Greg's Golden Treasury of Eyestrain

To date:

A Few Seconds of Panic
Polyphemus
Alan's War The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope
Burma Chronicles
Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?: 23 Questions from Great Philosophers
The Wasp Factory
The Beautiful Struggle
The Spiritual Tourist
The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East
Understanding Comics
City of Glass The Graphic Novel
Cults In Our Midst
Rum, Sodomy & the Lash (33 1/3)
The Borscht Belt
Science, Politics and Gnosticism
Myth and Reality
Every Force Evolves a Form
Feet of Clay
The structure of scientific revolutions
Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers
Nixonland
Truth About the Irish
The Ayatollah Begs to Differ
Moonshine
Noodling for flatheads
Something Wonderful Right Away
catapult: harry and I build a siege weapon
The Devil We Know
Your Name Here
A Childhood: A Biography of Place
The Wisdom of Doubt
Moral Minority
Patriotism and Other Mistakes
Imagined Communities
Marriage, a History
Boys on the Bus
Jesus Interrupted
Being Good: An Introduction to Ethics
Creationists
TWELVE YEARS An American Boyhood in East Germany
Veeps
On Being Certain
The Devil's Candy
The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China from the Bottom Up
Politics of the Governed
Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America-and Found Unexpected Peace
Inventing American History (Boston Review Books)
The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture
Cultural Amnesia
Occidentalism
Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years
The Waste Books
In Praise of Barbarians
Who Hates Whom
Fooled by Randomness
Rapture for the Geeks: When AI Outsmarts IQ
The Beats: A Graphic History
The Trouble with Testosterone
What's Next: Dispatches on the Future of Science
West of the West: West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders, and Killers in the Golden State
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
See No Evil
Raymond Roussel and the Republic of Dreams
Tales Designed to Thrizzle: Volume 1
The Practice of Everyday Life
I Killed: True Stories of the Road from America's Top Comics
Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes
Born Standing Up
Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America
Free: The Future of a Radical Price
And here's the kicker
Daddy's Boy
An Utterly Impartial History of Britain
David Bowie's Low (33 1/3)
R.E.M.'s Murmur (33 1/3)
Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss
Everybody Must Get Stoned
The Best of All Possible Worlds
Mr. Mike
101 Things I learned in architecture school
The National Lampoon Encyclopedia of Humor
complete stories of flannery o'connor
Bad Science
Selected Stories of Robert Walser
Republican Gomorrah
Modern Liberty
AdLand
Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye
R. Crumb's Book of Genesis
Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives
The Rings of Saturn
Book of Imaginary Beings
Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation
Logicomix
Top Secret: The Truth Behind Today's Pop Mysticisms
Bright Sided
In Defense of Lost Causes
Culture of Narcissism
The Madwoman's Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings
Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century
The Situationist International: A User's Guide
Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith
Childhood's End
20 Jazz Funk Greats (33 1/3)
The Chaos Scenario
The Night of the Gun
Hollywood's Hellfire Club: The Misadventures of John Barrymore, W.C. Fields, Errol Flynn and the Bundy Drive Boys
Moab is My Washpot

Great start of the year!! You're farther along than I -- hope you had more good ones than I did too!

Welcome to the group!

Welcome! Looks like a good list. How was Why is there something rather than nothing?

Thanks everyone!

@2: So far so good!

@4: I wish there had been more something. I like the author leszek Kolakowski quite a bit, but this seemed like, I dunno, a stocking-stuffer-type chapbook.

City of Glass: The Graphic Novel

(Do graphic novels count? I say mais oui.)

A TWOFER!

Understanding Comics and The Spiritual Tourist.

i think that puts me at nine?

a lot of folks put numbers before their books, it helps keep count. Others keep a running list in their first message... I try the number thing but keep messing up anyway :)

Thanks, suslyn. How's your reading year treating you?

Not great so far :( Thanks for asking!

I finished a book I've been dipping in and out of since just after Christmas: The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East. It's only a couple of hundred pages, but as a book it benefits from putting it back on the shelf and mulling over what Roy is talking about.

Roy's premise is not particularly startling on its surface, that the West is deeply unfamiliar with the complex political landscape in the Mid East. I think ROy's achievement is how thoroughly he tracks the various ideologies and constituencies competing with each other.

we have some readers here who are going swoop down on that one! Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Just finished Cults In Our Midst, and while the writing drove me up the wall at times, the content moved me. I'm going through a stint of trying to understand motivations in coercive movements; political, religious, psychological, etc.

I want to know what motivates the followers, but more so the leaders. What happens to a person that they can dismiss another person's humanity so utterly?

That's what I'm trying to understand.

Anyway, this book was more about victims of cults. It is heartbreaking to see the cognitive gymnastics that people can go through in their quest for happiness.

#13: What happens to a person that they can dismiss another person's humanity so utterly?

If we knew the answer to that, we would probably be able to understand sociopaths. The real tragedy is that we see the dismissal of another person's humanity on a daily basis any more.

On another note, Greg, I smile each time I see your thread name :)

Thanks suslyn.

To cleanse my palate after my dive into cults, I picked a short , quick book: Rum, Sodomy & the Lash (33 1/3) by Jeffrey T. Roesgen.

If you're not familiar with the 33 1/3 series, they are a series of monographs, each one focusing on a particular iconic (usually rock) album, in this case The Pogues' 1985 album "Rum, Sodomy and the Lash".

Each book has different author, so the series is pretty varied in quality and content.

The gimmick here is the story plugged between the critical analysis of the songs. The author pictures himself joining the Pogues on the 1816 cruise of the ill-fated Medusa, the sinking of which inspired Théodore Géricault's painting The Raft of the Medusa.

The Raft of the Medusa was in turned purloined to serve as the cover of this self same album, with the heads of victims switched out for the band members.

Hmm.

Sort of a cockamamie book.

Just started on The Borscht Belt by Joey Adams. Catskills hijinx await!

Add to the better-than-I-expected-file: The Borscht Belt, a breezy history of the Catskills Jewish resorts of the early to mid twentieth century.

Funny, with one liners that weave between the inspired and the shamelessly corny.

Moving on to, what? I think either Science, Politics and Gnosticism or Myth and Reality.

Great list of books. Do you recommend The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East to one of those undereducated Westerners who is interested on becoming a little more educated (namely me)?

>#18: Yes, although the author isn't a prose master by any stretch.

