Metal Reviews

Darkness Visible went by quickly. 'Twas good. Now reading A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace.

@Rio: Have you ever read any Paul Willis? I'm reading a chapter of Learning to Labor for a soc. theory class; I figured you would dig it. How working class British kids are trained through schools to end up working class workers later on or something to that effect. I'm only 3 pages into it.

@trapt

No, actually, I'm not really familiar with Willis's work at all. Sounds very interesting, though. Dude, when you finish with it, synopsisize me!

I've just finished- thank GOD- reading about 80 undergrad essays on 2 subjects- "What would Marx think of the Human Relations school of management" and "What would Weber think of scientific management". Interesting subjects for the first 2 essays or so...

Otherwise, just finished Zola's La Debacle. Extremely gory, harrowing account of Germany's utterly brutal owning of France in 1870, and the anarchy of the Paris Commune which followed it. I love Zola, even if he's kind of a reactionary in this book- it's about politics, but the only "socialist" character in it is a caricature of cowardliness and evil.

Now starting Eduardo Galeano - Mirrors.

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King.

What a brilliant man, too bad he was a Christian.

The Ashdown Diaries, vol 1.

That doesn't make any sense. Most everything he did was based on the premise of his belief in Christianity. He wouldn't have accomplished what he did, in the way he did, without being a Christian.

Guy Gavriel Kay- Under Heaven

I'm sure I said something similar when I was 19 or so. I think the anti-christian mentality fades with age in a lot of us.

Someone should've given him some Voltaire.

I'm not talking about his "movement" in any regard, I'm referring to his perception of Marx, Nietzsche, and his readings on Capitalism. He constantly refers to his belief in concepts like "sin", which gets kind of annoying at times.

Oh awesome. I love books the ones I'm Reading right now are:
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Empire of Ivory (for the second time) by Naomi Novick
Wizardborn by David Farland
The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan
The Lord of the Rings (for the 6th or 7th time) by JRR Tolkien

I started American Gods but never finished. I will sometime. For some reason I just couldn't get into it.

you think that's a hard book to get into, try reading Robert Jordan... But American gods is an amazing book, I'm almost done it.

JS Mill - On Liberty.

Wooooo John Stuart Mill!

Currently reading The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead. It's weird, I tell you!

Getting back to your English liberalism roots?

I'm actually about to read an essay by him too, The Best Form of Gov't is Representative Gov't.

Yep, about time I read about something more intellectual than crime-fighting wizards.

Finished Galeano - Mirrors

Now starting Martin Meredith - The State of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence

Really, also need to push on to the end of EP THompson- Making of the English Working Class. Great book but I've abandoned it 3/4 way through for the last few weeks.

Two books:

Brave New World: Excellent novel. I think I can see now where novels like A Clockwork Orange (not to mention Operation: Mindcrime) got their inspiration.

Star Wars - Labyrinth Of Evil: One of the better Star Wars books IMO, mainly because it sticks to familiar territory (Anakin, Obi Wan, Palpatine, and Amidala) rather than introducing all these un-picturable "new characters" to the Star Wars universe.

Bought some summer reading.

William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury
Dave Eggers - The Wild Things
Kurt Vonnegut - Player Piano
Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina
? Cervantes - Don Quixote
Anthony Burgess - Honey for the Bears

Any suggestions for which to read once I finish A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again?