The Godfather (1969) by Mario Puzo
Watchmen (1985) by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
Jurassic Park (1990) by Michael Crichton
High Fidelity (1995) by Nick Hornby
The Last Samurai (2000) by Helen DeWitt
I could probably do a top twenty just as easily. But for the sake of brevity, this is just the top five.
Now, The Godfather is just a classic. Plain and simple. It was a great movie (well, the first one was), and an even better book. And every guy should have read it at least once. And yes, you're less of a man for having not read it.
Watchmen is one of the two comic books that created the term 'Graphic Novel' (which, to me, always seemed like a way for people who are insecure to tell other people that 'I read comic books.'). It was written as a way to explore the things that could be done within a comic, that could not be done in any other medium. Also, the fifth chapter, 'Fearful Symmetry' really made me question a lot of my own person beliefs and morality on certain issues. Forget that comic books are just for kids. Get over yourself, and go and read this freaking book. And don't watch that awful movie they made of it.
Jurassic Park is one of those books I will always love. When the movie first came out, I wasn't allowed to watch it, so to get around this, whenever we went into the bookstore, I'd grab a copy of this, and sit down to start reading, picking up wherever I last left off. It's the first book I think I ever boiught, and one of the happiest days of my life was when I found a hard-bound, first edition of this book in a second hand bookstore. Oh yeah, and in case you don't know, it's about dinosaurs.
High Fidelity is one of those books I both love and loathe. I love reading it, I love the movie, and just generally could go on about it for hours. But I loathe it too. It strikes a little too close to home for me. To be honest, the main character is basically me in another eight years. Which scares me a little.
Now, the Last Samurai. The first thing you need to know is that, save having the same name, it has nothing whatsoever to do with that horrible Tom Cruise movie. Second, you need to understand a little about what brought me to this book.
I was reading a whole lot of asofterworld (an online comic strip), and found on the website, a collection of interviews the author of the strip, Joey Comeau, had done with people who were important to him. One of them being this one with Helen DeWitt. I strongly encourage you to read that interview.
After reading that, and entranced by some of the ideas within that interview, I sought out The Last Samurai. Which to this day is one of the best decisions I have ever made. The Last Samurai made me feel really very stupid. But in a good way. It made me realise that there were all of these things in the world that I was ignorant of, and I wanted to know it all. You see, before I found that book, I was in a very weird place. I felt as if I were trapped, and if I stayed still any longer that I would stagnate, and rot.
All of a sudden, the world got a lot bigger (stupid really, it never really changed, I guess I just kind of had blinkers on for a long time), and life was worth living again.
I don't think I'm articulating this very well, but that book saved me.
Anyhow, if any of you are still reading this; yes, I am getting to the point. And no, I haven't forgotten that this is a blog of my travels. But bear with me just a little longer.
A little while ago, when I was still in Australia, I was in my backyard on a beautiful sunny day with a bottle of wine, a notebook to write whenever the mood would strike. and two books I was alternating between, one chapter at a time. The first was Slaughterhouse 5 (yes, the same book I talked about when I visited Schlachthof 5 in Dresden), by Kurt Vonnegut, and the second was Kingdom of Fear, by Hunter S. Thompson.
I had a very weird moment when I realised, after contemplating both of these books (which are also great, and you should totally read), that in the last five years, both of these wonderfully talented authors had died. And never would I have the chance to write to them and tell them how much I liked their books. Unless, of course, we end up on the same ice hockey team in hell (kidding).
Now, to bring us all back to the very nice town of Berlin. As I've said, this trip has also inspired hope for a better life, and has made me believe that anything is possible. And maybe, just maybe, those tides and dreams we look at from afar, are not so tall at all.
So I wrote to Helen DeWitt, who lives in Berlin, and we went out to lunch.
And it was great, we talked about all kinds of things, life, logistics, hopes, suicide. You know when you read an author, or maybe their blog, and from those little snippet of themselves the author has allowed you to read, you try and build up a mental image of what the author might be like. Well, I had an idea of the sort of person Helen DeWitt would be like, and I was not dissapointed. She was lovely, and gave me advice and thoughts on certain subjects, for which I am eternally grateful. There's lots more I guess I could say, but I might just leave it at that.
That was yesterday, and the day before, I went to the film museum at the Sony centre. There was a 'no photo's policy, so there isn't really much I can say. Maybe that I wish I'd seen a lot more German films. The full effect of the museum was probably a little lost on me. But still, fun.
Anyhow, That's about it from me for today. Tomorrow will not be very interesting at all, looks as if I'm going to spend roughly eight and a half hours on a train.
The joy.
You are in my heart always.
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