Mystery Blogger Meme Thing….

I’ve been tagged by Sarah (again!) over at “All The Book Blog Names Are Taken” so here’s my answers:

Three Things About Me

I have an older brother and a younger sister who has six kids. I don’t know how she does it but I’m VERY impressed!

I’m not a great traveller but have somehow managed to visit Scotland, Wales (on multiple occasions), Holland & Belgium, France (several times), Spain, Portugal, The Canary Islands, Italy, Canada, The USA, Australia and New Zealand. Not too shabby considering……

For most of my teenage years (well, it WAS the 70’s) I had very long hair – down to my waist at longest but mostly just to the bottom of my shoulder blades. The style in those years among the girls was for short hair so, at least for several years I had the longest hair in my school. I kept it long until my early 20’s when I went to University and one day, on a whim, had a short back & sides/crew cut and it’s been mostly that short ever since.

What fictional mode of transportation do you wish you could take?

The Time Machine from the HG Wells story – but the fantastic Victorian design from the 1960 movie version with Rod Taylor. Actually thinking about it a bit more it’d make more sense (as the HG Wells machine couldn’t move through space as well as time) to want the Back To The Future 2 DeLorean as it could FLY! Just think of the places you could go. I think my first visit would be back to Liverpool (my home town) in the early 1960’s to see The Beatles perform at The Cavern Club before they became famous.

What three fictional characters would you go on a road trip with?

My heroes – Mr Spock, Sherlock Holmes and Bugs Bunny.

If you could invite your favourite author over for dinner, who would you invite and what would you serve?

Iain Banks (except he’s dead but that’s allowed – right?). With pizza and beer. He’d be FINE with that I’m sure. I would SO love to pick his brain about his Culture novels.

What was your favourite picture book when you were a kid? 

Rather oddly, and many find this had to believe, I didn’t really read books as a kid. I only REALLY got into books in my very early teens. Of course I COULD read and did read some things but nothing at all memorable until Triplanetary by E E ‘Doc’ Smith blew my world apart.

If you had to add a regular non-bookish feature to your blog, what would you write about?

Well, my passion is History so it’d have to be about that!

Is there any book you have collected multiple copies/editions of, and if so what makes that particular book so special to you?

I have several copies of classic SF novels but mostly because I loved the garish covers rather than that they meant anything particular to me. Plus I always hoped that they’d be worth money someday.

If there is any book or series you could rewrite the ending to you, which one and why?

Endings are REALLY tricky things. Sure, I’ve been disappointed with a few in my time but I don’t think I’d want to rewrite them.

Do you prefer stand-alones or a series?

If I find a good book, or a great one, I always want it to be the first book in a series so that I can explore those characters or that world MORE. But there’s always a point when enough is enough. I just like good books – whatever format they come in.

What is your favourite hobby outside of reading?

Oh, that’s an easy one – Computer Gaming! Although I did also enjoy table top war gamming in my youth…

 Are you more likely to pick up a newly released super-hyped book, or do you wait until the furore has died down before giving it a try?

I’m not a great one for hype – indeed the more a book is hyped the less likely I am to pick it up immediately. If it interests me that much I’ll wait until other people have read it and see what they thought of it… and then I’d still probably wait a bit more.