spirtual talk does not excuse you from being assholes
Do not fear for me, internet, I have not yet gone, I am as alive as the stones in the beds of rivers. I read Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha from cover to cover today, and in between I had a discussion with my mother about conscious reality adjustement and its relevance to the great majority of the world which lives at the mercy of random evil. I think this is the greatest divide between I and Buddha-nature; the urgent need to change the world as well as accept it. What Camus' called Metaphysical Rebbellion.
I'm still not sure if I believe in evil, but I might.
O it is time for book reviews
Neal Stephenson
Quicksilver
The Confusion
The System Of The World
I feel that putting all these books together is doing them a dis-service, but they are a trilogy, a cycle, what is called The Baroque Cycle. But jesus! Each one of them is about a 1,000 pages long and is fulled with huge amounts of words. Reading all three is some sort of achievment. Anyways, the Baroque Cycle is about the invention of science and Isaac Newton and atoms and monads and religion and human beings who do things. It is really goddamn good and huge and sprawling and I think it is very very good and really really really really really long.
P.D. Ouspensky
The Symbolism Of The Tarot
P.D. Ouspensky is one of those great western occult gurus who pop up from time to time, and Symbolism is a sweet little booklet with a little story metaphor for each card of the Major Arcana of the Tarot. One page, at most two, for each card, and the font is very large. And he is spot on. He is correct. He knows things. By way of comparision, Elisabeth Haich wrote a book called The Wisdom Of The Tarot which is seven or eight times longer, with a lot of pages to each card, and it is absolute bullshit. What I am saying here is that P.D. Ouspensky knows things.
Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, et al
Fables (Volume 1 to 10, if we go by the trade paperbacks)
Oh man Fables is so great. It is about fairy tales and they do things and it is pretty neat and well written. I don't have much else to say about it! The pictures are also pretty.
Alexander King
May This House Be Safe From Tigers
Alexander King was, apperantly, some sort of vague cultural figure back in America of the 1930s/40s. This is a psuedo-biography in which he basically tells a lot of funny stories that might or might not have happened to him. He seems a good chap, this Alexander King, even a lot of what he says is so fucking weird, anarchronistic as all fuck, but kind of funny for that as well! Also he was not in favor of queer people. What the hell, Alexander King? But for that you would have been a neat kind of old dude. Why do you have to be one of those racist, gay hating old dudes? They are not the best kind of old dude. You are probably dead anyway.
Ralph Leighton and Richard P. Feynman
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Richard P. Feynman was a really smart physicist who was really smart and also very good at explaining physics to the masses who were less smart. He was also some kind of character! He was a cad. A jack-the-lad! That rhymed. Here he basically tells a lot of funny stories that might or might not have happened to him. Crazy! He is also sort of sexist, I think? There was one story which I thought was a little sexist. This is my opinion!
Mike Carey, et al
Lucifer
Lucifer is a graphic novel which steals the character of Lucifer from the Sandman mythos and builds him up and tells some stories about him. None can argue that the whole concept of the Fallen Angel is one of the greatest characters in literary history (see; Metaphysical rebbellion, above), so, you know, awesome! Rock out. To my mind Lucifer looses a lot of the charm of Sandman for focusing for attempting to fit everything into the Christian mythos, and also for failing, at the end, to keep the mystery and power of the setting alive. But it's not bad at all, it is even good.
Alan Moore, et al
League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen
LoEG is great, of course. Anyone who likes comics that are good comics know that LoEG is really great. It is pure Victorian or maybe Edwardian or hell possibly Elizabethean or, um, some other queenian anyways it summons up the period it wants to summon up perfectly. It's just super sweet and pulp as hell and pretty good.
Joe Haldeman
Old Twentieth
Basic sci-fi book with a 'twist' ending you see coming for miles, but not bad! I am a sucker for generation ship things, and for functional immortality, both of which play big parts. Could have done without all the parts about the Twentieth century though!
Jack Kerouac
On The Road
It is absurd that I had never read this book until last month. It is absurd. I've read it in a thousand reincarnations and adaptions and homages and inspirations-through, i've plumbed the beat generation to a certain depth, but I hadn't actually read the lynchpin of it all until March. Absurd. On The Road is the sort of book I would have remembered forever if I had read it younger. As it is, it's gorgous, strange, amazing, but i've encountered these ideas before. I can see the stupidty of the characters. I'm not burned.
Karl Schroeder
Lady Of Mazes
I've read this before, and it's still quite good. It's core concept sci-fi, the sort of thing you so rarely see, the whole story trying to make certain points and making them well. These points are; The invalidty of human life in post-scarcity enviorements, the nature of reality, and (most intruigingly) the idea that technology requires philosiphy to match it. I'd reccomend it just to grasp that last idea.
Phillip K. Dick
VALIS
Phillip K. Dick was mad, insane, absoloutly bonkers, and this is a book about how mad he is. It is not as reality shattering as it might be, or maybe i've just developed some sort of immunity. Gnosticsm and madness. It's very good.
Ken MacLeod
Learning The World
What the hell? Why the hell is Learning The World not stocked in Amazon? Jesus! What the fuck. Learning is everything science fiction should be. Short, sweet, loaded with concepts and poetry, real characters and a few moral conflicts. It's no masterpiece, but it doesn't want to be. It's really perfect sci-fi. It is about a generation ship (sold) and aliens!
