The wash instructions on the inside of my jeans.

My wife and I went to our local library today and got library cards. Tonight I'm going to start reading The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury.

Is this your first time in a library? Well, better late than never.

I'm still into Dance with the Devil by Stanley Booth.

I just got this book from the library recently but I'm in the middle of Voices From The Street by Phillip K. Dick which so far I'd say is okay but not his best.

No, just the first time in my new town.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick.

I read that last year. Don't get the fuss over Dick. I mean, I like Dick, but I couldn't ever be enthusiastic about Dick. I enjoyed Dick, but I couldn't ever see myself shouting about Dick in the streets to other people. I've met quite a few people who love Dick, but I wouldn't say I was one of them. Alright and all, but I wouldn't ever go to being a full-time Dick-lover.

Do Androids is my least fave of his, I must admit

I'm reading the Satyricon of Petronius [etc]. I love how classics (as in proper classics, not Victorian guff) are bawdier than a Sade-ian blush.

On thursday I read all 262 pages of The Color Purple by Alice Walker. In the preceding three days I had read The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I really enjoyed Hawthorne's likening of the child born of sin to a wildflower, as well as his entertaining polysyllabic adjectives.

Read The Scarlet Letter if you can, but pass up Walker's drudge through the land that time forgot.

Oh, and in between serious books, I do like to read a series of books about my home city of Liverpool- the Haunted Liverpool series, which is now up to about 17 books, is a collection of paranormal tales that are full of real detective work on the part of the author, Tom Slemen, who sat next to me on the bus once. He's written a Wicked Liverpool book too, which is just about grisly victorian murders. It's sort of heartwarming to know that orphan children were used as human guinea pigs for vaccines in the 1800s, right on my doorstep!

Wow, I tried to read that a few years ago but really couldn't get to grips with it. There's a contemporary novel by Michael Bracewell about a bloke who bunks off work that's packed with references to it. I'll try and find the title.... hang on...........looking on amazon....bear with me......here ya go....it's called 'Perfect Tense'.

I'm in the swing of epic poetry and classics. Strangely enough, I find a lot of 'straight' narrative literature massively confusing. Joyce or Pound or Eliot I adore endlessly, your Senecas, Ovids, Virgils, Euripides and the like I have no problems with, but something that is more obviously 'narrative fiction' and I simply can't follow it. I tried reading a Maeve Binchy book recently (my old dear recommended it) and it was like reading a book in Hebrew (a language I don't speak).

That's a well dope book. There's references to it all over American culture like some sort of pox. F'rinstance, the video to Smells like teen spirit.

The entirety of Dante Aligheri's Divina Commedia can be read online, if you're interested;

http://www.divinecomedy.org/divine_comedy.html

I find reading any length of text from a computer screen far too cumbersome for my eyes though.

And in a Simpsons hallowe'en special set in the puritan era, I noted the letter A had found itself emblazoned on the blouse of Edna Krabappel.

AND I LAUGHED

Thanks, but I read that a fair while ago. If you haven't - Hell is awesome, Purgatory pwns all and Paradiso is utter, utter guff.

It makes me happy to know that there are two people in Britain who laughed for the same reason at the same time at the same joke for the same faintly worrying reasons of faux-intellectual self-satisfaction.

I've read it too, but I don't agree with general consensus that Paradiso is considerably worse than the other two. What's so bad about it?



There's safety in numbers.

I didn't really care about Paradiso, seemed like a big old wankfest over the notion of Paradise. A bit too happy-clappy, 'everything will be ok' with a litany of legendary Christians. Purgatory just struck me as eternally confusing, which appeals to my sense of ethics.

Oh, well there you go then. I'd surmise Dante wrote it as a Christian and for Christians. What I enjoyed most about the whole thing was the complete slap in the face at the end, when he "can't" describe what God looks like. Actually the whole poem is about people being slapped in the face; Virgil gets knocked back from Paradise for being a pagan, which I thought was pretty funny in a car crash kinda way. I'd love to go back in time and just add 'pwned' to the end of the verse.

Yeah, that's sort of what I mean by it being a wankfest. Dante's bleak allegories I agree with; his fantastical visions of redemption by the Christian God I find quite insipid. Perhaps I'm a masochist or somesuch, but his terse grip on the allegory just flies way off into a big Christian wank over the notion of paradise.

Well throughout the poem it was a big Christian wank wasn't it? Sinners being pwned. Pagans being limbo'd. That's basically the gist of it.

Fair point. I've always been an old testament man meself, so maybe that explains it. I've always liked the God that's confusing, weird and gruellingly spiteful.

I've always loved the romanticism of that fire-and-brimstone, Norriseqsue old testament God myself. There was no messing with old testament God. He commanded his chosen people to wander the desert for near 50 years! There'd be no crucifying that God.

P.S.
I love you Jesus

Yeah, well, I've gotta big up my man JC.

But it's all about my man Job as well. That's my nigga right there.

The OT God was a total git wasn't he. Sort of reminded me of a bearded Norman Tebbit.

joy division's unknown pleasures 33 1/3 book. i also bought the velvet underground and nico one too.

Currently I am reading Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein.

Bao Ninh - The Sorrow Of War

I recently bought a handful of victorian novels from an antique shop here in Liverpool- at the moment I'm reading one of them, "Christie's Old Organ", which is about a boy called Christopher who befriends an old organ grinder. The writing, as you can expect from a victorian author, is unconciously poetic and full of those flourishing polysyllabic adjectives which give me a huge intellectual boner.

That's an awesome book if you keep in mind the cultural impact it had. It was hugely influential on the anarcho-communist side of the hippie movement, and Kesey and the like were really into it. Also the stuff about the First Lady's astrologer influencing presidential politics was incredibly prescient since Ron and Nancy actually did that two decades later!

I see lots and lots of parallelism between the book and current events as well. Especially between the Fosterites and Scientologists.

Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson

I've really wanted to enjoy this book , but in both attempts of a few months ago and a few years ago , I havent been able to get what it's about .

for about the tenth time

What it's about is a social critique of American politics disguised as a science fiction novel. It's odd because Heinlein was a bit right wing, but this book is a blue-print for why an anrcho-socialist society is a good idea. That said, the writing can be a bit juvenile at times, as juvenile SF was where Heinlein was coming from in terms of marketing and audience.

I never got much further than when Jill "kidnapped" Valentine and brought him to Ben's apartment . I assumed that he made Ben a total pig on purpose to illustrate something , that or it was an example of the juvenile style of writing . Everything that was going on was like that for me - what was deliberate and what was nothing .

I suppose I really dont know enough about American politics, especially of the times back then , to really grasp it . What is an anarcho-socialist society ? Why was it needed then ?
Ha, thanks for replying though , I've wanted to ask someone about it for a long while !