Tag: reading

Raymond Chandler – The Simple Art of Murder

~ Mark

Chandler on the detective story and how it resists criticism. This bit reminded me of Joan Acocella’s recent article about Stieg Larsson:

The murder novel has also a depressing way of minding its own business, solving its own problems and answering its own questions. There is nothing left to discuss, except whether it was well enough written to be good fiction, and the people who make up the half-million sales wouldn’t know that anyway.

A bit cynical, but there you go. Also provocative:

There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that. The growth of populations has in no way increased the amount; it has merely increased the adeptness with which substitutes can be produced and packaged.

And of course:

Everything written with vitality expresses that vitality; there are no dull subjects, only dull minds. All men who read escape from something else into what lies behind the printed page; the quality of the dream may be argued, but its release has become a functional necessity. […] I hold no particular brief for the detective story as the ideal escape. I merely say that all reading for pleasure is escape, whether it be Greek, mathematics, astronomy, Benedetto Croce, or The Diary of the Forgotten Man. To say otherwise is to be an intellectual snob, and a juvenile at the art of living.

See also Woody Allen on escapism. The next-to-last paragraph about the nature of the crime/detective story hero is also worthwhile.

Raymond Chandler – The Simple Art of Murder

2010 Review of Books (Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought)

~ Mark

Good round-up and commentary on his year in reading. New to/of interest to me:

  • Secrets by Daniel Ellsberg
  • A Bee Stung Me So I Killed All The Fish by George Saunders
  • Prince of the Marshes by Rory Stewart
  • Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman
  • Becoming Attached by Robert Karen
  • Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
  • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
  • The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman

2010 Review of Books (Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought)

2010 Review of Books (Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought)

~ Mark

Good round-up and commentary on his year in reading. New to/of interest to me:

  • Secrets by Daniel Ellsberg
  • A Bee Stung Me So I Killed All The Fish by George Saunders
  • Prince of the Marshes by Rory Stewart
  • Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman
  • Becoming Attached by Robert Karen
  • Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
  • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
  • The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman

2010 Review of Books (Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought)

~ Mark

There are two ways of walking through a wood. The first is to try one of several routes (so as to get out of the wood as fast as possible, say, or to reach the house of grandmother, Tom Thumb, or Hansel and Gretel); the second is to walk so as to discover what the wood is like and find out why some paths are accessible and others are not. Similarly, there are two ways of going through a narrative text.

Umberto Eco, in Six Walks in the Fictional Woods. (via)

Gifting Digital Books — Craig Mod

~ Mark

This is a good idea.

My friend turns on their Kindle the morning of the day I select for the book to arrive. Their Kindle syncs with the Kindle cloud and — oh, look! A gift! The book is automatically downloaded. My personalized message — long or short — is displayed and kept as a part of that book. Furthermore, if I’ve opted to have my notes and highlights included with the book, those too, are downloaded.

Gifting Digital Books — Craig Mod

What I’ve been reading, vol. iv

~ Mark ~ Leave a comment

Gotta say, these past two months have been pretty good for reading. From the most recent to the more distant in time:
1. Why Mahler?. This might be better for people who already care at least a little bit about Mahler, one of those characters that lends to incompleteness. Like talking about his music. Too vast, too contradictory, too universal, too personal. Still, it’s a breezy, rangy biography mixed with some memoir, and it’s a good read.

2. Listen to This. Alex Ross is one of my favorite writers. This book is mostly a collection of stuff he’s written for The New Yorker. The essays I dog-eared most heavily were Chacona, Lamento, Walking Blues, Infernal Machines, The Storm of Style, Song of the Earth, Verdi’s Grip, and his writings on tour with Radiohead and Bob Dylan were interesting, too. He’s also got a great audio guide for Listen to This like the one for The Rest is Noise (which is awesome).

3. The Art of Non-Conformity. Got curious about this one because I recognized the brand. The blog is better.

4. The Music Instinct. Author Philip Ball struck me first and foremost as a very fair writer. It seems like he doesn’t have very many bones to pick, aside from the fact that we should stay open-minded and open-eared. The first 60-70% of the book, the best part, is nerdy stuff about music theory—the science of pitch, scales, harmony, timbre, rhythm, etc. He’s glad to branch out across the world and not just focus on Western tradition. I found it quite good.

5. The Substance of Style. Couldn’t finish. Seemed sort of argument-by-anecdote-y, which is fine, but not what I wanted at the time.

6. The Art of Travel. This is mostly worthwhile, the first half in particular. Each section centers around a topic (Anticipation, Curiosity, the Exotic, the Sublime, etc.), a tour guide of sorts (e.g. Huysmans, Humboldt, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Van Gogh), and de Botton’s own observations and musings. It’s a good, quick read.

7. The Book of Basketball. I thought it was awesome. Rare to find any book, nonfiction or otherwise, that keeps you up late a few nights in a row.

8. On Kindness. Another one that I really, really liked and shared a bunch of quotes from. Great brain food here.

9. Steppenwolf. I read this one right after “The Moviegoer”, below. They both deal with existential angst, but this one is much more over-the-top, orotund, and, um, German. I think you could get your time’s worth just reading the first 40 pages or so.

10. The Moviegoer. I liked this one alright. Nothing much happens in the story, but the narrator’s struggles—with his own ambivalence, with relating to people, with finding satisfaction outside of passive distractions, etc.—were good food for thought.

11. Jane Eyre. This was a bit of a drag. Either I’m a curmudgeon with no heart or it’s kind of boring. This was, however, the first book I read mostly on my iPad, so it was nice to have that experience. I would have shared a bunch of quotes and bon mots, but, alas, as of now there’s no way to export highlights from iBooks other than tedious cut and paste. Maybe get to that later…

I think I’m due for some more fiction soon. More of what I’ve read lately can be found in volumes one, two, and three.

