2003-12-16 - 1:29 p.m.

Well, thank Rowling that Harry Potter isn�t the nation�s favourite book (The Big Read survey) or I would have had to emigrate, although it did come in 5th, which still makes me want to take a long weekend away somewhere with an imagination. Predictably, Lord of the Rings romped home, so it appears that the New Infantalism still has a vice-like grip on the country, or at least on the kind of people that vote for their favourite books on TV polls (e.g. the kind of people in the office who get into a frenzy about Secret Santa and who think The Darkness are in any way a good band)

In a gesture that could be construed as romantic if it weren�t clearly just for the sake of something to do, my housemate Bruce and I are reading each other�s Favourite Books Of All Time (neither of which made the top 200 in the above poll, which is reassuring). Hence last week, we made the exchange and I now have a copy of �Microserfs� by Douglas Coupland, and he has �London Fields� by Martin Amis. There�s not really any sense of trepidation in the experiment, apart from us being such nerds that we both own first editions of said books, mine a signed copy and Bruce�s much treasured, and so it�s more the handing over of the physical copies that�s causing nerves, rather than any worries that the other may not like it.

In work�s Christmas party news, we had the work�s Christmas party. Nothing happened apart from every time you tried to eat your meal, some stunted gaylord in a flowery waistcoat shoved a pack of cards in your face and tried to engage you in some festive conjuring. Nothing like having to sit through the lamest trick since Moses when you�re trying to snaffle down enough cheap wine to render office smalltalk sufficiently effortless. And the funding for this invasive amateurish wizardry could have better been channelled towards the bar stretching to more than one free warm glass of sparkling plonk, though having to pay for drinks did mean I could cut the night short without too many qualms.