Most of the time I'm not really into following along with online trends. Quizes and fill-in-the-blanks questionaires don't do much for me, either reading or writing them. But this time, I got tagged by Wendy. So here goes, I'll play.
1. How many books do I own?
On my own, I'd guess around 500. Between the Duck and I, probably around 1,200 live in our apartment.
2. Last Book I Bought:
Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell. I bought it to see how prophetic it had been - war is peace, Big Brother is watching you. Orwell's totaltarian vision rings truer now than when I last read this book in high school.
3. Last Book I Read:
The Human Factor by Grahan Greene. An incredible book that deceives with its compact slightness yet packs incredibly rich characters and plots.
4. Five Books That Mean A Lot To Me:
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
50 Stories and a Piece of Advice by David Arnason
Palimpsest by Gore Vidal
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
5. Tag Five More:
Naturally, the Duck, Chris Radcliffe, Darren Barefoot, Kris Krug and Stephen Osborne.
Incidentally, I read last night at a restaurant called Shebeen in Gastown during the Tour de Gastown bicycle race. The evening was themed as a tribute to Hemingway, since today would be his birthday, and the organizer of the event Lorraine read the old man's speech for accepting the Nobel Award for Literature, which was wonderful and made it hard to read afterward.
Having no facility for speech-making and no command of oratory nor any domination of rhetoric, I wish to thank the administrators of the generosity of Alfred Nobel for this Prize.No writer who knows the great writers who did not receive the Prize can accept it other than with humility. There is no need to list these writers. Everyone here may make his own list according to his knowledge and his conscience.
It would be impossible for me to ask the Ambassador of my country to read a speech in which a writer said all of the things which are in his heart. Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten.
Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.
For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.
How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.
I have spoken too long for a writer. A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it. Again I thank you.