I've been tagged by Gem!

I've been tagged by my blogger pal Gem with this here book meme: also for today (Tuesday) this blog is awarded Bestest Blog of The Day!

1.One book that changed your life - the hardest question first.
Richard Dawkin’s ‘The Selfish Gene’. It is a book that explains genetics in a way that only religious fundamentalists could object to. (And they do). Dawkins is a virulent and uncompromising atheist but I believe there is still a place for religious belief within evolution and genetic study, although it’s not for me. This book changed the way I percieve the world and I have told the author as much.

2. One book that you've read more than once.
‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This was my introduction to the genre of magical realism and I was knocked out! Fortunately it has a family tree printed on the inside cover because the names of the characters are all so confusing one needs to continually refer to it. The opening sentence of the book is this:
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” Note the inbuilt contrast between ‘fire’ and ‘ice’. Garcia Marquez is a master and this book has stayed with me for twenty years.

3. One book that you'd want on a desert island.
If there’s a book called ‘The Boy’s Own Annual of Escaping From A Desert Island by Using Coconuts and Seashells’ then that’s the one. However, if not, I would want ‘Palgraves Golden Treasury’ particularly the copy that was awarded to my mother as a school prize, which I already possess.

4. One book that made you laugh.
‘The Third Policeman’ by Flann O’Brien. If you don’t know this book or only know it through a strange reference to it in one episode of the TV series ‘Lost’ you will be in for a surprise. Whatever you think it may be – it isn’t! For example, how often have you come across the phenomenon of a man who is slowing exchanging molecules with a bicycle so that he and the bicycle are gradually changing into each other. No, I thought not! The book is surreal, satirical, complex, surprising, very funny and one of a kind.

5. One book that made you cry.
‘Schindler’s Ark’, the book on which the film ‘Schindler’s List’ was based. (It may have been published in the USA as ‘Schindler’s List’). Explanations unnecessary.

6. One book that you wish you had written.
‘Essays’ by Michel de Montaigne. You might think this to be a dull and dry collection but it is far from it. He wrote on every topic with insight, reason and humour and, for me, he represents humanism more than any other writer. Here are some of his quotes that I would have loved to have written: “Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.”: “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.” And finally, the quote that makes me think that he would have been a brilliant blogger: “There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.”

7. One book you wish had never been written.
‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ is a rabid anti-semetic forgery that has been conclusively and continually exposed as such, notably by the Times of London in 1921. However, it is constantly reproduced even as recently as 2005 in Syria. Thousands of naïve and innocent minds have been corrupted by its falsehoods.

8. One book that you are reading at the moment.
‘Kalookie Nights’ by Howard Jacobson, almost too brilliant for words. I will be doing a post about it eventually. I’m reading it slowly because I never want it to end.

9. One book that you've been meaning to read.
‘Finnegans Wake’ by James Joyce. Joyce is reputed to have said “This one will take the professors a thousand years to unravel” so I might wait a bit.

10. Five others that you’d like to do this.

I nominate Rob, Serenity, Jim, Slaghammer & Vive42 . If any of the nominees don't want to play, that's fine, no offence will be taken. Also if you would rather I posted your list because it doesn't fit in with your blog's style - that's OK too!