Another interesting author who deals in the demographics of the Middle East and is a much better stylist is an anthropologist named Fuad Khuri. I've read two of his books; Imams and Emirs which is more academic, and his wonderful, readable memoir Invitation to Laughter.

If I may be so bold, I would also recommend some of Bernard Lewis' books on the Middle East. His What Went Wrong? springs to mind.

#11 The Olivier Roy book sounds really good. I'll see if it's in the library (am on a book buying ban, with many exceptions that I make up as I go...).

#20 Ooh, Stasia, I have that one downstairs!! Thanks for bumping it!

#21: Cushla, I am on a book buying ban, too, and along with you, have many exceptions that I make up as I go, lol.

Science, Politics and Gnosticism

Another slim volume, all of 102 pages, though this one made my brain hurt a little bit.

Eric Voegelin was a conservative political philosopher who coined the phrase "To immanentize the eschaton", that is, to attempt to create heaven on earth.

Well, he's against it. He traces roots of various secular millenialist philosophies -- communism, nazism, fascism, and uh, liberal democracy (he was a grump) -- back to Gnosticism.

The world/nature is broken and perfectible, says the modern Gnostic, so let's fix it with this handy dandy totalist system I have created.

It's an interesting read if you're into that sort of thing.

My brain hurts just reading your review. I think I will give that one a pass, lol.

myth and reality

If you've the Saul Bellow novel Ravelstein, you've encountered Mircea Eliade. He made an appearance as Professor Grielescus, a Romanian professor with rumored past Nazi sympathies.

And Eliade did have some despicable skeletons in his closet, but he did have a brilliant mind for the history of religion. This book is about the blurring of myth and absolute truth in traditional societies. Not a lot of fireworks, but very interesting ideas.

Every Force Evolves a Form by Guy Davenport makes up for Eliade's dry style. This a collection of essays on art by cultural critic, poet, painter, professor Davenport. He's a wonderful writer, and each of the twenty short essays contained
herein are jam packed with amazing feats of prose and unexpected linking of ideas.

If you've ever seen any of James Burke's documentaries on the history of science , the effect is similar. Michel de Montaigne's kidney stones make an appearance, as well as W. H. Auden's idiosyncratic hygiene habits and the composer Pergolesi's dog, although it turns out to be someone else's dog entirely, namely Thomas Mann's daughter. If you have any stomach for art criticism, this is a fascinating book.

I may have to take my brain out and drop it in some coolant for a couple of days.

LOL I don't blame you -- hope nothing's permanently damaged ;->

Just a few calluses and general chafing.

Just finished Feet of Clay, which I enjoyed, and I'm now moving on to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I think I am subconsciously punishing myself for something hideous I did the past.

I think I am subconsciously punishing myself for something hideous I did the past.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions ought to do it! I read it a century ago and still remember it being dull as tombs.

Yes, I am eager for this particular paradigm to shift.

The structure of scientific revolutions is done. Not necessarily comprehended entirely, but it's done. This time I did it. I broke something. I hear some rattling around in there.

A slog through what seems like miles of thick ink with diamonds served up at regular intervals.

Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers

Ridiculously slim volume on Japanese aesthetics.

Nixonland. The sixties wasn't about Woodstock and the Constitution was a considered list of talking points instead of the law of the land by many, many people who should have known better.

An enlightening, if depressing book.

#33: I may tackle that one later this year, but not anytime soon. Too much else on my plate at the moment, but I was glad to see your take on it. I have heard a lot of good things about the book.

The Truth About the Irish. Just finished.

Just finished a great book, The Ayatollah Begs to Differ. Written by a Iranian American journalist, is a tour of the Iranian republic with an emphasis on how ordinary people actually live, how different constituencies jockey for power, and perhaps most interestingly, how Iranian society is shaped by Shia fatalism and Persian sensibilities and how that make Iran an outsider nation even in the midst of the Islamic world.

It's wonderfully clear, personable, and occasionally funny book. As someone who is woefully ignorant about Iran, this was a great first dip in the pool.

>36 gregtmills:: sounds really interesting - I still haven't got round to Reading Lolita in Tehran (although it is at the top of one of the stacks), and I guess this might make an interesting companion. On the wishlist...

>35 gregtmills: Was The Truth About the Irish funny as promised?

>38 suslyn: It was sort of funny. Not laugh out loud, but charming.

A twofer! Noodling for Flatheads and Moonshine two great books that I read back to back in a frenzy of eyestrain.

Noodling For Flatheads is a quick survey of Southern folk traditions by an interpid German American journalist. Covered are the pleasures of squirrel brains, competitive marbles and noodling, the practice of catching giant rutting male catfish using only the human arm and a meathook. Really good quick read.

Moonshine is an all time classic of long form journalism. Alec Wilkinson (who also wrote a great memoir of being a small town policeman on Cape Cod -- Midnights) speads time shadowing a modern day revenue agent, the inimitable Garland Bunting, as he fights moonshine in the South Carolina of the mid-eighties.

It's a stunning book that I finished in one sitting. Really wonderful and funny.

Adding The Ayatollah Begs to Differ, Noodling for Flatheads, and Moonshine to my list. Thanks for the recs!

#40: I definitely have to find Noodling for Flatheads - my husband tries to get me to realize the nutritional merits of squirrels brains, which he grew up eating, and I continue to resist :)

Both of Wilkinson's books look good, too, so I will try and track them down as well.

Something Wonderful Right Away is an oral history of the years of the Compass Players and the Second City, the improv troupe that birthed Saturday Night Live, SCTV, and various members of the Christopher Guest universe.

It's interesting to see these brand name comedians and comedic actors talk about the craft of comedy as a subset of theater, rather than a distinct art form. It struck me that in today's comedic landscape, the standup comedian approaches comedy from a different, more pragmatic perspective than the people witnessing in this book.

Pretty good read. Parts are laugh out loud funny.

Here's some more:
catapult: harry and I build a siege weapon
The Devil We Know
Your Name Here

A Childhood: a Biography of Place

I started grumbling but I ended up loving this. I've read Harry Crews novels, and generally like them, and this attempt at autobiography was recommended by a writer friend.

The first few pages read as kudzu-thick Southern Gothic, a genre I don't have much patience for, but it eventually settled into a groove that was gripping. It's filled with the horrors of a mid-century rural life in the pine country of Georgia, a place which by any measure can't support a rural life.

It's amazing that as a country we are only a few generations out from the sort of deprivation depicted here.

