What's a noise dude reading?

Achille Mbembe "On the Postcolony"

i just had to read part of this for class; i liked it a lot

STRESS: The Nature and History of Engineered Grief, by Robert Kugelmann
also still working on Walker Percy's Lost In The Cosmos which I highly, highly recommend so far

if not for the short & informal semiotics lesson in the middle then at least for the hilarious/tragic questionnaires

Actually it's pretty interesting how STRESS, Lost in the Cosmos, and my last book - Normal Accidents by Charles Perrow - all sort of dovetail on similar points. Also see Why Things Bite Back by Edward Tenner for more discussion on how modern life is amazingly bad for everyone

like, in a more interesting and intellectually honest way than "fast food nation" is

that book sucked

green man has been on my list forever ... is it worth picking up?

not as funny as KA's best social satires but good, a strange and interesting little supernatural mystery.

ive been considering k amis for a while...i fear hell be a touch to mannish for my taste, but...its worth a go

mostly hacked through todd gittlin's the sixties and the twilight of common dreams...in both cases theres something about his "prose" style i like -- a certain "prophetic voice", to accept a term, that i find necessary in nonfiction these days and a good amount of allusive language -- and a good amount to too close to his home prattle. indeed, too much prattle in general. hes also a bit too tied to born-on-the-fourth-of-the-cold-war thinking for my taste. i appreciate his criticism of later 60's thought, but ... something annoyingly stodgy, as though he can't get past his own frustrations...im reading his stuff to prep on a book idea about the break between the babyboomer gen and what ive been calling "the new lost generation"(and evidently im not alone in that), and his stodgy, strangely higher-than-thee, now-that-ive seen-it-all, approach that proves my points, sooooooo. to the same end im constantly rereading the grails of didion's essays, some galbraith, c wright mills, bucky fuller, etc...need some if stone and w. apppleman williams

otherwise:
playing with mailer's why are we in vietnam
ray mungo's return to sender (have to find a copy of total loss farm ... and get that new book about communes in vt)
don delillo's great jones (something very annoying about this..perhaps just the character. the character names are terrible. so cute (something i couldnt take from k vonegut and irks me about tom pynchon)
and that new collection of letters between the mittford sisters (which is charming as all hell and makes me ...oh, whats the word when yr sentimental for something you never had?)

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0fiT27cfyN00t/340x.jpg

bb: if you havent read any kingsley amis lucky jim is definitely where to start. "a laff riot" -- j-p sartre

ha, well, if jp likes it...

n/a: how is that?

something annoyingly stodgy

Ben, Alex Cockburn of thr Nation and Counterpunch refers to this track of tediousness in ex-lefties as "Gitlinization."

modern life is amazingly bad for everyone

Still my fave Blur album.

it's pretty good, though i may be too dumb for it, which is distressing. he'll be going along all pop-sciencey and it's fine and then all of a sudden drop into serious linguist mode and i have to read everything three times before i can grasp it

i love great jones street - so funny

oh, its funny alright..and everything i like about dd...just..wish hed quit it with the cute shit

doc: ha...hillarious...i remember gitlin being annoying as all get out in the weather underground film...its like he just doesnt see certain things right in front of his face while claiming hes onto it...(indeed he pulls out "mr jones" a few times in the 60's: days of...).

n/a arrgh...serious linguists...are...tedious...

its it because...not enough ellipses...

basically

i'm reading cradle to cradle: remaking the way we make things by william mcdonough and michael braungart.

http://www.mcdonough.com/images/cradle_cover.gif

next up is counterculture green: the whole earth catalog and american environmentalism by andrew g. kirk.

http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/images/kircou.jpg

hmm lemme know how the kirk is. first one looks good too

have you read that book plenitude by rich gold?...my ladyfriend was reading it...and speaks v.v. highly of it

i want that book on the whole earth catalog too.

i am reading this: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71KYH1ED23L.gif

oops: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71KYH1ED23L.gif

plenitude is on my "i'll get around to it eventually" list. :-)

there's so much to read on this subject; it's overwhelming and more than a little repetitive sometimes.

true,very true...its hilarious in that regard...soon there will be landfills full of them

except cradle to cradle's zero-waste production/packaging means it can be UPCYCLED and used as biological and technical nutrients, resulting in a CLOSED-LOOP SYSTEM and saving everyone from getting cancer and having six-eyed mutant babies!

*pats self on back*

Got some nice books for my b-day! proven fact: friends give better books than parents.
charley patton bio by calt & wardlow
blood meridian
breakfast on pluto - mccabe
that book abt TG & COUM that i started a thread about

also was at the bookstore today and saw a few books that looked interesting. new A1an Licht book on "sound art" and a new moondog bio. not to mention my ever-lengthening list of novels and novelists.

im confused by alan lichts book...its all pictures of sound art

i think ill pick up the moondog book after xmas

Faulkner - The sound and the Fury and As I Dying.
Coleridge's brilliant and confusing (both qualities peak at the exact same points) Biographia Literaria.
Bukowski - Post Office
Lenin - What is to be Done?

Might start on E.P.Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class. If not now then probably never.

attention williamsburgles:
good book table at bedord & north 6th today, in front of the muffin shop. might have to go check back--other books on witchraft, two compies of Lucky Jim (one hardback, one soft.), some PKD i already had, lots of post-war european lit.

picked up:
-anthology of soviet sf
-kundera "farewell party"
-calvino "difficult loves"
-carver "where i'm calling from"
-muldoon "projections of the astral body"
-mccarthy "all the pretty horses" (started blood meridian on the train today, liking it very much.)

oliver sachs "musicophilia: tales of music and the brain"

david markson "reader's block"

i love where i'm calling from. its very manly.

The Armies of the Night
by Mailer (that's "Mailer")

the magus by john fowles

that book (the magus) is ... goddamn, i don't know what it is. am i glad i read it? yes, i think. or maybe not. at the end of it i thought 'huh, that is an interesting thing, but then again maybe it isn't.'

in short: what the hell is the that book?

the magus would have been better with extreme editing applied to the final hundred pages.

(started blood meridian on the train today, liking it very much.)

nice

ended up getting Tree of Smoke for xmas so I'm readin that now

just read:

austen - persuasion
bill buford - heat

reading:

j roth - the radetzky march

magazines

in past several days, in order:
en r0ute (air canada mag)
arthur
fashion
us weekly
hello! canada
oprah
drome
vanity fair (in progress)
harpers (in progress)

bear aware: a homeowner's guide to preventing bears in your backyard phamplet

i look forward to taking this thread to heart and to the return of books

Kingsley Amis - The Old Devils
Sheldon M. Novick - Henry James
Joseph Ellis - American Creation
That big-ass collected Joan Didion.

Here are books that I like:

Post Office
Rivethead
Lucky Wander Boy
Tobias Wolfe, Raymond Carver, Nicholson Baker
How to be Alone

Now, what should I check out from the library?

PP, see if they have any collections by Andre Dubus (esp. the 'We Don't Live Here Anymore' book of novellas)(not Andre Dubus III) or Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road.

starting Miss Lonelyhearts tonight

those appear to be excellent suggestions. Thanks, mz.

How should I read Hopscotch? Starting in the middle or from Chapter 1?

uhm, i don't remember which way it is but read the one where you skip around a lot. i don't remember if it starts at the beginning or in the middle.

you read 1 to 56 straight through and then start skipping around (altho I didn't re-read chapters I had already read, just glanced at enough of it to remind me which one it was)

http://www.compositiontoday.com/images/the_rest_is_noise.jpg

just used xmas gift cards to buy this .... psyched