Metal Reviews

Working through Uncle Tom's Cabin. It's nothing like the Warrant song (lol) .. although I can't get the damn chorus out of my head while reading it.

Oh shit. I haven't heard that song in years. Where you at, scumbag?

taking The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, Chronicle of a Death Foretold António Lobo Antunes's Elephant Memory with me. taking a second shot with the first, re-reading the second, and fourth shot with the third, so i'll probably end up dumping them all when i get monies to buy more books.

Are there any really detailed books on thrash metal? I had remembered Sound of the Beast being a lot better than it actually was...

Ranciere - The Philosopher and His Poor.

The October Country - Ray Bradbury

was reading Stephen King's novella The Mist earlier (longest "short story" ever?) so much better then the movie

Just got Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion in the mail. Movie is coming out in February. It's a zombie romance novel. It's kinda fun. I did sixty pages just now rather than writing final papers.

gonna read through Edgar Allen Poe's Fall Of The House Of Usher later and see if I can't finish the lyrics I started on that this tale inspired

Finished Zizek's The Year of Dreaming Dangerously. Solid readings of the most recent events.

Then restarted Floyd's Reification of and Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot. Reading a book with as pretentious of characters as this makes me feel rather pretentious.

My sister and/or mom recommended me Euginides' Middlesex. Someday I might read it.

The Marriage Plot is set in 80s New England with a bunch of college students reading Barthes, Derrida, Irigaray and Kristeva, etc. And then talking about it. It's obnoxious. The book has me gripped insofar as I'm being kinda mopy right now and the book's love triangle is working for me. He writes decent romantic angst.

going to order Small Gods from Amazon, plus another book or two... what do you guys think of
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Savage Detectices

by roberto bolaño?

my best friend didn't like Savage Detectives. but that's all I remember. I'm staying at his place. I may just read it today.

take a look and tell me what you think lol. and ask him why he didn't like it i guess.

thanks a lot man.

I got about thirty pages into it and didn't enjoy it. reminded me of Burroughs for some reason.

instead read Coetzee's Disgrace. Isn't doing much for me, but it's an easy read in terms of the style letting the story flow rather nicely. Also reading essays from The Idea of Communism collection by Ranciere, Negri, Vattimo, Balso and Badiou.

Finished Žižek's Sublime Object of Ideology.

One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey by Sam Keith/Richard Proenneke.

Finished Swann's Way. Two months to take down the first part of the book. Seven more to go. This might take a while.

Took Vladmir Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor on a trip. Funny looks on the bus because it kept making me chuckle. Also Salman Rushdie must've liked this book a lot when he wrote Midnight's Children. (Pynchon, Rushdie, and Amis are all heavily indebted to the dude; his influence is impressive.)

Starting David Foster Wallace's The Pale King soon, group reading it with people on another forum. Fun times.

I also bought William Gaddis' A Frolic of his Own, Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady, and William Styron's Set This House on Fire, but I don't think I'll be starting any of them soon.

turns out he loved the book, but I may have caught him in one of its slower spans. he said it tends to have slow parts but he really liked it.

I'm thinking Coetzee is overrated. good, but not great.

I wrote an article about Disgrace during my first course in the teacher program. It was aight I guess. The book, I mean. The article was shit.