Metal Reviews

Raymond Williams on hegemony is ace.

Now started Robert Walser's Running with the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in Heavy Metal Music, which is basically cultural theory, Frankfurt School, Foucault and Debord applied to heavy metal. Hopefully, it's good. Sadly, he is only focusing on the 80s.

Finished Lord Of The Rings

Now on to A Game Of Thrones.

Unfortunately, I'm really forcing myself this summer to read through the books I've already bought (though I've of course been weak and bought a few more... this is the problem with working at a bookstore and getting a discount). But on my next impulse buy/library trip I'll see what I can do about getting my hands on it...

Im reading it too

The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football--David Goldblatt

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo--Stieg Larsson

With a name like Stieg Larsson he should be in a metal band instead of writing books.

I keep meaning to give Rand another go since I'm slowly turning into a libertarian, but the horrific memories from last time are putting me off. Taking a basically good idea and turning it into some painfully-written novel = fail. Plus she hated Amerindians and homosexuals, so wasn't that much of an icon. No doubt I'll get to it in time.

It's one of those novels you have to fight no to put down. The content in itself is highly interesting but the writing is too often defective and loses itself in meanderings I found unnecessary.
I friend told me he thought that was the greatest novel of the XXth century, I certainly do not share his enthusiasm.

Not wanting to derail the Now Reading thread, but am I being a bit uncharitable in this interpretation of events, which has been festering in my mind for a little while?

Pre-election Goat talking to me all friendly-like: Don't worry, the Lib Dems grassroots is very left leaning. We have this "triple lock" thingy which will stop us going into coalition with the Tories. Chris Huhne's "heart beats on the left". LDs are the best vote for we left leaning types.

Post-election Goat: I'm into (a PC version of) Ayn Rand now k thx bye!

Haha, yeah, you're telling me. Everything I said pre-election is true - the grassroots are left-leaning, heart beats on left etc, but given the case for coalition vs the case for not, conference approved the coalition. Now, in the new reality of books balanced in 5 years, NHS free marketeering (neither of which were in the coalition agreement iirc and both of which are pissing a lot of LD members off if I'm reading things right) I've been reassessing my politics and questioning the various things I previously held as absolute truths - tories are evil incarnate, only the state can provide services, and so on.

A lot of this is personal rather than 'ZOMG the lib dems are now a libertarian party!' - we're still a socially democratic bunch with liberalism ingrained rather than the opposite and yet being 1/6 of a coalition government that's been all economically liberal hasn't made anyone I know go 'zounds, the tories were right all along!' I guess being part of a third party that (in theory at least) rejects both the working class and the upper class as god's gift to mankind means that you will expore the right as well as the left. I still think of myself as a lefty, if that helps, but exploring the thoughts of others rather than rejecting them as evil incarnate ain't a bad thing. All this 'oh dear, I'm a libertarian' is more from doing the Libertarian Party UK's test and discovering I'm with them 70% of their stuff than anything else. Don't worry, I'm not denouncing taxes as theft and calling for the legalisation of guns... yet. Bwahahaha.

I like legalizing drugs and prostitution but otherwise libertarians are not a good idea.

Prostitute posts in the new topic.

It will be interesting to see how the arctic nations will resolve this looming conflict, the biggest potential territory dispute we have seen for quite some time.

What's her name??

Would be a very interesting subject. Russia's planting of that flag was cute.

Haha, I thought it was great! A quintessential Russian move.

Eric Brown - Necropath. Fun sci-fi / mystery read, though the ending is a bit unsatisfying.

Caitlin R. Kiernan - Threshold. Very well written horror novel in the vein of Lovecraft, but I'm 50 pages away from the end and I have no clue how things are going to wrap up in such a short amount of space.

Picked up Zizek's Welcome to the Desert of the Real. Not sure what I think of it yet, but it's definitely interesting and I'm looking forward to getting a new perspective.