I neglected three books mentioned above.

Catapult: Harry and I build a siege weapon is a funny book about two underemployed friends living in San Francisco who set out to build a working catapult. The book is interspersed with historical anecdotes. It's pretty fun.

The Devil We Know is a fairly dry, though well-argued book about the modern state of Iran. The author, an CIA-analyst turned journalist, argues that Iran has successfully transitioned from a chaotic revolutionary state to a modern state, acting on "rational" motives (I'm not a big fan of the idea that states act rationally, but no matter). He furthermore states that for the first time in history Shiism is on the acendency in the greater Gulf region, Iran being the only stable state of consquence in the area. We should deal with them now, rather than later. Makes sense, I say.

Your Name Here
John Ashbery can be difficult to get through. I spent an unsuccesful summer trying to get through his Flowchart: A Poem years ago (I learned I was not a fan of poems that require book marks).

This collection was pretty good, however. He seemed more personal and less willfully obscure than I felt his poems I read in the past were. Occasionally very illuminating.

lol... love the title for your thread, "Golden Treasury of Eyestrain."

@47 thekoolaidmon

I remember as a kid having several books around the house that were "Golden Treasury"s of something. And they were always crappy.

OMG! I have those in my library, too. I inherited them from my mom when she sold her northern house. I've never read them, though.

The Wisdom of Doubt

A sledgehammer apologia for skepticism.

Moral Minority -- A book about how the founding fathers were steeped in Enlightenment values, and as such had deeply ambivalent feeling toward organized faith. It's book that recovers well tread ground, but it still offers up little gems that bring the traits of Jefferson, Adams, Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, et al. down to human scale. These were busy, curious, ambitious men with little time for false piety. I enjoyed it.

Patriotism, and Other Mistakes is a collection of very, very dense essays, usually defending the dignity and realness of the individual against various group identities and imagined communities. I enjoyed the ideas very much. The prose? Meh.

Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century

This is a re-read of a book I read fifteen years ago, and damn if I don't remember it being as bizarre as it seemed this time around. Geil Marcus is a rock critic and musicologist who has whipped together a strange history that intertwines the fates of various European avant garde art movements (especially Dada and Situationalism) and Anglo-Saxon pop culture (Punk, Elvis, Doo-Wop), and claims to find their common roots in apocalyptic Anabaptist communes of the 16th Century.

Like I said, it's bizarre.

But it's also weirdly inspiring in its audacity

Imagined Communities Great book about the causes of the sudden and universal rise of the nation state. His main assertion is that nations are the product of the collective imaginations of the people who perceive themselves as members of any given state.

He traces the causes variously to the rise of vernacular languages, the discrediting of divine dynastic rule and the successful model of the early post-colonial American nations (according to Anderson, the first modern nations).

I've probably made it sound boring, but Anderson can be witty and he frequently wanders off into brief, fascinating asides.

greg, at least to me, you didn't make the book sound boring. i've heard of this book before but thanks for bringing it to my attention again. got to look out for a copy. the subject seems really fascinating. does he also discuss the role of religion in the rise of nation states? i'm now reading the Pakistan section of V.S. Naipaul's Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples and from what you mention about Anderson's thesis, it seems to apply in this country's case though the driving factor was religion.

#56: He does, soft of. He talks about the decline of Latin as the administrative language of Europe due to the Reformation and the rise of localized presses.

He also points out that that religious language creates intimate groupings that extend past national boundaries, in Islam for example, or the universal Church.

But, other than that, he doesn't get into religious considerations.

I'd be interested in reading that Naipaul book.

Beyond Belief is a follow-up to a Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey, which he wrote 17 years earlier (in 1979). in Beyond Belief, he visits the same 4 countries he went to earlier: Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia where he continues to explore the theme of conversion through the stories of the converted. he poses an interesting and controversial thesis, that in the Islam of converted countries, there is an element of neurosis and nihilism. the Pakistan section shows this more clearly than the other stories. certainly well worth the read.

Beyond Belief looks really fascinating. I checked it out on Amazon and Daniel Pipes only gave it three stars, so it must be good!

It's funny, because in Imagined Communities, Anderson spends a lot of time talking about the creation of Indonesia (his speciality) and spends a few pages imagining the discomfort an Indonesian patriot of Islamic faith might have with the some of the Buddhist and Hindu nationalist iconography of Indonesia, like the Borobudur.

Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage

Crammed full of interesting facts, but light on thesis. Wish it was chewier.

Boys on the Bus is an in-depth, often funny, look at the hardened core of political reporters on the road in the campaign bus during the 1972 presidential campaign.

This is during the era of the teletype and correspondents fighting over hotel payphones so they can file their sometime content free observations of the campaign.

They are drunk, they are tired, and they fighting over resources, ideas, and time. It's everything wrong with pack journalism from the early years of the information age.

What's interesting is seeing how grab-ass and quaint the machinations of both the politicians and journalists of those days are compared to the sleek and fatuous haircuts we tolerate these days. These guys where the high cynics of the era, yet they were passionate and artful.

Robert Novak, Haynes Johnson, David Broder, Hunter S. Thompson as well as Richard M. Nixon and George McGovern all make appearances.

Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them)

Full disclosure: I am not a New Atheist, an Old Atheist, or a Middle-Aged Atheist.

I guess you could say I'm a theological non-cognitivist. Arguing theology is largely besides the point. But that's me.

I've been reading some of the recent glut of atheist apologia lately, and I've enjoyed some of it, though I think globally the various authors could benefit from a little detached Humean irony. Less fire and brimstone, you know?

Anyway, this is an interesting about a very specific topic: the incoherence of the bible. Ehrman, a professor of religious studies, makes an interesting point again and again. The historic bible he depicts in his book isn't anything new to biblical scholars. The problems and issues he discusses are known to pastors.

He does a pretty good job of drawing the lay reader into the basics of historic-critical analysis of the bible. I wish the book read a little less forensically.

Being Good: An Introduction to Ethics

This is the third book I've read by Simon Blackburn and I have to say I've enjoyed each one.

Blackburn is an academic philosopher who also writes accessible, conversational books for plebs like me.

This book isn't a hardcore introduction to capital-E ethics, nor is it a history lesson, like a Will Durant (thankfully!). Rather it's a book that designed to get a soul thinking about the basic issues around how we should live and treat each other and ourselves and why.

