Ben_j Escribi�:

I'm just like Barbrady : I think lyrics sucks

I meant reading sucks... I posted that at 3AM >_<

I'm reading '101 places not to visit'...very funny.

mc marsh Escribi�:

I'm reading '101 places not to visit'...very funny.

Do they talk about the 17th arrondissement in Paris ? :D

i am currently reading Brave new world buy aldours huxley.



an interesting book for sure i think i will need to read it twice thou. lots of depth to it.

Ben_j Escribi�:

mc marsh Escribi�:

I'm reading '101 places not to visit'...very funny.

Do they talk about the 17th arrondissement in Paris ? :D

X-D

Just finished reading 'Glamorama' by Bret Easton Ellis (author of American Psycho). I really enjoyed the book but don't really know what to make of it. Very bizarre and pretentious, but gripping and disturbing. Liked it a lot though.



Also read Douglas Coupland's 'All Families Are Psychotic'. A truly disturbing, fast-paced look at the (a)typical family gone wrong.



Currently reading 'Inca Gold' by Clive Cussler. A light read, breezing through. Entertaining, though not as gripping or well-read as Tom Clancy's earlier work.



Also finished 'Man Walks into a Pub: A Sociable History of Beer'. A light-hearted but interesting look at the history of beer and the pub in Britain. Good washroom reading, esp. while hungover. :)



Tried working through 'Not Wanted on the Voyage' by Thomas Findlay, but despite being able to see that his gift for story-telling is significant, I just can't get into it, unfortunately.

It's Banned Book Week here in the States. Here's a list of a few:



The American Library Association keeps an accounting of objectionable reads.



1. "Harry Potter" (Series) (J.K. Rowling)

2. "To Kill a Mockingbird" (Harper Lee)

3. "The Color Purple" (Alice Walker)

4. "The Outsiders" (S.E. Hinton)

5. "Lord of the Flies" (William Golding)

6. "Of Mice and Men" (John Steinbeck)

7. "Goosebumps" (Series) (R.L. Stine)

8. "How to Eat Fried Worms" (Thomas Rockwell)

9. "The Catcher in the Rye" (J.D. Salinger)

10. "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (Mark Twain)

11. "The Giver" (Lois Lowry)

12. "Brave New World" (Aldous Huxley)

13. "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (Mark Twain)

14. "Captain Underpants" (Dav Pilkey)

15. "The Anarchist Cookbook" (William Powell)

16. "Carrie" (Stephen King)

17. "Flowers for Algernon" (Daniel Keyes)

18. "The Dead Zone" (Stephen King)

19. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" (Maya Angelou)

20. "Go Ask Alice" (anonymous)

21. "American Psycho" (Bret Easton Ellis)

22. "The Chocolate War" (Robert Cormier)

23. "James and the Giant Peach" (Roald Dahl)

24. "The Pigman" (Paul Zindel)

25. "A Wrinkle in Time" (Madeleine L'Engle)



http://www.ala.org/a...edbooksweek.htm





Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, this annual ALA event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. This year, 2006, marks BBW's 25th anniversary (September 23-30).





_____________________________



And on that note, the benedryl and robitussin are kicking in. I'm going to bed.

2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Hardcover)

by Daniel Pinchbeck (Author) "Our civilization is on a path of ever-increasing acceleration, but what are we rushing





From Publishers Weekly

Pinchbeck, journalist and author of the drug-riddled psychonaut investigation Breaking Open the Head, has set out to create an "extravagant thought experiment" centering around the Mayan prophecy that 2012 will bring about the end of the world as we know it, "the conclusion of a vast evolutionary cycle, and the potential gateway to a higher level of manifestation." More specifically, Pinchbeck's claim is that we are in the final stages of a fundamental global shift from a society based on materiality to one based on spirituality. Intermittently fascinating, especially in his autobiographical interludes, Pinchbeck tackles Stonehenge and the Burning Man festival, crop circles and globalization, modern hallucinogens and the ancient prophesy of the Plumed Serpent featured in his subtitle. His description of difficult-to-translate experiences, like his experimentation with a little-known hallucinogenic drug called dripropyltryptamine (DPT), are striking for their lucidity: "For several weeks after taking DPT, I picked up flickering hypnagogic imagery when I closed my eyes at night ... In one scene, I entered a column of fire rising from the center of Stonehenge again and again, feeling myself pleasantly annihilated by the flames each time." Pinchbeck's teleological exploration can overwhelm, and his meandering focus can frustrate, but as a thought experiment, Pinchbeck's exotic epic is a paradigm-buster capable of forcing the most cynical reader outside her comfort zone.

Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.



Book Description

Cross James Merrill, H. P. Lovecraft, and Carlos Castaneda -each imbued with a twenty-first-century aptitude for quantum theory and existential psychology-and you get the voice of Daniel Pinchbeck. And yet, nothing quite prepares us for the lucidity, rationale, and informed audacity of this seeker, skeptic, and cartographer of hidden realms.



Throughout the 1990s, Pinchbeck had been a member of New York's literary select. He wrote for publications such as The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, and Harper's Bazaar. His first book, Breaking Open the Head, was heralded as the most significant on psychedelic experimentation since the work of Terence McKenna.



But slowly something happened: Rather than writing from a journalistic remove, Pinchbeck-his literary powers at their peak-began to participate in the shamanic and metaphysical belief systems he was encountering. As his psyche and body opened to new experience, disparate threads and occurrences made sense like never before: Humanity, every sign pointed, is precariously balanced between greater self-potential and environmental disaster. The Mayan calendar's "end date" of 2012 seems to define our present age: It heralds the end of one way of existence and the return of another, in which the serpent god Quetzalcoatl reigns anew, bringing with him an unimaginably ancient-yet, to us, wholly new-way of living.



A result not just of study but also of participation, 2012 tells the tale of a single man in whose trials we ultimately recognize our own hopes and anxieties about modern life.

oooo, that book (and DPT) sounds good.



I don't buy it though... my feeling is that if the mayans had known jack shit, they wouldn't all be dead now.

toomuch'stash Escribi�:

oooo, that book (and DPT) sounds good.



I don't buy it though... my feeling is that if the mayans had known jack shit, they wouldn't all be dead now.

they might have been enjoying their demise........shroomy demise.

there is that.



Olmec, toltecs, aztecs, mayans... I often wonder what latin america would be like if the 'latin' part had never happenend to it.

toomuch'stash Escribi�:

oooo, that book (and DPT) sounds good.



I don't buy it though... my feeling is that if the mayans had known jack shit, they wouldn't all be dead now.

hey im not dead

i just finsihed shadow of the wind by carlos ruis zafon. was pretty cool, kind of a post second world war whodunnit with a story within a story. quite creepy and a bit gothic, not the best book ever but an enjoyable read.

mippio Escribi�:

i just finsihed shadow of the wind by carlos ruis zafon. was pretty cool, kind of a post second world war whodunnit with a story within a story. quite creepy and a bit gothic, not the best book ever but an enjoyable read.

I just finished Ice Station Zebra, a really good cold war whodunnit, but with submarines and ice!



I'll see if I can find this one of which you speak....



actually, in the last week I've read (or re-read) Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, Ice Station Zebra, Micheal Crichton's Timeline, Issola by Steven Brust... and one other one... what the hell was it... fuck, I can't even remember.

I'm reading Diary of a married call girl. It's intresting because everything is described in detail. Bwahaha.



Before i read The Zahir from Paulo Coelho. Fucking weird book , about the energy of love , but it DID made me think about stuff.

Jeanie Escribi�:

I'm reading Diary of a married call girl. It's intresting because everything is described in detail. Bwahaha.



Before i read The Zahir from Paulo Coelho. Fucking weird book , about the energy of love , but it DID made me think about stuff.

Funny, I just finished reading The Alchemist.

That is a fucking great book though. Better than The Zahir imo.

Been reading a bunch of things lately, but not been reading very often. Too tired to read.



Really liking Bret Easton Ellis - Lunar Park.



New Irvine Welsh is out, too, but haven't picked it up yet.

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,

Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices

That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,

The clouds methought would open and show riches

Ready to drop upon me; that, when I waked,

I cried to dream again.



- Caliban from Shakespeare's The Tempest - Act 3, Scene 2



I'm not into Skakespeare, but I am reading the fantastic novel "Ilium" by Dan Simmons and it features a character based upon Caliban.

Just finished 'Less Than Zero' by Bret Easton Ellis again and was going to start 'American Psycho' for the umpteenth time but I realized I lent it out to Heather. I also read 'The Rules of Attraction' a couple weeks ago and I've now started 'Glamorama'. I suppose I'm in a somewhat bleak, nihilistic, Ellisesque mood.



Wanted to start 'Bonfire of the Vanities' by Tom Wolfe but I couldn't find it around the house.



Recently read 'X-Wing: Wraith Squadron' by Aaron Allston as a nice, light read.