Someone Else's Top Something

The results of The Guardian's Top Twenty Geek Novels survey have been published. With 120 people participating and voting closed already it wasn't exactly the most scientific study ever undertaken but that doesn't mean it's not indicative of the truth.

I've read ten and a half of them, making me 52.5% geek. The partial is Cryptonomicon, which bored me outright. I gave up a quarter of the way through. I should probably call it 10.25 and brag that I'm only 51.25% nerd. I loved #1, #2, #4, #6 and #12 on the list and felt like I'd finished a school reading assignment after #5 and #17.

It takes me a long time to read a book because of that thing Tim Berners-Lee did to keep me distracted. When I get around to actually picking one up I'm not a slow reader at all but we're talking trains, planes and that's about it. I read #14 on my first trip to New York City in 1997 and had to rush the ending so I could leave it with my host at the end of the week. In return, she gave me Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex* (the self-help book, not the movie with Burt Reynolds as a sperm).

Perhaps it's because I read so few novels in a year that they manage to evoke memories of times past almost as well as music does. In the case of Consider Phlebas, I remember my vacation vividly. And the plot? It had something to do with shape-shifters. I think Phlebas was a planet.

*But Were Too Afraid To Ask