Tim writes...

Blogmemes are the new tags e.g., the latest thing LiveJournal has been doing for years but "real" bloggers are only just now getting excited about. Can emoticons and fey movie-quote-graphics be far behind?

... and then proceeds to infect myself and others. So with my dying breath, I present:

A book that's changed my life - Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter.

A book I have read more than once - The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.

On a desert island - SAS Survival Handbook by John "Lofty" Wiseman.

A book that made me laugh - Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

A book that made me cry - Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers.

A book that is overrated - The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

What I wish had not been written - Nothing should be unwritten.

One book I am currently reading - Phantom by Susan Kay.

What I've been meaning to read - Kingdom Come by J.G. Ballard.

From Snow Crash...

These days, most states are franchulates or Burbclaves, much too small to have anything like a jail, or even a judicial system. So when someone does something bad, they try to find quick and dirty punishments, like flogging, confiscation of property, public humiliation, or, in the case of people who have a high potential of going on to hurt others, a warning tattoo on a prominent body part. POOR IMPULSE CONTROL. Apparently, this guy went to such a place and lost his temper real bad.

... and then from CNN...

An inmate serving a life sentence for molesting and murdering a 10-year-old girl named Katie was apparently forcibly tattooed across the forehead by a fellow prisoner with the words "KATIE'S REVENGE," authorities say.

House Of Leaves is the best horror story I've read yet, but don't be mislead by the "horror" label. There aren't any vampires or zombies, just a house that is bigger on the inside than the outside by a quarter of an inch, and that's all Mark Z. Danielewski needs to terrify.

Unfortunately, even with determined effort I could not hook into his new book Only Revolutions about a pair of forever-sixteen lovers. Make no mistake, one does have to work at this one; Mr. Danielewski is so playful with words and structure that I spent more time guessing at the rules than enjoying the game and ultimately had to concede an early defeat.

However, after trolling for a good interview with the man, at least I have a recommendation to run with, and plan on picking up White Teeth next.

Our list of 50 publications of the twentieth century most cited during 1976 to 1983 differs in a few important ways from other great-books list. For one, the selection of these titles is rooted in quantitative analysis, rather than in personal, subjective critera.

As my friend was remarking, Seattle probably has more coffee shops and bookstores per capita than any other city in the United States. Luckily enough, one of those book stores actually had a copy of Glasshouse.

Unfortunately, while I couldn't put it down, I'll not be holding on to it. Where as Accelerando was chock full o' far-out notions, Glasshouse focuses on examining our present in the eyes of the "accelerated" culture by way of an experiment not unlike The Prisoner television show. So it didn't really bring anything new to the table for me, which is rather disappointing given how visionary I found Acclerando to be.

Thanks to Make, I killed an afternoon by picking up and being unable to put down The Radioactive Boy Scout by Ken Silverstein. Perhaps too heavily influenced by The Manhattan Project, in 1994 then 17 year-old David Hahn nearly succeeded in creating his own home-made nuclear reactor.

Based on Mr. Silverstein's article for Harper's, Ken goes into greater detail of the life of Mr. Hahn, the culture of atomic optimism he had steeped in, and the controversies public and private he consciously avoided that resulted in the only Superfund site created by an individual rather than a company.

One particularly amusing anecdote included in the tale is that Marie and Pierre Curie's original papers on radiology are so contaminated that the French National Library requires signed liability waivers in order to view them.