Finally I finished “Against the Day” by Thomas Pynchon. It went as the last one: small interesting episodes were mixed with long passages that I only read to get through the book. It’s not surprising that I’ve read half a dozen other books during that one. I must confess that I lost track of the various story lines through those escapades. Afterwards I’m not sure that it was worth the time (although there’s something with Pynchon that makes you come back to the books) especially because of the anti-climaxing end. At least “The crying of lot 49″ had a better ending.

I also had my first Krav Maga lesson yesterday. Pain ensured. I’m not sure if I should continue: it’s not a bad idea overall but I might have a small problem with a hobby that consists of “punch the enemy in his genitalia or face and run like hell”. I had fun though. By now I’m quite good in differentiating the different kinds of muscle soreness.

So on to the next book on my “force myself to read”-list.

So I finally came to read Friedman’s famous book. Another book about globalization, my sarcastic self had to laugh after realizing that I bought it for a flight back from America to Europa. If you know me, you’d might as why it took almost 1.5 months to complete that book (highly unlikely for me) and I’d respond:

1. I’ve been tremendously busy
2. The book is not as great as I hoped

As usual the truth lies in between.  It is a good introduction into the whole ‘globalization to save civilization from another world war’- and ‘empowerment of the poor’ thing, but wasn’t quite as deep-going as I hoped it would. Its 640 pages are filed with repetitions of examples how the ‘flat world’ did help people while entrenched living spoils life. The problem is, that most of it could have been said in 200 pages to make a great and in even fewer to make an really outstanding book.

Also claims are mostly presented through examples and seldomly prooven. For an example the chapter about ecological impacts of globalization was quite shallow, a short ten minute talk with a friend of mine (Eva, who blogs around here) brought more understanding.

Also it gets a bit populist from times to times.

But as an (alas long) introduction it is very suitable. For people (like me) that believe in capitalism and globalization bringing freedom and need some reinforcement in it I’d rather recommend the other Friedman’s (Milton) ‘Capitalism and Freedom’.

Lot of stuff has been on my mind lately: finishing my last university courses, doing work for my diploma thesis and side projects, visiting concerts and reading books just took its time.

Nova rock was fabulous, the bands rocked. I was rather astonished that not everyone loved the Pearl Jam gig. Last weeks Metallica concert also was worth every Euro I payed for.. they are just one of the best live bands ever. Between all those gigs some ’smaller’ concerts where watched by me: Beatsteaks, Wolfmother, Tori Amos.. all of them where good, but still the aforementioned sticked better in my mind.

University related stuff is mostly over by now, the only missing oral exam will be taken the day after tomorrow, the workings on my diploma thesis are another story which might be told another time.

My birthday keeps happening on the 7th of July each year, and hopefully will. I was really happy to hear and see some old friends of mine, but missed some. Still I feel somewhat distressed partying in the knowledge that one the same days families are mourning their loss of two year’s ago.

I just finished reading “To kill a mockingbird”. It seems that Hollywood loved the book as the plot was featured in too many films by now, sadly most points raised are still valid. The book gains bonus points for being told from the naiive perspective of an eight years old child, also the goth pseudo-hero was a nice twist.

I’ll have to switch to “Programming language concepts” for my upcoming exam, but might have time to read a couple of pages of Sam Harris’ The End of Faith.

Steven Brust tries the hard one: rewriting the bible, creating an alternative version of satan’s downfall. Heavy inspired by John Milton’s Paradise Lost the book creates a rousing storyline based upon Yaweh, Satan, Lucifer, Michael, etc.

The remaining question is, with which character you identify most. As the book is written with sympathies for the devil, my favourite fallen character still is lucifer.

Stardust falls in the same category as the movie “Big Fish”. They’re stories that you could have heard as child. The storyline is magic, but not challenging. While not badly written at all you can’t call them exploring new terrain. But you just can’t stop reading or watching. Your mind goes back to better times, when everything was simple and all you knew of the world was that the end will be good, the happily ever after is just some pages or minutes away.

