chasing bawa

One of my favourite blogs Su[shu] has tagged me for the Honest Scrap Meme: 10 things you don’t know about me.

OK, here we go:

1) I no longer spend hours reading books but tend to watch more TV and DVDs (I blame you, Supernatural and Battlestar Galactica!) The shame of it. This is one of the things I’m going to change this year!
2) I’m allergic to self-help books.
3) I once interviewed Sir Arthur C. Clarke for my dissertation research. I couldn’t use it, but I got to spend an interesting hour with the great man and his pet chihuahua.
4) I improved my Japanese considerably through reading manga and Japanese magazines and watching Japanese TV.
5) I read everything I could find about the Templars, the Holy Grail and Mary Magdalene 10 years before The Da Vinci Code was published so it didn’t surprise me at all. I preferred Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco and The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Richard Leigh, Michael Baigent, and Henry Lincoln.
6) The only film I thought was better or comparable to the book is The English Patient.
7) I’m too scared to read horror except for vampire and werewolf books (which I don’t really class as horror).
8 ) I like reading Asterix comics in the bathroom.
9) I sometimes choose books because of their cover.
10) I prefer going to bookshops and libraries alone.

I’m adding a bonus as I feel a bit of a party pooper but
♥) I don’t do chain e-mails and am pretty crap at tagging people, but for any of you who like this meme and want to try it, please consider yourselves tagged! I would love to read 10 secrets about you!

I’m happy that Su[shu] has tagged me with this meme as I was having a bit of a reader’s block throughout the holidays and spent most evenings when I should have been reading curled up in front of the telly watching Poirot and Marple. But I started off the year with Terry Pratchett’s Unseen Academicals and what better way to kick off 2010? And I’ve also finished my first non-fiction book this year, We Danced All Night: A Social History of Britain Between the Wars by Martin Pugh, so I’m happy.

Currently I’m in the middle of Mosquito by Roma Tearne in preparation for my impending trip to Sri Lanka and the Galle Literary Festival. It’s making me ponder upon the troubled history of the country, especially with the forthcoming elections this month. But it’s a sublime read and I’m quietly impressed with Tearne’s way with words.