Metal Reviews

I love Othello. That's one of the best ones

I am finishing up the call of Cthulhu and other weird stories by H.P. Lovecraft while listening to a drudkh channel on pandora. The music and storytelling are complimenting one another very well.

Got Carolyn Abbate's A History of Opera from the library today. I'm excited because from the intro she writes really well, and as a genre of art opera's very interesting since it doesn't do new things. And it's my latest obsession.

Tried for the third time or so to pick up Dostoevsky's The Idiot, but it doesn't grab me the way his other works did.

Dostoevsky is my all-time favorite writer. I started the Idiot, but it got lost somehow when we moved a few years back. Probably up in the attic, but I'm not interested in going up there digging through boxes.

That's the thing! I love Brothers, Crime and Notes, but can't ever get past the first fifty pages of Idiot In its defense, I haven't read anything really in the last week since getting back to VA. I'm in a huge lazy slump.

My favorite is The Possessed. Notes was not easy reading, but I enjoyed it quite a lot.

Starting The Odyssey. Reading it with a friend and we're both listening to some lectures about it by Hubert Dreyfus at the same time. Worried that I'm starting to have too many books going on at the same time (4).

Finished A History of Opera. It was really great. Although I was a little let down by their diagnosis of the demise of new operas, maybe I wanted a more interesting answer than "opera is expensive and the new ones aren't as popular." They brought up some interesting issues - e.g. one composer mentioning that there's a 2 million dollar investment being placed on him, but he's writing something he's never written before and the tradition ended a hundred years ago. It wasn't really elaborated on though. Overall, it was a history book that I got excited enough about that I read the last 150 pages yesterday, which is imo pretty amazing. Planning to reread it in 5 years when I'm familiar with all the music they're talking about.

Gonna finish Ada, or Ardor now. Nabokov u tryin my patience.

I think there's only 1 person here who cares, but it's been chapter after chapter of awesomeness in book 3 (GoT). I can not wait for the show to catch up to certain parts. Like when Dany finally buys her army... That will be awesome.

I'm mildly tempted to read them. I may pick it up over summer depending on how reading other things goes. I kinda want her to just burn that entire place down and take the army, using the army to slaughter the overseers. No spoilers though.

I don't read as much as you do obviously, but I think you could enjoy them. You already know the people and what's happening for the most part, and reading after watching it makes it that much easier to picture in your minds eye. I think it's a great series, but Martin sure does repeat a lot of shit over and over and over again. We get it, it's cold.

I have ambitious plans to start some of my preliminary dissertation work this summer. If that doesn't happen or goes slowly then I'll make a point to read them. I was just told that the writing was clunky and more frustrating than enjoyable. Story being told is great; manner of doing so not so much. But yeah, you might have me convinced to give it a shot.

There is a lot of stuff that happens off page that you only find out about by two people talking about it. But so far, I've had no problems with the story telling. Just remember that every "chapter" is being told from a different point of view. And he writes differently for each person, this making some chapters better than others depending on which characters you like and don't like.

Storm of Swords is awesome man, it's amazing.

it gets a bit more repetitive (especially with the cold) later on in dance with dragons so get ready lol.

Finished Ada. It was tough to get through at times but I liked it overall and the last 50 pages were very pretty.

I never notice if a book is pretty or not...

It's a meditation on aging, death, and love, partly delivered via a philosophical examination of time!

Here's a passage of what I'd call prettiness:

That is kind of pretty. Echoes of Lolita in some ways. Nabokov has a way.

yeah, it is pretty.

never read Lolita, my sister did and she really likes the quote