I suspect some form of pastrami was foisted on us, I went with the "cheese". Although the guy decorated his shop with Santa Claus and was playing Tom and Jerry videos with dark-classical soundtracks. Very surreal shop in the old city.
Interesting Dawkins piece. I agree with a suprising amount of it, despite the usual ignoring of the actual process of interpretation that has taken place over time in order to make cheap points. (Basil Fawlty voice: Oh my, they KILLED people in Old Testament times, thanks for pointing that out, I had NEVER noticed that before, etc.)
despite the usual ignoring of the actual process of interpretation that has taken place over time in order to make cheap points.
Hmm. I would have thought that an evolutionist would make a better historian. By dispensing with actual history, Dawkins makes studying the Bible in context pointless.
taking a break from swamplandia! -- which i like, but a break in reading momentum has (temporarily) dulled my interest -- to read a short, tight noir from denis johnson.
the NYT review overhypes the book, and johnson's writing style, a bit, but it is immediate and enjoyable and mercifully short, and sometimes all of that is its own reward. also: this was written for playboy!
(query whether i should be reading anything at all, considering i'm moving from one firm to another this week, and there's, oh, maybe 3,270,234 things to do that i haven't even considered -- much less acted on -- yet.)
hey, this book is a pretty good read! mostly cuz (a) i love noir-ish pop-art and (b) the dialog is snappy. example!, starting with her, moving to him.
"you think i'm just too hammered to know better."
"yeah, i do, and i thank god."
"nope. i know where i am. i know where up is."
she stepped away from him and pointed at the ceiling.
"good."
"it's just, it's just, he -- it's feeling good right now to be around somebody who's not full of shit up to his eyeballs."
"are you kidding? i'm the most fulla shit guy i know."
"well," she assured him, "you're not the most fulla shit guy i know." she (then) grabbed the hem of her coffee-stained white blouse and wrestled it up over her head, but could only raise it so far, and she appeared to be lost in it, wavering side-to-side in her crimson bra. "not even close," she said. fell backward onto the bed . . .
i like it. i do feel like something essential is lost, tho, when i'm not reading these major sections inside consecutive issues of playboy.
Not a complete Bible, but a 21st century attempt at a rewriting it. To quote Amazon
Rob Lacey's "dangerously real" retelling of Scripture vividly demonstrates that the Bible is packed full of stories/poems/images that resonate with the big issues of today. This fresh paraphrase with running commentary brings the text alive: Bible stories are retold as mini-blockbusters; psalms as song lyrics; epistles as emails; Revelation as a virtual reality. Out with stale religious terms, here's a "Bible" that talks today's language - gritty, earthy, witty. Enough of starting at Genesis with good intentions but getting lost in Leviticus. Lacey succeeds in revitalizing a classic work by focusing on the big picture: fast-forwards through the "slow-moving" bits with pace, passion and energy to make the Bible a page-turner again. What's more, Lacey's award-winning tour de force was created during a remarkable personal journey through terminal cancer: the stuff the Bible stories are made of. This life-experience injects Lacey's take on Scripture with authenticity and authority - resonating with Bible characters who also wrestled with the big questions. Purist alert; This is not The Bible (capital ...but it might just get you reaching for one.
so i finished nobody move in two sittings (short book). on the one hand, it was the perfect follow-up to franzen's freedom: it was light; fast; kind of funny; mean and violent but not gruesome; cold and clever. on the other hand, i felt nothing from it, and was ready to forget it as soon as it ended. so, mixed results, but situationally worthwhile.
This series of essays I finished a few weeks ago does an amazingly good job of joining progressive politics to some figures who are not fashionable in progressive circles, like Moses, John Calvin and Charles Finney, by arguing that they have been misunderstood and that they were actually progressives themselves. She also mounts a good defense of theism and and makes arguments against the New Atheism by avoiding being painted into a corner by having taken as her positions untenable expressions of theism. I'm drinking and that may not make sense, but I think it does. She does such a good job of defenestration on Bishop Spong in just a couple of paragraphs that I had to laugh, although I sort of admire him. Rowan Williams, pre-BoC, took some good swipes at him, too.
She does all that with a dazzling prose style, too. Dazzling, that is, if you like someone who admits that her style owes more to Cicero than it does to Hemingway.
Watching the news tonight while in my cups I thought that Richard Dawkins had undergone the ultimate test of his ideas, but it was someone with a similar name.
Now starting this. Each gets only 2-4 pages. I probably will skip around, rather than going straight from cover to cover. Since I got it from the library I won't have it long enough to read the whole thing anyway, but I think it'll be fun to go from John Updike to John Cleland (some points of similarity there) to Wilkie Collins, etc. At 3.4 lbs. I probably won't take it to & from work in my backpack, either. NY Times review
Thus far it's just 'meh'. A good summary of his life and career, but without Bowie himself as a source it's pretty clinical. It doesn't matter how many people he knows/knew you interview, if you can't get inside the Bowie brain itself your story is going to be "just the facts ma'am."
Wheen has a very lively style (even snuck a Dylan lyric in describing Paris) and talks about how the beard into his "wild boar" persona and reception. "An Intellectual History of Beards" - surely someone's done the PhD.
Comments
And I've heard good things about Adam Nicolson's God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible
the NYT review overhypes the book, and johnson's writing style, a bit, but it is immediate and enjoyable and mercifully short, and sometimes all of that is its own reward. also: this was written for playboy!
(query whether i should be reading anything at all, considering i'm moving from one firm to another this week, and there's, oh, maybe 3,270,234 things to do that i haven't even considered -- much less acted on -- yet.)
i like it. i do feel like something essential is lost, tho, when i'm not reading these major sections inside consecutive issues of playboy.
Not a complete Bible, but a 21st century attempt at a rewriting it. To quote Amazon
now, maybe i'll pivot back to swamplandia!.
She does all that with a dazzling prose style, too. Dazzling, that is, if you like someone who admits that her style owes more to Cicero than it does to Hemingway.
Watching the news tonight while in my cups I thought that Richard Dawkins had undergone the ultimate test of his ideas, but it was someone with a similar name.
NY Times review
Thus far it's just 'meh'. A good summary of his life and career, but without Bowie himself as a source it's pretty clinical. It doesn't matter how many people he knows/knew you interview, if you can't get inside the Bowie brain itself your story is going to be "just the facts ma'am."
Craig
I'll get off my run of political books soon and go back to murder mysteries.
beardo imo.
napoleon is short.
dude is short.
Great satire on the home front experience for recent American Soldiers coming back from Iraq/Afghanistan.