The book-thread of seriousness

Lets step up one level from the sex talk everyone.

The light weight questions:
What are you reading right now?
Who is your fav author?
Do you read poetry, in that case, what type? Fav poet?

The heavy artillery:
How do you read?
Litterature is like all art contextual, when reading something that is apart from your everyday context, how do you work with that?

Do you write yourself? If, what genre and have you published anything?

and last:
any quotes?
----

I'm still not getting through Maryce Condé, but I'm working on it. I wanna re-read Kaddish for an unborn child by Imre Kertesz, but it's at my parents house so can't get it until christmas eve..

I completely love Jeanette winterson, for her language and her way of mixing philosophy/mathematics and ordinary love feelings. Also her way of ripping apart timelines and work outside normal frames. I love her enough to be on my way to tattoo a quote from one of her books to my body (when I get money).

If I read poetry it's mostly swedish stuff, but I want to read e e cummings and ezra pound, the stuff I've read I really like. I prefer poetry that works with entangled metaphores rather than rhymed verses, if it's not sonnets like inger christensens Butterfly valley, a requiem, because thats the most beautiful thing I've ever read.

( "No, this is the angel of light, who can paint
himself as dark as mnemosyne Apollo,
as copper, hawk moth, tiger swallowtail")

I read like I write, I write like I read. For me it's as essential as the air I breath, it's a window to a bigger freedom, a way of penetrating that thin membrane that separates me from myself, and opening up. It's what I do and what I live for. Language is my everything. Parasite, virus. It eats me, but also keeps me alive. I've been published in two antologies but right now I'm working on a longer manuscript for a novel, I hope I manage to finish it and get it published.

The quote that will be tattooed to my body:
"Walk with me. Walk with me through the nightmare of narrative.
Walk with me, hand in hand through the neon and styrofoam. Walk the razorblades and broken hearts."
From GUT symmetries by Jeanette winterson, a book I carried with me to australia and back.

 

I like to read alot of history and Economic and math books. Noam Chomsky is the man!
"Tough love" is just the right phrase: love for the rich and privileged, tough for everyone else. -Chomsky
I mean, what's the elections? You know, two guys, same background, wealth, political influence, went to the same elite university, joined the same secret society where you're trained to be a ruler - they both can run because they're financed by the same corporate institutions. At the Democratic Convention, Barack Obama said, 'only in this country, only in America, could someone like me appear here.' Well, in some other countries, people much poorer than him would not only talk at the convention - they'd be elected president. Take Lula. The president of Brazil is a guy with a peasant background, a union organizer, never went to school, he's the president of the second-biggest country in the hemisphere. Only in America? I mean, there they actually have elections where you can choose somebody from your own ranks. With different policies. That's inconceivable in the United States.
-Chomsky
"The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics."
T. Sowell

 

Love the Sowell-quote. I've heard it before somewhere. I did read a book by chomsky last year, but I can't remember what it was called, I left it in australia so I can't check. Oh wait, I have internet... Failed states it was.

I did some reading on him while working on linguistical structures in internet based communication networks (interactional sociolinguistics.. ). He is truly a great mind. If I'm not completely wrong he has talked about spoken language as disorderly and without rules. I worked some with in the frame of text speak.. ^__^

 

^_^;

 

With 2 little ones running around the house I'm typically reading children's books. Dr Seuss is the fav for them at this time.

When I do grab something for myself to read these days - it needs to be short and light. It's just the nature of "mommy brain". I tend to spend more time researching various topics that pop up of interest. This way I can look at something read a bit and leave it and come back easily. I tend to jump in and immerse myself in whatever it is until I feel satisfied with it and then on to the next.

I'm fickle - favorite authors and poets depend on the moment and phase of my life.

At this point in life...I write much more than I read. I think I'm on input overload much of the time and writing is one of the ways I express myself. I may read something very quickly and then take days/weeks/months/years to absorb...those are the best reads!

