The ABC Of Books For Good Dogs

Following an open invitation from Brian Sibley to have a go, here’s the latest literary meme to do the rounds. It comes at just the right time because of late I’ve found myself starting a number of posts that I simply can’t be bothered to finish, deciding that I’d easily prefer to spend my free time in the company of the truly Luminous Beauty rather than witter on here about something inconsequential, so a little brain teaser is just the ticket.

So here are THE RULES (for there must always be RULES) as laid down:

01. Go through the alphabet, and for each letter, think of a book you’ve read that starts with that letter (A, An, and The do not count).

02. You must write down the FIRST book you think of for any given letter. This may make for some odd choices, but them’s the breaks.

03. You must have actually READ the book. (I thought of lots that started with some letters, but I hadn't read them).

04. If you think of a more impressive-sounding book for a particular letter, but you’ve already written your first thought down, you CANNOT change to the more impressive-sounding book. As an example, you have to leave Fifty Famous Fairy Tales (the Whitman Publishing pink and white one) on the list, even if you come up with fifty more impressive books afterwards.

05. If you can think of a book for X, you win... my lasting admiration (I can't afford real prizes!)

06. You can then tag as many people as you like. The more the merrier.

That said, my ABC of books is:

A is for American Tabloid by James Ellroy

B is for The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney

C is for Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

D is for Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane

E is for Enigma by Robert Harris

F is for Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

G is for God is a Bullet by Boston Teran

H is for How to be Topp by Geoffrey Willans

I is for The Iron Man by Ted Hughes

J is for The Juvies by Harlan Ellison

K is for The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana translated by Sir Richard Burton & F.F. Arbuthnot

L is for Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez

M is for Mefisto in Onyx by Harlan Ellison

N is for Native Tongue by Carl Hiaasen

O is for One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

P is for A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

Q is for Queen of the Dawn by H. Rider Haggard

R is for The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe

S is for The Silver Locusts by Ray Bradbury

T is for The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

U is for The Urth of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

V is for The Visitor by Lee Child

W is for We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

X is for ...nope, I can't think of one either

Y is for You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming

Z is for ...stumped! When I think of one I’ll let you know


When it comes to the tagging I’m going to plump for Stephen Gallagher, Mister Mark – who has defected to facebook and twitter and left his blog wanting – and, if she feels like it, The Woo. Naturally anyone else who feels like taking a shot at it is free to have a go.