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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

What's on your bookshelf at the moment ?

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09:39 / 10.01.02

Yes, I have An Arrow's Flight. Goody, I was not totally sure b/c in the frontispiece, or whatever that's called, it says "In the last episode" & I thought maybe this was the sequel.

We did agree on the Hammond translation, I only have the Fagles because I could not find the Hammond right off... am still looking though, but I wanted a verse translation anyway.

09:39 / 10.01.02

I'm listening to The Red and The Black by Stendahl on tape. (Maybe this should go on the kink thread, but listening to books on tape, in my car, is an invitrio-womb-trip orgasm thingy for me. polymorphous. don't tell my car insurer . . .). I'm quite enjoying it. The fact that it's apparently Al Gore's favorite book is only slightly off-putting ... but at least it's not the happy caterpillar or whatever the crap was GW(u)B's "favorite book."

Reading: Well, besides the Invisibles vol. 2, I'm now reading No Logo, working/throwing coins through the I Ching
and re/reading Benjamin's Illuminations and Ladelle McWhorter's
Bodies & Pleasures: Foucault and the Politics of Sexual Normalization--a lesbian philosopher's confessional anti-confessional text, whic uses country line dancing to explore epistemology and the mind/body dichotomy in Western thought.

Up Next--I'm eyeing a new book called Stupidity by Avital Ronell (anybody here heard of it?), and a new collection of lectures, Fearless Speech by Michel Foucault.

On top of that, I love magazines. Just got a new one called Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, but maybe that's off topic.

09:39 / 10.01.02

Hey, Todd - about Ireland - I read a snippet somewhere which suggested that some people only started to believe that Vortigern was a forgery when it was put on the stage and turned out to be utter drivel...

Finished Russell Hoban, nearly finished The Three Musketeers (from the 'Classic Lit' thread - Persephone is quite right about it).

The Return Of Rothkoid

09:39 / 10.01.02

The Himes is still waiting, because I'm currently whipping through Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman which is just fucked up. Half man, half bicycle? Fuck's sake. For some reason, it feels like Lynch has been cribbing from this baby for years.

No sign of buff-coloured puke yet, though...

11:23 / 10.01.02

Three Musketeers was recommended by Haus, which I never thanked him for.

Matthew Fluxington

15:30 / 10.01.02

quote:Originally posted by alas:

On top of that, I love magazines. Just got a new one called Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, but maybe that's off topic.

Wait, are you talking about Elizabeth Wurtzel's last book?

16:50 / 10.01.02

nope--it's a ziny-sorta-magazine . . . 15th issue (and I just discovered, having actually sat to look at it, it's availabe online, here.
Have you read Bitch the book? I love the cover, but never picked it up . . .

17:43 / 10.01.02

Just finished reading the Consolations of Philosophy (good), Mr Vertigo by Paul Auster (very good) and am about to start reading Moon Palace by the same author.

18:00 / 10.01.02

Tried reading 'Moon Palace' a couple of times, but couldn't get into it for some reason. Enjoyed Auster's 'New York Trilogy', though. Currently reading 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay', which I'm enjoying (though not as much as I would have liked). Up next is Steve Martin's 'Shopgirl', an xmas gift from my girlfriend (hoping that it's good; have found Martin to be funny, but not hilarious; it'd really be nice if he did something that was hilarious), and then hopefully I'll get to Ray Kurzweil's 'Age of Spiritual Machines', but it has that futury shiny cover so I might feel like an asshole reading it on the subway, so who knows?

First post. Hey, everybody.

18:21 / 10.01.02

Result! Just picked up a first edition copy of Brendan Behan's New York, in excellent condition, trés cheap!

I'll start on that as soon as I finish Janet Flanner's World.

It's Ierne's Day.

18:33 / 10.01.02

I read a French translation of Mr Vertigo a few years ago. I think I missed out quite a bit because of the period american slang. I presume some of that got lost in translation...not sure it is worth reading again in the original though.

