Metal Reviews

Stephen King-The Body

One of my favourites, theres a lot that reminds me of growing up.

George RR Martin- Fevre Dream

Vampires in 19th century America along the Mississippi! Real vampires who don't sparkle and do things like kill innocent people! Good times ahead.

After I finish with The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, I'll begin reading The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.

I got books for my birthday last week. Lots of stuff on epistemology, because I need it for uni, and because I enjoy gazing at the hard words and scratching my head, whilst my eyes progress less than an inch down the page in an hour.

Popper- Conjectures and Refutations
Popper- The Poverty of Historicism
Adorno- The Jargon of Authenticity
Adorno/Brecht/Benjamin/Bloch/Lukacs- Aesthetics and Politics
E. P. Thompson- The Poverty of Theory
Paul Rabinow (ed.)- The Foucault Reader
Stephen Colbert- I Am America! (And So Can You!)

That's basically what I remember about the class on epistemology that I took. Stephen Colbert's book is pretty sweet.

Finished Catcher in the Rye last night. I liked this line: "If you had a million years to do it, you couldn't rub out even half of the "Fuck You" signs in the world."

Now reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez' 100 Years of Solitude.

I've tried really hard with it over the last few months, reading and reading on it, and managed to include a lot of it in a paper I wrote. My supervisor said "this is very good stuff", and I was so pleased I actually did a little dance around my room.

Marquez is fantastic.

Epistemology seems kind of pointless due to the Cartesian skepticism issue. If it's all about asking questions about ways of knowing, wouldn't the inability to answer the question "how do you know you're real" (or any other variation) make the whole thing redundant?

Well, this is epistemology in the sense of the social sciences, rather than psychology/philosophy etc.

i.e. positivism and empiricism versus the dialectical method. Should society be analysed the way you would conduct a scientific experiment in chemistry, or should it be analysed almost as if it were a piece of music, or the unknown recesses of the human mind.

That sounds interesting as hell. My classes are booooring.

I'm pretty well versed in Foucualt and I'm going to tell you that he's awesome. His politics sometimes fail but his overall thought is awesome. His epistemology writings are dense but his work on the penal system and sexuality are awesome and readable.

The Colbert book was pretty funny to read on the toilet.

Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange

Patrick Suskind - Perfume

A Clockwork Orange is awesome. Once I could understand the writing I burned through it in a day or two and really liked it.

I pretty much did the same, now I keep using the wording in real life :S

Like Malenky and Glazzies and Viddy :S

I've only read the Stewart book ("America - A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction"). How does the Colbert compare?

I haven't read the Stewart book, but the Colbert one is funny. Pretty much exactly what you'd expect from his show.

I'm not sure at this point. I'm kind of in the middle of a couple of things. But neither of them are excellent, and I'm feeling like I'd like some printed excellence in my life. I'm thinking about reading one of the following: A Clockwork Orange, Fellowship of the Ring, The Good Soldier, Breakfast of Champions, The Name of the Rose or Dune. Right now it's looking like Dune. Hopefully it's excellent.

You really can't go wrong with any of those; all of them are excellent books. The Good Soldier is a difficult read, but it pioneered the unreliable narrator and is a great example of post World War I confusion- great book. A Clockwork Orange is one of my favourites, and Lord of the Rings, Vonnegut and The Name of the Rose are just awesome of course.

Soooo World Without End is decent but not amazing like The Pillars of the Earth was...thinking about switching to something else. I need to read some Vonnegut.

I'm about 250 pages in and so far I think it's great. I never really expected it to be as good as Pillars.

I just got Game of Thrones and I might switch to that one because it sounds awesome.

Game of Thrones>Pillars

So yeah