Books

Yaxlich was reading Sim's Blog this morning and sees that he has been tagged. At first he was rather worried. He has read about tags and ASBOs and thought that he had done something wrong which would involve delivering meals on wheels to pensioners who dribble a lot and smell of wee. Fortunately he realised that this was not the case and that being tagged by Sim only meant that he had to complete something called a meme about books. 1. One book that changed your life - the hardest question first. Every book that Yaxlich has read has changed his life. They have all enriched his life in one way or another. He very much believes that life is a continual process of self improvement and by reading a book he has added to his life experience in some way. Books that have had significant spiritual effect on Yaxlich have been The Bible and The Qur'an but, equally, a single paragraph in Richard Harris' biography by Michael Feeney Callan has considerably changed his life so he doesn't think that one book has had more effect that any other. 2. One book that you've read more than once. He has read many books more than once. The most recent one, he thinks, was Mr Commitment by Mike Gayle. He thinks the book he has read the most was The Machine Gunners by Robert Westall. He remembers reading this book as a child, finishing it and then starting it all over again. 3. One book that you'd want on a desert island. The Lonely Planet Guide To The Desert Island You Are Stuck On. 4. One book that made you laugh. Rain Men by Marcus Berkmann. Yaxlich loves the game of cricket and plays for a village team. When he first read Rain Men he laughed so hard that he had an accident in his underpants. There are so many pages in the book which reminded Yaxlich of the team that he plays for and he thoroughly recommends it to anyone that has played cricket, watched cricket, been a cricket widow or who just wants a laugh. 5. One book that made you cry. Yaxlich is a sensitive soul. Lot's of things make him cry even when they shouldn't. He watched X Factor at the weekend and had a little moment when the girl in the wheelchair got through to the next round. He is a bit soppy like that. He admits to having a blub when reading Man and Boy by Tony Parsons. He also cried when he read D-Day by Stephen E. Ambrose because of the sacrifices made by so many brave men to protect a free world. He wonders how those men would have felt if they knew what would become of the free world 60 years later. 6. One book that you wish you had written. Yaxlich has never read any of the Harry Potter books. He watched one Harry Potter film and didn't really enjoy it much. However he wishes that he'd written the first Harry Potter book because he would now be a millionaire and have enough money to buy underpants and wouldn't have to go to the vegetable soup place every two weeks. 7. One book you wish had never been written. Yaxlich cannot think of any book he wishes had never been written because of his answer to question 1. 8. One book that you are reading at the moment. Yaxlich has two books on his bedside cabinet at the moment. One is Dear Boy: The Life of Keith Moon by Tony Fletcher. The other is Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche. One of them is a light hearted book exploring the life of a drug crazed lunatic. The other is the book about Keith Moon. 9. One book that you've been meaning to read. The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield. A friend of Yaxlich's has insisted that he read this as it will change his life. As far as Yaxlich can see the book is about spiritual awareness and awakening which ultimately leads you to vibrate a lot. He doesn't understand the vibrating bit but has promised his friend for the last ten years that he will read it. Another book that has been gathering dust on his bookshelf is Alan Carr's EasyWay to Stop Smoking. 10. Five others that you’d like to do this. This is the bit where Sim tagged him so he is going to tag Reeholio, Lizza, Tish, Richard and ExAfrica.