travelling the globe, walking around and thinking i'm Lord Byron, mountain biking, researching illnesses I think I might have, trying to find a political opinion I can stick to, feeling guilty,the balaerics (used to live in ibiza), shopping without a list (I'm getting quite accomplished), peanut butter and marmite, early morning bedroom dances, contemplating the wonder and futility of our existence, staring into space, reading 17 books at once and not finishing any of them...
Music
The sound of the nightbuses that go past my window
The Cure, especially ‘Just Like Heaven’
Joy Division/New Order, especially ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’
Those Giorgio Moroder synthesiser sounds in eighties movies
Beach Boys
We are Scientists
Non stupid rap music (from PE to Kanye)
Johnny Cash ‘Hurt’
When Doves Cry by Prince
The Killers
Beethoven
The Pet Shop Boys
The Beatles ‘Here, There and Everywhere’
The busker who plays on my street
Rufus Wainwright
Mendelssohn
Beethoven’s Ninth
Bob Dylan
‘Live to Tell’ by Madonna
‘Little Nikki’ by the dirty purple symbol
Felix da Housecat
Kate Bush ‘Hounds of Love
Al Greene
Fantasy and Fugue
R.E.M. ‘Nightswimming’
Marvin Gaye
The Klaxons
Queen ‘A Night at the Opera’
Hyperbolic, pretentious, melodramatic rock music in the Romantic tradition a la Muse and a few of the current bands that loiter dangerously close to the edge of emo
St. Etienne
‘Push It’ by Salt N Pepa (for dancing)
Tom Waites
Bruce Springsteen ‘Born to Run’
Theme tunes: Cheers, M*A*S*H*, The Mission, the Burt Bacharach one in Arthur, Flashdance (seriously), Stay Gold by Stevie Wonder (The Outsiders), the slower refrains from the Star Wars themes esp. in Empire Strikes Back, Knight Rider
Movies
Stand By Me
Barton Fink
Walk the Line
Hairspray
American Splendor
A bout de souffle
Bonbon El Perro
Any John Hughes movie before 1990, especially the Molly Ringwald ones
The Wizard of Oz
The Searchers
Central Station
The Outsiders
Jaws
Marnie
Elf
Man on the Moon
Double Indemnity
Roman Holiday
The Ice Storm
ET
Being John Malkovich
Amores Perros
Y tu Mama Tambien
Die Hard
City of God
American Werewolf in London
Bonnie and Clyde
Papillon
Shaun of the Dead
The Fly
My Own Private Idaho
Toy Story
Big
Teen Wolf
The Lost Boys
Television
reality tv and late-night interactive quizzes or anything else that calms my head down and stops me thinking (the original point of tv)... oh, and Family Guy...
Books
Enid Blyton, Noddy Goes to Market
Where do I come from?
SE Hinton, Rumble Fish and The Outsiders
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
The Kid Stays in the Picture, Robert Evans
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Lord Byron, Don Juan
Bret Easton Ellis, Less than Zero
Martin Amis, Money
Easy Riders and Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind
Francois Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse
Voltaire, Candide
Michel Faber, Under the Skin
Shakespeare, Hamlet
Shakespeare, Henry IV Part I
Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an Opium Eater
Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native
Donne, The Complete English Poems
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
Carl Jung, The Development of Personality
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Stephen King, The Shining
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Ovid, Metamorphoses
George Orwell, Animal Farm
Nicholson Baker, Vox
J G Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition
Gustav Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Plato, The Republic
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
Roald Dahl, everything
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are not the only Fruit
Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting
Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10 and a half chapters
Geoff Dyer, Paris Trance
Steven Hall, The Raw Shark Texts
Heroes
Bertrand Russell, John Cusack, FF Coppola, Bill Nighy, Chuck D, Gilbert and George, Spinoza, Edward Hopper, Georgia O'Keefe, Byron, Donne, Emily Bronte, Woody Allen, Prince, SE Hinton, PB Shelley, Mary Shelley, my Nan, my Dad, Andrea Semple, people who are unafraid of trying to escape the shackles of irony and postmodernity and who still aren't scared to take off their ipods and FEEL and ENGAGE with this beautiful and messed-up world
Hi. I'm Matt. Excuse me while I try and impress you with some of the praise for my novel, The Labrador Pact:
a comic tour de force The Times (UK)
it will go down as one of the great animal books Jeanette Winterson
a wry, serio-comic family tail, er, tale for our serio-comic times Molly Gloss, Washington Post
dark, comic and brilliantly adult New York Times
a winner from page one...a subtle dog's eye view of the frailty of human relations, it is perceptive and enchanting The Mail on Sunday
readers can't help feeling bad for Prince, a good dog trying to do the right thing Publishers Weekly
a cult hit... I only wish my dog had thought of it first Daily Mail (UK)
Extremely funny . . . the most enjoyable book you could read this year. . . Who'd enjoy this book? Firstly, dog lovers, who've probably always known that our four-footed friends are thinking, feeling, communicating beings. Secondly, anyone who enjoys the kind of book that hooks you so much you start reading at eight in the evening and finish the next morning at two (as I did with this). Thirdly, anyone who has ever seen, heard, ignored, played with or tripped over a dog. Now is that everyone? Martin Higgs, Waterstone's Literary Editor, Waterstone's Books Quarterly
Matt Haig is a novelist of great promise Daily Express
An incisive insight into contemporary life, somewhere between Watership Down and Animal Farm, that will make you think hard, as well as laugh Angela Levin, Weekend Magazine (Daily Mail)
so multi-faceted it could be re-read time and again . . . This is a remarkable book and a brilliantly entertaining read. The Big Issue
The Labrador Pact is published by Vintage in the UK (as The Last Family in England) where it became a bestseller and it has just been let off the lead by Penguin/Viking in the US. The film rights have been sold to Brad Pitt and the novel has now been translated into seven languages. I wrote it while suffering from panic disorder and I think the experience of actually writing and finishing a novel helped me overcome my panic attacks.
I'm also the author of The Dead Fathers Club. That's a ghost story, not a dog story. A sort-of-update of Hamlet which is out now in paperback in the UK and US. The film rights for that have gone to Heyday Productions. And in case you're still reading I've written a children's novel called Shadow Forest, which won a gold medal at the Nestle Children's Book Prize 2007.
To order The Labrador Pact from amazon.com click here and to order The Dead Fathers Club from amazon.com click here.
My favourite ancient philosopher is:
My favourite food is:
My first childhood crush was:
When I was 15 I got beaten up every Tuesday evening. Probably because I looked like this:
Other things: My favourite city is Rome. I believe the seas are going to rise and we're all going to drown. I like dogs. When I was ten I saw a ghost. Okay. That's it. Bye.
OH and in celebration of our new
friendship I'M NAKED!! Come read my latest "First
Chapter." It's
all about PUBLIC RELATIONS! PUBLIC
RELATIONS Chapter 1
Hey thanks for accepting our request, we hope you like our music. See you on a Gwydion show! Our merchandise is available for sale, to order send mail to: shop@gwydion.org or do it in our myspace.
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