About Books
17/8/06 20:14![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eredienThis is about books!
One of the good things about having an hour long commute to work is that I get time to read. A lot.
I often read the bad, free, daily paper; I amuse myself by pointing out typos and composing imaginary irate letters to the editor in my head. "Dear Editor, if that's what you call yourself: please never ever refer to anything ever again as "suped-up," or else I will personally bury your desk in Campbell's and wallpaper your office with Warhol lithographs until you can spell correctly."
I often read the excellent Weekly Dig (now with spiffyfun new and improved blog!). Though its Media Farm column is often spot-on in the fact that someone somewhere needs to criticize ineffectual and just plain stupid media pieces, I feel like their assertions are not always fully backed up with facts.
The rest of the paper, though, reads like it was written by Spider Jerusalem, so I'm happy.
I also occasionally find books I don't like: I tossed one, called "Healing the Child Within," in the trash. I thought it was just a psychology-for-the-layman book with a bad 70's cover that made it look New Agey, but it was a New-Agey book masquerading as psychology. Too Many Caps in a Sentence do not make your Concepts More Important.
Last books read: House of Leaves, Notes on a Lover's Discourse by Roland Barthes, Issue 16, I think, of the McSweeney's magazine The Believer, and I'm currently reading As Francesca, by Martha Baer. A little about each one:
House of Leaves
I wanted my thesis to be this book, but I didn't know it.
This is a fascinating book in that it is one of the only ones I've seen that's physically difficult to read. I had to intellectually figure out the correct direction to read at one point, force my brain into a different mold--and I didn't mind, because it was pointing out an important, fun thing about the text and illustrating the action at the same time. Not a small book, not an easy or nice book, but utterly fascinating. (Up and right-to-left, by the way, was the reading direction of that particular passage).
Oh, wow.
Passage.
Yet another pun I just caught up on. And I've been done with the thing for two days.
Notes on a Lover's Discourse
I say I don't like literary theory, but I lie. I really do like it. I like thinking about words, about how they're used, about how they're not used. This is an ideal book to get you to think about that in a particular case (that of love), and to get you to think about the topic generally and also in specific.
That being said, Barthes, for all his intellectual brilliance, seems like he was a very sad man.
The Believer August '06 Issue
I first got introduced to McSweeney's through the sestina section of their website (which is genius); then my girlfriend started subscribing to their magazine (they also produce books of a surpassing richness of design and sumptousness). I was particulary interested in an article (too short, alas) on animal stories for adults (Kipling, sometimes, Hemingway, Jack London, things such as that) and how we've been trained to think of these as juvenalia. Very interesting. Also a great article on undercover journalism in India.
As Francesca
A very strange little book. A quick read despite the beatiful, sometimes harsh, language. The cover art describes the book somewhat accurately: a lush Renassance-style painting of a naked woman gives way to stark sans-serif letters and modern-looking lines. Vignettes of a woman's online relationship give way to musings on her job. Originally published in the online version of Wired, of all things--I sometimes forget they do a decent job of profiling fiction and authors.
One of the good things about having an hour long commute to work is that I get time to read. A lot.
I often read the bad, free, daily paper; I amuse myself by pointing out typos and composing imaginary irate letters to the editor in my head. "Dear Editor, if that's what you call yourself: please never ever refer to anything ever again as "suped-up," or else I will personally bury your desk in Campbell's and wallpaper your office with Warhol lithographs until you can spell correctly."
I often read the excellent Weekly Dig (now with spiffyfun new and improved blog!). Though its Media Farm column is often spot-on in the fact that someone somewhere needs to criticize ineffectual and just plain stupid media pieces, I feel like their assertions are not always fully backed up with facts.
The rest of the paper, though, reads like it was written by Spider Jerusalem, so I'm happy.
I also occasionally find books I don't like: I tossed one, called "Healing the Child Within," in the trash. I thought it was just a psychology-for-the-layman book with a bad 70's cover that made it look New Agey, but it was a New-Agey book masquerading as psychology. Too Many Caps in a Sentence do not make your Concepts More Important.
Last books read: House of Leaves, Notes on a Lover's Discourse by Roland Barthes, Issue 16, I think, of the McSweeney's magazine The Believer, and I'm currently reading As Francesca, by Martha Baer. A little about each one:
House of Leaves
I wanted my thesis to be this book, but I didn't know it.
This is a fascinating book in that it is one of the only ones I've seen that's physically difficult to read. I had to intellectually figure out the correct direction to read at one point, force my brain into a different mold--and I didn't mind, because it was pointing out an important, fun thing about the text and illustrating the action at the same time. Not a small book, not an easy or nice book, but utterly fascinating. (Up and right-to-left, by the way, was the reading direction of that particular passage).
Oh, wow.
Passage.
Yet another pun I just caught up on. And I've been done with the thing for two days.
Notes on a Lover's Discourse
I say I don't like literary theory, but I lie. I really do like it. I like thinking about words, about how they're used, about how they're not used. This is an ideal book to get you to think about that in a particular case (that of love), and to get you to think about the topic generally and also in specific.
That being said, Barthes, for all his intellectual brilliance, seems like he was a very sad man.
The Believer August '06 Issue
I first got introduced to McSweeney's through the sestina section of their website (which is genius); then my girlfriend started subscribing to their magazine (they also produce books of a surpassing richness of design and sumptousness). I was particulary interested in an article (too short, alas) on animal stories for adults (Kipling, sometimes, Hemingway, Jack London, things such as that) and how we've been trained to think of these as juvenalia. Very interesting. Also a great article on undercover journalism in India.
As Francesca
A very strange little book. A quick read despite the beatiful, sometimes harsh, language. The cover art describes the book somewhat accurately: a lush Renassance-style painting of a naked woman gives way to stark sans-serif letters and modern-looking lines. Vignettes of a woman's online relationship give way to musings on her job. Originally published in the online version of Wired, of all things--I sometimes forget they do a decent job of profiling fiction and authors.
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House of Leaves
18/8/06 07:07 (UTC)Re: House of Leaves
19/8/06 23:56 (UTC)My copy is different from hers, though. I can tell you how tonight.