Blackburn reads like a very, very interesting and engaging conversation you might have with a smart neighbor. He is very clear and precise, and assumes you have a functioning brain that can stand a little flexing.

It's one of those books that makes me want to read MORE books. That's a good kind of book.

#63: It's one of those books that makes me want to read MORE books. That's a good kind of book.

The very best kind of book!

Hmm... a very, very interesting ethics book, you say? I may have to track it down. I quite enjoy ethics books that spark conversations AND that are written by people with half a brain. There are too many "just be nice to everyone" type of 'ethics' texts out there!

>62 gregtmills: have you read Terry Eagleton's (Yale UP) Terry lectures? Published in the UK next month - Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. Looks interesting, not least because Eagleton is an atheist who can't abide Dawkins, which makes for an explosive mix.

I like reading Eagleton, though he can aggravating. Is he an atheist? I thought he was some sort ideosyncratic Marxist Catholic. ANyway, he been having a lot of fun as of late at the expense of "Ditchens" as calls Dawkins and Hitchens.

I'd be eager to check out that book.

The Creationists: Selected Essays: 1993-2006

Perfectly pleasant collection of essays by E.L. Doctorow. I will forget having read this.

>67 gregtmills:, now that you say that, hmm - I'd always just assumed he was an atheist, on the grounds that he is always described as a 'Marxist' over here, and Marx and religion, as I understand it, were not easy bedfellows. He does get stuck into Dawkins on a fairly regular basis, and I'd always thought it was for intellectual sloppiness rather than anything more parochial.

My husband read the first chapter and pronounced it good (he's much more clued up on the whole debate than me.)

TWELVE YEARS An American Boyhood in East Germany

Written by James Agee's son, who's mother took up with a hack East German party scribe and novelist and took him along. This is a lovely memoir of growing up an American kid on the periphery of the East German cultural elite during the Cold War. There isn't a lot of politics here, other than of the interpersonal variety.

Agee recounts being horny, bored in school and ping-ponging around various jobs, familiar enough stuff in memoirs of young manhood, but made alien enough through the refraction of Communism and the rawness of German history to keep the book fresh and slightly disorienting.

I forgot to add Veeps, a very amusing and silly book that I read on the train over the past week.

#70: That one looks pretty good. I will add it to the Continent!

On Being Certain

A neuralogist argues that feeling of knowing is a mental and physiological state rather than evidence of the state of the world.

Pretty neat little book, crystalizing ideas in Wittgenstein, Lakoff and McGin.

</em> Fascinating... I'm always intrigued by the exact definition of reality, and your "feeling of knowing" is along the same lines. Is reality the evidence of the world as defined by our 5 senses? Or is it more? Does it shift? is it based on a mental and physiological understanding that makes it different for each individual.

I'll have to look into On Being Certain, looks like a good bit of eyestrain ;-)

edited to add: Couldn't close the open scripting. It's neither nor .

</i>
Killing the permanent italics. There seems to be a rash of this today.

The Devil's Candy

Intermittently interesting behind the scenes look at the production of the film version of The Bonfire of the Vanities.

The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China from the Bottom Up Liao Yiwu is a poet (one who has gotten into no small trouble in China for his pointed writing), though in this book he takes the role of the Studs Terkel of China, interviewing misfits, outsiders and invisible people in China (very moving interview of a father of a student killed in Tiananmen Square). Pretty amazing book, but since I'm not that versed in Chinese history, some of it goes over my head. The eponymous interview is very strange and eerie, and it's stayed with me since I read it. Someone needs to make a movie from it.

The Politics of the Governed by Partha Chatterjee

A collection of essays dealing with how new conceptions of democracy and governmentality are emerging in the post-colonial. He argues that as new governmental institutions evolve to administer in new democracies, it is often at odds with the democratic aspirations of the governed masses.

The essays vary in technical depth and as my technical depth is roughly that of a puddle of spilt milk on the kitchen floor, I was frequently out of mine.

That said, when I could follow what was being discussed, I enjoyed it.

#77: The Corpse Walker looks very good. I will see if I can find a copy. Thanks for the recommendation!

#79 Of course! it's a very readable book.

Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America-and Found Unexpected Peace

A believing L.A. Times religion reporter loses his faith by reporting on... religion.

Inventing American History

William Hogeland isn't a historian by training. I guess you could say he's the Malcolm Gladwell of history -- a populizer with an occasional axe to grind. He released a book about the Whiskey Rebellion that has generated a little bit of controversy over the author's methodology.

But that's not the book I'm talking about here. Inventing American History is slim little volume, three historical essays that explore the delta between how history is portrayed in popular forms -- museums, PBS-type documentaries and opinion journalism -- and the gritty facts that make historical events noteworthy in the first place.

Pretty okay over all; my favorite essay compares the hagiography of Pete Seeger and Bill Buckley -- two ideological icons who both held and espoused anti-democratic views during their careers, views that were subsequently overlooked in the popular narratives.

The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture

Okay, I sort of ended up with this one in a roundabout way.

At my last on-site freelance assignment, there is a pretty good little bookstore nearby where'd I'd peruse the shelves during my lunch break.

I was poking around in the philosophy section, looking at shelf after shelf of books whose titles I couldn't understand when I came across something called Slavoj Zizek presents Mao: On Practice and Contradiction. I'm a begrudging fan of Zizek, mainly because he can be funny and he's as pragmatic as a crazed Marxist can get, and I'd imagine he'd have an interesting take on Mao.

I pick up the volume, and I see that all Zizek did was write an introductory essay to Mao's On Practice and Contradiction. And who the hell wants to read Mao?

So I note the title of Zizek's essay "Mao Zedong: The Marxist Lord of Misrule" and decide to Google it when I get back to the office. Sure enough, it's there in it's entirety. I print up for the train ride home.

Interesting essay. Lays the foundation for an expensive future visit to Amazon. But one strange little passage sticks with me (Read it. It's long but weird):

"Mao's speculations closely echo the so-called "bio-cosmism," the strange combination of vulgar materialism and Gnostic spirituality which formed occult shadow-ideology, the obscene secret teaching, of the Soviet Marxism. Repressed out of the public sight in the central period of the Soviet state, bio-cosmism was openly propagated only in the first and in the last two decades of the Soviet rule; its main theses are: the goals of religion (collective paradise, overcoming of all suffering, full individual immortality, resurrection of the dead, victory over time and death, conquest of space far beyond the solar system) can be realized in terrestrial life through the development of modern science and technology. In the future, not only will sexual difference be abolished, with the rise of chaste post-humans reproducing themselves through direct bio-technical reproduction; it will also be possible to resurrect all the dead of the past (establishing their biological formula through their remains and then re-engendering them - at that time, DNA was not yet known...), thus even erasing all past injustices, "undoing" past suffering and destruction."

