30 Days – Day 17 – “Books”

A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.

Been busy over the past couple days so haven’t had much time to sit down and write. Anyway… I read a lot, have done ever since I was young. Some people hate it, I’ve always found it easy. I’m not the fastest reader, I don’t try to read 150 pages an hour, I’m not racing anyone. And I don’t remember every last little detail about every book, or try to deconstruct them to debate about with people. If I meet someone at a party and they try to show off by quoting lines and the fucking pages they appeared in the 1986 Penguin Classics reissue of War and Peace the urge to just glass them skyrockets. I enjoy reading, I read for me, not to be one of those twats that want to place themselves above others just because they’ve worked their way through some Tolstoy and then understood what it was all about by reading the Wikipedia entry on it afterwards. These are a few books off the top of my head that have made an impact to one degree or another over the years.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde –

I first read it back in 2009 when I was working in the kennels, sitting in the owner’s kitchen eating my lunch wishing to hell that I hadn’t crashed my car so I could drive away each afternoon for some peace and quiet. We all took separate lunches as the place always had to be covered in case a customer came along so I wasn’t too anti-social for it. I had a choice of either reading or watching Loose Women on the TV as those were the only two decent things to do at that time. Even four mad hags were preferable to Doctors or one of those cheap fly on the wall documentaries about someone wanting to open up an ice cream shop in a seaside town or half an hour all about lifeguards. I’m convinced that the NHS secretly funds these programmes to cut down on having to keep the elderly, infirm and mentally fucked from needing expensive medication or entertainment. And LCD lobotomy pretty much. Suffice to say they fucking depressed me, so ideally I’d get stuck into a book for an hour’s worth of escapism.

I’d taken to Amazon a month or so before to bulk-buy a load of cheap books bought with the job grant I’d received for getting my arse back into ungainful dead-end employment. Dorian Gray is one of those things that most people know the story of but have never read, if they even know it came from a book in the first place. The thing’s become a kind of fairytale of late. It was short and written recently (little over a century) enough that I wouldn’t have to worry about too much archaic language, and as I knew the story and a couple of the characters already it seemed like the perfect thing to read when I wanted something to help me take my mind of things but wouldn’t suffer too greatly from any interruptions like people walking in and out and the boss’ jailbait daughter in her nightwear. I was nineteen mind!

I loved the whole hedonistic first half. I loved that for once I reading that looks did matter, that all you can hope for is pleasure and you should never deny yourself it. It appealed to me, sitting there in someone else’s kitchen literally shovelling shit for £5 an hour and not knowing what the fuck I was doing with my life. What else was there other than trying to find the good times wherever you could? Why live piously when that’s more or less not living at all?

Is it a childish philosophy? Almost certainly, though one that I’d used as a means of hope at a time where things weren’t particularly good at all. Before reading it the whole concept was there in a hazy formless way in my mind already, afterwards it was just solidified and I understood what it was I wanted a little bit better. I try to pretend that the entire second half where everything ends badly as a result of living like my wet dream was really just a little footnote the publishers added in without telling anyone. This book made it a bit easier to make a few tough decisions, and still pops into my head every so often when I’m feeling cynical or unsure. Next time you find yourself in a moral quandary, just ask yourself, WWDGD?

Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs –

From this I learned that anyone can pick up a pen and a syringe full of heroin and make themselves a novel. I’ve only read it once, understood very little of it, and may go back to it sometime. Though in fairness it taught me that you can put absolutely anything on the page, that there are no limits as to what you can write. Whether or not others understand or like it is another matter.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller –

You know, I don’t remember exactly when I first read this book. Definitely within the last two years at least. At first I wasn’t entirely sure if I’d enjoy it, most had described it as quite funny, but the plot amounted to little more than “guy on an airbase in WW2.” Four hundred or so pages about that? I went into it unsure, but it soon won me over. The humour in it isn’t for everyone, it mostly comes from twisted logic and various absurdities. At first I laughed, often out loud which is unusual for me, but then I stopped laughing quite so heartily as the book went on and I no longer seen it as a sort of dark slapstick and began to realise that it all seemed far too believable. All of a sudden it became very sad, and downright terrifying as I thought of how I had seen and heard and read of people today with the kind of mindset some of the characters possess. The book confirmed my belief that idiots float and that serving the common good is only a side-effect of an individual profiting from a situation.

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh –

First read it when I was around twelve or thirteen and took it out of the school library. Up until that point every book I had read or been made to read was written in the Queen’s English with only a smattering of dialect for comedic purposes or if there really had to be. And of course there was always the correct grammar and punctuation, all the quotation marks and apostrophes and new lines for different people speaking just like there should be! Then I only go and read this and eight or nine years of education was ruined in one fell swoop. Most of it was from a first person perspective in Scottish dialect, which until then I had never realised was far easier to read than standard English, even with the slight difference in accent as it was about Cunts From Edinburgh. Characters’ speech was signified simply with a dash at the start too. The whole thing felt as if all the useless fat had been stripped off of it leaving just the real meat behind. Back then I was young enough that reading it was a big deal purely because it was Trainspotting: it had all the sex, drugs, swearing and everything else that meant it definitely wasn’t for kids, so I loved it all the more. Again, it broadened my horizons about what a book and language itself could be. As well as the fact that while other kids were out trying to sneak into a 15 rated film or listening to a dirty album with the volume turned down, I had centuries worth of filth to choose from and would get a pat on the back from the grown ups who had no idea what it was I was reading. Just a book right?

Glue by Irvine Welsh –

Tells the story of four boys growing up in Edinburgh, following them from children until they are pushing forty. Aside from simply being my favourite Welsh book and one that’s up there in my top ten, it’s also the book I’ve most related to, particularly when the main characters are teenagers, as I was around the same age at the time. I knew the people in the story, aside from the names you could slot in most of the people I knew perfectly. I could show you a picture of mad shagger Juice Terry, of the serious Birrell, the lamb to the slaughter Gally, the nutters, the mad cunts, the girls both good and bad. I’ve never read a book that captured whatever the hell it was I was living so perfectly. I read it at a time that will never come again, all the memories and feelings that created my opinion of it are quite important to me, so I don’t know if I ever will go back to it for fear of damaging them. Still, go and read it, chances are you’ll be seeing all the people you once knew too.