Metal Reviews

i leave for France on wednesday, and will take the following books with me:
"Leite Derramado" ("Spilt Milk"), by Chico Buarque
"Diary of the War of the Pig", by Adolfo Bioy Casares. book has blurbs from Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez.
"Rude Food", by Vir Sanghvi, a collection of his food columns. enjoying it a lot so far.
"Viva México", by Alexandra Lucas Coelho, liking it, although being crazy about Mexico certainly helps to enjoy it.

I'm 100 pages into Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds. So far it's VERY promising.

I do like him a lot as a sci-fi author, but don't like how drawn-out he can be sometimes. Think that one's better than some others of his.

A Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader and Kant which is kicking my ass.

Read the first couple chapters of Godless by Dan Barker at a bookstore today. Powerful stuff. Gonna go back and read more of it as time permits.

Read The White Tiger (very good, highly reccomended) recently and then The Other Lands (Acacia book 2) by Durham, which was pretty average. Now onto Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Brian Jacques has died.

I heard about that :(

http://www.mangafox.com/manga/fuan_no_tane/v01/c000/

Fantastic manga with short stories of the creepy variety.

Joe Abercrombie- The Heroes

Notes From Underground

ooooh.

Yes, you better like that stuff and then you'd better read Brothers' Karamazov and tell us what you thought.

Trapt: I'm writing a paper on the origins of the word 'totalitarian' as being used to describe the USSR by the mainstream media. In addition, I am going to look at some Marxist journals to see if, when, and how they countered the claim of the Soviet 'totalitarian' state. You wouldn't happen to know of any solid 50s era English language Marxist/Red apologetic journal resources?

The word totalitarian philosophically Arendt addresses it best but she isn't a Marxist. She hammers the U.S.S.R. after being a jew who fleed Nazi Germany. You may want to invest in Origins of Totalitarianism if those two regimes interest you historically. She lays it out in a historical account but addresses just what the regimes sought to do in a philosophical manner. Easy reading but long.

If they're apologetic I've probably ignored them. Sartre was down with the U.S.S.R. but never wrote anything praising it to my knowledge. The big Marxists of the 50s, Marcuse and Adorno, rejected the U.S.S.R. Marcuse in One-Dimensional Man levels the critique that it was the opposite side of the coin to America's unfreedom. PM Chuck.

Thanks, I was just asking if you knew off any apologetic journals off the top of your head; I can't blame you for ignoring them.

I loved it.

Went on a shopping spree yesterday and bought Redemption Ark and House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds and Pandora's Star by Peter F Hamilton.

Plato's Euthyphro last night, Apology tonight and Crito tomorrow night. Some Kant tomorrow afternoon and Lorraine Code's Ecological Thinking, some ecofeminist epistemology.

"The Spook's Apprentice" - Joseph Delaney

Supposed to be one hell of a fantasy series, just ordered it, got great critics all over. Looking forward to it, anyone read it? Brahm?

"Dare More!" - Gunnar Cramer, Dag Furuholmen

A book about developing a stronger mentality, which I've discovered that I need. Waaaay too many down-periods lately.

Heidegger's Being and Time has been kicking my ass the last two days. It's cool because at some point you really do come to understand what the fuck he is talking about and you can play his jargon games but that only makes it worse because then he hits you with bullshit sentences like "dasein is either inauthentic or inauthentic or it's neither". Fucking durr, cocksucker. I have about 8 pages written on the Nazi and that was my goal. Write about ambiguity as a form of unconcealment then I get to the Marxist Adorno ripping him to shreds. Oh, writing theses papers...