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read any good books lately...

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Toaster Mantis View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Toaster Mantis Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 04 2014 at 09:38
On a related note, here is a psychiatrist's take on Jack Kerouac. It is not exactly positive, to say the least, but it is very very funny precisely because his skewering is so matter-of-fact and more bemused than indignated.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote TheProgtologist Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 09 2014 at 15:47
I'm actually enjoying this one quite a bit......





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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote Toaster Mantis Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 09 2014 at 16:01

Listening to a lot of their music right now, so I thought this would be quite enlightening. I'm first struck by how incredibly traumatic Siouxsie's childhood was, were I in her shoes I'd probably have multiple suicide attempts past me by this point. The biography of the band seems to be as much airing the figurative dirty laundry of late-1970s punk scenesters in the UK as about the creative artistic side of things, something I find equal parts depressing and hilarious.

I get the impression it really wasn't fun to be British in the late 1970s and early 1980s, so people coming of age then developed a very bleak sense of humour.
"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote King Only Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 12 2014 at 12:15
I didn't know that Siouxsie had written a biography. Thanks for mentioning that Toaster Mantis. I'll put it on my 'to buy' list.

I love that late 70's and early 80's UK music... Siousxie and the Banshees, Sisters of Mercy, Joy Division, Clock DVA, Cabaret Voltaire, Killing Joke, Cocteau Twins, Birthday Party, Simple Minds... so many great bands from that time period. 


Edited by King Only - December 12 2014 at 12:16
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Moogtron III Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 12 2014 at 12:44
Originally posted by King Only King Only wrote:

I didn't know that Siouxsie had written a biography. 

It looks like a biography, but not an autobiography by Siouxsie herself.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Toaster Mantis Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 12 2014 at 13:44
It's mostly built around interviews with the relevant musicians, though, apparently Siouxsie has a reputation in certain circles for exaggerating or at least embellishing her and the band's past? Could just be her trademark acerbic sense of humour, though.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote TheProgtologist Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 14 2014 at 23:05


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Atavachron Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 15 2014 at 00:19
File:OswaldsTale.jpg

Enormous and fascinating study of Lee Harvey Oswald during his years in Minsk, his marriage, and later return to the US.   Norman Mailer's mastery as a proseman allows him to partake in a style much like the great Russian novelists he's always worshiped, giving us tremendous insight into Lee Oswald the individual through State surveillance of his apartment, interviews with Russian friends, KGB & MVD officers assigned to Oswald at the time, and his ex-wife, the mysterious Marina Prusakova.

Ultimately Mailer provides the view of a man who was not dumb enough to misunderstand history but not smart enough to avoid his own undoing within it.   And eventually his undoing of  it, as Mailer says, shooting the leader of the free world for Oswald "was the largest opportunity he had ever been offered".   At nearly 800 pages I can't recommend anyone other than history or assassination buffs try to knock this one off, but it is spectacularly tactile, in-depth, and sensual reading.





Edited by Atavachron - December 15 2014 at 00:40
"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."   -- John F. Kennedy
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Toaster Mantis Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 15 2014 at 10:48
What's your opinion on Libra, Don DeLillo's biographical novel about Oswald.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote presdoug Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 15 2014 at 11:11
Just bought a lovely old book called "Portrait Of A Symphony" which is a mainly photographic essay on the Boston Symphony Orchestra circa conductor Charles Munch. With a forward by Aaron Copland.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Gerinski Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 15 2014 at 12:13
I'm reading The Mammoth Book of Sex, Drugs & Rock'n'Roll, a 600+ page collection of articles appeared in music magazines etc since the dawn of rock'n'roll (it actually starts with the late Big Bands period, the Skifle bands and then proper R'n'R with Gene Vincent & co) up to modern day, dealing with the excesses of rock stars. What is nice is that they are articles written in the period, not stuff written today looking back, so you get a very real feel for the historical context of each era. Itīs full of anecdotes, amusing for all of us interested in the history of rock and its protagonists.

Since it's a collection of short articles written at different eras by different people in completely different styles it's a bit inconsistent but that's part of the charm. They are arranged chronologically. I'm still on the Marc Bolan period, around 1/4 of the book so still plenty to read and I'm busy in parallel with another book so it will take me some time to finish it.



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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Gerinski Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 15 2014 at 12:23
The other book I'm reading is this treaty about neuroscience and the interplay between emotional and rational processes in the brain-body system.

 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Angelo Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 15 2014 at 13:55
Re-reading my Neal Stephenson favourites: Cryptonomicon and REAMDE.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Atavachron Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 17 2014 at 21:30
Originally posted by Toaster Mantis Toaster Mantis wrote:

What's your opinion on Libra, Don DeLillo's biographical novel about Oswald.

Y'know I tried reading it and it's so fictionalized ~ or perhaps I should say novelized ~ that, as a student of the case, I found it hard to get into.   Mailer's book has the same writer's ambitions but with tons of great documentation to back it up, stuff that he uncovered after the Soviet Union broke up and first-source testimony from ex-MVD and KGB guys.   Libra is well-researched though, and probably a good read.

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."   -- John F. Kennedy
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Toaster Mantis Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 21 2014 at 04:21
Haven't read it myself, apparently it's one of James Ellroy's favourite books though with DeLillo being his number one influence outside the crime genre. (with Jack Kerouac a close second place)
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote dr wu23 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 21 2014 at 11:31
Originally posted by Toaster Mantis Toaster Mantis wrote:

What's your opinion on Libra, Don DeLillo's biographical novel about Oswald.
 
Personally  ....I was a fan of his early work up to The Names.....found White Noise to be a bit too long and  I stopped reading there.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Toaster Mantis Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 23 2014 at 05:41
I'm reading this...


Danish-language anthology of horror short stories released on the 200th year anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe's birth, the stories all take influence from his work but have some radical new twist on it. The first one I've read is a tale of a doomed affair between an orchestral conductor and an opera singer that's rather disturbing, eventually turning into a riff on The Tell-Tale Heart that plays like some really screwed up Italian horror movie from the 1970s.


Edited by Toaster Mantis - December 26 2014 at 16:36
"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote TheProgtologist Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 24 2014 at 03:02




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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote King Only Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 25 2014 at 08:32
Just started reading Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis. Autobiography by the lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Luna Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 26 2014 at 16:13

Started yesterday, about halfway through. Really interesting.
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