This is my reading blog post, not my general fury/joy blog post.
Thursday 24th September
I started the day in the fecund menagerie and arboretum of Technobiophilia and ended it reading Gary Numan’s stories of abusive graffiti in 1980s New Zealand.
“Like Copernicus, we are privileged to witness the dawning of a new kind of space” Margaret Wertheim
Spending much of the day traveling back from Oslo to my small town, my reading was fidgety, hopping from chapter one to chapter one in a spinebound sampler kind of way.
I continue with Andy Miller’s The Year of Reading Dangerously.
“Finally, Socrates, I question whether your dick is particularly chubby.”
This is not Socrates the bull-faced, gadfly who goaded the cocksure, but Socrates the web forum contributor who declared that Dan Brown had “all the riches and the bitches”, and that the jealous haterzzz and lozerzzz can suck his “chubby dick”. Andy Miller then proceeds to compare and contrast The Da Vinci Code and Moby Dick.
In my ignorance, I had not know that, while the riches and bitches are Brown’s, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick sold terribly, the first print run had still not sold out at his death, and he spent most of the rest of his life working as an inspector in a New York customs house.
“Moby Dick is a miscreated, mythical leviathan, often unfathomably deep, whose flaws and imperfections miraculously become the contours of the immaculate whole”.
Then the kindle flitting begins…
I haven’t quite finished Luke Haines’ Post Everything:Outsider Rock n Roll. It is more self-deprecating than acerbic and covers the Black Box Recorder years. He is till producing playful and inventive albums, and I am not sure why he has not become more popular, but he remains popular enough to remain sharp and funny without being softened by too much adulation. Rampant success may never have suited him. Not enough music autobiographies have drug induced conversations with a cat on west country public transport.
“‘Hur hur’ cat sick funny’, confirms Notorious B.I.G., and with that the two deceased rappers and the deceased martial arts film star lumber out of the first class compartment in slow pursuit of Sam the speedy Bad Cat’.
Surely you want to read more now.
I have never read a Malcolm Gladwell book, so I thought I better start one. I have gone with the latest, David and Goliath. I am told this will help me understand how catapult use will improve my ability to deal with life and business. I now know, due to the work of an Israeli Defence Force ballistics analyst that a stone hurled by an expert shepherd sling user would have traveled at 34 meters per second and should lodge itself in a giant’s brain.
As part of the liberal elite, apparently this is title is conferred upon you once you have presented a Radio 4 documentary or laughed at a Stewart Lee joke, I have started Naomi Klien’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs the Climate.
“I love that smell of emissions” -Sarah Palin.
This quotation is placed prominently to get you riled and ready.
“We engage in this odd form of on-again-off-again ecological amnesia for perfectly rational reasons.”
I don’t think this book will make me happy, but maybe it will make me more active, or just tweet more confusing that with action, a common malady of mine. The concept of financial institutions gambling on weather futures makes me queasy, or was that the little bump of turbulence.
Ghosts of my Life by Mark Fisher had many if its ideas trialled on his k-punk blog. http://k-punk.org/the-shining-and-the-eerie/ He grasps me from the start by starting with an analysis of the bleak final story of Sapphire and Steel.
“it is the contention of this book that 21st century culture is marked by the same anachronism and inertia which afflicted Sapphire and Steel in their final adventure. But this stasis has been buried…”
I judged a book by the cover, and his subtitle – “writings on depression, hauntology and lost futures” had the required allure.
The trains pulls in as I open Present Shock by Douglas Rushkoff.
Friday 25th September
It’s Grayson Perry time.
I will continue to do shows between reading on trains – Sheffield, Cardiff, Liverpool, London, Harrogate, Sutton Coldfield, Alnwick, all and more are imminent. Details HERE
The next Vitriola podcast with Michael Legge and me should be soon, here is the pilot
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