What are you reading right now?

[Belligerent Savant]

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Browsing through this too.

Ah, yes. I believe this was first published in the early Aughts, no? Even before 9/11 If my fuzzy mind recalls correctly.
It was my first introduction to Dave McGowan, which in turn led me to his website -- an address I visited often in the first few days after that bright day in September.

[Belligerent Savant]

I got a copy of Barry Moser's woodcut bible, a hardcover, a bit dinged up but still shrinkwrapped, from a book sale under a tent here in Vermont. Force of habit: if there's enough books laid out, I still stop at any yard sale I drive by.

Anyway, the bible? USD $5.

You seem to be re-introducing yourself to the words of that Nazarene laborer, ay? I believe I noticed a few other references to his teachings (Sermon on the Mount, etc) in your posts...

I went through a similar (don't mind me being presumptuous and all) re-exploration not long ago as well, cleansing myself of some of the Catholic conditioning of my grade school years and re-reading some of the passages 'cleanly', objectively, as if encountering the words for the first time, stripped of its heavy branding.

A worthwhile endeavor.

[PufPuf93]

I got a copy of Barry Moser's woodcut bible, a hardcover, a bit dinged up but still shrinkwrapped, from a book sale under a tent here in Vermont. Force of habit: if there's enough books laid out, I still stop at any yard sale I drive by.

Anyway, the bible? USD $5.

You seem to be re-introducing yourself to the words of that Nazarene laborer, ay? I believe I noticed a few other references to his teachings (Sermon on the Mount, etc) in your posts...

I went through a similar (don't mind me being presumptuous and all) re-exploration not long ago as well, cleansing myself of some of the Catholic conditioning of my grade school years and re-reading some of the passages 'cleanly', objectively, as if encountering the words for the first time, stripped of its heavy branding.

A worthwhile endeavor.

Only tangentially related and not on my current reading is is the author Elaine Pagels. I read four of Pagel's books not that long after their publication.

The first was the Gnostic Gospels and my read was because of the PKD-gnostic intersection.

Later good reads were Adam Eve and the Serpent, The Origin of Satan, and Beyond Belief (about 10 years ago).

[PufPuf93]

Tangentially related regards to book stores.

Bibliophiles' Bucket List: 15 Coolest Bookstores in America

Photo essay at link.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/smar ... z#image=16

My favorite bookstore is Powell's (my employer in Portland, OR 87-93 was located on Pioneer Square or about 7 block walk away; there is no bookstore comparable to Powell's except the internet).

I made many visits to Elliot Bay (Seattle, WA) ; Strand (NY, NY); and City Lights (San Francisco, CA) but none since 2003.

A major omission is Moe's Books in Berkeley, CA. There is a wealth of bookstores in Berkeley.

http://www.moesbooks.com/pages/About-the-Store.html

In 1994 I went to a book festival in Hay-on-Wye, Wales.

I bought many, often rare, occult books (Crowley, Grant, Spare, Chumbley) from a private bookseller in Leicestshire, England but haven't since 2008.

I am currently reading Sue Grafton's "Dial F for Fugitive" which is mindless reading that reminds me of Nancy Drew (called Kinsey Millhone in this series). Grafton is up to "X" in the alphabet. I have read 12 of her 24 books which are probably not RI reads. I am a long term fan of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and many of the popular books today are derivative of their art, especially Chandler.

https://www.amazon.com/Sue-Grafton/e/B0 ... 444&sr=1-1

[dada]

Journey to the West, unabridged in three volumes. It's just so much fun. A Monk, a pig, a monkey, and friar sand travel to fetch the scriptures. What's not to like?

Monkey, pig and friar sand are immortals, too. They'll all be wandering through a forest one minute, and then monkey will do a somersault and be at the bottom of the sea, talking to a dragon, or maybe go to heaven and act like a jerk. You never know what you're going to get.

A flood of high poetic imagery, like an overdose of nature, seasons, flowers, trees, animals, mountains, jade, pearl, clouds, phoenixes... it's decadent. And plenty of surreal surprises...