WHAT. THE. FONZI.?

COSMISM! Sound like a worthy candidate for my book buying dollars! Red zombies!

Now, it just so happens about a year ago I went through a Stalinism phase, because who hasn't, right? (Note: I was not an actual Stalinist. I was just interested in that period in Russian history, okay?) One of the books I picked up was a strange, very interesting book called New Myth, New World From Nietzsche to Stalinism, which made that case that Soviet ideology in the twenties and thirties ripped off a lot of ideas from Nietzsche, while at the same time holding him up as reactionary boogie man. (In the same order I also picked up the excellent Everyday Stalinism. If you're interested in Russian or Soviet history, this is a good 'un.)

Amazon very thoughtfully recommended The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture when I was purchasing my crazy Nietzche book (same author!), and the name stuck with me (I didn't buy it at the time because it seemed creepy and I had yet to stumble across the madness that is Cosmicism).

So I Googled The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture and did a search of the index, and yep, you got your dang Cosmicism right 'chair. So I bought it.

And it's good! It's a multi-disciplinary collection of essays by various scholars and it traces different aspects of Soviet ideology, philosophy of science, and aesthetics to different strains of pre-revolutionary Russian folk mysticism, Theosophy, masonry, Mysticism, etc.

Funny how the mind wanders, isn't it?

Cultural Amnesia

Clive James is smarter than me. I learned this over a three month period, nibbling at this doorstop of erudition, a collection of 110 essays about various personalities from (mostly 20th century Western) history. It one of those books everyone should read from time to time, just to allow for some perspective: there are people you and I have never heard of whose legacies are being passionately debated by somebody somewhere in the world.

The questions haven't been answered, they have barely been formulated. That's why it's exciting to be alive. That's why a bookshelf of unread books gives me butterflies.

That's fifty titles for 2009. Now I've six months to get to 75.

#84: That's one I have been reading off-and-on in chunks. I have made it up to the Ks. One of these days I will actually finish it!

Congratulations on making it to 50!

You read such intellectually stimulating books, and I'm over here reading stuff like Goblins! and You Suck... you're making me feel dumb! LOL... Maybe I should brain up a little and dig Team of Rivals out of the back of Mt. TBR. You know, just to read a smart book.

Congrats on book 50, you're a bit ahead of me, I think I'm on book 42 right now. ;-)

alcottacre -- It was my go-to book for bedtime. Five chapters a night. Not every night, mind you. There were plenty of nights I was watching COPS.
And thanks for the congrats!

thekoolaidmom -- Believe me, sometimes I have hankering for something dumb. I'm turning forty this year (in three weeks!), so I made a deal with myself to make my reading count this year. I don't know what it's counting towards, necessarily, but I've learned a lot and reevaluated a lot of my assumptions about stuff.

But, yeah, I keep drifting over to that John Hodgeman book.

Thanks for the congrats!

Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies

The "West" in this case being liberal democracy and Enlightenment values. The authors trace the history of anti-liberalism through Imperial Japan, Germany, Russia, Zionism and various strains of Islamism. Interesting book.

Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years by former Monty Python member Michael Palin.

Thick book, a bit too diary-like for me. (I mean, it says it in the title, right? But I've read two other diaries by other entertainers and quite liked them: With Nails by Richard E. Grant and Year with swollen appendices by Brian Eno.) Lots of details about lunch. Ho-hum.

Hi, I was thinking of picking up Nails by Richard E. Grant good to know it was enjoyable.

The Waste Books

The Waste Books is a collection of aphorisms by Georg Lichtenberg, 18th C. German natural philosopher. Sometimes clever, sometimes funny, occasionally profound.

in Praise of Barbarians

Disappointed. Mike Davis wrote the excellent City of Quartz, a Marxist historical, economic, and cultural dissection of Los Angeles, particular around issues of development and landownership. It's a great book of urban sociology.

This book is a collection of inelegant essays on various topic regarding American foreign and labor policy, and his style here is very shrill and screedy. A lot of sentimentality about 20th century Progessivism and socialism that is embarrassing to read. I'm not a knee-jerk anti-Marxist or anti-socialist, but the stuff here is just so bloody polemical. I'd like to hear you ideas, Mr. Davis, but your Wobblie persona wears a little thin.

#91: I hope your next read is better for you, Greg.

I want to thank you for your recommendation of the Harry Crews book, A Childhood: The Biography of a Place. I enjoyed it very much.

Who Hates Whom

Cheeky, informative and as breezy as you can be when talking about armed conflict.

#93: That one looks interesting. Thanks for the recommendation.

Fooled by Randomness

The Black Swan is an expansion of the ideas first posited in this volume. Good.

Fooled by Randomness looks very interesting. I'm afraid it would be over my head though...

Rapture for the Geeks: When AI Outsmarts IQ
The Beats: A Graphic History
The Trouble with Testosterone
What's Next: Dispatches on the Future of Science

#97: What's Next: Dispatches on the Future of Science looks interesting. What did you think of it?

I liked it. A few of the essays have appear on Edge.org, which is a great site. Very thought provoking stuff.

#99: I will check out the book and the website. Thanks!

Have you read any of the other Edge.org books?

Yeah, I think I have three of them. I really enjoy them, though I wish there was a little bit more attention put into the design of them

I wonder how many of the 75erati read The Edge? It's one of the few sites I've checked in on for years. Most others I stop visiting after awhile. I have What's Next on order and should get to it this year. Rapture for the Geeks sounds good also. Thanks for the mention.

West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders, and Killers in the Golden State

A pretty good overview of the politics and little cultures of my crazy, messed up state. The flattest piece is about my hometown of Berkeley. He comes looking for 1966 and when he doesn't find it he gets churlish. Other than that, he does a good job of shining light into the corners of California you don't here much about.

The Cathedral and the Bazaar A selection of essays about the Open Source movement and hacker culture. Interesting as a history and anthropology, but golly the author is dry.

See No Evil Great rock 'em sock 'em memoir of a CIA man in the Middle East. He has serious grievances with the agency. The film Syriana was partial inspired by this book.

