Reading

Resolutions?

Akufu — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 02:45:00 GMT

Right, so it is the New Year and traditionally people make loads of resolutions, aiming to improve their life. This is apparent when watching TV, as adverts concentrate on diet pills, workout equipment and smoking-quitting aids.

This will last until February, the month when all resolutions wither and die.

But alright, I'll go for it too, but I like concrete objectives. I am going to read Bertrand Russell's The History of Western Philosophy, because apart from my mandatory - and therefore much loathed - course in Philosophy of Science way back when, I am a complete and utter nitwit in philosophy.

Wish me luck!

A Pulitzer for the Looming Tower

Akufu — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 00:51:00 GMT

I know, I know, I promised a review for this book, but any extensive writing has been put on the back burner because of my general uselessness, as well as reporting, grant writing and other life events. Soon, I keep telling myself, soon I will be back at it.

Anyway, The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright is a must-read. This book is good, that's all. After reading this you will know something about the history of fundamentalist political Islam, the meaning of towers and caves, and how things could happen the way they did, when they really shouldn't have.

And don't take my word for it, some other folks think it was a good read too, for example the peeps behind the Pulitzer Prize:

The Pulitzer Prize
Winners
2007
General Nonfiction

For a distinguished book of nonfiction by an American author that is not eligible for consideration in any other category, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).

Awarded to "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11" by Lawrence Wright (Alfred A. Knopf).

End of an Era

Akufu — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 00:35:00 GMT

Read it and weep. No more Batboy.

The world's only reliable newspaper will be missed.

Book list

Akufu — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 11:50:00 GMT

Yay, a book meme! How could I resist...
Bold: read
Italic: on my wish list
Normal text: don't know and/or don't care

The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)
Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (JRR Tolkien)
The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (JRR Tolkien)
The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (JRR Tolkien)
Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (JK Rowling)
Angels and Demons (Dan Brown) (bleh)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (JK Rowling)
A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (JK Rowling)
Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
The Stand (Stephen King)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (JK Rowling)
Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
The Hobbit (JRR Tolkien)
The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
Dune (Frank Herbert)
The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
1984 (George Orwell)
The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley) (meh)
The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
The Bible (read about half, does that count?)
Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt)
The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
The Great Gatsby (F Scott Fitzgerald)
The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (JK Rowling)
The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
The Time Traveller's Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)
Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
Les Miserables (Victor Hugo)
The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
Bridget Jones' Diary (Fielding)
Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
Shogun (James Clavell)
The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
The World According to Garp (John Irving)
The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
Of Mice And Men (John Steinbeck)
Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
Wizard's First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
Emma (Jane Austen)
Watership Down (Richard Adams)
Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
Blindness (Jose Saramago)
Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
In The Skin Of A Lion (Michael Ondaatje)
Lord of the Flies (Golding)
The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
Ulysses (James Joyce)

An eclectic mix indeed. Anything essential I missed?

(via Grrlscientist)

The madness at Waihi falls

Akufu — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 03:57:00 GMT

An idyllic Hawaiian scene, a beautiful waterfall on Oahu's North Shore, in the heart of Waimea valley Audubon Center.

Experience the majesty and mystery of Hawaii's Waimea Valley. Join generations of Hawaiian islanders who have explored the valley's sunlit paths, through gardens of extraordinary beauty to the cool, clear pool below historic Waihi Falls.

Yeah right. That is what they want you to believe. For those who know what to look for, there is ample warning that things are not what they seem:

Something about this place just feels off, and it may be hard to capture the actual level of dread in a mere photograph. The hints are too subtle maybe.

But look! The abandoned flip-flops are clear evidence of something very sinister at work here. And I think I know exactly what happened to a poor soul who ignored the warnings (all of them!) put before them:

I made sure I stayed well away from this unholy pool, lest I turn into Giant Squid bait, a fate as dreadful as one only imagines in the darkest of nightmares.

(of course I will welcome our tentacled overlords, Ia Ia Cthulhu fhtagn!! and all that, I am however not particularly enthusiastic about featuring on their menu, ok?)

The Looming Tower

Akufu — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 05:54:00 GMT

I was reading The God Delusion (nearly finished!).

I was reading When Life Nearly Died.

But then I made a mistake. I opened The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright just to check it out. And I was dragged in, haven't been able to put it down.