It can be read as extremely silly stories and as a pretty powerful symbolic alchemical text at the same time, the whole time. Lots of humor, satire. Insightful. Everything's sacred/nothing's sacred. The characters' personalities are sharp. The narrator breaks the fourth wall.

But my favorite part about it is the way it turns conventional narrative on its head. A plot develops over the course of a chapter or two, tension sort of builds, and then it all falls apart anti-climatically. And then they just move on as if nothing happened.

I read a little bit every day, savoring it.

----

Somehow I ended up on this Alfred Jarry kick recently. He's alright. I'm on the 'Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll' at the moment. I'm enjoying how the 'story' is just the thinnest pretext of a plot that doesn't hold up at all, not even slightly, and doesn't even try to. It's like the story is aware, and fighting against itself. I like Jarry's sense of humor.

---

Picasso's play 'The Four Little Girls.' The way the dialogue flows, my goodness. I don't care what anyone says, I think it's the greatest thing around. I don't know what else to say about it. I don't really want to say anything, anyway. But I am just bowled over by it.

[dada]

Not reading it right now, but read it recently and was thinking about Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel by Anatoly Kuznetsov

Kid lives through occupation and war. Not a hero, nothing glamorous in this book. He just gets lucky.

Although 'lucky' means scrounging for any scrap of moldy bread in abandoned barracks that were once the elementary school, stuff like that. Lucky is relative.

A really good writer, writing about horrible things he experienced.

It was first published in a literary magazine heavily edited by Soviet censors. The book has the full original manuscript, with what the censors edited out in bold type. You can see the mind of the censor at work. How just taking a few words out here and there can change the whole point of the text. Not just anything critical of the Soviets, they'd edit anything critical of authority in general.

So while you're reading about this horrible stuff, you also get this whole other level of horrible, by seeing how the censors twist the story. After reading a few chapters, I'd feel like I'd been beaten up.

[Novem5er]

I just realized that I read a lot on the Internet, mostly for informative purposes. I shy away from online comedy, fan-fiction, or pure entertainment. The web for me is all about information, information, information (even when its information about entertainment like Game of Thrones news, etc). However, when I read a print book, it is 100% for entertainment. I enjoy historical fiction because I feel like I'm learning something, but I need the storytelling part of it to get me hooked. So I just finished this horror novel last week:

Bram Stoker, quoting the ballad “Lenore,” said, “The dead travel fast.”

Those words have never rung more true…

Remember that car that passed you near midnight on Route 66, doing 105 with its lights off? You wondered where it was going so quickly on that dark, dusty stretch of road, motor roaring, the driver glancing out the window as he blew by.

Did his greedy eyes shine silver like a coyote’s? Did he make you feel like prey?

You can’t remember now.

You just saw the founder of the Suicide Motor Club. Be grateful his brake lights never flashed. Be grateful his car was already full.

They roam America, littering the highways with smashed cars and bled-out bodies, a gruesome reflection of the unsettled sixties. But to anyone unlucky enough to meet them in the lonely hours of the night, they’re just a blurry memory.

That is—to all but one…

Two years ago, they left a witness in the mangled wreck of her family car, her husband dead, her son taken. She remembers their awful faces, despite their tricks and glamours. And she’s coming for them—her thirst for vengeance even more powerful than their hunger for blood.

On the deserted highways of America, the hunters are about to become the hunted…

SEE LESS

[norton ash]

Just finished The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes. Poetic, hard, brilliant, novella-length imagining of Shostakovich's life and career in Stalin's USSR.