I just finished Raymond Roussel and the Republic of Dreams. He was a very strange man, a loony whose texts fell into the right hands at the right time. Influenced the Surrealists, the Dadaists, Georges Perec and the Oulipo group.

Sort of a Huysmans-like character but wackier.

I like reading about real people of whom I have never heard, and Raymond Roussel fits firmly in that camp. Thanks for the recommendation - I will look for the book.

Tales Designed to Thrizzle: Volume 1 An anthology of Tales Designed to Thrizzle, a bull dada comic book of the first order. It made me laugh out loud in sections, though I'd hesitate to offer an unqualified recommendation. The humor is goony, surreal and occasionally mildly scatological. Which is fine for me, because I'm a no-class bum.

The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel de Certeau a tough book sprinkled with little diamonds of genius. Certeau proposes to examine how mass culture filters down to individuals, and how individuals repurpose the representations that institutions deem to impose upon them.

Certeau is not interested in thinking and intent of the people who built the sidewalk, but how other people, the end-users, actually end up using it.

Full of brilliant insights, if you're willing to hunt.

The Practice of Everyday Life sounds interesting, Greg. Another one for Planet TBR!

Boom, boom, boom. Just like that. Three comedy-related books in quick succession:

I Killed: True Stories of the Road from America's Top Comics
Anecdotes of various stripes about going on as a working comic. I'm fascinated by stand-up comedy. It's the last bit of seat of the pants showbiz we have left. I appreciate that good comedians are experimenters and scientists, testing and retesting jokes, colors of deliver, postures, pauses -- brave folks. The life style is punishing, the worst parts of traveling salesman and thespian rolled up into one obsessive ball. Anyway, I enjoyed this.

Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes
A slim, fascinating survey of the joke, from the earliest recorded joke to the the anthologists and joke writers of the 20th century. Renaissance Italians were big on fart jokes, apparently. He ventures a theory of jokes, that they are sort of a curious expression of some sort of stress relieving adaptation, a come down from a stressful event. Mmmm.

Born Standing Up
Steve Martin's stand-up memoir. Pretty good. He's not sentimental about about his life in the comedy trenches. One of the better entertainment memoir I've read.

Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America

A short polemical essay telling Americans to seize the moment and view our current upheaval as an opportunity to reset our priorities. I partially agree with it, that we are living through a historical pivot point, but I'm not quite as optimistic. I think a lot of people are going to be displaced in their lives by new technologies and a new libertarian-tinged pragmatism that the empowered classes are taking up. I do think America will end up on her feet again, but it's going to be a different place, with a more entrepreneurial work force, and less loyalty to institutions.

Free: The Future of a Radical Price

Chris Anderson is a great business journalist. In this book, he investigates the implications of the Free model: businesses offering goods and services for nothing (or, pretty close to nothing. Librarything for example).

It's fine book, though my one complaint is it ignored one fruitful vein of investigation (well, a vein that appears fruitful to me): areas of the digital life where the financial motive is ignored all together, such as blogs, open source, etc.

For that, Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody does a fine job, and sociologist Lars Qvortrupt's technical book The Hypercomplex Society goes to amazing depths to explore the implications of our increasingly complex community grids. But Chris Anderson handles the business implications of our wired world admirably.

And Here's the Kicker Great collection of interviews of iconic comedy writers. Not a funny book (though it has it's moments) but rather a book of trade secrets, working methods, and philosophies of humor. I'd recommend this one.

An Utterly Impartial History of Britain: (or 2000 Years of Upper Class Idiots in Charge) Pleasantly idiotic mostly correct history of Britain. Funny.

Daddy's Boy Chris and Bob Elliot's answer to Mommy Dearest, where Chris Elliot (Late Night With David Letterman) exposes the sordid Elliot family secrets (all fake), with rebuttals from his dad Bob Elliot (from the comedy team Bob and Ray). It's stupid, but that's what I expected. I did laugh.

Looks like you have had some good laughs lately, Greg!

I have alcottacre! We're on vacation in Cape Cod this week, and I've been reading less chewy stuff. I'm also 3 books out from 75! After that, comic books and wrestling mags until January.

Vacation in Cape Cod sounds wonderful! I hope you enjoy your stay.

Thanks for warning about the wrestling mags. I can therefore skip your thread after you hit 75 (an early congratulations BTW), since I have no interest whatsoever in wrestling :)

David Bowie's Low (33 1/3) A short monograph on David Bowie's 1976 album Low.

It's a strange album, with nothing like the histrionics you'd find on most of Bowie's other work, and I've long been fascinated by it. It's an introspective album, fully half of which is instrumentals, and with the remaining songs barely featuring lyrics.

This book goes into the particulars of Bowie's pysche at the time and he was in a very fragile spot indeed.

R.E.M.'s Murmur (33 1/3) Another volume in the 33 1/3 series. Here the author places R.E.M.'s first studio album (back when you couldn't understand what Michael Stipe was singing. That's the R.E.M. I like) in the context of the Southern Gothic tradition, hauling out some Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor mentions in the process.

And that, chums, is 75. Adieu, and good luck!

Congratulations, Greg! I hope you join us again next year.

Thanks!

Congrats!

Congrats on reaching your goal! I'll miss your intensely intellectual reads. :)

Dr. Neutron and All These Darn Books --

Thanks!

I'm going to rest my brain for a while. I have to sort out what I read in the past eight months.

The sad thing is I'm on vacation but I know there's a stack of Amazon boxes waiting for me when I get home. Does it ever end?

#123: Does it ever end?

Not if you're lucky, it doesn't!!

Congrats on the 75!

Thank you, Ms. Flossie.

Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss is an autobiography by Tom Davis of Franken and Davis. He seems to have liked drugs quite a bit.

I love your wry, succinct reviews. :)

Everybody Must Get Stoned I debated even posting this one, since to say it's a book to "read" stretches the definition of the verb "to read" to a shape that renders it useless.

It's a book of notated lists chronicling the drug habits of various rock stars, the sort of lists I used to make back when I was stoned a lot.

It had it's mildly amusing moments, though I spotted a few factual about various stoned rockers. (The band Hawkwind isn't German!). Nothing here that hasn't been obsessively covered to the point of explosive nausea by the nerdier rock magazines like Mojo.

There is a bigger problem for me, other than the author's sloppiness (was he high?), was the fact that other people's drug experiences, like the strange dreams they had the night before, or their sexual peccadillos, usually make for boring copy.

