Booker's Dozen 📚 Marcus Meltdown

Marcus Meltdown 🔖answers thirteen questions in Booker's Dozen.

Reading Aloud And Allowed

TPQ: What are you currently reading?

MM: Noooo! Don't ask me that! Why did you ask me that? Okay . . . don't you dare fucking laugh . . . but I am, currently, reading a book by Marian Keyes titled Again, Rachel.

Look, I had no fucking idea it is a sixth book in a series, nor am I the proud owner of it. I merely offered to finish it for my wife. She then forced me to start at the beginning, as she had forgotten herself what had happened so far. Bleeding woman. But the agreement was, I read it, finish it, give as detailed a description of the narrative, then, only then could I move it back into her zone of obsessively compulsively untidy wifey zones.

My wife got it from some big superstore and begun reading it on that same evening and I am not going to lie, it made me semi-hard and then proud. I told her as much. She acknowledged this with a mere nod and a purse of those lovely lips. Then with most books she buys, she doesn't read them. She obviously wasn't going to read this now, was she? Her stuff is everywhere. You'd think the anal-retentive pernickety OCD fucker would be the wife. Nope, I have recently taken on those most often attributable traits of the wife and am personifying them all in my mere existence.

Let's get the record straight she is tidy, just not in the way I want or wish her to be tidy. She had left a bookmark in it, Again, Rachel, 60 odd pages in and it had been left on my sofas arm. Nothing moved it or touched it. The kitten sat on it, for all of its troubles. Then it remained merely there . . . existing. . . on my side of the three seaters' armrest; for far too long, I must add. I know, hypocrite, I buy heaps of books. But they have a place. An order. And because my book obsession isn't sparse like hers, her sticks out more. As hers do not have a place. I found Fifty Shades somehow magically shrunk to fit in a snap purse, one time. When Matilda was a baby, she had a relatively small bag, with a few essentials in there, and what took pride of place was a thick ass book. A Jilly Cooper novel, about some posh school, that exceeded 1000 pages, which had taken residence between orderly balm pots, Suda cream tubs and nappies, like these tubs were pillars surrounding the glorious object known as a Jilly Cooper novel. I liked the smell of her books, specifically, weird detail to add, but I'll allow it to stay. It was impressive but kind of didn't make sense to my eye. Hey Marcus, why not move the book, you smart-asses are all saying. I dare not even think of moving it away or putting it near her things, as movement of anything of hers will go missing. My fault it is then, as I moved it. I can't deny it. I'm just an honest guy. But this book was pissing me off. I hate these kinds of books. They all look the same and read the same (somewhere in my ear someone is stating, what about your books and covers?)

Touche, now fuck off conscience/ego and hubris. I am trying to answer an interview question here.

So, to make a long monologue shorter, that is what I am reading on her behalf. On my behalf I have just started Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault. Man, I wish I could write like him. I might slide in some of his passages "by mistake" whilst telling my wife what the fuck Rachel has be up to, again!

TPQ: Best and worst books you have ever read?

MM: The best book I ever read? The Hungry Caterpillar. Fucking fast paced, lyrical, satirical, a bonanza of colour and creative restraint. A masterpiece. Experiential too. Depends what addition you get. The one I got suffered through teething, pissing the bed, gnawing on anything that wouldn't make me chunder and somehow survived a bonfire. Caterpillars are resilient like cockroaches, especially when in book form. Joking aside, Iain (sometimes M.) Banks' The Wasp Factory really got to me. But the first book of his I read that kept me up, turning those pages, struggling with an erect penis and an existential crisis all at the same time was his incestuous cult masterpiece, Whit. I can't ever get that scene of the lead character, Isis Whit backing away from Grandfather who is crawling along and over his sex bed of doom to get to her, out of my head. It was so dirty, so edgy. I love that book. The Worst, hmm, too many. The worst book I have Ever read was . . . The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling. That book was embarrassing. You want us to believe before HP that you were hard up and from a labourer working class environment? Yeah? Don't even bother or try it.

Oh, she did. It played and rang true for a bit, until one journo went, has anyone actually looked into JK Rowling's own mythology? To tear her a new asshole. No? Let's go.

The bitch was privileged even before she became a bazillionaire. All that, "I wrote on toilet paper" bullshit bugged me. Once she said it, she had to keep on going, "From a dustbin..." I half expected her to then say, "I used a perpetually aroused homeless man's cock as my quill and his semen as my ink". She never did. Thank fuck for that.

