Hurtling Through Space

It’s been a few years since I sat in my living room late one evening watching Paramount Stand Up! (or something) on the then Paramount Comedy channel and I saw a weird-haired, mascara-wearing comic and fellow Sandgroper singing a song about canvas bags:

Tim Minchin – Canvas Bags

I find the song clever and rather moving, and it’s what resolved me to actually do what the song says, rather than just thinking about it. Within a week or so, a friend and I had chipped in and bought 20 canvas bags from Clever Baggers for ourselves and family, and to this day we both independently take our bags to the supermarket.

That video was of course my first encounter with the brilliant, talented… and slightly eccentric Tim Minchin. Since then I’ve bought his three CDs — Darkside, So Rock and Ready For This? — and have tried to make it to his shows, but to date events have conspired against me (including the Nine Lessons & Carols for Godless People show where a twisted knee prevented me going).

He’s back in the UK later this year, so I’ll be going — even if it’s in an iron lung or something equally ludicrous!

And this brings me to his latest sensational piece of creativity. As he talks about his wife and friends in it, it’s entirely likely to be based on fact. But regardless of the details, it’s a great beat poem called Storm:

Storm by Tim Minchin (with text)

It sums up precisely what so many of us feel inside whenever we speak to a “true believer”. And there’s not enough beat poetry anymore…

If you like his stuff, please support him by buying his merchandise — and try to make it to a show, if you can. You won’t regret it.

What-a-sad-world disclaimer: I have no affiliation other than being from the same city, having a similar view of the world, and following him on Twitter!

I thought I’d continue the book meme found at Nullifidian’s site…

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here, though the closest BBC reference I can find to it is The Big Read from 2003. Either way, it’s time to find out:

Instructions:

1. Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read ENTIRELY (and not just seen the film!)
2. Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3. Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4. Tally your total at the bottom.

The BBC reading list:

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien x
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling x
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee x
6. The Bible x
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell x+
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman *
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens *
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott *
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller x
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare *
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier x
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien x
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger x
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens x
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams x+
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky *
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll x
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame x
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy *
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis x
34. Emma – Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis x
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini *
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne x
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell x+
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown x
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy *
48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding x
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan *
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel x
52. Dune – Frank Herbert x
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens x
58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley x+
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck x
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov *
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas *
66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac *
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding x
69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie *
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville x
71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens x
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker x
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce *
76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession – AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web – EB White x
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Alborn
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle x
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery *
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks *
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams x
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas x
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare x+
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl x
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

If I’ve tallied correctly, that’s: 34 x / 5 + / 15 * I’ve not read nearly as much as I’d have liked in recent years, but amusingly I have a number of those “want to read” books sitting in a pile in my living room. So much to do, so little time…