Books - check them out

[Samus Aran]

Today I bought A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn and Howl by Allen Ginsberg.

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night ...

who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy"

Fuck yeah.

one of my professors and I spent so much of my first junior semester talking about Howl it's ridiculous

[Commander Fuckass]

The Apocalypse Watch by Robert Ludlum

Mass Effect: Ascension

[strongbad]

Currently reading How to be Bad
I really really like it. Has anybody given this one a read before?

[Nyerp]

Half the Sky for caw-ledge. :'(

[Selkie]

Today I bought A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn and Howl by Allen Ginsberg.

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night ...

who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy"

Fuck yeah.

A People's History of the United States was a required book for my American Society class first semester of my freshman year.

Pretty interesting stuff.

[snorkel]

Ordered a few books last week


Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson) - Had to see what this was all about, Stephenson's books are allegedly awesome technologically-inclined time-traveling adventure epics. Read the first 90-100 pages in the car the other day and I don't think I'll continue, if this is the kind of shit people call epics and are amazed by these days, then shit I should be an author. It's like a half-assed continuation of Pynchon into the 21st century, minus any discernible literary talent

Heroin (Humberto Fernandez) - Skag media intrigues me to no end, looking forward to reading this

Moravagine (Blaise Cendrars) - The first book that has hooked me on the first several pages in a long while, leave it to French linguistic mastery. "Cynical incisions in aristocratic backs and loins," "laparotomy of consciences," etc. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The Doorman (Reinaldo Arenas) - Regrettably my first time reading Arenas, this one sounds brilliant

The Anatomy of Melancholy (Robert Burton) - I don't really intend to read this (800 page volume of 16th century exposition on mankind), always wanted it on my shelf though, it's got some great little anecdotes:

"But see the Madman rage downright
With furious looks, a ghastly sight.
Naked in chains bound doth he lie,
And roars amain, he knows not why.
Observe him; for as in a glass,
Thine angry portraiture it was.
His picture keep still in thy presence;
'Twixt him and thee there's no difference."


Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald - It's been topping my Amazon wishlist for months, finally got it

Maldoror and Poems (Comte de Lautréamont) - I don't remember exactly what this is, some sort of grotesque surreal French gothic thing about an evil misanthrope. sounds interesting, waiting for it to arrive

I'm also reading Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock, it's a serious presentation of information suggesting/'proving' the existence of an ancient human civilization and/or aliens who impregnated human civilization (a topic I follow avidly but with appropriate skepticism), the guy is a complete hack but it reads well as a fiction novel, and some of the stuff is undeniably mysterious (significant similarities in unachievable architecture between South American and Egyptian sites built circa 5000 BCE, commonalities in oral histories from geographically disparate peoples in pre-history, etc)

[snorkel]

Maldoror came, unfortunately some illiterate fuck underlined random shit in the first 30 pages at some point, but it's great:

(in reference to a sleeping child)

"Blindfold him, while you rend his palpitating flesh; and having for hours listened to his sublime cries, like the piercing death-rattles which sound in the throats of the fatally-wounded on battlefields, and having, like an avalanche, then subsided, you will rush into the next room and pretend to come to his aid. You will untie his hands, their veins and sinews swollen, you will restore sight to his haggard eyes, as you start licking his blood and tears again ... Then you will tear me ceaselessly both with your teeth and your nails. I will adorn my body with heavily-scented garlands for this expiatory holocaust; and we will both suffer, I from being torn, you from tearing me."

shit

[Nyerp]

Half the Sky for caw-ledge. :'(

finished this

[Patrick Stickles]

"in the heart of the sea: the tragedy of the whaleship essex"

i didn't know that moby dick was based off real life events

i'd be pissed if a whale left me stranded and i had to eat my crew

[rdl]

im reading the princeton review for the sat subject tests (us history), and its kind of interesting. the writer likes to leave out certain parts of history that people should obviously know (like uh the iraq war and maybe reagan's presidency), but that's what makes it entertaining.

the history section is only 50-ish pages long, and i learned absolutely nothing reading it. for shame.

[LCK]

I just purchased a few books for the first time in a while.

Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks
Godless by Dan Barker
How Language Works by David Crystal

[The Hand That Fisted Everyone]

Fear and Loathing in las vegas.

[Patrick Stickles]

Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman.

Next up is Brave New World.

[snorkel]

Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman.

Next up is Brave New World.

I've read Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Klosterman, and part of Chuck Klosterman IV, he's kind of funny but talks about bad 80s bands he thinks were cool too much

The Perennial Philosophy and The Doors of Perception/Heaven and Hell (and the other novels too) are both awesome writings by Huxley, it only gets better after Brave New World

[Patrick Stickles]

I've read Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Klosterman, and part of Chuck Klosterman IV, he's kind of funny but talks about bad 80s bands he thinks were cool too much

yeah i thought it was kind of weird that in the description for his book he put that it was "unpretentious", thats a pretty pretentious thing to do, but that makes me pretty pretentious too

but yeah its his only novel and it was okay, except the ending was pretty lackluster