Wacky Book Questions!

Well, thanks to Thersites, I am now obliged to answer some pointless-yet-thought-provoking book questions...

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

Solaris. Unless there's a novelization of Waterworld...

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

I'm sure there's hundreds of them, but I think Mrs. Stainless Steel Rat comes to mind first. Dead sexy, resourceful, lethal, smart, and tolerant.

The last book you bought is:

I will take this to mean "intentionally", rather than "by default 'cause I didn't decline the book club selection fast enough"...

I'm not rightly sure, actually - I think it may have actually been a cheesy Marvel graphic novel called 1602, where various Marvel characters like Dr. Doom, Dr. Strange, Daredevil, Nick Fury, and The X-Men are living and heroing (or villaining) in 1602.

As far as a real book without any pictures, I think it might be Gridlink'd, by Neal Asher, where the main character is a government agent who has been gridlinked (connected to the cyberuniverse in realtime) for so long that he's started to forget how to be human. His eccentric and mysterious boss has him disconnect from the net to reconnect with his humanity while investigating a massive teleportation disaster, while being chased by a crazy vengeful terrorist and his goons and evil psychotic android.

It's, um, not exactly literary, but fun stuff all the same.

The last book you read:

Lempriere's Dictionary, by Lawrence Norfolk. My stepmother raved about it and loaned me her copy. The main character is a bookish young 18th-century classical scholar who gets sucked into a mysterious and elaborate conspiracy involving the East India Company. The arcane Greek mythology references made it difficult to get into, but after the scene with the village priest who could only achieve sexual climax by covering himself in mashed potatoes, I was pretty much hooked.

What are you currently reading?

Altered Carbon, by Richard Morgan. More cheesy sci-fi, it's kind of like a mild amalgam of noir and cyberpunk. It's set in a future where everyone (except Catholics, for religious reasons) has hard drives in their heads that store their consciousness, so if their body is killed they can just be "resleeved" in a new one. There is almost no death penalty at all; instead, punishments are in terms of "dislocation", where the criminal's consciousness is stored for months, years, or decades and then resleeved. Seems a bit ineffective to me compared to prison, but what do I know. Anyway, the main character is a criminal who also happens to have outstanding detective training, conditionally reprieved, hired and resleeved by a 350-year-old gazillionaire who wants answers to his own death. You see, he was found in his study with his head blown off (fortunately for him, his consciousness is remotely backed up every 48 hours), and he wants the protagonist to prove that he was "murdered", and did not commit "suicide", which is what the police have decided. Pretty intriguing so far - I have a broad-outline theory on what might have happened.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

Ouch, that's a toughie. Definitely Queen Of Angels by Greg Bear, which is just amazing. Possibly the Watchmen graphic novel by Alan Moore. Dune, by Frank Herbert (only the first one, though...). If I may combine a bit, I would round it out with Tom Weller's Science Made Stupid and Culture Made Stupid, and both volumes of Monty Python: All The Words.

UPDATE: Okay, much as I love Dune, I think I would have to replace it with How To Build A Seaworthy Raft Out Of Palm Trees And Coconuts, by Hibiscus J. Moped.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons)? And Why?

The shadowy and mysterious Codename V., whose reviewing skills are exemplary.

driftglass, because he's a honking great bibliophile and borderline insane.

LJ/Aquaria, because she's a writer herself, and maybe this'll get her to come back...