What'r you readin' for? Not: What am I reading?

[hyperborean]

I. I'm not going crazy - that subject line is a Bill Hicks quote.
a. Exhibit A: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uvs2g5Nj0NI

II. I'm interested in sharing and learning about what we're all reading.
a. What I'm reading.
b. What you're reading.

III. And so it goes.
a. Currently reading: Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol - because it inspired the creation of The Master And Margarita.
b. Next: The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov - because I have to read this book once a year.
c. Then: The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie - because it was inspired by The Master And Margarita.

...plus paging through 10 or so brand new books that I'm almost sure I'm never going to have the time to read...

Bonus Points: "So it goes.", is a reference to what great American author?

[the dark fourth]

Been too busy for books lately (regretfully) but I'm currently half way through The Brothers Karamozov (Dostoyevsky) and The Audacity of Hope (Obama). Both are very good, but the Dostoyevsky isn't nearly as good as Crime and Punishment, which I HIGHLY recommend.

[isador21]

Love that quote "Well... looks like we got ourselves a reada'"

Anyway, I'm reading Skull Session by Daniel Hecht...

Found it in the english section of my local libary, since I'm french and usually read french thrillers

Gotta hate translated american novels tho ...

[ryan]

i'm shit at getting round to reading, i buy books then forget about them. last i read was stephen frys 'moab is my washpot', which was really good, and next up i've house of leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.

[hyperborean]

Jun 25, 2008 20:55:46 GMT ryan said:

i'm shit at getting round to reading, i buy books then forget about them. last i read was stephen frys 'moab is my washpot', which was really good, and next up i've house of leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.

Concerning House Of Leaves - which I swear I meant to read a few years ago but totally forgot about:

...(inner thoughts: F**k now I have to go get that one too!)...

I guess that's what this thread is all about.

[hyperborean]

Presenting: a passage from Dead Souls.

"Otherwise – marvelous is the world’s makeup – the merry will turn melancholy in a trice, if you stand a long time before it, and then God knows what will enter your head. Perhaps you will even start thinking: come now, does Korobochka indeed stand so low on the endless ladder of human perfection? Is there indeed so great an abyss separating her from her sister, inaccessibly fenced off behind the walls of her aristocratic house with its fragrant cast-iron stairways, shining brass, mahogany and carpets, who yawns over an unfinished book while waiting for a witty society visit, which will give her a field on which to display her sparkling intelligence and pronounce thoughts learned by rote, thoughts which, following the law of fashion, occupy the town for a whole week, thoughts not of what is going on in her house or on her estates, confused and disorderly thanks to her ignorance of management, but of what political upheaval is brewing in France, of what direction fashionable Catholicism has taken. But pass by, pass by! why talk of that? But why, then, in the midst of unthinking, merry, carefree moments does another wondrous stream rush by of itself: the laughter has not yet had time to leave your face completely, yet you are already different among the same people and your face is already lit by a different light…"

Fascinating! This passage starts so many thoughts. I'm constantly amazed by how cultures spread, how cultures last, and some outlast others. How there is no great conspiracy greater than the deity of distraction, that which lies in the City of Dis - where all active sins are committed by those with enough time on their hands to conspire against themselves and others, in short; the wealthy, who betray their own wealth in retrospect, that is the constant tragedy of their revisionism. There are those who constantly underestimate the value of things, due to the inability of being able to catch up to the overthrown lures of capital: capitalism meeting communism in the end, being a zero-sum game where the only way to win is through the specter of distraction. So starts every conversation about local politics or religion with the lingering zombie of which every culture begins as a commodity; each culture as a temporary savior to create a bridge made of nothing but clouds, the fanciful, the golden ticket which wins one a way out of hell.

Then what of me? The one who has realized all of this, with, "But why, then, in the midst of unthinking, merry, carefree moments does another wondrous stream rush by of itself: the laughter has not yet had time to leave your face completely, yet you are already different among the same people and your face is already lit by a different light…" I am in limbo, as every enlightened one in the crowd is only an enlightened one, one which has only oneself to confide in since one begins to lose all comprehension the moment one tries to express all one has comprehended. I am half a part, and half apart. I am half a way, and half away. I am half a wake, half awake. Nimrod. Legion. Baal. All in all, in awe.

But then I go to sleep with a sort of smile on my face, because I have learned just a hint of a better understanding of the world and the way cultures work. Just a hint, a movement of dust in a dark room, just a hint waiting for me to turn on the light.

"He left the room where I was; hide the light, hide the light!"

[the dark fourth]

I dunno about Gogol, but your writing is friggin fantastic! How'd you learn to write so well? I don't understand any of it, but it has that quality about it...that makes it all the better for being incomprensible.

