Metal Reviews

I got four books for my birthday:

Aldous Huxley - Brave New World
Tom Clancy - The Hunt For Red October
The Evolution Of Physics - Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld
Michael Chrichton - Jurassic Park

Brave New World is a good read.
I've been meaning to get to the copy of The Doors of Perception collecting dust on my bookshelf for quite a while now; one of these days I'll give it a read.

I don't really know yet when I'll read BNW, since I have a lot of other books on tap right now. Nonetheless, I look forward to reading it when I have the time.

Ape and Essence was a fun quick read by Huxley if you're interested.

i'm just past page 220 on The Master and Margarita and nothing has happened. is it going to get better?

Duly noted, and many thanks.

How many pages left?

Shit, man, I'd have packed her in by now; if I am not grabbed at least by the writer's style pretty quickly, fuck it sez I.
Take Dostoyevsky (spelling? It seems that there isn't any one correct way, haha)... as is pretty typical of that era, he can use up thirty pages describing a setting or introducing a character, but his prose grabs you.

On the other hand, attempting to read Joyce's Ulysses is lesson in absolute mind-numbing boredom.

well, you can also read it for the story, and at least from the premise the story looks like it can be really good. plus many people in this forum has recommended it, and this (russian) chick in my course says that it's her favourite and that she has read it some 6 or 7 times.

as for Dostoyevsky, i read Crime and Punishment and admittedly i hated it.

I like Ulysses.

Not Finnegan's Wake, though. It's funny to read aloud to yourself in a raucous Belfast accent, but it is beyond my capabilities.

The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins

He's got a new one. It seems like a big book of examples of evolution.

David Stevenson - 1914 1918 The History of the First World War
Jim Starlin - Dreadstar Volume II (trade)

It's supposed to be a comprehensive collection of evidence for evolution, interspersed with the usual ferocious anti-creationist rhetoric. Pre-ordered it on Amazon some time ago, waiting for it to arrive.

So Dave Eggers wrote the screenplay for the new Where the Wild Things Are movie. I just bought the book since I'm such a giant fan. Hopefully I'll have time to read it in between Marx and Kierkegaard.

D:

Whatev

Solomon Gurksy was Here by Mordecai Richler

He seems to like to give his characters funny-sounding names.

Now it is:
Nietzsche - The Gay Science
Marx - Communist Manifesto and Capital
Condensed Capitalism
Gibbard - Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (some bullshit metaethical norm-expressivism stuff)

Reading in parallel:
Richard Dawkins - The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins - The Greatest Show On Earth
The Survival Of The Pagan Gods In Renaissance Art
Shakespeare - Hamlet (for school, so analysis ho!)
Shakespeare - The Tempest (memorizing the fucking thing )
Daniel Dennett - Breaking The Spell - Religion As A Natural Phenomenon

Fik Mijer- Gladiators: People's entertainment in the Colosseum

Great and complete book about the Roman tradition of fights between gladiators, executions, man-beast fights and hunting shows. Good view on the violence that thrived in Roman culture and how it originated from their imperial desires.

If you want more material on it, I'd suggest Daniel P. Mannix - Those About To Die. Picked it up for 2€ in a used book store and had a fantastic read on the way back from Metalcamp. The book hovers between classic historian's monologue and novelesque semi-fiction following a type of entertainer. Geen vertaling, wel.