Reading Tab

Oh I am not reading those for school. I am interested in M. E foreign policy and so I am trying to learn a little bit more.

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I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
T.S Eliot, "Preludes"

I just finished "SlaughterHouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut and I'm currently in the middle of "Cut the MotherF*ckers Loose" Ken Kesey had a really cool life.

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"Rule number one. Any more sh*t and you lose a thumb.

The Game by Neil Strauss

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I'm in movie heaven

All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris.

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Bleacheddecay

Now reading Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
and
Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port

Recent:

Transparent Things by Vladimir Nabokov
chapter 1, Ulysses by James Joyce
Act 1, scenes 1-3 in The Tempest by Willian Shakespeare
The Designated Mourner, a play by Wallace Shawn
The Bell Shaped Pitfall, an essay by Philip Morrison in The Myth of Measurability, Paul L. Houts (ed.) c.1977.

Currently reading Ulysses by James Joyce.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Orpheus Descending by Tennessee Williams

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

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"I know, honey. Look at the map. We go your way, that's about four inches. We go my way, it's an inch and a half. You wanna pay for the extra gas?"

30 days of night: dark days.

i started reading it because the film was coming out. not sure if its my favourite graphic novel...well i know its not my favourite. but it is quite good, i really enjoy look at the artwork. plus the pages of the graphic novel are all shinny.

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I don't have Parkinson's. I inherited my shaking head from my grandfather Hepburn. I discovered that whisky helps stop the shaking. Problem is, if you're not careful, it stops the rest of you too. My head just shakes, but I promise you, it ain't gonna fall off!

I'm reading Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom.

Suddenly last summer // Tennessee Williams
Cosmopolis // Don Delillo

Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
Steve Martin

This is a memoir from Steve about his early life and stand-up career, a subject he hasn't talked about much in the past twenty-five years or so. By the end of the 1970s, Steve Martin's act was bonafide Rock-and-Roll, selling out huge arenas like The Hollywood Bowl. But it all started with an interest in magic tricks and Vaudeville-style joke telling, both of which he learned at Disneyland and then Knott's Berry Farm in the 1950s. Later he tried stand-up and even television writing, working on the award-winning sketch show "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour". After that it was still a long haul before the phenomenon that made him a super star of comedy, those memorable and now classic "Saturday Night Live" guest appearances and ultimately gave him the opportunity for a film career. Martin covers it all. A must-read for fans. It officially hits the shelves tomorrow, but I read it this past weekend.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

For my course I'm currently reading Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, E. M. Forster's Howard's End and Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus.

For pleasure I'm splitting my time between Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man and Alexander Broadie's The Scottish Enlightenment.

I just noticed both authors have the same initials, creepy.

In December I finished:
Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen
Battle of Angels by Tennessee Williams
The Eye in the Pyramid by Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson

I'm reading a few long books right now and that's why it seems like a slower month for reading than it was.

I'm reading I am America and So Can You by Stephen Colbert. So far, it is absolutely hilarious!

Recently finished The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan and currently 100 pages into The Great Hunt.

The other day I read a couple plays by Wallace Shawn: A Thought in Three Parts and Marie and Bruce. These were both very funny but it's hard to imagine actors doing what A Thought in Three Parts calls for: sex, fights, masturbating at and onto each other... I'm sure the shock effect is wholely lost in reading it, so what you're left with is descriptions of shocking acts and a lot of clever one-liners and interesting staging.

I received Eli Wallach's autobiography The Good, the Bad, and Me, for Christmas, and read it in the days that followed. Quite enjoyable.

You know that series is never getting finished, due to the author's death, right?

Aside from that, the series falls apart after book 6, and I stopped reading after 8... What started as a tightly written epic, devolves into to stuttering mess by book 7, with pages and pages of the characters clothing descriptions, a slew of new and unimportant characters, and silly filler situations. A couple of the main fellowship that starts the adventure in Eye of the World, just sort of evaporate for entire books, and the main cohesion of the story goes right in the toilet. A lot of speculation was flying around around the time we were all waiting for book 8 to hit, that Jordan and his publishing company were attempting to cash in on the wild success of the early books, and the company had him generating a ton of filler and useless subplots to extend the series well beyond 10 books. After hearing this, and observing a marked decrease in quality with each release, I gave up on the series. Friends that stuck with it tell me I made the right choice.

I have a few major issues with the series that I can't elaborate on for fear of spoiling the books for you, but, I recommend stopping after the fantastic book 6... Books 1-6 are definitely great, but read the series with the knowledge that it will remain incomplete, and that the quality dips to abysmal levels after a while...


George R.R> Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series is MUCH better, and if you haven't read that yet, I would grab a copy of the first book, A Game of Thrones, ASAP.

I have a few friends that feel The Wheel of Time series is just downright bad, first book to last, and I can't find anyone that dislikes Martin's stuff...


Meanwhile:

The Iliad - Homer

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