Oh, did I tell you guys that I read "Play it as it Lays" by Joan Didion and thought it was a really good book? If not: I read "Play it as it Lays" by Joan Didion and I think it is a really good book!

Reading The Green Child by Herbert Read. Only novel he wrote. so far so weird.

Andrzej Szapkowski - The Witcher

i just read this autobiographical bit in the newspaper:

http://wapo.st/1cpQHnR

it great! reads like a short story.

ooh ooh! i didn't like it as much as the last thing he wanted, but it's still classic didion. her prose is even tenser than her non fiction, i think, it almost makes me squirm.

So I start reading Elmore Leonard's Stick. I get a chapter in and I'm thinking I love this but I have to stop because whenever I read him I become a lazy fucker and only want to read him, and drink, and listen to crap 80s Rock music.

just spent a chunk of the morning reading

THE RISE & FALL OF THE SILK ROAD

http://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-1/
http://www.wired.com/2015/05/silk-road-2/

fascinating stuff. like a real-life breaking bad. part 2 has its clunky moments, as it recaps aspects of part 1 for readers who waited for the installment. but still, i impossible to put down.

Finished Herbert Read's The Green Child, http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2015/0...-were-not.html

and will be starting in on the last volume of Joseph Campbell's The Masks of God, titled Creative Mythology

picked the texts for my oral exam:

a bunch of short stories by Kate Chopin
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
The Crying Lot of 49 by Thomas Pynchon

Now I just have to read them all ...

edit:
and I am reading this for class right now:

some of the best shit wired's done in a while. what a swashbuckling story.

Returned about a dozen books to the library yesterday. A winter's worth of reading.

Renewed Nabokov's Lectures on Literature. Due date: May 24, 2016. Aren't college libraries wonderful!

YES. i wanna read that book again!

I'm sure this'll go down like a ton of bricks, but hey it's what I'm reading.



Decided to give this another read. I dunno, I think it's one of my fav autobiographies out there. Great book.

Im reading my obituary

Masks Of God is epic good, my fav is Oriental.. though Occidental talks a lot about Christianity and i especially like how Primitive discusses how human sacrifice was replaced by symbolic rituals..

Arnold is as much a self-made success as ANYONE in US History. Sounds like a cool read.

This one will be cool too. I like how it deals with how personal revelation, and personal experience of LOVE usurped the dogma of the organized church. Heavy stuff.

Primitive was AMAZING

I absorb masks so quickly i can read one volume in a lazy afternoon and not miss a single pouint, and i exchange dialogue with the text like a conversation

Yeah you've gotta give him credit where it's due there. I've read A LOT of biographies. Mostly music biogs, but also including sports etc. Most of them are the same (especially music ones). Band start out as best friends, get famous, fuck a load of people, play for millions of people, do loads of drugs, start getting addicted to drugs, become miserable, make shit albums, sober up, they talk about stuff no on really cares about at the end, then fin. Same old, same old.

Arnie's is different, 3 vastly different careers (The best body builder at the time, biggest movie star in the world, then two term governor) done to stupid levels of success with a whole load of other stuff in between. I dig it and t be honest he's a pretty big inspiration for me. Again, I know that's pretty much anathema to the punk rock/art scene i'm in, but whatever.

Arnold is Numero Uno

Anathema? Arnold is punk as fuck yo!

I almost picked up a used paperback copy last weekend for 6 bucks. Might have to go back and grab that.

Today:

Updike;s Assorted Prose and Bech: A Book
Woody Allen's Without Feathers

Due date: May 24, 2016

Gotta love those college libraries.

I'm obsessed with wanting to read Howard the Duck comic books from Marvel Comics (1st series). I can't find them anywhere except selling online for mega bucks.

i'll just check it out from the local penitentiary

Funny, I got a whole Howard the Duck compilation earlier this year (1973-1986); clearly, the last issues of this book are of no interest (Steve Gerber not being involved).

Gerber revived his fowl in 2002 for another series that's more affordable and quite good too.

I'm about to read James Ellroy's latest, Perfidia.
He was in Paris 2-3 weeks ago for a reading and a signing of the book.

Could I have some of them, please? I'm interested in the series that starts in 1976. Thanks!

The Intellectual Journey continues, with Nail Gaiman's The Eternals. http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2015/0...ly-boring.html

33 Revolutions per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day by Dorian Lynskey

Excellent. Much better researched and written than it needed to be.

Yes, I bristled at Green Day. And I questioned a few other selections.

But each chapter is more about the social context of the song, usually in proximity to an historical flashpoint, whether Vietnam, the miner's strike or WTO protest in Seattle. What emerges is a mini-history of fighting the power in the 20th century, and the songs themselves usually take a backseat. A ton of tricky issues are explored, and this is by no means a blind "celebration" of the protest song genre.

A good blend of US and UK, although clearly written by a Brit. Refreshingly, Chile, Nigeria and Jamaica get a 50 page chunk.

The whole thing is nearly 700 pages, and I wish it was twice as long.

Three ishes of Howard the Duck, courtesy of Bertrand across the pond.

I loved Gaiman & Romita's Eternals re-boot when it first came out in single issue format. Really, loved it! Got the TPB and tried to re-read it last year and didn't get far, but I wouldn't call it boring.


I'm out of the loop on comics... Have been or years. Are you reading the 2006 version or has something new been released?

I'm reading the 1976-77 series.

the 2006 version. It slowly lost steam the whole way through. I cared less and less. They are pointless characters.

rob's gotten me inspired to start some kinda "intellectual progress" blog... i'd have to finish a book as of late, though.

actually, i finished "although of course you end up becoming yourself" again... i think i've waxed emotional a lot about david foster wallace on here before, and i won't lie, it's hard not to mythologize the man. but he nailed a lot of things about self-doubt/fear/relating to the world when you can feel an imposter sort of syndrome that i personally feel. so it's nice that someone out there was able to express the same thing, but be successful. i think he's the main contemporary writer who first truly made me think "holy shit, you can actually word that!" on a page. and i like the format of the book- lipsky comes across as being like, he's trying to impress dfw too or get some weird point it/he's obviously trying to please rolling stone too and hint at any drug problems raised by infinite jest, but there really is a playful vibe after wallace finally opened up to him more.

hey schizo, you read a lot of cool stuff. you SHOULD definitely do a review blog of the stuff you read. it will be cool to look at in the future to see how you have changed opinions and all that!

if i can just finish stuff, haha. i flipped through things fall apart the other day, and i hated reading it in school but now i think it warrants a re-read. i know i've changed on sylvia plath and anne sexton as i'm older... tended to write them off. thanks for the good idea, dude! and thanks- i try to keep my mind sharp

Sorry, I thought you were talking to me about the Howard the Duck comic books.

hey, pillastres, it's bloomsday tomorrow. the year has flown by. YOU BEST BE READY. BE READY.

YES

(Ha! I get to be first. I'm so proud. Can I self-rep?)