It was a tough ninety minutes, let me tell you.

The Best of All Possible Worlds

This is a tough order; a survey of the quest for "The Best of All Possible Worlds" from a (mostly) mathematical perspective. Beginning with Galileo and meandering through Descartes, Leibniz, Maupertuis (who has a big part in this narrative), Voltaire, on up to Poincare and beyond.

Now, I'm not a math guy. That said, Ekeland does a pretty good job of translating mathematical principles to prose.

Fascinating and mentally exhausting.

#130: That one looks like one for me to find, math geek that I am. Thanks for the recommendation.

Mr. Mike : The Life and Work of Michael O'Donoghue The Man Who Made Comedy Dangerous

Biography of Michael O'Donoghue, a comedy writer who had notorious stints at National Lampoon (as a founding editor) and Saturday Night Live. He had a self-consciously black humor and was responsible for a lot the darker stuff that appear on the first few seasons of SNL.

It's pretty apparent that the author has a man-crush on O'Donoghue, excusing a lot of idiotic behavior that on the page just looks childish, but other than that, a pretty interesting book. Lots of interesting details about the runnings of National Lampoon and SNL.

101 things I learned in architecture school

Attractive little book that touches on aesthetics, the creative process, practical tips for creative professionals and other, more esoteric things. I'm not an architect but there were a few things in there that I cribbed for my latest work project.

The National Lampoon Encyclopedia of Humor

This was marketed back in the mid-seventies as sort of an ultimate issue of National Lampoon. It's original material rather than an anthology of stuff that previously ran in the magazine.

It's in amazingly bad taste. Of course there were parts where I laughed out loud. I dunno, sometimes I just respond to black humor.

>133 gregtmills: this book seems to be uber cool amongst web geeks at the moment - everyone was quoting from it at a conference I went to back in June, and one speaker even based his entire presentation around it. Looked nicely presented too.

It is a handsome little book. I can see how web geeks would taken with it. There are some nice parallels with UI and all that crud.

the complete stories of flannery o'connor

Took a while, but I put this one to bed last night.

It's medium thick, but the stories seems to need some space between them.

I loved it, though most of the stories were bruised as hell, with no one understanding themselves, the world, or each other.

I've just started reading a collection of essay by Walker Percy, and he writes about the same things. O'Connor just shows them.

#137: I have read a couple of Walker Percy's books, but no essays. What are you reading?

Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies

Fun, interesting reference work to everybody's favorite paranoids.

Bad Science A pretty thorough rootering of health fads and silly nonsense, written by an English G.P.

>140 gregtmills: Ben Goldacre is a public service. Still haven't read the book (my bro bought it me for Christmas last year, bad Floss) but I love his Bad Science columns, and he's on the radio all the time over here arguing with ill-informed government ministers and lethally stupid journalists and PRs. The world needs more of him.

>141 FlossieT: And he's funny.

Selected Stories of Robert Walser

Swiss author, wrote fine little miniatures, some only a page or half a page long.

Wasn't a story writer, or rather, a larger story was implied by the actions of his characters.

Very beautiful, with amazing turns of phrase.

#143: That one looks good. On to Planet TBR it goes!

>143 gregtmills: Cushla (cmt) was looking for Swiss writers - sounds like this might make a good rec. for her...

Republican Gomorrah

A history of the evangelical movement's involvement with the Republican party. Very interesting.

Modern Liberty

A classical liberal legal scholar's exploration of the tension between liberty and equality.

Hi Greg - the book by Robert Walser looks good! I'm on the lookout for Swiss recs because we're moving there at the end of the year, and I'm trying to soak up the kulcha. So far I'm doing better at writing down lists of books...

Republican Gomorrah has just gone onto the TBR pile too.

>149 cushlareads: I just order a novel by Walser, called The Tanners. It follows the adventures of four siblings in Switzerland, and it's supposed to be "funny". We'll see.

AdLand

A pretty decent -- if a bit light -- memoir of a man who successfully escaped my idiotic profession.

Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye

So continues my fascination with pre-Fox news American conservatism. I don't where I get it from, as I'm not particularly conservative, but I am fascinated by old guard conservatives. Maybe because they took pride in arguing their points with class, wit and irony. (They also had their own loathsome moments, like Bill Buckley invoking white supremacy in an editorial supporting segregation in the National Review. And the John Birch Society was simply a coven of conspiracy theory loons.)

Probably because of people like Florence King. She was/is an openly bisexual atheist Southerner who was skeptical of populism and anti-intellectualism, and she's very funny.

R. Crumb's Book of Genesis

A beautiful, touchingly faithful graphic adaption of Genesis. Crumb doesn't stray from the text, and as such it's not a kiddie book. There is nudity and gore. There was a lot of begatting going on back then.

Sum

Interesting sort of post-modern fiction in which various possible afterlives are posited. Reminds me of a lesser Calvino or Borges. Amusing.

#154: Sum looks interesting. I will give it a shot. Thanks for the mention, Greg.

The Rings of Saturn

A memoir of an anonymous German walker's (who maybe W.G. Sebald) tour of East Anglia. He ruminates on many things -- the natural history of the herring, the writing of Thomas Browne, English eccentrics -- and relates meetings of various strange people met on his wanderings.

It is very odd and sad, full of images of decay.

I enjoyed it quite a bit.

#156: Looks like something I would enjoy. Thanks for the recommendation, Greg.

Book of Imaginary Beings

A fairly straight miscellany of fantastical creatures, written and edited with restraint by the Fantastical Being himself, Jorge Luis Borges.

If it is Borges, I must read it. Thanks for the mention!

Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation

Great, fun book about the surprisingly influential history of esoterica in the Republic -- Theosophy, Christian Science, Spiritualism and the like.

#160: The reviews on that one seem to be all over the place. I may give it a look to see what I think. Thanks for the mention!

#161: I think it's more entertaining than anything else. There are a couple of chapters that are spellbinding, but mostly it does seem like a greatest hits collection. There are also whole areas of uniquely American mystic thought he missed -- not that I'm any great mystic or seeker, I'm not -- but there's really weird stuff I've read about in my promiscuous reading career that I'd like to know more about that didn't make it into this book.

#162: Thanks for the additional info, Greg.

Logicomix

Page turning graphic novel about Bertrand Russell's work on the Mathematica Principia. No, really!

