FRIDAY FIVE ON LITERATURE

Posted on March 1, 2003 by Dave Pollard
fred b My answers to this week’s literary Friday Five . Most Sloggers could easily write volumes in response to each of these questions, but in case my response provokes others to reply (these questions are kinda interesting and I’d really like to hear what other Sloggers’ answers are), I’ll keep my reponse short:

1. What is your favourite type of literature to read (magazine, newspaper, novels, nonfiction, poetry, etc.)?
I read everything, and can easily spend a whole Saturday in a good bookstore. Favourites are short stories and what taxonomists now call ‘cultural studies’ (which a friend calls ‘philosophy by non-dead guys’).

2. What is your favourite novel?
Most enjoyable: Natural Selection by Frederick Barthelme (his photo above). Most powerful: Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. Most worldview-changing: Story of B by Daniel Quinn. Can’t pick between them.

3. Do you have a favourite poem? (Share it!)
Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot.

4. What is one thing you’ve always wanted to read, or wish you had more time to read?
Wanted to read: People’s minds. Wish I had more time to read: Humour writing, to learn what makes it funny, and women’s fiction, because in every other creative field they’re leaving men in their dust.

5. What are you currently reading?
Nine books in the active stack and five more on order, half fiction and half not. Most promising: Shadow Play by Charles Baxter (it has a picture of a Raven on the cover!)

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