matt welch reads far more than i do

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and rarely does anything like this. but when you read his answers you understand why he jumped in. for some reason he picked me to take this quiz even though he knows that i read far more blogs than pages on paper. but i’ll do my best.

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

like matt i have no idea what this question is asking. but if i had to be a book i would be the bible. it’s crazed and full of variety. it’s easilly the most well-written book of all despite being written by lots of people over various periods of time. the stories are insane the people are believable and even when you think you know whats going to happen next someone does something totally bizarre like listen to the talking snake instead of God, and thats just page five.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

even though Roberta in Lynda Barry’s “Cruddy” is 14, shes pretty amazing. she’s good with a knife, likes to make out, does acid on her rooftop and puts up with her father calling her son. the whole time i was thinking, i wonder what she would be like when she grows up. maybe lynda will make a sequel.

The last book you bought is:

Charles Bukowski “You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense” for Bunny McIntosh for her birthday a few weeks back which is ironic because i dont think bunny has ever been alone in her life. this is a great collection of poems and short stories. it was one of the first bukowski books i ever really got into because the poems are short and easy to dive into and the stories are sexy and sad.

The last book you read:

“The Most Fucked Up Person Alive Tells All” by HC

this is a book that i first saw on the web long before blogs. whoever HC was put the whole thing on web pages for free and dared you to print it out and read it or just read it on your screen. it was such an outrageous story that i never forgot it and when i was bored one day i put the title into an ebay search engine and there it was.

this is the prologue:

I was born to hijack space shuttles and blackmail cities and start world neurolic wars. And be kicked out of rooms and institutions and off planets and out of solar systems.

I was born to be the kind of person that intercepts a satellite feed and superimpsses flashing titles like “Disingenuous Slimeball” “Mass Murderer” or “Dickhead” over its images of celebrities and world leaders.

And I was even born to be elected President of the Cosmos — on a platform of “Fuck the Economy! Fuck the People! Fuck the Police!”

Or else I wasn’t born this way at all, and something must have happened in life itself, to make it this way.

thats how you start a fucking book.

What are you currently reading?

“The Insider’s Guide To Getting an Agent” by Lori Perkins because i’d secretly like to be a published author someday and everyone who has done it says it starts with getting a good agent.

Five books you would take to a deserted island.

  • “White Oleander” by Janet Finch because she writes so colorfully and richly that it makes you forgive the stars for making it an oprah book club novel.
  • “Hammer of the Gods” by Steven Davis. there will never be another band like led zeppelin and i dont know how this guy got the access that he got to be able to tell the stories that are told in there but it’s an amazing and just biography of a miracle of a rock group.
  • “Ham on Rye” Charles Bukowski. everything bukowski wrote was mostly-autobiographical but very little was about his horrific childhood of boils and beatings and sex and sin. this novel describes much of his earliest years in the matter-of-fact style that has become legendary. and although tragic and sometimes unbelievable, it is also suprisingly funny at the strangest moments.
  • “Vurt” by Jeff Noon. ive read this book three times and bought it for every person who i know who has done acid more than twice and liked it. it’s a sci fi techno surreal pychedelic love story set in the future in london. nothing that i ever thought i would be interested in and not at all what you expect from a first novel because noon has complete control of his story throughout the entirety of tale.
  • “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy. nobody writes characters better or their dialogue. no man has written better women and as many. in heaven there are volumes of new tolstoys where he rewrites the entire tom robbins catalogue. anna karenina is tolstoy showing off via a soap opera history lesson character study. the sole reason to go to college is so that one day you’re assigned to read this and you do and then get to talk about it with people who cant believe how much better tolstoy was than anyone who dared call themselves his peer.

    Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

    sk smith because shes been educated in the best schools in america and despite that has great taste. [update: sk has obliged us!]

    mc brown because he’s always ahead of the game

    and amy langfield because shes always right.

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