Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts

Friday, December 10, 2010

Some 2010 books

Despite spending 35 hours a week sitting in a bookstore, a good deal of which time I do spend reading, I haven't done an extensive survey of everything released this year that I should. HOWEVER, these 10 are recommended, and if you want one or two to be your holiday present and I know you that well, email me.

Also, if you follow these links and buy anything I get a little money from Amazon Associates so help a sister out.

Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality

Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy Deluxe Boxed Set: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, Plus On Stieg Larsson

Kraken

The Windup Girl
(technically released last year, but got much wider print this year due to the Hugo nomination and win)

Chronic City (Vintage Contemporaries)
Also last year, but in softcover this year.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Possum Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and with (Almost) No Money
Re-released.

Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel

X'ed Out

Richard Yates

Friday, November 12, 2010

Never let me go against the day

I love chasing something long and silly with something short and intense.

I don't think I want to see the movie of the latter. Ishiguro does something brilliantly interior with the dystopian genre that either the reviewers are missing or the filmmakers did. My post-humanism is showing in that it never occured to me that anyone would have to prove the existence of their "soul", since nobody has one, yet my moral outrage still stands at having to prove one suffers when one's purpose in life is dying of other peoples' diseases. Arguably it's a book about the ethical treatment of animals, although I don't think Ishiguro meant it that way.
A shared theme of human's inhumanity to human, or when there is not enough labor in society for its majority to is too trite when what a historical outlook on ethical trends reveals is that there have always been subhumans among humans. These connections are still too broad. Is it also offensive to you when anyone says "just a copy"? It just shows how far behind normal people are on this whole science ethics thing. Speaking of post-humanism -
Pynchon's family anarchist steampunk western focuses post-historically on the end of the enlightenment project, during the build-up to World War One. Plus, something about relativity. It's like watching anachronistic cartoons stoned for a year.
Here is my illustration for everything Pynchon wrote:

I do need something better than a facebook app to log my reading, but I need to be able to export from the app I'm using. Anyone know of one already?