I went to the library today, which in itself is unusual. Halifax Central Library, while staffed by wonderful people*, is unfortunately frequented by less than wonderful people. People who talk loudly, people who use their phone. People who leave me red-faced with rage over breaches of the social etiquette. People, I am reliably informed, who urinate in the lift and masturbate in the toilet.
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| To clarify, this is not a toilet. |
Those people.
The kind of people best described as dregs of humanity. The bit in the bottom of the glass that’s gone flat and is full of spit and broken promises.
I don’t want to sound elitist, but libraries are for people like me, who generally appreciate the idea of a book, even if reading is one of those things that has become an annual tradition. They’re definitely not a social club for the worst members of society to congregate and do whatever illiterate peasants do when trapped in libraries. It must be horrible, surrounded by all of that knowledge and only able to gibber incomprehensively. Something I have yet to discover is what percentage of the screaming, phone wielding teenagers who fuck around on the top floor can actually read. And I am yet to fathom what they actually do there all day, and if they actually know where they are.
Anyway, long story short, it was a trap. I tried to print something off the computer and it cost a ridiculous amount of money because I hit print three times and ended up with the same sheet over and over and over again. Mea Culpa. To make myself feel better, I decided to get a book out, since the last one was so delicious I ate all of it. Then I thought, you know what, I’ll get two. Because I can always put the other one in the freezer when I get home.
Something went wrong, and I returned home with not two books, but eight. Five of which I had sent some hapless sod into the bowels of Hell to retrieve. She returned, staggering under a weight of ancient crumbling paper with a distinctive hunch associated with people who snivel and say ‘Yeth mathter!’. After depositing them on the desk, she retreated, bowing and squinting in the bright sunlight, obviously overcome by my passion for reading. In Calderdale, someone who reads more than twice a year is generally either a scientist or holy man.
So I figured today I would do a list of authors and their books that have helped shape me into the twisted bile-filled meatsack you all know. I decided on 7 Authors because it is more than six and less than eight, and it stops me revealing the boundaries of my cultural famine. Anyway, there is nothing better to write about at the moment.*
Charlie Brooker – The Hell of It All
Charlie’s hate fuelled diatribe is what inspired me to write A Clockwork Lemon, because it’s really easy to get angry about stuff, and fairly easy to remain funny while doing it. I know I’ll probably have a heart attack at 28 because you bastards feed on my anti-social warblings, but it’ll be worth it because then I’ll be able to chase you through your nightmares.
The Hell of It All is a collection of Brooker’s Guardian articles between 2007 and 2009, if memory serves. No, I don’t have it with me. And yes, he is funnier than me. Go fuck yourself.
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| The thousand yard stare of someone who has eaten too much hate. |
Terry Pratchett – Going Postal
Famous for his Discworld series, I refrained from reading any Pratchett until I was 24 because I heard about him when I was a super-serious twelve-year old and figured that anyone recommending a book to a twelve year old is probably a fool trying to get me to read the extended edition of The Very Hungry Catapillar. I couldn’t have been further from the truth.
I like Pratchett. His stories are good, and while they can be a bit silly sometimes, he has a great way of approaching topics and phrasing things. Recently, I finished The Fifth Elephant, in which the line ‘he was so far out of his depth the fish had lights on their noses’ had me in stitches for about ten minutes. And no, that is not sad.
I’ve read maybe a dozen Pratchett books now, but far and away my favourite is Going Postal, a story about a professional con-man who gets offered a second chance at life – to work for the city council restoring the postal service. It’s a great book, and features one of my favourite exchanges of all time, in which the benevolent tyrant Vetinari philosophically discusses the nature of Angels with the man he’s just had hung.
Judith Butler – Precarious Life
I first read Butler in my final year of university. The full title is ‘Precarious Life, Politics and the Power of Mourning’, which is guaranteed to get you some eye boggling stares on the train and make that dickhead reading the Da Vinci Code put his book away and gaze politely out of the window, with is a resounding victory for literature everywhere. Precarious Life is a book of political philosophy, about identity creation and loss. I read it specifically in relation to global terrorism but Bulter’s theories are more applicable to everyday social interaction between human beings.
I’d like to go on, but it’s a political theory book and there isn’t really much more to it than that. If you like political philosophy, check it out. If you don’t, give it a miss. It’ll only be wasted on your tiny brain.
Neil Gaiman – The Sandman
The first of two graphic novel authors I really appreciate. I’ll dispense with any myths about graphic novels right now, in the least geeky way possible without making me sound like an overenthusiastic fanboy. Graphic novels are not comics. They are books with lots of pictures. While there is horrendous amount of trashy, badly written superhero X versus Y books out there featuring copious amounts of blood and tits, this does not invalidate the genre.
Gaiman has wrote a lot of stuff, and you’re more than likely going to be familiar with some of it. But the Sandman series is an easy favourite, despite the awesomeness of American Gods. The Sandman tells the story of Dream, an anthropomorphic manifestation of dreaming. Woven throughout the ten part series are his interactions with a series of reoccurring characters, exploring gender, sexuality, morality, ethics and of course, his big sister Death.
*Even if a few of them today looked suicidal.
* Politics having recently become such a giant pantomime that it has rendered parody a pointless medium.
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