Well, she must have gone, "I will do that for the first draft of The Casual Vacancy, and not with felt-top but my actual shite" - and why? All so she can state, in its essence as a book to her being on side, the right side, way back in 2012. She was one of the people. Yeah, and I'm related to royalty.

Now Rowling's reputation is soddened in modern linguistics and semantics and hyperactive dickhead social justice warriors' opinion pieces. It is pathetic, the book is crying for a form of recognition . . . of look, I am writing about working class pangs and angst and a community coming undone also there is a few council houses in there somewhere.

Fuck off you big titty'd fit as fuck tool.

TPQ: Book most cherished as a child?

MM: Not a book, per se, but my first copy of the Beano. Can't remember the issue number. It was the start of loving cartoons, an introduction to some modicum of humour. Hold on, I did like The Twits by Roald Dahl. The zaniness. The inherent British nature of it all. Full to the brim with nasty ass characters. Grotesque characters, that resembled my neighbours - who in reality don't become good friends (RIP Neighbours, you won't be missed).

Also, I loved The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier. That is for certain the one that has stuck with me; it is a book about a Catholic school with a secret society bullying a sole student; it contemporaries a certain feeling that all boys have, when growing up, feeling disillusioned and out of control over their emotions and place, and it is in many ways about emancipation, in a lot of ways from something specific, within this era and fictional world, this fraught and disenfranchised time leading onward to Thatcherite rule. The book is processed via a collective new norm, almost through a collective outcry of anarchy. Violence of every kind. It is about cultural norms broken down and beaten away. I will go with Robert's book over the others.

TPQ: Favourite Childhood author?

MM: Roald Dahl. Enid Blyton. Raymond Briggs books, Fungus the Bogeyman was my thing. Dahl though is extraordinary and special. He was a dirty old man with a dirty forever marinating imaginative mind that transcended the norm, especially in those times. He was giving voice to a lot of things that adult fiction writers were being banned and vilified for. Clever man.

TPQ: First book to really own you.

MM: You mean knocked me on my arse? Or bent me over, didn't have the decency to spit on its papery fingers before shoving its creased spines leathery volume into my bum-bum? Well, that was Moby Dick. I hate sailing. I hate the sea. The nautical shite is boring. But bored and alone housesitting an old relatives gaff I saw this weirdly polished, obviously much cherished volume of Moby Dick. I opened it and it was dedicated to my relative but dated 1913. And no word of a lie it looked new. Sitting on a shelf. The paper was discoloured though, proof of its age and stank of a musky antique shop.

The binding looked newly done to be honest, but I couldn't for sure say it had been done recently. And the leather-like coverlet was so pristine. So, more impressed by its age and well looked after form I took it over to the conservatory, a light drizzle eventually turning into a deluge, a perfect weather pattern to usher you into the work. I was transported and very impressed by the skill. Call me Ishmael I fucking well loved it. The weather heightening it. The sky growing dark and boisterous with thick and bruised clouds. Making me switch on a side lamp. Pulling up an adjacent blanket. Feeling chilled to the bone. It owned me and my preconception and bias. Moby Dick dicked me good and madly proper in my anus-y ass. I got Whaled. Also, I had A Whale Of A Time. (I know Dad jokes aren't the new in nowadays)

Library Inside An Abandoned 19th Century Mansion

TPQ: Favourite male and female author?

MM: I love David Baldacci and Martina Cole.

Martina is the OG and GOAT when it comes to gangster and British based thrillers and dramas and crime novels. There are some other good lasses, but she is the reason this genre is so popular and its own form of genre in of itself. Female written crime novels focused in and around the criminal element in the UK.

Thick, chunky books they are, full of great compelling characters, big Loud action, snappy dialogue. It is predictable. Of course. She likes her swearing, her gore and violence, and goes one way then pelts you in the gonads, another way. Love her. She seems to have disappeared as of recent, and I reported to be of really bad health, which is gutting. I want to read a new Martina Cole Epic. Instead, they keep republishing her books on hardcover as anniversary additions. And suckers like me keep buying them, even though I own the PB version.

David Baldacci isn't a one trick pony who somehow manages to write the same book over and over with just a different title and cover attached and settings altered and a few scenes to separate the same monotony we get with long running book series in the crime and thriller genre.

I just can't stop reading them. One after another. A writer who can get you going like that, that you return to on so many occasions must be one of your favourites.