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-tur ... ovich-wars

[Freitag]

Atlas Shrugged. It's been on the bucket list for a long time. I finally pulled the trigger during Audible's black Friday sale (paid $5 for it; it's over 50 hours long, so quite the bargain). As you might imagine, I find it absolutely enthralling. I'm halfway through and it's finally slowed down a bit. The first 15-20% of the book was some of the most riveting literature I've ever read. Because Communism is coming back into fashion these days, it remains perfectly relevant. The timing could not have been better; it's the book I needed to read right now. It's life-changing. I don't think I can ever see the world the same way again. I know many members here are, shall we say, left of center and would never consider reading this book. But if you're open to it, and you've always meant to read it, please do because no Wikipedia summary or commentary can do justice to the actual book. I procrastinated for so long because I had an idea of what it was about, and that felt like enough. It's not.

[Searcher08]

Atlas Shrugged. It's been on the bucket list for a long time. I finally pulled the trigger during Audible's black Friday sale (paid $5 for it; it's over 50 hours long, so quite the bargain). As you might imagine, I find it absolutely enthralling. I'm halfway through and it's finally slowed down a bit. The first 15-20% of the book was some of the most riveting literature I've ever read. Because Communism is coming back into fashion these days, it remains perfectly relevant. The timing could not have been better; it's the book I needed to read right now. It's life-changing. I don't think I can ever see the world the same way again. I know many members here are, shall we say, left of center and would never consider reading this book. But if you're open to it, and you've always meant to read it, please do because no Wikipedia summary or commentary can do justice to the actual book. I procrastinated for so long because I had an idea of what it was about, and that felt like enough. It's not.

I remember reading it at a very difficult time, where business sank, home was repo-ed and girlfriend bailed within a few months of each other. I came back to the parental family home, in a bitterly cold snowy winter with little more than a backpack. I had been told to read Atlas, and there was something about that dark icy bare winter landscape that resonated with the book's tone and my own state.
Enjoy!

[Freitag]

I remember reading it at a very difficult time, where business sank, home was repo-ed and girlfriend bailed within a few months of each other. I came back to the parental family home, in a bitterly cold snowy winter with little more than a backpack. I had been told to read Atlas, and there was something about that dark icy bare winter landscape that resonated with the book's tone and my own state.
Enjoy!

Well I hope it was the right book for that time in your life. For me, it's been like a blast of motivation and clarity. It's acting almost like a self-help book, which I did not expect. It perfectly complements my self-development studies (for example Norman Vincent Peale and Madam Blavatsky, who manage to say similar things about the power of the mind and willpower and yet come from opposing perspectives, one Christian and the other Occult).

[dada]

I got this for christmas from my brother. It's actually a real first aid book, very comprehensive. Shatner is just on the cover. It's the kind of thing you keep in the car with the first aid kit.

If there is a natural or man-made state of emergency disaster, I'm certified to help, my credentials mean the cops will let me through. When I get to people in need of first aid, and I pull out this book, I imagine some might be a bit nervous when they see the cover. Although some might be cheered up by it.

[Grizzly]

The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain

[dada]

Having a thing with one of my jobs, about working more hours. I work two jobs, seven days a week right now. I know my limit, and I'm at it. If I'm going to continue doing my job effectively, I have to draw the line. I do good work, it isn't about just showing up like a zombie to make a dollar.

Telling mom about it this morning, she says, "It's like Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged." I almost fell off my chair.

[Wombaticus Rex]

You seem to be re-introducing yourself to the words of that Nazarene laborer, ay? I believe I noticed a few other references to his teachings (Sermon on the Mount, etc) in your posts...

Oh, I've been a preacher for money, man. I first read the bible at 18 and again at 20 because I took a college course on the Old Testament -- only of the only 2 courses I showed up to, and not often at that.

Knowing the Bible absolutely infuriates the shit out of Christians, too, so there's that. Smart ones appreciate it and we can talk shop, but you know how aggregates are.

Edit: currently reading Jerry W. Sanders, "Peddlers of Crisis" alongside Douglas Valentine's "The CIA as Organized Crime," which work nicely in tandem. Got Gonick's "Cartoon History of the Modern World Vol. 1" in the bathroom and it's on par with the best of his earlier work. (His illustrations will never be as good as the first few volumes of Universe, but fuck, those must have taken years.)