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And having finished what proved to be the best book I've read in a long time, Bruno Schulz's "The Street of Crocodiles", introduced to it by the animation of the same name by The Brothers Quay, a rich, vivid, metaphorical description of the author's life in Poland around the turn of the century.
“There open up, deep inside a city, reflected streets, streets which are double, make-believe streets. One's imagination, bewitched and misled, creates illusory maps of the apparently familiar districts, maps in which the streets have their proper places and usual names but are provided with new and fictitious configurations by the inexhaustible inventiveness of the night.”
You can read it online here: http://www.schulzian.net/translation/shops.htm, which may be easier than finding a print edition...
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And I picked this up at the Flea Market, a Graphic Novel, attracted by the environmental themes and rough graphic style, I can imagine that with a little (or probably a lot) of practice my style might approach it. "For the daughter" I tell myself - because, indeed, I think she'll like it, but as she's still a few months away I pass the time by reading it.
And it's brilliant. By brilliant I mean it uncovers and reveals the complex layers, motivations and consequences of the ecological abyss we are plummeting into. And it's a bit hard-hitting, but the truth is, and it doesn't satisfy itself with the conventional media platitudes of "reuse, recycle...", it attacks the corporations, governments and institutions that are promoting the destruction of the planet, and raises complex philosophical issues of how domesticated, indeed zombified, by corporate and consumer culture, we are, and how we rebel against doing small and necessary evils to prevent larger ones...
It tackles in uncomfortable ways our passive and impotent attitudes towards the destruction of our planet, and raises up a call to arms...Genius. It's not a happy book, but unless you've been on Prozac the past hundred years, it's not a happy world.
AS THE WORLD BURNS: 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Stay In Denial - By Derrick Jensen & Stephanie McMillan. 5/5 Stars, and kudos for them for having the courage to write a book that calls it like it is and probably hasn't sold that well. I'm hoping the daughter loves it as much as I have.
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Now I saw this at a thrift-shop and as I like Louis De Bernieres and have been on a bit of a reading roll I picked it up.
It's good.
But, less on the review front I read it and begin to recognize myself - the plot - a middle aged man falls for a young Yugoslavian Girl (Serbian). That's plenty. No spoilers here. But there's the curious symmetries - heroin lives in Clapham - I lived in Clapham - Heroin is a Serbian Hostess in a Hostess Bar in Soho - oddly enough, my housemate was a Bosnian Hostess at a Hostess bar in Soho...and the stories, well, fictionalized for sure, but one recognizes enough places and parallels to ones own life to wonder...
A curious coincidence, timing, whatever, that took me back to the day...
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Funniest book I've read since...well, for a while. Collections of Mr. Thorne's emails with the unwitting, unwary and, for lack of appropriate un-word, stupid. With their replies. Loads of LULZ.
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Reading, at the moment, “The Werewolf in Lore and Legend” by Montague Summers.
And, I must say, it’s absolutely brilliant.
In the spring I read his “The History of Demonology and Witchcraft”, as well outstanding, and the incentive to read anything by him I can come across.
He is, first and foremost, erudite and well informed upon his subject matter, quoting hundreds of references. He presumes upon the reader a similar level of education, quoting his sources in the original Greek, Latin, Italian, German, Russian, etc. footnotes provided not to translate the quotes but merely clear up some obtuse point that might confuse one. When he condescends to argue a point in English there is no paragraph in which you can’t find occasion to open a dictionary. He writes as a Catholic clergyman, and as such occasionally references the pleasures to be found in more classical Man-Boy relationships (his first book was a book of verse dedicated to the subject). When describing the trials of witches he uses phrases like “subject to the most exquisite torture…”, which, in the strictest sense of the word, is true, but perhaps a little less zeal might be appropriate? Nonetheless he is highly entertaining, and to add to it all he professes to believe what he writes - that the Devil is a real being, who wreaks his supernatural agency amongst the living through witches, werewolves, and vampires. A curious point of view, especially given the time that he writes at and his formidable knowledge of the subject.
And a very curious individual, arguably his reasoned (reasonable?) assurances on the existence of evil and devilry might be better founded upon the organization that he represents and the causes he champions than by the demons and witches he so mercilessly flays, but that’s part of his charm…a must have guest, along with Aleister Crowley, to any dinner party of historical figures.
For a short (but entertaining) biography and list of published works read the wiki: