Fiction on my bookshelf

I thought I’d write an overview of the works of fiction adorning my bookshelf - not a comprehensive list but a fairly good summary, using enough examples to represent the overall spectrum.

Remarkable tattoo

THIS photograph was posted to an Internet forum recently. It’s got to be the coolest tattoo I’ve ever seen (or do I mean it’s the only cool tattoo I’ve ever seen)? I just hope the joke doesn’t wear thin after a few decades.

Greeting cards

Here’s a whimsical idea for you. Look through the greeting cards that people have sent you over the years, and select one that most accurately captures your personality. Then share it with the world.

I’d have to choose this one, which I was given for my 22nd birthday in 1999 (no, ye pedants, not the 22nd of the birthdays that I had in 1999):

The thousand pictures of Pam Marlow

The Marlow family are close friends of ours. Pam and Phil are the same age as my parents, and friendships began long before I was born. Their children are Rob and Suzanne. When I was young, we camped in the sandhills together every Easter. Nowadays, Pam helps me with my fortnightly shopping. My family and theirs have shared many different moments together.

Pam writes haiku, which she couples with photographs. She is hopeful of publication, and I hope to have more to say about her haiku in the future, including examples.

Another thing that Pam has done is to build models, particularly of old buildings and towns. In the year 2000, for a university topic then called Advanced Professional English and later re-named Creative Non-Fiction, I interviewed Pam and wrote an article about her model-making adventures.

The article I wrote is reproduced below for your pleasure.

The Thousand Pictures of Pam Marlow

Sport

The topic of sport has come up on alt.fan.pratchett, so I thought I’d share some of my views and preferences here.

Glasses

Everyone in my immediate family wears glasses of one sort or another. Dad and Rebecca wear permanent glasses, Mum wears reading glasses for close-up work, and I have a pair that I use when I want to see something in the distance.

I’m slightly short-sighted. I find glasses useful when watching television, scanning items on a supermarket shelf, reading a menu on a restaurant wall, watching a performance on stage, admiring a beautiful view, and other things like that. But I’ve had them for a few years now and they still give me a mild headache if I leave them on for too long, so I only wear them when necessary. If I’m watching television, for example, they come off in the commercials.