wicked eastern reading club <1 member>
Wednesday, November 29th, 200629november
I’ve been on the road so to speak for the past almost two months, hunkering down in Budapest for a bit then traveling to places I’ve only dreamed about by watching movies. All the while I am alone and reading:
kafka on the shore. japenese magical realism as told by a 15 year old boy who meets sages and spirits in the popular form of Johnnie Walker and KFC’s Cornell Sanders.
bury me standing. ethnographic long term study of gipsys of eastern europe. everybody hates the gipsys- no lie.
salt: a world history. i did a paper on salt for my mineralogy term paper at psu, this book was much more thought out.
the simulaca. weird philip k. dick, knocked it out in a night.
sidarthtta. herman hesses famous work. it taught me about how nothing matters cause the river will always take a piss on you
the maltese falcon. rad, read it in vienna at a coffeeshop and on the austrio-hungarian train- the perfect setting. made me want to live in san fran and develop dangerous relationships.
yellow raft on a blue lake. 3 generations of native american women living in the west, things get really messed up when there is honor and booze involved. beautiful.
3 women. gertrude stien writing about 3 southern women in early 1900’s in the common english of the time. i enjoyed 2 out of three.
turn of the screw. read this on halloween in the bathtub with red wine. purchased because its in the program ‘lost’ and i am a fan. saw a portrait of henry james at the national portrait gallery in london- he looked stodgy and mean.
one flew over the coocoos nest. saw the film a long time ago in snippits. great great pacific northwest atmosphere and really amazing freeze frame of the time period. lol funny.
20,000 leages under the sea. long winded but chock full of psudeoscientific facts about our earth- really enjoyed the pissing contest of captain nemo and ned land. obsessed with it actually.
the cement garden. amazing. picked it up in amstredam at the best used english bookstore i’ve ever been to. hands down. better then powells by far. man at the counter was drunk at 10am and arguing with me about the politics of the booker prize. i really scored some points in the purchase of this one. read it in a day - absolutely one of the most perfect short novels i’ve ever read.
skinny legs and all. not finished with this one yet. i liked jitterbug perfume so so much better in the magical realism tom robbins vein. but there is something dreamy about a dirty sock, can o’ beans, shell, and a stick traveling x-country.
so anyways. in london now with one of my most amazing friends from back east in hometown, newburgh new york. we have tickets to see ennio morricone live! in concert conducting a full on symphony friday.
I thought he was dead, so this is my dream coming true.