Escaping reality always has it’s little charm..

After watching ‘Hannibal rising’ and hating the new Hannibal Lecter I had to reread my old Hannibal book. The protagonist still is (besides HAL 9000) the one of the best ambivalent villains ever imagined.

And yes, most of my spare time is spent reading, watching movies and listening to music.

After reading ‘A long way down’ it was only a matter of time before beginning the next of Nick Hornby’s books. I stumbled upon ‘31 songs’ in my local book store and thought the idea behind it (telling a story through songs and lyrics that you like) quite interesting. Even more so as I tend to do the same.

Even as I seldom knew the bands or songs being discussed I can recommend the book. It’s (as typical for Hornby) witty written while being quite sarcastic. You might even learn some new bands through it (I abandomed my long standing disapproval of Bruce Springsteen and bought one of his CDs, while I do hate half of the tracks the other half is better than most contemporay music).

Returning themes are the estrangelment in modern society, Nick Hornby’s problems with his (now) ex-wife and kid and how he dealt with it. After discovering that he already was 54 when writing this book started me thinking about getting older while still being ‘alive’.

And the last chapter (he discusses the billboard top 10 song by song) is just a must read! It’s a rare occation that my thoughts are that good stated, it even brought a smile into my face. And his final conclusion that the punk music he heard while being young had more content then modern pop or rap made me realise that it might not be punk that was thoughtfull but rather current pop music that has great demand for better thought of lyrics.

This was just a normal criminal thriller albeit with some strange twists and turns. The language used to imitate texan slang was rather hard and annoying to read as the the author’s unwillingness to use common puncutation rules. The overwhelming theme of moral degration through the end of the book seemed more than just a bit over the edge.

After reading excellent reviews of McCarthy’s book I just bought two of them from amazon. Lately I seem to stumble into books that are not bad, but not that great either.

The storyline centers about a man and his son travelling through post-apocalyptic america into the south. Why? we do not now. How did the apocalypse happen? We do not know. Most of the few survivors turned into cannibals, so human contact is not favoured.

The books style is very interessting. Prosa, with very few punctuation marks and extremly short paragraphs and no hierarchy otherwise. It seems like turning in into a series of flashbacks: the world is described as grey and black (ashes mask the sun) and after three to four sentences the scene fades away. The overall picture drawn is very depressing. The two protagonists are slowly dying over the course of the 250 pages, the father even more so.

I really embraced the dark end-time spirit, the last three pages didn’t remain well in my memory as they broke with the permanent theme of the book.

There are many memorable quotes, as:

• Do you wish to die? No. But I might wish I had died.
• There is no god and we are his prophets.

I’m not too sure if I like McCarthy or not, but I do have another of his book to get clear about it.

A friend of mine lent me Marilyn Manson’s “The long road out of hell”, his autobiography. Despite being at one of his concerts I wouldn’t count myself as a big fan, even though I will watch him again at this year’s NovaRock music festival.

After reading the book I’m quite ambivalent towards it. While the confrontation of his ‘diary’ and anti-Manson propaganda is great, it lacks authenticity somehow: an arbiter is missing. Manson himself does oscillate between artist and spoiled brat. Some of his interpretations of old stage shows sound artificial with the need to display things in another light. And his desire to shock people can be felt from page to page, sometimes it’s more interfering than helpful.

Manson reminds me of Anthony Burgess’ Alex, someone with too much power and possibilities and a moral framework that does not prevent him from exploiting others. Well, as long as those do not object to it, there’s nothing wrong with it.

The most disturbing parts of the book where the description of the state’s interventions and Manson’s saying, that he heard an advanced version of the (then unreleased) first pearl jam album (ten), but thought the album to be bad.

Also his relationship to Trent Reznor was enlightened. As I do like NiN (and am currenlty counting the four days till their concert in Vienna) those parts did seem more important than the most Brian Warner parts.. a sad conclusion for a biography.