 

Emerging virues: AIDS and EBOLA Nature, accident or Intentional? by Horowitz

Human Devolution: A Vedic Alternative to Darwin's Theory by Cremo

TiKHAL abd PiKHAL by Shulgin

The Head Negro In Charge Syndrome by Kelley

DMT: The Spirit Molecule by Straussman

Food of The Gods by McKenna

Marijuana Chemistry by Starks

A People's History of The United States by Zinn

Prometheus Rising by Wilson

The Doors of Perception by Huxley

and many mo'....

***whew**

 

I don't read much political books, and right now I'm actively avoiding christopher lash (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture_of_Narcissism) even though I think it still has some value. It's written in a context of the 70s, but since then individualism has only grown, some understanding of the discrepancies of todays society between the struggle for the singular person and the aims of the structures around her might still be squeezed out of it..

 

DMT, serious. lol. I remember my young days when we used to discuss this elusive drug that nobody could ever ever get hold of like it was some sort of holy grail... "You can only get it from the bone marrow of dead mammals".. stuff like that.

Is Doors of Perception good? I have only read brave new world, but are his essays any good?

 

Indeed, syclla.

It got me on the path to enlightenment...so to speak!:smt112

 

I've heard of the mommy brain, it scares me.... O__o
How about short stories? There is some really good south american and spanish ones out there. The art of writing short stories is somewhat looked down on by the rest of society, but some of the best stories I've ever read has been short stories.

 

lol, you talking about the DMT or huxley now?
... and that stuff about the bone marrow, it's not really true is it?.. O_O

 

Looks like a good read!

 

Naw, poetess.

Either synthesize it (it's illegal in da USA I think), or get it from da pineal gland or some such.

 

I love to read!

Since I am back in university (after a long hiatus doing other things), I take the opportunity to read rather light fare on my holidays. I enjoy:

Noam Chomsky - am working through Manufacturing Consent again (not light!)
Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death and Technopoly
I've just read Stehpenie Meyer's Twilight, it was a fun and light read
Jill Bolte Taylor's My Stroke Of Insight
and have just been introduced to Adrienne Rich's works and have purchased Of Woman Born
Oh, one of my required texts at school is As Long as the Sun Shines and Rivers Flow and I am enjoying some of the essays in it too - it's about Canadian Aboriginal history from and Aboriginal perspective.

I will read all day if I give myself the opportunity!

Lucifer: what is A People's History of the United States like as far as emphasis and accuracy in your view?

 

Quoting wiki: "Like many other psychedelics, DMT is often misclassified as a dangerous drug (due to political reasons) even though it is very non-toxic, non-addictive, and safe. However, DMT is unique in that every person is technically guilty of DMT possession where such laws against it exist, as the chemical is created in the body."

I can only guess that the person who wrote the wikipage has very little against psychedelics.. lol

It's illegal in most countries, but so are shrooms, and at least here they grow all over the place. Best was when they outlawed mescaline-cactuses, after realizing you could by them in the supermarket.

Is huxley holding on to his black and white universe he uses in brave new world? I found it a bit annoying that he percieved the alternatives so limited to how humans, that by nature are for more diverse then he makes them, will act in a dystopian enviroment.

Have you read Anthony Burgess? (it's a trick question. If you have, I'm yours forever.)

 

I've just found it online, I think I'll take a dip in.

 

It is, if you like sentences a half mile long. But it is really interesting. It's just that now and again it would be nice if I had this books in swedish, I loose a lot of the context reading english books.
But I recommend it warmly.
I need to get through that one and Eric bernes games people play.. and r d lang. And melanie klein. And .... ahhh gawd. There is so much I need to read!

 

I'm pretty sure I read Clockwork Orange in high school. Are you mine now, lol? jk

 

Yes it is rather frightening. That and our vocabulary really goes out the window! And memory...forget about it (no pun intended). Well, about some things. I easily forget the titles of books, movies, songs.

It's sleep deprivation....I'm working on about 21 years of it now.

 

lol, I'm up for grabs. Anyone who can discuss Burgess with me can have me melting into a puddle of happy joy in seconds. No one has ever read him! Except Clockwork Orange though, which I actually haven't read. I read 1985 by him (yes, 1985, not 1984, thats orwell) last semester. Great book. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_(Anthony_Burgess_novel) ) Especially the critizising of the dumbing down of society.