#164: I have got to find a copy of that one!

It's great! Beautifully illustrated, too.

Top Secret: The Truth Behind Today's Pop Mysticisms

The Secret, the Course in Miracles, Prosperity Gospel and other pop metaphysics are put in historical context. There is nothing new under the sun.

Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America

Why is everyone so damn cheerful all the time? Barbara Ehrenreich takes a look at a certain kind of positive thinking and how it clouds reality, cheapens religion, infantilizes adults, and creates havoc in the economy.

#169: Why is everyone so damn cheerful all the time?

Don't look at me! I am certainly not.

In Defense of Lost Causes

This doorstop was something that has been sniping at me from the bookshelf for most of the year. I took the plunge and brought it with me on an extended business trip, and locked myself in the hotel room every night to take it, page by page.

As far as contemporary philosophers go, you could find a lot of worse prose stylists as Zizek, who has a rangy, ironic style, and he's not afraid of dropping in a bit of trivia or odd observation to liven things up (Much ancient Greek philosophy texts end up sounding a lot like Yoda if directly translated into English, because of the placement of the verb at the end of the sentence in Greek).

The premise here is a defense of universal values, and the defense of active ideology that seeks to change the world, and mostly a defense of revolutionary movements as catalysts for the redemptive moment, a temporal space where all chips are on the table. I know I don't agree at the end of it all, but along the way I did find myself reexamining assumptions -- never a bad thing.

Can't face the doorstop myself, but he is amazingly charismatic 'live'; this is the previous book, but still fascinating: http://www.lrbshop.co.uk/news/9/Slavoj-iek---Violence.html

You read such interesting stuff! Added The Republican Gomorrah and Occult America.

@172 FT -- Have you seen either Zizek! or The Pervert's Guide to Cinema? I've seen Zizek! and enjoyed it, but the Pervert's Guide to Cinema looks amazing. I maybe forced to buy it just to watch the damn thing.

@173 -- a.t.d.b. -- Of the two, I'd go for Republican Gemorrah first. It's chewier.
I did enjoy Occult America, however. Got me buying more damn books!

Yeah, Republican Gomorrah sounds like a better book, but the occult stuff is right up my alley.

Culture of Narcissism

Somewhat a classic screed, the thesis here is that post-war America has developed a collective narcissism, weakening community and a sense of productive individualism. Lasch defines narcissism here as suffering a weak sense of self.

It was published in '79, and as such, Lasch has a lot to say about the self-realization movement and the still-fresh sixties. Ideologically, he's a odd syncretism of Marx, Freud and grumpy paleoconservatism.

Interesting, though dated.

The Madwoman's Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings

I've been reading the name Germaine Greer for years, mostly as a feminist icon, but what really piqued my interest in her was Clive James' affectionate portrait of her in one of his 900 autobiographies. So I girded and took the plunge.

She's a wonderful, evocative writer, with a blustery wit, and that sure helped here. These essays, as wonderful as some are, are seriously dated.

#176: I am going to look for that one. Thanks for the info, Greg.

Greg, what did you think of Bright Sided? I saw the author on Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart and I got the book from the library but so far it has just been lying on the dresser looking at me. Is it worth the effort or should I just return it and let someone else have a chance at it?

It reads like a really long magazine article. It's pretty okay.

I'll try to fit it in then.

Thanks.

Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century

A book the subject matter of which is both esoteric and Esoteric. Traditionalism is
a fairly obscure (to me, anyway) 20th century Metaphysical school that combined elements of Freemasonry, Vendanta, and Sufism in quest to find the "Perennial Philosophy", which is sort of a theoretical ur-religion.

I know, I know.

Interesting story, full of strange and intense people in revolt against the modern age (the most household namish of the bunch was the Romanian scholar of comparative religion Mircea Eliade). Brief forays in Fascism, with plenty of strange sects. Colorful stuff.

None so queer as folk.

(I tried to read it concurrently with Revolt Against Modernity, a book about Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, but things got too esoteric real fast! Leo and Eric are on deck. )

The Situationist International: A User's Guide

A readable, lucid introduction to the Situationists, an entertaining band of artists, affable goons and Marxist theorists that had some influence in launching the French general strike of '68.

They were easily the funniest of the various threads of continental Marxism, getting up to all sort of dubious stunts.

The idea of the "situation" is any event that levels hierarchies for participants and allows them to experience life directly and lucidly, without the alienating intercession of the media or capital. (I'm just reporting here, folks).

A "situation" is the anti-thesis of the "spectacle": any event or scrap of media that is designed to remove observers from active participation in life -- advertising, mass media, even city planning.

Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith

Surprisingly staid memoir by one of the strangest men in Rock and Roll, Mark E. Smith, lyricist and capo of the seminal British post-punk group, The Fall.

Childhood's End

Arthur C. Clark is both a) a visionary and b) a ghastly prose stylist.

#185: Love that review! lol

20 Jazz Funk Greats (33 1/3)

Sloppily adoring monograph about a mostly unpleasant album by a band that I am intensely ambivalent about. How's that for a endorsement!

Thanks for the recommendation of the Borges book, The Book of Imaginary Beings. I just finished it tonight and enjoyed it very much.

@188: It's a lovely book, isn't it?

Yes, it is, and I suspect J.K. Rowling has more than a passing familiarity with the subject matter given the number of 'imaginary beings' she uses in the Harry Potter series.

The Chaos Scenario

Bob Garfield, co-host of NPR's "On the Media", claims the industry I work in is on the outs. There are days when that is my most fervent hope.

The Night of the Gun

Interesting premise: a journalist who is also recovering crack addict goes out and interviews his former dealers, ex-girlfriend, ex-wives, drug buddies and relatives to figure out how his life went wrong.

Pretty wrenching in places.

Hollywood's Hellfire Club: The Misadventures of John Barrymore, W.C. Fields, Errol Flynn and the Bundy Drive Boys

The adventures of a influential clique of Hollywood blasphemers, art forgers, drunks, womanizers, poets, and other good stuff.

Lots of tasty fodder for my continuing interest in the weird LA of the 40s and 50s.

Greg, I hope you are joining us again for the 2010 challenge. The group is up and running!

Oh, I'll be there! Thanks for the tip off. Have a great holiday!

You have a wonderful holiday as well!

Moab is My Washpot

Moving and funny memoir of the British comedian's teen years as a sexually frustrated gay Public School boy who also has a voracious appetite for petty larceny.