+ french, but only if I really love an author (e.g. simone weil) and am willing to put in the extra effort of looking up some words

oh shit, you should read baudelaire's prose poems (petites poemes en prose).

re: jean rhys, she's most famous for wide sargasso sea, but her paris novels, while less famous, are pretty awesome, and they are quick to read.

Taking a George R.R. Martin break with Catch-22. We'll see how it goes.

ps- MARGUERITE YOURCENAR!!

her memoirs d'hadrien was AMAZING.

(i read it in spanish translation though)

unfortunately i haven't read more since her books are often hard to come by. but i should put her in my to-read list.

HOW MUSIC WORKS by David Byrne



I didn't think I'd like this, but when it was over I wanted more. Plus, it has a cushioned cover.

cool!

im reading the intro in the amazon thingy and it's fun

turned out they didnt have the jean rhys book you recommended, !@#$%!
I got "Sleep It Off Lady" by her instead. We will see how much I will enjoy it!
I also got Freedom by Jonathan Franzen cause they had it for 5€ and I enjoyed The Corrections by him when we read it in the University book club. Also because some of my fav book junkies on tumblr won't stop taking about how much they love it!
Wanted to pick up Taipei by Tao Lin as well, I enjoyed reading his "poetry" books in lectures cause his work is really easy to read and I want to see how that will work out for him in a novel. buuuuut... I slept too long today and didnt make it to the city

^^ i think you'll like it. not that it's necessarily a masterpiece but paris in the 20s was ruled by men and she was as good as anyone (but less famous at the time). this was all years before she went to prison for writing bad checks (oh yeah) and many many many years before she was recognized for her talent. eventually i think you might wanna read all her stuff (which is not a lot, fits in a single volume actually).

i forgot to say i think i spotted an instance of trolling in byrne's intro but i don't have time to point it out right now (will later).

checked this out of the Library. Good shit so far, from 1929.

^ The fuck is that?



Don't take your clothes off and not fuck me. I looked over the preface and didn't see anything. I'm really curious what you mean.

Joseph McCabe was a Freethinker who was previously a Roman Catholic priest. In The Story of Religious Controversy, Mr. McCabe brings every bit of his encyclopedic research and knowledge of religions throughout Human history to try and show the lie that is religious belief.

OF COURSE the book is out of print. Here it is online. http://infidels.org/library/historic...s_controversy/

Chapter I - The Revolt Against Religion
Chapter II - The Origin Of Religion
Chapter III - A Few Of The World's Great Religions
Chapter IV - The Myth Of Immortality
Chapter V - The Futility Of Belief In God
Chapter VI - The Human Origin of Morals
Chapter VII - The Forgery Of The Old Testament
Chapter VIII - Religion And Morals In Ancient Babylon
Chapter IX - Religion And Morals In Ancient Egypt
Chapter X - Life And Morals In Greece and Rome
Chapter XI - Phallic Elements In Religion
Chapter XII - Did Jesus Ever Live?
Chapter XIII - The Sources Of Christian Morality
Chapter XIV - Pagan Christs Before Jesus
Chapter XV - Legends Of Saints And Martyrs
Chapter XVI - How Christianity "Triumphed"
Chapter XVII - The Evolution Of Christian Doctrine
Chapter XVIII - The Degradation Of Woman
Chapter XIX - Christianity And Slavery
Chapter XX - The Church And The School
Chapter XXI - The Dark Ages
Chapter XXII - New Light On Witchcraft
Chapter XXIII - The Horrors Of The Inquisition
Chapter XXIV - Medieval Art And The Church
Chapter XXV - The Moorish Civilization In Spain
Chapter XXVI - The Renaissance: A European Awakening
Chapter XXVII - The Reformation And Protestant Reaction
Chapter XXVIII - The Truth About Galileo And Medieval Science
Chapter XXIX - The Jesuits: Religious Rogues
Chapter XXX - The Conflict Between Science And Religion
Chapter XXXI - Do We Need Religion?
Chapter XXXII - The Triumph Of Materialism

Chapter 7 gets REAL

its actually not the intro but chapter 1 (p.27). he's been talking about the influence of venues in the kind of music created.

then he talks about the walkman/the headphone. he sez:

"You, and only you, an audience of one, can hear a million tiny details, even with the compression that MP3 technology adds to recorgings. YOu can hear the singer's breath intake, their fingers on a guitar string. That said, extreme and sudden dynamic changes can be painful on a personal music player. As with dance music one hundred years ago, it's better to write music that maintains a relatively constant volume for this tiny venue. Dynamically static but with lots of details: that's the directive here"

then he adds:

"If there has been a compositional response to MP3s and the era of private listening I have yet to hear it. One would expect music that is essentially a soothing flood of ambient moods as a way to relax and decompress, or maybe dense and complex compositions that reward repeated playing and attentive listening, maybe intimate or rudely erotic vocals that would be inappropriate to blast in public that you could enjoy privately. If any of this is happening, I am unaware of it."

WHAT?????? is he trolling? he has to be trolling.

first of all-- wasn't his first band produced by brian eno??? has he never heard of him and the DELUGE of ambient music that came after? i mean, genre upon genre of ambient/chill/etc. fucks sakes. under what rock is that man living? or is he trolling eno? he must be-- they probably parted ways badly.

as for the dense complex compositions that reward repeated playing + attentive listening: don't get me started! someone needs to mail him one of those wire tapper CDs.

same with "rudely erotic vocals"-- he probably slept though the whole tipper gore debacle of ancient times. make him lissen to peaches. though i think of her more as dance music than headphone shit.

I see. Yeah, either he's mistaken ("trolling" if you like) or else I'm not sure what it is he's imagining.




What a great website. Funny one has to agree not to bitch to the site about anything.

he HAS TO be trolling. he cannot be that wrong, or "unaware."

maybe he wrote it as a joke in the draft, and forgot, and the editors in their usual malpractice didn't point it out to him, and it slipped by.

glaring, though.

You should really check out the rest of the book. Maybe it'll drive you nuts, but you will certainly be stimulated. There are oodles of ideas in there to play with.

Then please write a 5000 word response. Double-space, Times New Roman, due on Friday. No plagiarism. This will go toward 25% of your final grade.

alright ms. mcgillycuddy.

i found chapter one plenty stimulating already-- which is precisely why i noticed. most shit i just skim through in disappointment.

i'll order through the library & see when it arrives.

cute!

http://de.scribd.com/doc/154400835/I...ILL-TALK-TO-ME

(reading alt lit stuff i find on the internet in my lecture cause i forgot to take a book)