Two years ago David Bowie shared his top 100 favourite reads on Facebook. Seemed like an apt time to revisit this once I heard the awful news. I’ve read shockingly few of these, seven to be exact, so I’ll have to revisit this now and then for inspiration. I haven’t even heard of half of these. Interviews With Francis Bacon by David Sylvester Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse Room At The Top by John Braine On Having No Head by Douglass Harding Kafka Was The Rage by Anatole Broyard A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess City Of Night by John Rechy The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot…

Today was the annual Times Colonist book sale, which I mentioned earlier. It’s a great event that goes to charity, so not only can you buy what you want without guilt, but you can even feel good about it. I’m always surprised at how large an event this is. The doors open at 9:00am and someone commented on their Facebook page that the first people started showing up around midnight. Another commented that at 5:30am there were already 50 people in line. That’s dedication! It confuses me a little why people would do this, as there are more books than they can actually display and the stock is constantly being…

This is a great interview from Neil Gaiman on his friendship with Terry Pratchett and how they collaborated for Good Omens, filmed the day after Pratchett’s death. He shares some great stories and does a short reading. One of my favourite bits happens around the twenty minute mark when Gaiman mentions Pratchett’s goal to make people understand that funny and serious are not opposites, that the opposite of funny is simply not funny. I think that’s something that really struck me when I was reading his books early on. It’s a common misconception that a story loses any insight into the human condition as soon as comedy or fantasy or…

I’ve just started A Slip of the Keyboard, a collection of Terry Pratchett non-fiction that spans his entire career. I plan to take my time and just read an article here and there over the next few months, but there was a short article near the beginning of the book that I loved and thought I’d share. It’s one he wrote for a survey that was done in the UK to find the nation’s favourite word by The Word, London’s Festival of Literature. I like the fortuitous onomatopoeia of words for soundless things. Gleam, glint, glitter, glisten…they all sound exactly as the light would sound if it made a noise.…

This is a bit from A Confederacy of Dunces that made me chuckle. It’s a good example of the novel’s typical dialogue and humour. “I refuse to ‘look up.’ Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man’s fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery.” “I ain’t miserable.” “You are.” “No, I ain’t.” “Yes, you are.” “Ignatius, I ain’t miserable. If I was, I’d tell you.” “If I had demolished private property while intoxicated and had thereby thrown my child to the wolves, I would be beating my breast and wailing. I would kneel in penance until my knees bled. By the way, what penance has…

Sir Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series, died this week after struggling with Alzheimer’s for eight years. He was 66 years old, which seems so unfairly young, particularly for someone who still had so much passion for his work. In the mid-90s, before I ever picked up a Discworld novel, I played something called Discworld MUD (Multi-User Dungeon), which is a massively multiplayer online text-based computer game. The sort where you literally type ‘backstab Mike’ to stab Mike in the back with something pointy. They had built the world up from his books, filling it with his hilarious descriptions and ridiculous characters, and my friend and I were in…

I thought I’d participate in this month’s Classics Club question, which is actually 50 questions. It turns out that 50 questions is an awful lot of questions. Some might say too many questions, but I felt committed to finish once I’d started. It was a fun exercise, though. Share a link to your club list. My List of 50 classics. When did you join The Classics Club? How many titles have you read for the club? I joined on March 23, 2012 (wow, doesn’t feel that long ago) and have read 28 (plus one I haven’t written about yet), which puts me right on track for my end date of…

Books Acquired: The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor by Bruce Campbell The Magicians by Lev Grossman A Cook’s Tour – In Search of the Perfect Meal by Anthony Bourdain Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin Rebus’s Scotland by Ian Rankin The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret…