Metal Reviews

Just started:

Chuck Palahniuk - Rant

I finally finished Ulysses. On one hand, I might read it again. On the other, it's my least favourite of the books that've taken me a month+ to read. More challenging and frustrating than rewarding.

Starting off CS Lewis' The Screwtape Letters tonight.

I finished the Screwtape Letters. Not Christian but it still had some insightful stuff and at least two absolutely beautiful paragraphs. One of which I want to use as the intro to a short story. Finishing of DFW's Consider the Lobster and then reading Crime and Punishment.

You'll really dig C&P. Dostoevsky is a beautiful writer.

Indeed he is.

Finished Crime and Punishment. It was really great. Not much to say about it. The scene between Svidrigailov and Dunia as well as the ending both got to me big time. Writing was a little clunky but I find that's a problem with translations in general.

Reading Marcel Proust's Du Cote de Chez Swann now. Maybe Walter Kaufmann's Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre too.

Don't waste time on Kaufmann. Just read the original.

Reading Paul Willis' Learning to Labor, Susan Buck Morss' Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West, Jodi Dean's The Communist Horizon and Althusser's Ideological State Apparatuses. Finished Badiou's Communist Hypothesis and Roland Barthes' Mythologies this past week.

I think the book is mostly excerpts from originals with only the introduction actually written by Kafumann. I like the idea of reading an overview 'cause it'll help me situate things when I do get down to the originals. It'll also probably help me choose which originals I wanna read.

Ahh, a reader is much better than a textbook intro.

Zombie Capitalism by Chris Harman
The Uses of Literacy by Richard Hoggart
Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag

hearts in atlantis

finished Barbarians at the Gate a while ago actually. it's quite good for the first two thirds, three quarters, but as it nears the end of the bidding process for RJR Nabisco it gets really fucking boring. too many parts where it looks like it's about to end but isn't, and you see the same thing happening over and over, with one side coming just slightly ahead, the other side complaining, and the process starting again.

now reading Everything is Illuminated and re-reading Chronicle of a Death Foretold. any thoughts?

This week's books:
-Chris Harman, Zombie Capitalism
-Dick Hebdige, Subcultures: The Meaning of Style (which is an account of british working class subcultures from the 60s and 70s so I've been reading analyses of mods, punks, rasta/reggae, skinheads, hipsters for the last eighty pages. Kinda fun.)
-Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks
-Gramsci, Reader (1916-1935)
-Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life

The Thrawn Trilogy. I've read the books before and now I'm reading the Comic Book adaptation.

I seriously fail to see how this would have made a good movie so far. It's good for what it is, but I don't think it would translate well as a movie at all.

Hmmm I'm thinking it would be awesome. First book, you have the Luke and Mara in the woods dynamic, plus the Noghri chases and then the move to Kashyyyk with the mystery of C'Boath. The political back and forth with the Bothans, Bel Iblis and then Leia going to the Noghri planet would mimick Episode I's Naboo storyline, but actually be good. Then you have the cloning facilities, the attack on Coruscant and then the giving birth business and the final lightsaber battles. It would basically mimick a lot of the stuff from the first two trilogies now that i think about it.

Paul Gilroy - 'There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack': The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation. Skip all the boring generic stuff on race to get to the awesome bit about utopias and the black music scenes of the 60s, 70s and 80s.

Kyle any thoughts on Georges Bataille?

I enjoyed Blue of Noon. I read my friend's book with a lot of pictures on torture while he was reading it and would have it in the office. He's an enjoyable read, but I don't know how I could write about him or incorporate him into my research. Much like Nietzsche, I enjoy reading him but I don't have a reason to read him any further.

Now reading:
Bruno Bosteels - Marx and Freud in Latin America: Politics, Psychoanalysis, and Religion in Times of Terror. I don't know nearly enough about Latin American culture to understand a chapter of this book.

Work reading: Finished Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass today. I liked it. It made me laugh. I like puns. Starting Gulliver's Travels tomorrow.

Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts