Craig Anderton's Sound, Studio, and Stage

[nat whilk II]

I'm about 3/4 the way thru The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. I am always looking for good sci-fi, but disappointed 90% of the time. This one does not disappoint.

Finished The Odyssey for about the 5th time. Fitzgerald translation, which I particularly like. Recommend his Illiad translation, also.

The book that's had the most impact on me personally as of late is the english translation of the novel Sepharad by Antonio Muniz Molina (spanish author). Deeply compassionate and vivid book about loss, memory, dislocation, identity. A whole bunch of stories all revolving around these themes, the place settings ranging from WWII Germany, Spain, Morocco, many of the characters with Sephardic Jewish backgrounds. Outstanding translation, too - won some big translator's award.

Tip for those attempting Dante - his worldview is very,very,very distant to ours, Catholic or otherwise. The medieval model of the universe is a fascinating cultural construction. But it's implicit and assumed in Dante, so reading The Divine Comedy without some professorial guidance can be a heavy slogging chore, plus you'll just miss so much.

I recommend this for those attempting to climb down through hell and up through purgatory to heaven with Dante:

1. a good annotated version - and read the notes, or at least enough to help you understand the depth of the resonances and the encyclopedic range of historical references that Dante is working through.

2. get a copy of The Discarded Image by CS Lewis. It's his Oxford lecture series on the medieval world view and model of the universe. He's always an entertaining author even at his most academic.

3. peruse artbooks from the 12th - 15th centuries.

Personally, I dislike the prose translations of Dante. The verse format is part of the essential deal - I have a copy with the Italian on one side, english on the other. All I can do with the Italian is read it phonetically, but even doing just that adds much to the effect. The whole work is very musical, and without a notion of the music, it can be very gritty plodding indeed.

nat whilk ii

[slight-return]

excellent advice - I esp like the prose v verse thing

[rhino55]

hey rhino you may dig

"Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy's Story "

it's about WWII japanese naval situations/practices/decisions (including pre WWII treaty and build up practices) - written by a couple of Japanese officers who were in the thick of it

SWEET I'm there

[veracohr]

Electronic Filter Design Handbook - Arthur B. Williams It's a little depressing because it assumes the reader knows things that I don't, and I can't afford to continue school.

[stomias]

"The Year Everything Changed 1959" Fred Kaplan Great book. "Take a ride on the New Frontier with Fred Kaplan, your insightful (and hip) guide to the space race, thermonuclear war, the civil rights movement, the "sick comics", the Beats, and the beginings of the Vietnam war, all to a soundtrack by Dave Brubeck, Ornette Coleman, Miles, and Motown." Donald Fagen

[girevik]

Snow Crash (or possibly Diamond Age) - Stephenson

:thu:

This was one of way too many "thank you" presents I got from my cousin for being one of his wedding groomsmen.

[girevik]

Been on a Dan Simmons kick..

Rise of Endymion

A serviceable sequel to Endymion, which I read over the spring. The Hyperion two-parter that precedes Endymion is superior - brilliant far-future take on the Canterbury Tales concept of travelers exchanging stories.

Ilium

Highly recommended to sci-fi fans who are also fans of one or more of the following: Iliad, Oddysey, The Tempest, and possibly Proust (never read his stuff myself). There's also a reference to The Time Machine by HG Wells. This book is right up there with Hyperion.

Olympos

I just started reading this sequel to Ilium. Another page-turning delight so far.

[tremolounge]

Recently read Harlot's Ghost by Norman Mailer -- excellent semi-fictional history of the CIA. Wish he had lived to write the hinted-at part two...

Also read Mailer's Oswald's Tale, certainly the best book on the enigma that was L.H.O.

Re-read Karen Larsen's Breaking the Limit, about her journey from New Jersey to Alaska and back solo on a H-D Sportster (!). Am in the middle of Doris Rich's Amelia Earhart: A Biography. (I like gutsy women.)

Am eagerly awaiting the imminent release of James Ellroy's Blood's a Rover, which will round out his "American Underworld Trilogy" -- not for the faint of heart... American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand are the first two novels in the series. Great stuff.

[Rubber Lizard]

Hmmm. Lesseee... Anatomy and Physiology is the latest.

However, the text for my writing class contains essays by folks like E. B. Wite, Orson Wells, Sam Clemens, etc. I've enjoyed those, and plan to look up books by all of the above -- sort of use it as a guide. Between terms I read Garrison Keillor's latest. His books tend toward the dark side of small town, but this one was more enjoyable than his others, to me.

BTW, Ernest... Nicest avatar ever.

[Ernest Buckley]

:thu:

:love:

[Hush]

I just finished Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen It was a good read.

Before that I read The Laughing Sutra by Mark Salzman for the second time.

[MarkydeSad]

Oh and I've also got a book on back-order

It's Craig Anderton's forthcoming release: 'Saul T. Nads - Remastered (an mp3 Nightmare)'

[Magpel]

Pattern Recogntion - Gibson

I really, really like that book--not because of Gibson's voice, and certainly not because of his gift for characterization, or lack thereof, but for his world-making muscle. It's an incredibly vivid "present," and incredibly cool take on semiotics and, what's his face, Dawkins and memes. I taught that book several times in an Honors Freshman Composition class, thinking they would recognize "their" world in its pages and be stunned by Gibson's vision. The students uniformly loathed it. No matter what I tried to reveal about its cultural theory underpinnings. Now, Nick Hornby, on the other hand, they adored. Sympathetic identification junkies...navel gazers.

