fucking Boise
livejournal! chè fa? i'd hoped to outgrow this by now, but now i'm feeling bad for never writing. i liked justin's new years resolutions and figured i'd make an attempt at at least one of them. so what's new? i've read quite a few books recently. i read a people's history of the united states last month. i read the first half on thanksgiving break. i worked on it during finals at school, reading a chapter whenever i got bored of studying. it was so productive that it didn't feel like procrastinating. i finished it on the plane last saturday. i had a great companion on that plane ride. the guy next to me was very talkative. he advised me strongly to start watching Numbers, some tv show. apparently he was a lab tech at a research think-tank type deal in philadelphia, getting his masters at night, going down to visit his sister in Homestead. people's history was very interesting. at college just about every person that saw me reading it said they'd read it for an american history class, so i guess most of you have probably already read it if you took a real american history class. if you haven't read it, you should. my next book was the electric kool-aid acid test by Tom Wolfe, another classic that most people have probably already read. i started it in ohio last summer and worked on it occasionally until the car ride christmas day. it's about ken kesey and the merry pranksters and...i'd highly recommend that too.
next in line was italo calvino, which miriam read for hock's class last year and gave to me last summer. have any of you read it? anyone care to recommend it? i tried to get into it, but after thirty or so pages it didn't feel worth it. instead, i took a trip to Kendall Used Books to pick up something new. i found four books: drums along the khyber, the sensationist, sweet thursday, and tristram shandy, all for less than twenty dollars. i dallied in the first five or ten pages of sensationist for a few days until last night, when i decided to do away with it. it was a story about a man who moves to an anonymous city, which mirrors the emptiness of his heart. gyrating at dance parties, he finds himself receiving and achieving a stream of women/couples, but still he is empty. he nearly sates himself when he seduces a woman named Lucy after rescuing her daughter in the park. their union is graphic, and their connection perfect, until he fails to take her painting seriously enough. they reject each other a couple times, she goes insane, he gets boring, the end. it was trashy, and yet, bland. like, no matter how graphic it got, it never seemed like anything happened. maybe that was the effect the author was going for, with the whole anonymity/misplaced identity theme. (after reading the book, i was curious about what other people thought of it, so i looked up the reviews on amazon and found its author being compared to italo calvino. ironic?) i think i am glad that read this book, because up until i did, i hadn't been reading much, and i'd aspired to read a lot over this break. the book was 150 pages, of which i read 125 between 10 and 1 last night.
in other news, yesterday was an exciting day. in the morning we drove up to st. timothy's lutheran church in carol city to watch a great preacher. we bicycled to coconut grove for the king mango strut, which was great. after that we played tennis, ate dinner, and visited the sketchy dairy queen (they're all sketchy, but the one north of dadeland is exceptionally sketchy). i had no new years party, so i read my trash novel that night. new years is such a stupid holiday. the whole calendar system is just an arbitrary construct, which isn't to say it's not useful and good, but celebrating it's hiccups seems kinda pointless. i might feel differently if i'd gone to a party (though then i'd be like dear david the sensationist).
let's end this with a better anecdote. eh. maybe this wasn't worth it.
next in line was italo calvino, which miriam read for hock's class last year and gave to me last summer. have any of you read it? anyone care to recommend it? i tried to get into it, but after thirty or so pages it didn't feel worth it. instead, i took a trip to Kendall Used Books to pick up something new. i found four books: drums along the khyber, the sensationist, sweet thursday, and tristram shandy, all for less than twenty dollars. i dallied in the first five or ten pages of sensationist for a few days until last night, when i decided to do away with it. it was a story about a man who moves to an anonymous city, which mirrors the emptiness of his heart. gyrating at dance parties, he finds himself receiving and achieving a stream of women/couples, but still he is empty. he nearly sates himself when he seduces a woman named Lucy after rescuing her daughter in the park. their union is graphic, and their connection perfect, until he fails to take her painting seriously enough. they reject each other a couple times, she goes insane, he gets boring, the end. it was trashy, and yet, bland. like, no matter how graphic it got, it never seemed like anything happened. maybe that was the effect the author was going for, with the whole anonymity/misplaced identity theme. (after reading the book, i was curious about what other people thought of it, so i looked up the reviews on amazon and found its author being compared to italo calvino. ironic?) i think i am glad that read this book, because up until i did, i hadn't been reading much, and i'd aspired to read a lot over this break. the book was 150 pages, of which i read 125 between 10 and 1 last night.
in other news, yesterday was an exciting day. in the morning we drove up to st. timothy's lutheran church in carol city to watch a great preacher. we bicycled to coconut grove for the king mango strut, which was great. after that we played tennis, ate dinner, and visited the sketchy dairy queen (they're all sketchy, but the one north of dadeland is exceptionally sketchy). i had no new years party, so i read my trash novel that night. new years is such a stupid holiday. the whole calendar system is just an arbitrary construct, which isn't to say it's not useful and good, but celebrating it's hiccups seems kinda pointless. i might feel differently if i'd gone to a party (though then i'd be like dear david the sensationist).
let's end this with a better anecdote. eh. maybe this wasn't worth it.