“Among the most memorable books of the year, of any genre, was Declan Burke’s ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL (Liberties Press) … Burke splices insights into the creative process into a fiendishly dark thriller that evokes the best of Flann O’Brien and Bret Easton Ellis.” - Sunday Times' 'Best Books of the Year'


Crime Always Pays (n): being the blog of Irish author Declan Burke (right, with Chief Helper Elf, the Princess Lilyput), and featuring reviews, interviews and occasionally interesting news about the dicks, dames and desperadoes of (mostly) crime fiction. All of which is designed to help promote his own novels, natch.

Agent: Allan Guthrie, c/o Jenny Brown Associates.

Contact: dbrodb(at)gmail.com.

For daily updates on Irish crime fiction, click here.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

The Curious Case Of The Non-Meme Meme

Memes being the interweb’s version of pesky chain-letters, I’m not going to tag anyone in particular for the meme-ish notion below. But feel free to run with it, and link back here if you like. For simplicity’s sake I’ve kept it to one book per author, and the idea is that the last book on your list is the book you’d most like to die reading, if you had to die reading. To wit:
A long, long time in the future, in a galaxy far away, the doctor says, “Sorry, but you’ve only got a month to live.” What ten books would you re-read in your last month?
  My choices runneth thusly:

THE MAGUS – John Fowles
THE LONG GOODBYE – Raymond Chandler
THE CATCHER IN THE RYE (and ‘Teddy’ from NINE STORIES) – JD Salinger
SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5 – Kurt Vonnegut
THE GREEK MYTHS – Robert Graves
PROSPERO’S CELL – Lawrence Durrell
THE DOUBLE TONGUE – William Golding
THE ODYSSEY – Homer
STARDUST – John and Mary Gribbin
PETER PAN – JM Barrie
  For anyone interested, I'd like the theme music from ‘Match of the Day’ played as they carry the coffin out. Cheers.

3 comments:

bookwitch said...

'Match of the day' might cheer you, the corpse, up, but don't you want the rest of us to be less cheerful?

As a matter of interest, have you read Salinger as an adult? I think I've heard The Catcher doesn't travel through time so well.

Jerry House said...

Only two possible answers:

-- Whatever book is at hand, although I much prefer to have finished the book before kicking off; or,

-- my massive, best-selling, fourteen-volume autobiography, MEMOIRS OF THE WORLD'S GREATEST LOVER, which will be published on my 114th birthday (perhaps in the leather-bound 25th anniversary edition)

Corey Wilde said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
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