[hyperborean]

Jun 26, 2008 21:22:15 GMT the dark fourth said:

I dunno about Gogol, but your writing is friggin fantastic! How'd you learn to write so well? I don't understand any of it, but it has that quality about it...that makes it all the better for being incomprensible.

Haha... what? Well, I was just writing my unorganized thoughts. I have a mind like quicksilver, which can be a good or a bad thing depending on whether I'm able, or, trying to get a point across. Also - take a mushroom trip down by your local rail-road tracks, it's terrifying! Well, it starts out well enough, but then your mind will ah... it's a test, a damn good test to see just how much more you can open your mind. From there it's a lot of stoic sobriety and good books.

[hyperborean]

Recently acquired:

From So Simple A Beginning: The Four Great Books Of Charles Darwin
and Faust in Copenhagen by Gino Segre.

I went out looking for "House Of Leaves" but they didn't have it.

[isador21]

Just ordered myself "Aurélia" by Gerard de Nerval

I'm native french but I ordered the english translated version ;D
(Mainly because I pretty much hate the style of french the author uses, and completely fell in love with the english used in the little previews I got to read ...

And neat writing btw
Quoted your "One begins to lose all comprehension the moment one tries to express all one has comprehended" in my MSN nickname, since it perfectly fits me at the moment ...

[hyperborean]

Ha! I just ordered the Penguin Classics "Selected Prose" of Gerard de Nerval last night. Neat coincidence.

[hyperborean]

The Devolution of Democracy

“Exactly thirty years after these three distinct forms of shock descended on Chile, the formula reemerged, with far greater violence, in Iraq. First came the war, designed, according to the authors of the shock and Awe military doctrine, to ‘control the adversary’s will, perceptions, and understanding and literally make an adversary impotent to act or react.’ Next came the radical economic shock therapy, imposed, while the country was still in flames, by the U.S. chief envoy L. Paul Bremer – mass privatization, complete free trade, a 15 percent flat tax, a dramatically downsized government. Iraq’s interim trade minister, Ali Abdul-Amir Allawi, said at the time that his countrymen were ‘sick and tired of being the subjects of experiments. There have been enough shocks to the system, so we don’t need this shock therapy in the economy.” When Iraqis resisted, they were rounded up and taken to jails where bodies and minds were met with more shocks, these ones distinctly less metaphysical.” - Naomi Klein in The Sock Doctrine

Three things, thee steps to our devolution:

1. First came the war, designed, according to the authors of the shock and Awe military doctrine, to ‘control the adversary’s will, perceptions, and understanding and literally make an adversary impotent to act or react.’ This was Hitler’s Blitzkrieg, the Nazi way of war, a fascist enterprise from which our military actions in Iraq were derived.

2. Next came the radical economic shock therapy, imposed, while the country was still in flames, by the U.S. chief envoy L. Paul Bremer – mass privatization, complete free trade, a 15 percent flat tax, a dramatically downsized government. This was Stalin’s state, the Soviet way of capital, a communist enterprise from which our economic actions in Iraq were derived.

3. Then, When Iraqis resisted, they were rounded up and taken to jails where bodies and minds were met with more shocks, these ones distinctly less metaphysical. This was God’s wrath, the Christian way of redemption, a religious enterprise from which our political actions in Iraq were derived.

I’m out of breath with rage. And I’m only 10 pages into “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein.

…fuck…

And yet this rage, that fury, is the fuel that drives my otherwise calm and collected facade. Without it I would be an autistic shadow version of myself. That fury is almost a religious experience for me in that sense, a way to transcend or extend my static self into the further evolution of my further furious soul.

[Nikos]

I'm currently reading James Frey's 'a million little pieces'.

it's good.

[ripley]

I love Gogol!!

Otherwise I do read a lot of horror & sci-fi.
Eh, I do read a lot. My mum used to work at the library and my grandma too . .. Excellent place to grow up, I can tell you. And I use Audio books when I'm trying to fall asleep.

1. The Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko (2nd book in a trilogy: The 1st is called The Night Watch - I love the film!).
Not as good as the first one, as usual. Nice reading.

2. Three Who Made a Revolution by Bertram D. Wolfe
Great book. Recommended!

3. Alexander den store by Bengt Liljegren.
Swedish book about Alexander the Great. Love it! Wish you all could read it. I've read it three times already

4. Decamerone by G. Boccaccio.
Just started.

[hyperborean]

I think I'll look into those - after I acquire and finish this new book that came out which describes how the White House falsified documents to promote a war. "The Way Of The World" by Ron Suskind.