Bookshh...
I put this list of books together last night (just before watching "Finding Neverland" which was really good), and ordered them all at Watersones today (they actually had the top two in stock):
Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
Five Great Novels, Philip K Dick
Too Loud a Solitude, Bohumil Hrabal
We, Evgeny Zamiatin
Slowness, Milan Kundera
Farewell Waltz, Milan Kundera
I suppose I should have spent the vouchers on computer books or something? "Boorrr-iing!!" (in a Homer Simpson voice). Why read about computers when you can read about people? I'll be glad to add the two Kundera's to our collection, I'll only have "Laughable Loves" left to buy/read by him, then I've "read Kundera" (his fiction anyway). Have YOU read Kundera? (Asked in a Darren White tone of Voice, no disrespect Darren if you ever read this, perhaps I should say the "old" Darren?). I'm glad to add some more Sci-Fi classics to our collection too (did I say yesterday I was looking for true to life fiction? Well, that includes true to future-life fiction!); having read Slaughterhouse Five/Cats Cradle & Dr. Bloodmoney/The Man in the High Castle by Vonnegut/Dick respectively, I thought I'd purchase some other peoples recommendations by these guys (Amazon's good for that). So I'll finally get to READ Bladerunner...I'm reading Hrabal because he's Kundera's favourite (living) author and Zamiatin because apparently We was (not We were, strangely) a huge influence on Orwells' 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World, two favourites of mine. Mind you, that wasn't all the books on the list- I had to scratch the likes of The Master and Margarita, Ferdydurke and Flatland: I'll be scouring the second hand book shops for them though!(or at least abebooks.com).
I can't write out the whole piece, but suffice to say that I had to do some severe nipping of myself on the train back from Uni (to prevent the tears flowing), reading "A cream cracker under the settee" from "talking heads", easily the best (it's the last) monologue in there and too touching to describe: I put the book on Beckys pillow and said she must read it after she's finished her current book (Identity - Kundera).
Final Questions (answers at the bottom of the paragraph): If you've never been in a fight, or avoided them, are you a coward? Have you lived less? Is this Mans desire to fight someone or something for someone or something surfacing in me (at last)? Will Phil move away, will he really sever ties, familial and musical? And will I stop trying to notice "moments" worth remembering, being a self-tourist, snapping away with my memory instead of enjoying the moment and Remembering it later? A.K.A. the tourist who spends his holiday time "remembering" what's actually in front of him there and then, through his camera lens, thus precluding any full momentary and spontaneous enjoyment (venerating the image above the reality)? Is "I don't know" the answer to everything? Answers: (I wish it were possible to write upside-down in HTML) : I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
Five Great Novels, Philip K Dick
Too Loud a Solitude, Bohumil Hrabal
We, Evgeny Zamiatin
Slowness, Milan Kundera
Farewell Waltz, Milan Kundera
I suppose I should have spent the vouchers on computer books or something? "Boorrr-iing!!" (in a Homer Simpson voice). Why read about computers when you can read about people? I'll be glad to add the two Kundera's to our collection, I'll only have "Laughable Loves" left to buy/read by him, then I've "read Kundera" (his fiction anyway). Have YOU read Kundera? (Asked in a Darren White tone of Voice, no disrespect Darren if you ever read this, perhaps I should say the "old" Darren?). I'm glad to add some more Sci-Fi classics to our collection too (did I say yesterday I was looking for true to life fiction? Well, that includes true to future-life fiction!); having read Slaughterhouse Five/Cats Cradle & Dr. Bloodmoney/The Man in the High Castle by Vonnegut/Dick respectively, I thought I'd purchase some other peoples recommendations by these guys (Amazon's good for that). So I'll finally get to READ Bladerunner...I'm reading Hrabal because he's Kundera's favourite (living) author and Zamiatin because apparently We was (not We were, strangely) a huge influence on Orwells' 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World, two favourites of mine. Mind you, that wasn't all the books on the list- I had to scratch the likes of The Master and Margarita, Ferdydurke and Flatland: I'll be scouring the second hand book shops for them though!(or at least abebooks.com).
I can't write out the whole piece, but suffice to say that I had to do some severe nipping of myself on the train back from Uni (to prevent the tears flowing), reading "A cream cracker under the settee" from "talking heads", easily the best (it's the last) monologue in there and too touching to describe: I put the book on Beckys pillow and said she must read it after she's finished her current book (Identity - Kundera).
Final Questions (answers at the bottom of the paragraph): If you've never been in a fight, or avoided them, are you a coward? Have you lived less? Is this Mans desire to fight someone or something for someone or something surfacing in me (at last)? Will Phil move away, will he really sever ties, familial and musical? And will I stop trying to notice "moments" worth remembering, being a self-tourist, snapping away with my memory instead of enjoying the moment and Remembering it later? A.K.A. the tourist who spends his holiday time "remembering" what's actually in front of him there and then, through his camera lens, thus precluding any full momentary and spontaneous enjoyment (venerating the image above the reality)? Is "I don't know" the answer to everything? Answers: (I wish it were possible to write upside-down in HTML) : I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
posted by John Doran-Armstrong at 7:19 PM
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