But so many honourable mentions must be listed: nah, can't be bothered. Soz.

TPQ: A preference for fact or fiction?

MM: Both. Actually, I love essays and film reviews. I can't deny, I Love A Good Escapist Novel.

Both are very integral to becoming a writer. Also, what one can garner from fiction they cannot from non-fiction and vice versa. Non-fiction is weirdly easier to read. Facts. Evidence. Opinion pieces. Like the snapping of fingers that is jolting and very percussive. Then again, some non-fiction isn't easily digestible. Fuck me this is haaaard. As a non-fiction writer I am expected to go with non-fiction. I prefer fiction. So, it has to be . . . nope, I'm not doing it. Both are as important to me. Yes Both! (Apparently, I've been whisper typing, speaking my words as I typed them out and I screamed the last two words aloud. I didn't know my daughter was even there . . . she told me to shush!)

"Matilda I am doing an interview here, go into another room if I'm so distracting. I'm talking to a nice guy called Christopher."

"But you're not, Dad. It's a standard copy and paste interview sheet, that I bet they ask everyone to fill out. It isn't a specially dedicated one for you. Also, who is called Christopher anymore?"

"Okay I get your point"

"You are typing that all out, aren't you?"

My reply, "No. . . yes. . . oh, Matilda leave me alone for a minute"

TPQ: Biography, autobiography or memoir that most impressed you.

MM: Charlie Chaplin's memoir is a must read. What is better than hear from the horse's mouth himself or some opinionated asshat who has to divulge their fetishes as well?

Then, there are so many amazing biographies by the likes of Barry Miles and Peter Ackroyd. I really enjoy Ackroyd. His Dickens bio, the unabridged version is a mammoth task but a rewarding one at that.

TPQ: Any author or book you point blank refuse to read?

MM: If you are a cunt to me and write, I am not going to buy your book. If you run a Press and are a cunt, I will not support any of your authors. But, a writer I do not like is Wilbur Smith or Jeffery Archer. Archer's prison diaries would have suited the comedy or satire section if it wasn't actually him being "humble" and regretful.

TPQ: A book to share with somebody so that they would more fully understand you.

MM: Anything by a great thinker, bullshit spewing, laff a minute kind of guy or girl with no delusions of great superiority. Read Tom Sharpe. He was a solid comic writer. Some of Robert Rankins books. To really get me is to Read And Buy My Books hahaha, ching-ching, book promotion, two in one.

TPQ: Last book you gave as a present?

MM: Only recently I gave a copy of If Only I Could Fucking Choke You Out - to a man I see often on the bus . . . wait, that was Stop Being A Shit-Cunt . . . he received it gratefully. Oh, I got my wife a weird how to do it book by that laughing buck toothed lady who is shacked up with that sweating ginger fellow on TV . . . Stacey Solomon, that's here, her new book. She liked it. A real genuine like, read this you'll love it, was Women in Hollywood or Hollywood Women . . . Women VS Hollywood by Helen O'Hara, that's its name. The Fall & Rise of Women in Hollywood is its subtitle. I was recommended to read this by my publisher. I gave my copy to my daughter. She dug it and I dug it. Top book.

TPQ: Book you would most like to see turned into a movie?

MM: It isn't a novel it is a graphic novel and I really want Matt Reeves who directed The Batman earlier this year to adapt Scott Snyder's Court of Owls comics run onto the big screen. I thought genuinely we were going to get it in the first Bats film. I feel there are hints of it in there, but not enough to get slap happy clap happy like a boulder bludgeoned brained seal over it. Or a real good film adaptation of an Issaac Asimov property. Nothing has perfectly captured his work.

TPQ: The just must - select one book you simply have to read before you close the final page on life.

MM: Where's Wally? I know he is in their somewhere. Wouldn't that be a waste of time?

No, maybe Love & Peace. A long, epic, sprawling novel, that, before my death I can moan and groan about having wasted my time on. Stating, I can't go until I've read a book that makes me go, Yup, this was great, time to go. And I would respond in the same negative fashion over and over, repeatedly conning the great elements, doing this over and over with all of the purported classics, until they cotton on, I was just trying to hang on long enough to con death. Yeah, I like that idea.

BTW thanks for having me.

📚 Marcus Meltdown lives in Bolton and is the author of Stop Being a Shit Cunt and If Only I Could Fucking Choke You Out.