Vernor Vinge
A Fire Upon The Deep
More ever so classy sci-fi. It is really goddamn classy. But there's something about that ending that really annoys me. I don't know what. It's on the tip of my tongue. I liked A Deepness In The Sky better.
THAT'S IT
FOR BOOKS
READ
IN MARCH
I GUESS
I'm still not sure if I believe in evil, but I might.
O it is time for book reviews
Neal Stephenson
Quicksilver
The Confusion
The System Of The World
I feel that putting all these books together is doing them a dis-service, but they are a trilogy, a cycle, what is called The Baroque Cycle. But jesus! Each one of them is about a 1,000 pages long and is fulled with huge amounts of words. Reading all three is some sort of achievment. Anyways, the Baroque Cycle is about the invention of science and Isaac Newton and atoms and monads and religion and human beings who do things. It is really goddamn good and huge and sprawling and I think it is very very good and really really really really really long.
P.D. Ouspensky
The Symbolism Of The Tarot
P.D. Ouspensky is one of those great western occult gurus who pop up from time to time, and Symbolism is a sweet little booklet with a little story metaphor for each card of the Major Arcana of the Tarot. One page, at most two, for each card, and the font is very large. And he is spot on. He is correct. He knows things. By way of comparision, Elisabeth Haich wrote a book called The Wisdom Of The Tarot which is seven or eight times longer, with a lot of pages to each card, and it is absolute bullshit. What I am saying here is that P.D. Ouspensky knows things.
Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, et al
Fables (Volume 1 to 10, if we go by the trade paperbacks)
Oh man Fables is so great. It is about fairy tales and they do things and it is pretty neat and well written. I don't have much else to say about it! The pictures are also pretty.
Alexander King
May This House Be Safe From Tigers
Alexander King was, apperantly, some sort of vague cultural figure back in America of the 1930s/40s. This is a psuedo-biography in which he basically tells a lot of funny stories that might or might not have happened to him. He seems a good chap, this Alexander King, even a lot of what he says is so fucking weird, anarchronistic as all fuck, but kind of funny for that as well! Also he was not in favor of queer people. What the hell, Alexander King? But for that you would have been a neat kind of old dude. Why do you have to be one of those racist, gay hating old dudes? They are not the best kind of old dude. You are probably dead anyway.
Ralph Leighton and Richard P. Feynman
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Richard P. Feynman was a really smart physicist who was really smart and also very good at explaining physics to the masses who were less smart. He was also some kind of character! He was a cad. A jack-the-lad! That rhymed. Here he basically tells a lot of funny stories that might or might not have happened to him. Crazy! He is also sort of sexist, I think? There was one story which I thought was a little sexist. This is my opinion!
Mike Carey, et al
Lucifer
Lucifer is a graphic novel which steals the character of Lucifer from the Sandman mythos and builds him up and tells some stories about him. None can argue that the whole concept of the Fallen Angel is one of the greatest characters in literary history (see; Metaphysical rebbellion, above), so, you know, awesome! Rock out. To my mind Lucifer looses a lot of the charm of Sandman for focusing for attempting to fit everything into the Christian mythos, and also for failing, at the end, to keep the mystery and power of the setting alive. But it's not bad at all, it is even good.
Alan Moore, et al
League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen
LoEG is great, of course. Anyone who likes comics that are good comics know that LoEG is really great. It is pure Victorian or maybe Edwardian or hell possibly Elizabethean or, um, some other queenian anyways it summons up the period it wants to summon up perfectly. It's just super sweet and pulp as hell and pretty good.
Joe Haldeman
Old Twentieth
Basic sci-fi book with a 'twist' ending you see coming for miles, but not bad! I am a sucker for generation ship things, and for functional immortality, both of which play big parts. Could have done without all the parts about the Twentieth century though!
Jack Kerouac
On The Road
It is absurd that I had never read this book until last month. It is absurd. I've read it in a thousand reincarnations and adaptions and homages and inspirations-through, i've plumbed the beat generation to a certain depth, but I hadn't actually read the lynchpin of it all until March. Absurd. On The Road is the sort of book I would have remembered forever if I had read it younger. As it is, it's gorgous, strange, amazing, but i've encountered these ideas before. I can see the stupidty of the characters. I'm not burned.
Karl Schroeder
Lady Of Mazes
I've read this before, and it's still quite good. It's core concept sci-fi, the sort of thing you so rarely see, the whole story trying to make certain points and making them well. These points are; The invalidty of human life in post-scarcity enviorements, the nature of reality, and (most intruigingly) the idea that technology requires philosiphy to match it. I'd reccomend it just to grasp that last idea.
Phillip K. Dick
VALIS
Phillip K. Dick was mad, insane, absoloutly bonkers, and this is a book about how mad he is. It is not as reality shattering as it might be, or maybe i've just developed some sort of immunity. Gnosticsm and madness. It's very good.
Ken MacLeod
Learning The World
What the hell? Why the hell is Learning The World not stocked in Amazon? Jesus! What the fuck. Learning is everything science fiction should be. Short, sweet, loaded with concepts and poetry, real characters and a few moral conflicts. It's no masterpiece, but it doesn't want to be. It's really perfect sci-fi. It is about a generation ship (sold) and aliens!
Vernor Vinge
A Fire Upon The Deep
More ever so classy sci-fi. It is really goddamn classy. But there's something about that ending that really annoys me. I don't know what. It's on the tip of my tongue. I liked A Deepness In The Sky better.
THAT'S IT
FOR BOOKS
READ
IN MARCH
I GUESS