Category: books
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my next read
Dawson, Julian. 2011. And On Piano … Nicky Hopkins: The Extraordinary Life of Rock’s Greatest Session Man. Foreword by Klaus Voormann. San Francisco: Backstage Press. Here’s a link to what I think is the publisher. Different press name, but I think they’re under the same imprint somehow. Anyway, I know a little bit about this…
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Is it possible to love books too much?
That’s a pic of my copy of Dennis McNally’s Long Strange Trip. It had been taped and glued years ago but we all know how well that keeps a binding together when you are still using the book. I bought a replacement copy (new paperback, just to add my bit to the metadata that matter).…
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other fiction read in the last, well, year or so
Nabokov’s Lolita.Voltaire’s Candide.Adam Fawer’s Improbable.Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner.Stephen King’s The Stand.Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818 text).Stephenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath (can’t believe I never read this before — incredible!)Several short stories by Joseph Conrad.Escohotado’s A Brief History of Drugs. A bunch of other stuff that I don’t have handy.
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Riverworld
Re-reading Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld series, which I had read when I was 15 or so. I wanted to see if I enjoyed the philosophical bent more now than I did then. Eh … it’s OK. Neat premise (all 36 billion humans who ever lived resurrected on the banks of a 10-million mile long river,…
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Blindness
Read Jose Saramago’s Blindness a month or so ago. It was recommended by a Barnes & Noble guy when I asked for something “dystopic, preferably post-apocalyptic,” and he did a pretty good job for me. Right on, B&N guy! The writing style is haunting and beautiful, the story and characters fascinating.
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Potter Post
Just finished reading Harry Potter books 1-6. Have #7 ordered and will probably read it on Sunday. Not sure where things will go. There’s a great blogpost somewhere that has given me some ideas, so what little is below is probably not of my own devising. Anyway, a few thoughts. 1) R.A.B. is Regulus Black.2)…
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On the Road
Just read this for the first time. Loved it. Have a few quotes that I’d like to single out but don’t have the book in front of me. Anyway, a neat American adventure that’s utterly without a purpose, which purposelessness, of course, makes it deeply suspect in today’s America. Of course have seen it said…
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Beneath the Underdog
Finished it a week or so ago. Feh. Didn’t really get what people see in it. That it’s nonlinear and therefore somehow jazzy? I thought it was self-indulgent crap. I need to look up some info (maybe read a real biography of Mingus) to find out when it was written. It wouldn’t surprise if it…
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Taking a Shit is a Political Act
Carol Brightman’s Sweet Chaos: The Grateful Dead’s American Adventure offers the thesis that Garcia and the Grateful Dead were “apolitical” and should be condemned to that extent, having failed to stand up (as the Berkeley radicals did) to the injustices and corruptions of American and international politics in the 60s and 70s. The GD/San Francisco/Merry…