Saturday, July 15, 2006

Reading material...Part II

I went with Douglas Adams, specifically Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. It's odd that I hadn't read it before being a fan of Adams. It was great. I love comic time machine stories, Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog is a big favorite of mine. After I finished Dirk Gently's, I polished off that memoir of a guy in a psych ward that I started last week on a graveyard, Nervous System by Jan Lars Jensen. It wasn't great, but interesting and provides good insight on the thought process of psychotics.

Around 6 AM I started in on Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could By Your Life. I'm not much of a fan of Black Flag, Big Black, Mission of Burma, and several of the other bands it profiles. Azerrad's such a compelling writer though that I enjoy just learning more of the history of these bands and the American underground scene of the '80s. Thanks go out to Choo for selling this at Dan's garage sale last year.

Thanks also to jlowe for the Vonnegut suggestions. I've been eyeing Player Piano lately. I'll bring it along tonight, though I'll be reading the Dirk Gently sequel The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul first.

6 comments:

  1. After you've finished both Dirk Gentlys, you might want to try Neil Gaiman's American Gods. And also Good Omens.

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  2. of course, there's always a donna tartt you could add to your list...

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  3. Wasn't taken with the 2nd Dirk Gently. And I've read both of the other suggestions. American Gods was just okay. Good Omens was funny, but I wanted to laugh out loud. C'mon authors, satisfy my desire for hilarious SF. Cuz it's such a big market.

    As to the Donna Tartt, back to the pit of hell with you.

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  4. i liked nervous system, although it's probably because it made me want to read shiva 3000 to see if it was all sorts of crazy. it's probably not, though.

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  5. choo sez:
    i'm glad you like the azerrad. i like the bands you don't, but i don't like his writing. tea-time of the soul is okay. good omens is unfathomably better than american gods, but i'm a pratchetter and not a gaimanen. gaiman is stilted, as in show, not tell. buh. good omens, the wordplay and footnotes is mostly pratchett, and is more awesome in the discworld series. i have to call the rest in (a moving ocd) before i start loaning them out again. try the philip pullman dark materials series and tell me what you think. the only spoiler i'll give is he wanted this to be his anti-narnia (already an A) and he read way too much blake for it (A+). i'd make kids read it, but it's not on their average level. -ish.

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  6. This is shaping up to be the most commented post. Maybe I should always be noting my reading material. As to Choo: After reading over half of it, I'm getting bothered by Azerrad's style. His holier-than-though stance on these bands versus more popular ones (he's got a thing againt REM & U2 seemingly based on the fact that college kids liked them) is annoying. I'll have to sample more Pratchett, I feel the same about Gaiman. I tried the first His Dark Materials and hated it. So reactionary.

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