Now Reading

  On 4/25/2016 at 7:02 AM, cwmbrancity said:

 

  On 4/23/2016 at 10:40 AM, tec said:

 

  On 4/22/2016 at 9:43 PM, cwmbrancity said:

Electric Eden/Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music by Rob Young - same author who nailed the history of Warp Records works similar magic from folkier realms, bought for reading more on The Incredible String Band's back story. Still 1 of the best bands to emerge from these islands.

 

Sweet, some author mentioned this on her reading list at the AV Club recently and sung its praises too, do you need to know much about folk? I have a fairly decent knowledge but fear this may be too niche.

 

link http://www.avclub.com/article/elizabeth-hand-her-5-favorite-books-about-music-234658

 

 

 

plow into it, its immense as a provenance filter for all manner of themes, from myths & religions to sounds to the deeper melodies tucked away in lost songs

 

Aye, it's not just about folk, digs into English pastoralia in classical music before the folk stuff really took off and Julian Cope/Talk Talk-ish vibes after folk had its moment in the 60s/70s limelight. Fantastic book.

  On 2/26/2016 at 1:29 AM, ThatSpanishGuy said:

A hundred or so pages into Infinite Jest

2 months later 200 pages in lol, oh boy. It's because of college though. This summer I'll read the whole thing.

  On 4/25/2016 at 8:10 PM, ThatSpanishGuy said:

 

  On 2/26/2016 at 1:29 AM, ThatSpanishGuy said:

A hundred or so pages into Infinite Jest

 

2 months later 200 pages in lol, oh boy. It's because of college though. This summer I'll read the whole thing.

 

one of my fav books :) i'll probably read it for a 4th time this year. only gets better imo

I need to take another swing at Infinite Jest sometime. For the people that finished it, did you read all the footnotes and stuff? That was starting to drive me bonkers. Since then I read The Pale King and I really enjoyed it.

Thanks for the mentions of Elizabeth Hand & Rob Young, that stuff sounds really fascinating.

  On 4/26/2016 at 3:18 AM, sweepstakes said:

I need to take another swing at Infinite Jest sometime. For the people that finished it, did you read all the footnotes and stuff? That was starting to drive me bonkers. Since then I read The Pale King and I really enjoyed it.

 

Thanks for the mentions of Elizabeth Hand & Rob Young, that stuff sounds really fascinating.

I read the footnotes, but you could probably skip a lot of them if you really wanted. If any book was meant to be read on an E-Reader, it's Infinite Jest.

I would recommend not skipping the footnotes. Lots of them contain interesting details relating to the main story and the book rewards patience.

Second the e-reader comment: reading footnotes through an url link is much quicker and neater than flipping pages in a huge book.

Oh man, I loved reading the endnotes - don't skip them. It's part of the experience. I used 2 bookmarks when I read it, to make it easier to flip back. (If you got through all the tax stuff in The Pale King you'll be fine.)

  On 4/26/2016 at 3:52 AM, weakmassive said:

Oh man, I loved reading the endnotes - don't skip them. It's part of the experience. I used 2 bookmarks when I read it, to make it easier to flip back. (If you got through all the tax stuff in The Pale King you'll be fine.)

me too. two bookmarks.

there's a lot of great stuff in the footnotes.. some of them are quite long detailed side stories that are really relevant. especially near the end.

i'd also recommend that when you get to the end of the book to go back and read the beginning again as it kind of closes the loop a little bit.

the Pale King had its moments and i'm glad i read it but it was also hard to read as it was so promising and painful. also, the entire section about the podiatrist's neon sign that points one way or another and the people living in the apartment across the street would see it out their window and check before leaving the apartment to determine if indeed they should go out or stay in etc etc.. well.. that's pretty much what Beck said in an interview he gave to a magazine in the 90s. exact same fucking story about beck's life in LA. he lived next to podiatrist neon sign he could see out his apartment window.

i even wrote DFW's editor to ask about it being in the book but got no response.

if you like DFW it's worth reading all his stuff. Supposedly fun thing i'll never do again, Consider the lobster (has some of the most amazing non-fiction in it.. i was just glued to it and amazed that one of my fav things in it is a review of a book on grammar and usage), Oblivion (though it's pretty damn dark at times and kind of fucking floored me as it gets weirdly meta feeling at times especially reading it after he hung himself and knowing about his depression and the failure of his medication to work again after he tried to switch to a new medication with less side effects), Girl With Curious hair (aces really.. some really great short stories in this)

yeah i'm kind of a DFW nut. his work really got me early on. "end of the tour" is actually pretty good movie as well. the book it's based on is good too.

blah!

