Avatar, I've tried to start the hero with a thousand faces several times, but find it too dry... or something, I just can't get into it although I know the basic premise and find it to be fascinating. Oh well it'll stay on the pile until i find it interesting... :m:
Ishmael- Daniel Quinn Citizen Kane so I can watch the movie seeing as how it's supposedly " the greatest film ever made. "
Just finished Phillip Dick's A Scanner Darkly. Fine, fine story. It's hard for me to do much of a review right now, since the tale is also one of several factors which have come together strangely right now and are causing me to reconsider my policies toward illicit drugs and also mental illness. Though it is officially outdated (set in 1994, I believe), the story remains relevant to drug use, abuse, and addiction today. I hear the movie was good, but I haven't seen it. Primal Scream's song of the same title, incidentally, is pretty cool. Sticking with the broodingly depressive, I'm onto Camus' The Stranger and The Fall. I've nothing to say on those titles at present; as much as I adore Camus' philosophical outlook, his stories are always a bit laborious since they chase after such large concepts. I also read Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation, and despite the fact that her writing style actually grates on me a little bit, it was a fun read. Anyone who thinks American politics is particularly disturbing today ought to remember that things really have been this way for a while. Vowell's book actually provides some interesting insight into that unfortunate truth.
Haven't read The Fall. I've read The Stranger and The Plague. I recommend The Plague. By the way, did you know his name is pronounced Camooo. Heh. Funny. Odd how funny words sound when you've built up a specific sound based on reading the word and then find out it's pronounced completely different. Camooooooo. Anyway. I'm reading A Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind by John Heil. It's written from a metaphysician's point of view and is thus not my cup of tea, but it does have some interesting facets and I promised someone I care deeply for that I'd read it. And I will. I'll milk it for every gemstone it might contain. But, the man seems to be a Dualist. Imagine that! I thought they were extinct.
I've got three on the go at present In Search of Schrodinger's kittens by John Cribbin (better and wierder than any SF), Tales from the Mabinogion and on a lighter note Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett!
I don't like these recent Dune books. When Frank Herbet died his son should have left the series alone. He spoilt a masterpiece of SF with his inadequate writing. I like Roger Penrose, his "Shadows of the Mind" is interesting, where he tries to put a Q Physics bent on Human Consciousness
The Runes of the Earth by Stephen R. Donaldson. A new Thomas Covenant trilogy. Woohoo!! I'm a bit late finding out about this one. White gold rules!
I'm mid-way through American Gods by Neil Gaiman---amazing writer, recently I also read Anansi Boys by the same author. I just finished A Short History Of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson---very highly recommended for a potted history of well, nearly everything!
Just finished: Truman, Margaret. Murder in the CIA. (Pub. info., who cares?) A twenty year-old murder-spy mystery. Ye gads! On the one hand, I tend to criticize the genre; to the other, I rarely read it. The book was given to me in a box purged from a neighbor's library. I decided to give it a read. Ms. Truman must have been signed for name recognition; it would be inaccurate to say she cannot write, since she obviously can undertake the function of writing. But the notion that this book was at one time a bestseller in the U.S. only testifies to the sad results of American literacy. I just don't get it; I refused to read Shatner's Tek- series, based not on the covers but on the first pages. This was worse than I expected of Captain Kirk. Ms. Truman's book serves me as a stern warning that the genre should be avoided strenuously. Television is better for the brain than this crap. Brust, Steven. Dzur. New York: TOR, 2006. Now here is a writer that can make a genre worth paying attention to. It's not that I have anything specifically against fantasy, but the genre usually doesn't suit me. Brust, however, is good enough to transcend such considerations; the guy can tell a story. And what a story it is. Those who have followed his Taltos cycle will not be disappointed. Teldra Lives! (And no, that's not spoiler info.) Currently reading: Kenan, Randall. Let the Dead Bury Their Dead. New York: Harvest, 1993. I'm reacquainting myself with this collection of linked short fiction. While the jacket copy compares the stories to Faulkner, I tend more toward Harper Lee and Alice Walker. Find it. Read it. Sublimely excellent. These are stories that turn fiction into a kind of heritage: no, you don't experience foreign lands reading adventure novels, but you do get a glimpse into the southern black experience (U.S.) that is not easily forgotten. Genuine, moving, artful.
Just finished: -- Old Twentieth, Joe Haldemann. Doesn't compare with his The Forever War (but does anything?) or his other semi-remarkable Camouflage. The twist at the end isn't really worth the drudging through historical snapshots that precedes it. An interesting conceit, but done better elsewhere. Currently reading: -- The Kite Runner, Amir Housseini. Picked this one up in tandem with the one above. So far, so good. Details the disruption of everyday life in Afghanistan during the (late?) 1970's til the present day, I believe. Though it's still early, there's echoes of The Power of One in the prose.
Mondays to fridays Nights : 1.)Bhagwad Gita (always read it, so yeah whatever) 2.)Upanishads by Easwaran (contains upanishads translation from sanskrit and corollaries from shankara's texts) 3.)Uddhav Gita (Most accurate translation to this date) Saturdays and Sundays 1.)Complete Plato Works ( currently on republic) Rick