O man, but this is an excellent book. It deals with the rise of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and the struggle of a lone FBI agent to prevent their attack on the Twin Towers, culminating in his death and that of some 3000 others on 9/11 at the World Trade Center. It reads like a thriller, even though you know the tragic outcome. If you read one non-fiction book this year, please pick this one up.

You will not regret it.

I will post a more detailed review soon.

Mission accomplished

Akufu — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 08:24:00 GMT

I have finally obtained it.

To show you how happy I am:

But will I be able to buy it here?

Akufu — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 06:06:00 GMT

The new Dawkins is out and gets a glowing review in the Guardian by Joan Bakewell. Currently bookless (my books are being shipped), I drool at the prospect of reading, especially a work by a snarky atheist.

Religions have the secular world running scared. This book is a clarion call to cower no longer. Primed by anger, redeemed by humour, it will, I trust, offend many.

The God Delusion certainly sounds like an interesting read, and I will need it on this side of the pond, as a kind of counterweight to the constant God bombardment over here.

Ooooh and next week it's Banned Books Week! If my shipment hasn't arrived by then, it'll be the perfect excuse to strike a good deal at the local bookshop.

O, who am I kidding, look at the titles, I'll go and do that anyway!

Lunar Park

Akufu — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 21:16:00 GMT

When I read American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, it was by far the most disturbing novel I had laid my eyes on. As a horror fan, I was pretty blasé about violence and gore. Still, I remember at times having to put the book aside for nausea. After prolonged reading for example on a train journey, I would find myself wondering what some, blissfully unaware, co-passenger's brains would look like splattered on an eighties design futon. I also remember laughing out loud at the irony and spot-on eighty-isms. But what can I say about that book that hasn't been said before? Sure, it is pornographically violent (though I don't agree with those who label it misogynistic), but it is intelligently written, and after putting it down, I could always feel the book pulling at me to start reading again. I think most detractors of the book hate it because the actions of the serial killer Patrick Bateman, have no consequence. It is perfectly alright for a character to be utterly evil, as long as he either sees the error of his ways or gets punished by the end of the story. This way the reader is allowed to 'enjoy' the evilness, and still hang on to morality. No such relief in American Psycho (though there is an escape route your tormented mind can follow).

When I finished that book, I recall wondering about the author who created Bateman. If reading the novel is intense, how the hell must writing it have been? And where did he get his inspiration? (Ellis himself says American Psycho was his most autobiographical work. Haha.) That curiousity drove me to pick up Ellis' latest book Lunar Park.

The main character in Lunar Park is Bret Easton Ellis, a famous writer, most well known for his controversial novel American Psycho. Ellis is married to superstar actress Jayne Dennis, has a part time job teaching literature and is currently working on a novel called 'Teenage Pussy' (shoo you Google perverts, move along now, nothing to see here). I will call him Book Ellis, as he is not the author Ellis.
Ellis says in an interview that a lot of this novel was about coming to terms with his father's sudden death, which left many things unresolved. Complicated father-son relationships are certainly a main theme in the book. Not only does book-Ellis hate his dead father (he modeled Bateman after his old man), He is now a father himself, of a son he never wanted. Only now after 11 years, having finally married the boy's mother does he try to connect with him, but cannot. His anxiety and drug addiction, as well as the fact that everybody around him, including the kids, is on xanax, ritalin, klonopin, you name it, play a major part in this. Unable to do much about it, he sees history repeat itself, with himself now in the role of the hated father. While his family life spirals out of control, Book Ellis becomes haunted by characters he created as a writer. The relationship between a writer and his characters is explored; it is not always clear who is really in charge. As soon as a book is released to the public a character becomes an independent entity, but often has his own voice during the writing process as well. In this way Lunar Park is also a book on writing. It reminded me strongly of Stephen King's The Dark Half.

It is (intentionally, of course) confusing that the main character is called Bret Easton Ellis, talking about things that have really taken place. But does Ellis mean it when he lets Book Ellis say about American Psycho:

Exploring that kind of violence had been "interesting" and "exciting" and it was all "metaphorical" anyway - at least to me at that moment in my life when I was young and pissed off and had not yet grasped my own mortality, a time when physical pain and real suffering held no meaning for me. I was "transgressive" and the book was about "style"

I don't think so. He's basically having a laugh at all the people trying to interpret his books and him. To add to the disjointed feeling, at about three-thirds of the novel Ellis adds an all-knowing 'writer' to the mix, who gives his perspective on events. Is that then the real Ellis or is it just another personality budding off the Book Ellis, as a result of the strange events taking place?