  On 4/26/2016 at 8:03 AM, ignatius said:

the Pale King had its moments and i'm glad i read it but it was also hard to read as it was so promising and painful. also, the entire section about the podiatrist's neon sign that points one way or another and the people living in the apartment across the street would see it out their window and check before leaving the apartment to determine if indeed they should go out or stay in etc etc.. well.. that's pretty much what Beck said in an interview he gave to a magazine in the 90s. exact same fucking story about beck's life in LA. he lived next to podiatrist neon sign he could see out his apartment window.

 

Lol this doesn't surprise me. Heard a few of his stories were directly based on other events he declined to mention or outright fabrication, including a lot of his 'non-fiction'. Still enjoy the work though. Pale King too, is wonderful. I thought of Pale King as a 500 page introduction to a novel we'll never get, which makes me quite sad. That chapter where it's nothing but 'He turns the page. Desk ten turns the page...' was great but so sad.

Also yeah Although of Course... is worth reading if you're struggling with Infinite Jest. It's sort of a behind the scenes in the form of a road movie.

Finished Call for the Dead by le Carré. His are about the only spy books I can read / stomach.

Now reading: Jane Eyre. ヽ(´ー｀)ﾉ

I got a second-hand copy of Electric Eden, described as new on eBay but it appears to have been thrown down multiple stairs and the spine has a few cracks so I'll probably get it from a shop, getting bad vibes from this one.

I don't speak to many people.

endeavor to persevere

it'll prompt some quality tune hunting on top of the more schematic stuff, some of which you'll think are utter pish & some that are ethereal windows into other worlds

this might just be the best book ever, I swear

sorry for google translate

A lot of fantastic things in that book.

In Japan, they have a God for everything: http://www.lowchensaustralia.com/names/godsjapanese.htm Even their deities are a bureaucratic nightmare.

Reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons

The new Don Delillo novel Zero K just up on my Kindle, so I guess that's next up.

  On 5/3/2016 at 7:44 AM, doublename said:

Reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons

 

The new Don Delillo novel Zero K just up on my Kindle, so I guess that's next up.

new Delillo.. gotta grab that one ASAP.. shit.. to read pile is gonna fall over and kill me in m sleep.

"I am that" by Nisargadatta Maharaj, and once in a while a compilation of some short tales of the early Philip K. Dick

  On 4/26/2016 at 3:35 AM, Bechuga said:

Second the e-reader comment: reading footnotes through an url link is much quicker and neater than flipping pages in a huge book.

You guys gotta be kidding. The sheer physicality of the book, and the formal structure of its text, is half the joke. It's supposed to be a hassle. You can't lampoon the highbrow literati with an ebook.

My most recent reads (thesis-writing procrastination in full swing, now) are Maurice Blanchot's Aminadab, a collection of mostly-new-to-me Tommaso Landolfi, and I just started in on Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo (mainly picked it up because I read Angel Heart by William Hjortsberg awhile back and have been jonesin' for more inner-city voodoo ever since).

A huge ass book (some 500 pages, small print) on fascism and it's appeal to European intellectuals prior to and during WW2. It's in Finnish.

started this one last night

https://www.akpress.org/lastofthehippies.html

This was a really sad read, recommended.

On The Road is so boring. 2/3rds of the way through. i think i'm gonna drop it.

^ I always felt like I came to that too late, in my teens I would have been all over it but in my mid-20's I was a jaded motherfucker and thought it was quite irritating.

Speaking of boring:

Moby Dick: just got past the boring part where he describes a bunch of whales (in a tiny font!) and also Captain Ahab has shown up.

He sits on a chair and stares at the sea.

Also discussed is the patent for the crows nest and what goes into it, like chairs and jackets.

I'm at 26%. No whales, white or otherwise so far. And the ship has just begun a three year voyage...

Bechuga's Recommendation: read the abridged version, unless you want to know the authentic life of a whaler.

I have not read that, but there is a bar in San Francisco named Moby Dick, I think it's named after the DJ.

Looking forward to this months issue of the wire, comes with a tapper.

Looking forward to reading.more art books, and taking trips down memory lane. XX