[Magpel]

My favorite living writer is probably Jonathan Franzen, who's about due a new novel. If his recent story in the New Yorker fiction edition is any indication, it will be crushingly good. Crushingly. I almost can't live after I read this guy, which, I guess, is a good thing.

[nat whilk II]

Franzen's The Corrections was so merciless and funny. What an observant eye he trains on poor "ordinary" people. I can't help but wonder if he grew up on a steady diet of Evelyn Waugh.

I admired the book, but it left me depressed. Such dysfunction - makes a Wes Anderson family look like the Brady Bunch. And it seemed unreal to me that, after so much self-destructive and in important cases, illegal/unethical hijinks, the consequences of such seemed to just sort of dissipate into thin air.

Reading it for me was like watching one of those movies where you just can't really like anyone in the script, so your involvement gets hindered through lack of sympathy. Not the most objective of reactions - I could have missed the point I suppose.

I assumed that the title The Corrections was borrowed from stock market lingo, meaning, after wild meanderings in unsustainable regions, the market is forced to "correct" itself. Bearing a certain analogy to the arc of the story line.

I'd like to hear other takes on the book.

nat whilk ii

[Magpel]

Franzen's The Corrections was so merciless and funny. What an observant eye he trains on poor "ordinary" people. I can't help but wonder if he grew up on a steady diet of Evelyn Waugh.

I admired the book, but it left me depressed. Such dysfunction - makes a Wes Anderson family look like the Brady Bunch. And it seemed unreal to me that, after so much self-destructive and in important cases, illegal/unethical hijinks, the consequences of such seemed to just sort of dissipate into thin air.

Reading it for me was like watching one of those movies where you just can't really like anyone in the script, so your involvement gets hindered through lack of sympathy. Not the most objective of reactions - I could have missed the point I suppose.

I assumed that the title The Corrections was borrowed from stock market lingo, meaning, after wild meanderings in unsustainable regions, the market is forced to "correct" itself. Bearing a certain analogy to the arc of the story line.

I'd like to hear other takes on the book.

nat whilk ii

I think your take is very fair. For me the depth and clarity of characterization in that novel is affirming, even if there is no redemption or growth or any similar "deliverable..."

I think the title work on numerous levels--the one you observe; also, the pharamceutical theme--personality correction--and also a reference to the last minute corrections Chip tries to make to his screenplay before it is read by the producer.

[pink floyd cra…]

I would heartily recommend: "Yugos In the Mist: The Life and Times of Pink Floyd Cramer". However, it hasn't been written yet. But will guarantee a personally autographed copy if you would be so gracious as to pay-pal me $20.

[nat whilk II]

For me the depth and clarity of characterization in that novel is affirming, even if there is no redemption or growth or any similar "deliverable..."

That's a statement the jist of which I don't think I've ever heard before....has set me thinking.

thinking....thinking...thinking....ok, yeah, here's what it makes me think:

If the depth and clarity of characterization is, in and of itself, affirming, then it makes we suspect that the zeitgeist Franzen is writing to/within is one of an overwhelming contemporary atmosphere of desperate loneliness.

And then it follows that here we have characters whose social alienation is so dominating, that the other more classic types of alienation (political, economic, intellectual) are secondary effects of the dominant social alienation - dragged along in the wake of the emotional trainwreck. Now that strikes me as a very contemporary mood.

Which notion helps me sympathize more easily with the characters. And dang, they were all so disconnected and related to each other from painful and pathetic tangents. I think you've got a better intuition on the book than I was capable of.

That would make him something of a literary heir to Camus>>Salinger>>Nathanael West maybe? With a big infusion of Updike in the style. Maybe not - I'm just a part-time amatuer book critic.

Anyway, thanks for the insight.

nat whilk ii

[Magpel]

That's a statement the jist of which I don't think I've ever heard before....has set me thinking.

thinking....thinking...thinking....ok, yeah, here's what it makes me think:

If the depth and clarity of characterization is, in and of itself, affirming, then it makes we suspect that the zeitgeist Franzen is writing to/within is one of an overwhelming contemporary atmosphere of desperate loneliness.

And then it follows that here we have characters whose social alienation is so dominating, that the other more classic types of alienation (political, economic, intellectual) are secondary effects of the dominant social alienation - dragged along in the wake of the emotional trainwreck. Now that strikes me as a very contemporary mood.

Which notion helps me sympathize more easily with the characters. And dang, they were all so disconnected and related to each other from painful and pathetic tangents. I think you've got a better intuition on the book than I was capable of.

That would make him something of a literary heir to Camus>>Salinger>>Nathanael West maybe? With a big infusion of Updike in the style. Maybe not - I'm just a part-time amatuer book critic.

Anyway, thanks for the insight.

nat whilk ii

I think you're all over it, thematically. But it is done with a light touch and a lot of humor. His story in a recent New Yorker is brutal, brutal but so so dead on again in terms of characterization and mingling intimate and social themes. I think it was called "The Neighborhood." I just thnk the guy's the sh*t.

Another unrelentingly bleak writer I like is Martin Amis. I know people who admire his language and his imagination but can stand the lack of sympathetuic characters and affirmation of anything (he's darker than Franzen, if anything).

This is not my world view, but somehow, for me, perception and language of that cailber is its own reward, to whatever ends it is applied.

[Raymar]

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki

This master is great at pointing out how to meditate and what its all about. Keeping your beginner's mind makes life continuously interesting and meaningful.