In which I WILL NOT SHUT UP. Sorry.

(Today's post will be entirely conducted in an appalling mock-Swedish accent. If you don't know how that might sound chances are you never will because a) you can't hear me because I am writing not speaking and b) I'm not convinced that such an accent even exists.)

In my profile I wrote that my favourite books were The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams and Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. I don't know if you've read either of them, or if you're REALLY lucky, both of them, but you should.
Stop reading my bullshit and go and find these books and then love me for the rest of your Adams/Rushdie enhanced life.

The reasons I love these books so much is that I have this strange reaction when I am reading a book. I don't know if this is just me that this happens to, or whether everybody experiences the same and, duh, I'm so THICK how could I not know that was normal, but..
So if I'm halfway through a book and I'm walking around trying to attempt some kind of normal
'existence', and all the while my whole consciousness has adopted the narrative style of the book I'm reading at the time.
The book in question will be lounging in my bag, winking seductively at me in a brazen manner, tantalizing me with the notion that I could just stop, sit down in the street and indulge wantonly in some hardcore book-reading action.
My brain on the other hand? Has sucked in the narrative style of the (I must say, rather sluttish) piece of literature and is claiming it as its own.
Examples, you say? (Oh you didn't? You said shut the fuck up and give us more quizzes? Tough. You're getting examples.)

Er.. right so I have this guilty passion for bad crime thrillers. Preferably complete with rebellious but brilliant police detectives and hauntingly evil sociopathic murderers. And also, inevitably, depressingly predictable storylines. When I've been sucked into one of those I cannot help but walk around feeling VERY suspicious of things. I develop a habit of catching things out of the corner of my eye that I feel are familiar but can't quite place, and feel certain that they will become relevant as other things unfold. I also watch people intently, quietly believing to myself that I, and only I, can tell that they are certainly off home to slice and dice and wreak havoc in the suburbs somewhere, as if I might be some sort of brilliant but unruly cop. Furthermore I become HIGHLY distrusting of anyone who looks like they might be thinking in italics, because EVERYONE knows that this is what evil sociopaths do.

(Or do they?)

So that is one example. Another is that when I was doing my English Literature degree I opted to write an essay on Labyrinths, by Jorge Luis Borges. The title gives you some indication of the nature of the book. To say it's a little bit slippery would be a similar understatement to saying, for example, that fitting an entire herd of buffalo in your pocket would be a wee bit tricky. Throughout the collection of stories you do get the unmistakable impression that Borges himself is crouching somewhere just out of sight, sniggering to himself with glee as you attempt to wrap your mind around his baffling prose. Anyway, my point is that when I was spending my days focussed on Labyrinths I was a bit of a gibbering mess, as my brain simply couldn't cope with seeing everything through his carefully constructed room of mirrors. Think he had the last laugh with that one.

I love the books I love because of the way they make me see my world. Douglas Adams is a genius. His wit and comic timing is rivalled only possibly by PG Wodehouse, but I still prefer Adams. Everything, to him, is funny. He himself points out how different the world is when you look at it from just three feet to the left. Just genius.
In Haroun and the Sea of Stories the world is a beautiful, magical place that is limited only by the boundaries of imagination. Anything you can imagine exists in this book, and I think the whole thing is about the power of the human imagination and its never-ending capacity for stretching and illuminating everything that we see as 'normal'. They are both incredibly well constructed, the type of book that is startlingly simple to read and absorb but only because it so so finely and elaborately woven.

I am writing all this bollocks because sometimes I feel like I have too much of a propensity to view the world in a comic, colourless and even humourless way. The only things that can drag me away from this is the notion that there exists somewhere a whole ocean that is made up of every story that has ever existed, or will ever exist, or that the human beings came to Earth through a freak accident involving thousands of marketing executives, hairdressers and telephone santitizers, who had been expelled from their home planet.
This my not make any sense to you if you haven't read these books, but please. Trust me on this. Even if you're not like me and don't go around stealing narrative styles and trussing them up in your own consciousness, both of these books will change your view of the world, and help you live a little easier in it.

Tell me. Are there any books that you love and think I should read?