Read to Lead: How to Digest Books Above Your “Level” – RyanHoliday.net

~ Mark

Many good ideas on mercenary reading here. Feel free to set aside the “rules” of front-to-back reading. Gotta participate actively and take what you need.

The work is an expression of the message, not the message itself. So forget everything but that message and how to apply it to your life. Dates, names, pronunciations–-they only matter in how they provide context for the lesson at hand.

And also:

You ought to ruin the ending–-or find out the basic assertions of the book–-because it frees you up to focus on your two most important tasks: 1) What does it mean? 2) Do you agree with it? The first 50 pages of the book shouldn’t be a discovery process for you; you shouldn’t be wasting your time figuring out what the author is trying to say. Instead, your energy needs to be spent on figuring out if he’s right and how you can benefit from it.

Read to Lead: How to Digest Books Above Your “Level” – RyanHoliday.net

~ Mark

It is such a simple thing, but since I started, about three years ago, using Flickr and my top-secret notebooks to keep track of what I read, it has brought me a ridiculous amount of satisfaction.

What I’ve been reading, vol. iii

~ Mark ~ Leave a comment

Man, my reading of books has taken a nosedive since I got an iPad + Instapaper. But I’m not sure if I mind that much. The best of that stuff ends up on my tumblr, anyway. Here’s a rundown of bound volumes:
1. A Certain “Je Ne Sais Quoi”. It’s basically a long list of phrases and where they came from. It’s really good if you care about words and where they come from.

2. Coltrane on Coltrane. What comes up again and again in these profiles and interviews is how kind, humble, and reticent Coltrane is. He seems like a genuinely nice guy. Which makes it not nearly as interesting as Miles on Miles. Miles Davis is not known for being kind, humble or reticent. He’ll speechify and declaim and accuse and he’s got giant chips on his shoulder. In many of the Coltrane interviews, you see the interviewer’s paragraphs of speech balanced with just a few words from Coltrane. Too bad.

3. The Broom of the System. I couldn’t finish this one. Wallace’s nonfiction is where it’s at for me, though I’m still holding out hope for “Infinite Jest”.

4. The Happiness Hypothesis. Did I mention that you have to read this book? Yes I did. Still standing as my favorite nonfiction of 2010.

5. I Love Led Zeppelin. Some of it is funny.

6. Exit Wounds. Skip.

7. The Elegant Man was a nice style guide, if only for reasons of vocabulary and attention to detail. The nice thing about being a guy is that if you learn the classics, you’re set for life.

8. Mrs. Bridge. This is a day-to-day chronicle of suburban broken dreams, etc. Eh.

9. Finite & Infinite Games. Skip.

10. Then We Came to the End. I thought it was a nice chronicle of life in an office.

11. Once a Runner. It’s one of the classics about running, and true to its reputation, the best passages are about running and how exhilarating and exhausting it is to take it seriously. The overall plot was merely okay.

12. Ghost Wars. I really liked another book of his, but I didn’t get chance to finish this. What I read was really good.

13. The Places in Between. It’s a great travelogue and has a nice balance with explaining the history and complicated social intricacies of Afghan culture. Great read. I hear author Rory Stewart is a potential Prime Minister.

Here are my first and second reading round-ups.

~ Mark

Constraint in everyday life. A lesson learned as I spent a couple weeks dog- and house-sitting barely a mile from the office. In theory my time not-on-a-train in the mornings and afternoons could have converted to reading time like usual. In theory. If I had any discipline. And thus I remind myself that less important than the amount time I have–a shit-ton, if you know where to look (as in, let us say, around lunchtime; before, during and right after breakfast when I’m usually just kind of sighing and limping around the house; and pretty much every day from 6pm to midnight)–is the structure I give it.

A few weeks with my iPad

~ Mark ~ 4 Comments

To fill the void in my soul, etc.
I wrote this a long time ago, it seems, and never got around to pushing the publish button. Just a few notes I typed while I was using it…

  • I can position it without worrying about how the page catches the light.
  • Very bright. Usually use it at half-brightness or less.
  • A pleasure to use at night with brightness dimmed, especially in reverse light-on-dark text.
  • Super-awesome to eat with — no smoothing or holding pages, etc. It just sits there giving me text.
  • I use my iMac less often, which also means I’ve been listening to music much less than before.
  • RSS browsing is more difficult. It’s not great with Google Reader. The upside is that I’m more picky about what I open and send to Instapaper.
  • Speaking of which, Instapaper so completely rules. Indispensable.
  • Best travel device ever?
  • Typing is much easier than I expected, especially with the autofix in place.
  • I love being able to email myself my notes really easily. I should have been doing this all along.
  • It’s also great for work stuff because it’s a reliable backstop that I *want* to use, unlike the craptop I was assigned.
  • It’s not a fixture or a centerpiece. Enter the room and it’s just lying in there with the pile of books or lost in the blankets somewhere. No biggie, very low impact on the surroundings. It doesn’t take over a space like computer or a TV does.
  • Everything is a hot zone. I wish there were a way to desensitize it sometimes.
  • The iPad has near-silent operation. This is a HUGE plus for me. No fans, no drives spinning. No clicking mouse. No mechanical tap tappity tappa on the keyboard. No paper rustling. This is a very peaceful experience.

I liked these three articles related to the iPad:

Books Which Have Influenced Me – Robert Louis Stevenson

~ Mark

The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They do not pin the reader to a dogma, which he must afterwards discover to be inexact; they do not teach him a lesson, which he must afterwards unlearn. They repeat, they rearrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, not as we can see it for ourselves, but with a singular change—that monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, for the nonce, struck out.

Books Which Have Influenced Me – Robert Louis Stevenson