^ Wow. I almost never read graphic novels either but this got me very excited. I just jumped to my library's site to put a hold on it.

oh awesome! i am plowing through it and am about halfway done. a really great book so far and very informative about israel/palestine.

How have you got on with that? I've tried to read it a few times and never been able to finish it.

I can't remember how far I got. I tried a few times because I always felt it was a book I should like. I don't remember particularly disliking it or anything, just not being able to really stick with it. It's a book I always see in secondhand shops so I'm wondering if it's not a common problem.

I just finished The Virgin Suicides so its been a good transition into rereading American Gods. Eugenides is just such a mercilessly good writer, so fluid, so captivatingly bland and yet surreal to become as ordinarily out of the ordinary like a mushroom trip. Not overpowering like acid, not a subtle enlightenment like DMT, but the perfectly syncretic blend. Only Gabriel Garcia-Marquez does this better, and even he could take some lessons from the Virgin Suicides, though I just couldn't get into Middlesex even as superbly written as it was. There is a new one I'm lazily seeking..

Only Patrick Suskind speaks to me more deeply, and only Clive Barker lures me more. With American Gods, I enjoyed it the first time, but I think this second time and at this junction in my life I am appreciating it better. Lately I've been feeling evaporative, which I am starting to understand weirdly as a good thing, but its kind of a readjustment to be existentially evanescent. So I am getting this novel a bitter more intuitively then the first time through. I find it visual, subtle, coy. The motifs slowly unveil themselves but only so slightly as if being shy..

I'm finally reading "our band could be your life"

Great book, really enjoyed it. Except for the Mission of Burma chapter. That one was pretty boring.

Next week probably I'll find out what I'll be reading over the summer. I'm excited!

YES! I was stuck in this chapter :(

Dayum, I really never got into Michael Azerrad's writing style and found this book too...factual to interest me. It didn't really embody the feeling of the bands it talks about.

Opinions aside, I'm genuinely interested in why you liked it and what I could be missing

i am almost done with this. seriously though, it is one of the best books that i have read on the subject of colonialism/violence against women etc. it manages ina brilliant way to touch on almost every relevant subject, from physical sexual violence, violence against nature, forced sterilization, cultural violence in the form of cultural and spiritual appropriation, the prison industrial complex.
seriously, everyone should read this book.

Azerad is a terrible music writer, you nailed it. While gets the facts, his books read more so like newspaper articles and less like music biographies.

I only really remember the SY chapter. It was more about the personalities than the music but I did like the fact that it wasn't just the standard hero worship. It appeared fairly critical of what Azerad seemed to see as a quite cutthroat centre to the band. I found that quite interesting.

I'm sort of surprised at the Azerrad distaste here. I read both Our Band Could Be Your Life and Come As Your Are and found them both to be pretty enjoyable accounts. I always looked at both of them as neutral straight pieces. I dunno, The Perfect Pencil in the Butthole Surfers chapter cracks me up.

This is as opposed to someone like Derogatis, I always hated how he wrote.

Oh I just noticed the American Gods picture up there. I really enjoyed that book myself. I got reading The Sandman and that was a great trip. But even without the pretty pictures it was a good read. :)

La gaia scienza by Friedrich nietzche.

 

The phonograph stopped playing; the stack had run out.
"Like, I better flip the deck," one of the young hipsters said.
"No, man, don't play no more records," Red said.
"Yes, man."
"I don't want to listen to no more of them records!"
"All reet, all reet, Red, I only thought-"
"They're dragging me!" Red shouted.
"Yeah, yeah man." The companion touched the hipster's sleeve. "Like we better cut, Jim." The hipsters left.