07:47 / 14.01.02

quote:Originally posted by Rage:
Also reading Automated Alice by Jeff Noon, which is pretty cute. Nothing compared to VURT though. How's Pollen? Should I bother?

Pollen is a lot more like Vurt. An awful lot more. Like the same book.

If you're not worried about reading them in order (and why should you be?) my suggestion is to skip straight through to Pixel Juice and (his best) Needle in the Groove. Although Nymphomation is fairly darn groovy, too. The Game Cat knows.

07:50 / 14.01.02

And while I'm here:

Ovid's Metamorphoses, A.E. Housman's Collected Poems and J.G. Ballard's Super-Cannes.

Ayuh, and The Iliad too. Of course.

Strange Machine Vs The Virus with Shoes

08:49 / 14.01.02

Currently reading Cocaine Nights and Atrocity Exhibition by JG Ballard.

Among the massive pile of books waiting to be read I'll probably try to read Zodiac & Cryptonomican by Neal Stephenson, The Animal Factory by Edward Bunker and Slow Chocolate Autopsy by Sinclair & McKean.

By the way, can anybody tell me if Tree of Life by Isreal Regardie worth reading?

[ 14-01-2002: Message edited by: chaos junkie ]

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

08:57 / 14.01.02

quote:Originally posted by alas:

Have you read Bitch the book? I love the cover, but never picked it up . . .

It contains many interesting facts, which can be most edifying if you avoid reading any of Elizabeth Wurtzel's opinions on them. OK, that's slightly unfair. But not very.

I assume, vtw, we are talking about the Alain de Whatsisface's "Consolations of Philosophy", as opposed to the mighty mighty Boethius tome?

14:52 / 16.01.02

Now between the Hammond and Fagles translations of The Iliad, I am having as the sherbet course a little of...

<checking book cover>

...Phil Hine. Which I got in a trade from impulsivelad. Isn't that just the beauty of Barbelith, that Persephone is reading Condensed Chaos and impulsivelad (father of Gek) has Howard's End?

07:59 / 17.01.02

Mm... and while completing Tacitus and Housman I've accidentally opened Stanislaw Lem's The Star Diaries. Well there's nothing for it now, I'm gonna have to finish it...

</The Iliad stares at me reproachfully>

08:11 / 17.01.02

What is Tacitus like? I'm currently reading Suetonius (Graves trans) and am enjoying the slightly sardonic tone. Can't quite get rid of the historian's tic though ('But... where's the evidence?').

08:12 / 17.01.02

Oh, I love Housman. Have you got the edition with some of his prose in the back? I want to be like that (apart from the editing Manilius thing).

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

08:12 / 17.01.02

Oh, come on....Anoraknophobia was a classic album. All rightm they may have had a bit of a prog-rock past, but these days they're a really tight unit with a great sound.

Oh. Manilius. Sorry.

11:16 / 17.01.02

Taliban by Ahmad Rashid- very good.

The Gingerman by J.P Dunleavy- very drunk.

Penthouse July 1986- very big hair.

01:42 / 19.01.02

Having just emptied out my backpack, here's a concise inventory:

Swann's Way, by Marcel Proust (excellent, almost done, intend to read all of "In Search of Lost Time" this year)

The Urth of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe

Doctor Faustus, by Thomas Mann

The Emigrants, by W.G. Sebald

The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, by Nabokov

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex, by Edmund Morris

and a weighty text on Civil Procedure which, being assigned reading, I do not feel compelled to recommend.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:57 / 19.01.02

Currently reading "Martha Peake" by Patrick McGrath... like a gothic (in the literary sense) Robert Louis Stevenson (in the "Treasure Island" sense) and absolutely wonderful. Edgar Allan Poe meets J. Meade Faulkner, perhaps? Either way, it's wonderful. And I am in no doubt that it'll have me crying before the end (I'm about a third of the way through).

[ 19-01-2002: Message edited by: Moominstoat ]

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