of the missile operators at the start is played by none other than the late John Spencer, better known as Leo McGarry in the West Wing.

Quick review: Foreigner by C J Cherryh — I have to admit, I found this book hard-going initially. I think it’s the style of it versus the style of my reading. I don’t tend to read for long periods of time. It’s generally 15 minutes on the train, rather than an hour or two tucked up in bed, and this book didn’t suit that. But particularly towards the end, it was rivetting stuff. Apart from what would happen to the human character, his whole thinking of himself and the other humans compared to the… well, alien nature of the aliens was very interesting.

Paul Cornell, who wrote the excellent Father’s Day episode of Doctor Who, has a blog, and remarks that Rose’s father Pete was based on his own dad.

The piece is really about me appreciating the sacrifices he made, and how I know he’d do what the Dad in ‘Father’s Day’ does. I think most Dads would.

Yup.

Paul goes on to say that he’s recently discovered his dad had a terrifying, chaotic time in WW2 in the Far East, including a spot of treasure hunting, and he now thinks of him in the same vein as Bobby Shaftoe, the character in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon.

I can’t help thinking that for most of us, there’s way more about our parents than we know about.

Dan Brown: Angels and Demons. (Disclaimer: I was forced to read this.) The good: after a plodding start, the plot did get interesting, and exciting enough that I wanted to keep reading and find out what happened. Nice twist at the end.

The bad: Wooden, two-dimensional characters. Romantic scenes written like Mills and Boon. Spelling out every plot development 2-3 times so nobody will miss anything. Sloppily written (either refer to the Swiss Guard as one body, or the Swiss Guards as a group of individuals, but don’t swap between the two, especially in one paragraph).

For fiction to be believable, it has to have a basis in truth, and this fell down on basic facts (such as the BBC telephone operator smoking at her desk, and people continually commenting that their cell phones didn’t have a dial tone — dial tone???), which destroyed the fantasy and left me wondering how much else of it was wrong.

All in all, a mostly enjoyable read. But there are many much better-written books out there.

Life is short. Read good books. Thumbs down to Brown.

Astonishing literary discovery of the week: in the US version of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day it referred to Australia, not Timbuktu.