Ellis is toying with his characters as much as with the reader (you could also say that he is playing with himself but that would be too obvious a double entendre). At times this threatens to cross the border between clever writing and gimmick, and I certainly got a little tired of it. The novel itself is an amalgam of genres. It starts of in a very cool ironic mode. Slowly humour disappears and a feeling of general anxiety takes over, as the focus is laid on modern suburban (American) family life. Horror elements are introduced to the story, but in the hands of Ellis this results in surrealism more than actual dread. The last chapters of the book see another change of tone and pace, and seem to be written with a deep melancholical yearning.

Lunar Park on the whole is an interesting read, not perfect, but the first 30 pages as well as the last chapter are absolutely brilliant.

NB: if you haven't read American Psycho, read that first as Lunar Park contains some spoilers and many references. It is in fact the better book - if you have the stomach for it.

Al Franken's Lies and the lying liars who tell them

Akufu — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 03:56:00 GMT

Planning a move to the US, even if it is only temporary, is stressy business, what with all the bureaucracy involved, e.g. the way the Dutch government has fucked up the health care system for ex-pats. But that deserves a post in itself. So, anyway, to keep alert, I drink a lot of coffee, which I inevitably regret at night, when I lie tossing and turning, wide-eyed on a caffeine high. And that gives me ample occasion to mull over everything that could go wrong. Of course the next morning I am knackered, so even more coffee is needed to regain a functional brain. You can see where this is going.

What really helps me to go to sleep, or at least relax my mind, is a good audiobook as I found out having finished the complete Harry Potter series as read by Stephen Fry.

On a whim I decided to download Lies and the lying liars who tell them by Al Franken from the iTMS (this instant gratification combined with a credit card is evil!).

When I first saw the book in 2003, I thought, with its rather garish cover, it was just another publication jumping on the Michael Moore polemic band wagon. Not so. This is better. It does require a basic knowledge of US politics and right wing pundits. Basically you'll be fine (which means in stitches) if you noticed there were elections in 2000. If you ever laid eyes on any blather by Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity or Ann Coulter, so much the better.

A telling quote from Sean Hannity responding to someone pointing out that he should get his facts straight:

Hannity: Well I don't have a lot of time to refute every fact here. [emphasis mine]

Says it all, no?

The book is a humorous and informed investigation into shameless lies like the claim by petulant right wing pundits that the American media are biased... liberally.
That this is not the case is perhaps best exemplified by the chapter on the 2000 elections. For example, I thought Al Gore a bit pompous, for claiming to have invented the internet. Because he didn't. Well, as it turns out he didn't claim to have done that. He only said that as a member of congress he championed funding for one of the forerunners of the internet: ARPAnet. That actually shows him to be a man with vision... It makes me feel stupid for falling for these lies but also, think of Gore who got painted into a corner as a bragging, lying, elitist smart ass.

Another example. Suppose one day, before the elections you get a phone call by some polling agency, asking you:

'If you knew that prime minister Balkenende likes to kill puppies by slowly roasting them on a barbecue on a nice summer's day, would you be more likely or less likely to vote for him?'

This is an (exaggerated) example of push polling. These are fake polls, sometimes aiming to remind voters of important issues, and sometimes aiming to influence voters by smearing a political candidate. Colour me naive, I had no idea election campaigns would sink this low. It happened to John McCain in the 2000 republican primary elections when push pollsters asked:

Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?

This allegation had no substance (and sheesh, who cares if he did...), but was all the more insidious as McCain and his wife had adopted a Bangladeshi girl.

Franken exposes a web of lies, woven by politicians and the right wing media, so thick, that mainstream media are inevitably caught in it and will start to report lies and distortions as facts. How are you, as media consumer, then supposed to understand what is really going on? Call me lazy, but I just don't have the time to google every quote and claim outside my own tiny area of expertise, to check its reliability. Instead, I'll have to depend on people like Franken, who, with a team of Harvard undergraduates delved into the subject to hunt down the truth.

Go on, read the book, or, if you're so inclined, listen to the audiobook as narrated by the man himself. The audiobook clearly benefits from Franken's impersonations, his excellent comic timing and the inclusion of source material. You'll be much amused but risk becoming terminally cynical realistic about anything reported in the media. Even our decent (by comparison!) drab old Dutch media.