I just finished this one through. I understood it much more clearly this time, perhaps I was in a more lucid mode or a more receptive mood. It seems to me that this is essentially a personification of grieving or finding faith. The gods in this novel are symbols of belief. Shadow is grieving his dead wife, and the meeting of these gods through out the story is a symbol of his searching for faith while grieving. Each of his relationships with the personified gods is really just symbolic of his trying to develop an understanding and relationship with them in his mind. The gods themselves are symbols of all the things humans believe in, tangibly and tangibly, forces, phenomena, technology, ideas, opinions, myths, etc etc. What believe become "gods" and in this novel these beliefs are just personified as the characters called gods. The old gods battle the new gods, the old ideas battle with the new ideas, all in the mind of Shadow for dominance, for influence, for a relationship. Laura, as a zombie, represents his inability to accept her loss. she carries on because he still believes in her, just as the gods carry on because of the last bits of belief which keep them going. She destroys several of the gods in this story to save Shadow, symbolizing how his grief for her is overpowering even the other gods, the other aspects of reality. Only she remains somewhat real to him, everything else is in flux. Each event, each idea, each force, becomes a new god which he interacts with. In the end he only wins the battle for his own mind when he accepts and embraces her death as concrete, and lets her go. Further, the struggle with the gods only ends when he also yields to fate, and accepts whatever comes in the flow. As he concludes, "the only thing I've really learned about dealing with gods is that if you make a deal, you keep it.. even if I tried to walk out of here, my feet would just bring me back." Since the gods in this novel are essentially just all the aspects of human reality and the human experience personified, then what Shadow is saying is that in the end, all humans can do is submit to the whims of reality. This is truth. A delightful novel now that I have really attached myself more so to it. The first time I read it through I enjoyed it, but I didn't find any kind of depth, but now, I think I get it :)

I finally got my hands on a copy of A Clash of Kings in the library, today.

Travels with Charley by john Steinbeck

Did you like A Dance With Dragons?





Finished this a couple of days ago. Pretty enjoyable. Reads much more like Hammett a fantasy novel. It's more about racketeering and assassinations and prostitution and inner city/upper class politics than weirdo fantasy tropes. It only just HAPPENS that there are soul destroying weapons and teleportation. So with that said, pretty good detective stories haha.

Yes.

Kurt Vonnegut Breakfast of Champions

this is the third Vonnegut book that i have read. it is really great, but not as great as cats cradle or slaughterhouse five. but i really love vonnegut and would love to read more of his books.

i also started reading I.B Singer's the magician of lublin

Introduction To Phenomenology...Robert Sokolowski and The Invincible Iron Man Omnibus Vol. 2

DBC Pierre, Lights Out in Wonderland.

Help Me Decide!!!

Between "classic steampunk"


Untried, super-campy but fun looking science fiction:


Or this John Irving book. Yes I like John Irving but I haven't read a book of his since The Fourth Hand...


Suggestions? I'm also brushing up on some early psychobabble for work, so I need a distraction.

Infernal Devices. If you like Steampunk you'll only read it eventually anyway so may as well be now.

What's this like? I read Vernon God Little, or I should say I started reading it but found it so dull I barely managed to get half way through before giving up on it.

This was when I was working in a bookshop and I had a proof copy (one of many I used to take home) and was really surprised that when it was published it was so well received and went on to win the Booker.

I literally only just started it. I'll let you know after a couple of chapters but I'm already wondering if I'll have the patience to finish it.

^ Why are the Brits so invested in literature, even if the particular example ends up on the dull end of the scale?

I'm so jealous.

I mean, aren't the Booker Prizes televised, and not just on some obscure cable station? That would never ever in a million years happen here in the US.

I get the feeling that even yobs pick up a book now and then.

Am I wrong about all this? Tell me before I pack my bags and move away from this cultural cesspool.

Yes the Booker prize is televised on the BBC. It's one of the benefits of public service broadcasting. The BBC is required to produce a certain amount of output that is "intended for the public benefit rather than for purely commercial concerns." And being funded by the public it's able to show things like the Booker Prize (and the Turner Prize etc) because commercial concerns are not so important.

On the other hand it also makes utter shite like Top Gear.

the thing of reading
as i seen that newspapers with more broader and intelligent
report on the news
doesn't sell large numbers

to connect that with bookreading
is not the same

fills in another interest

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to dale_gribble again.

Hunter Thompson is like the Nietzche or Kafka of our time. I still consistently roll with the Dr Gonzo approach to everything in life..

too bad he had to go that way, I think its a conspiracy personally, but then again, I have personally known of folks who did the exact same thing in an argument with their old ladies just to mode them eternally!!

either way martyr or a psychopath, God Bless his Soul!!

i would be considerably more lost in my life if i didn't know someone like
HST existed in our time

Ok, so I picked up Infernal Devices on my Kindle and I have to say it's not a very compelling read thus far. Over half way through and still waiting for the story to start. not a good sign!

Nice choice. Are you a fan of the beats in general, or just Burroughs?