Muggles, Not Buggles July 22, 2007
Posted by zenandjuice in : Books , add a commentI love the packing from amazon.com that they used to deliver the new Harry Potter book. Especially the “Attention Muggles: Do Not Deliver or Open Before July 21!” warning.
1984 April 23, 2007
Posted by zenandjuice in : Books , add a commentThis is a book that I’ve had for several years.
It’s a pulp-paperback edition of George Orwell’s 1984, dated 1952 (or 1954, I forget).
I bought it because I loved the cover:
And also… Which one will YOU be in the year 1984 ? (Back Cover):
RIP Kurt Vonnegut April 11, 2007
Posted by zenandjuice in : Books , 1 comment so farKurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died Wednesday night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.
His death was reported by Morgan Entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said Mr. Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago.
Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and ’70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States. (more…)
A.L.I.E.E.E.N. August 6, 2006
Posted by zenandjuice in : Books , add a commentYesterday at Nightbird Books, I picked up A.L.I.E.E.E.N.: Archives of Lost Issues and Earthly Editions of Extraterrestrial Novelties by Lewis Trondheim.
It’s a great little graphic novel !
At last we have an answer to the question: What do alien kids read?
Who knows how many light-years this beaten-up, weatherworn volume has traveled to land up in the hands of an earthling like you? This rare artifact from another planet is written in an entirely alien language and alphabet, which you may be the first human to decipher.
Whichever galaxy they’re from, these interwoven tales prove that some stories are indeed universal — and that others are, well … weird, bizarre, and clearly not of this world. But no matter how many eyes, legs, or tentacles they have, it’s nice to know that aliens too can smile, cry, poop, make friends, be kind or be cruel, fall prey to peer pressure, and sometimes make a total mess of things while trying to do good.
Thanks to this extraordinary discovery from a world far, far away, serious ufologists everywhere are now rethinking their profession, while asking themselves: Do aliens really let their kids read this stuff?
Visit FirstSecond, the Publisher’s Site with sample pages, screensavers and wallpaper !
disco bloodbath September 12, 2005
Posted by zenandjuice in : Books , 5commentsand the book that I’m about to start is…
“Disco Bloodbath : A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland” by James St. James
The “True Crime” story that was the basis for “Party Monster“, starring Macaulay Culkin and Seth Green.
from amazon.com:
In 1996, New York City drug dealer and “club kid” Angel Melendez was bludgeoned, injected with Drano, dismembered, and tossed into the river. James St. James was there when the killer confessed, but before that, there were the clubs, the parties, the drugs, and the many fabulous (and some not so fabulous) outfits. Disco Bloodbath is “celebutante” St. James’s story, equal parts confession and attempt at closure. This is no square-jawed detective’s account of the investigation of the crime; St. James is a drug-addled clubster who wears a wedding dress out on the town and invokes Judy Garland as he talks about the scene in which he and Melendez immersed themselves before the murder. His story, despite its gruesome subject matter and frequent, shocking lucidity, has a chatty and anecdotal quality that’s compelling, endearing, and unrelentingly human. –Lisa Higgins
naked pictures of famous people September 12, 2005
Posted by zenandjuice in : Books , add a commentanother recent book I finished is “Naked Pictures of Famous People” by Jon Stewart.
from amazon.com:
Sometimes it seems like every standup comedian worth his or her salt just has to do the book thing, and you might feel that yet another warmed-over stage routine is the last thing you need taking up valuable bookshelf space. Jon Stewart’s book will come as an extremely pleasant surprise. He eschews the standard standup patter and instead gives us 18 short comic essays in a variety of styles that recall the prose work of Woody Allen, only with a few more references to genitals. Stewart proves himself a remarkably nimble humorist with a sharp eye for parody, whether he’s writing “A Very Hanson Christmas” or “Adolf Hitler: The Larry King Interview.”
HITLER: …Larry, look, I was a bad guy. No question. I hate that Hitler. The yelling, the finger pointing, I don’t know … I was a very angry guy.
KING: And this … new Hitler?
HITLER: I get up at seven, have half a melon, do the jumble in the morning paper and then let the day take me where it will…. Me!! The inventor of the Blitzkrieg… When you stop having to control everything it’s very freeing.
Stewart is not afraid to flirt with bad taste, in fact, some of the pieces in this collection do for “flirting with bad taste” what Bill Clinton did for “not having sexual relations.” But it’s wonderful to see an edgy comedian taking on the traditionally cozy genre of the humorous essay, creating work that combines the wit of Robert Benchley with the energy and attitude of the best modern standup. Naked Pictures of Famous People proves that Jon Stewart is as comfortable, and accomplished, in front of a word processor as he is in front of an audience. –Simon Leake
choke September 12, 2005
Posted by zenandjuice in : Books , add a commentI just finished reading “Choke” by Chuck Palahniuk.
Victor Mancini is a ruthless con artist. Victor Mancini is a med-school dropout who’s taken a job playing an Irish indentured servant in a colonial-era theme park in order to help care for his Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother. Victor Mancini is a sex addict. Victor Mancini is a direct descendant of Jesus Christ. All of these statements about the protagonist of Choke are more or less true. Welcome, once again, to the world of Chuck Palahniuk.
“Art never comes from happiness.” So says Mancini’s mother only a few pages into the novel. Given her own dicey and melodramatic style of parenting, you would think that her son’s life would be chock-full of nothing but art. Alas, that’s not the case. In the fine tradition of Oedipus, Stephen Dedalus, and Anthony Soprano, Victor hasn’t quite reconciled his issues with his mother. Instead, he’s trawling sexual-addiction recovery meetings for dates and purposely choking in restaurants for a few moments of attention. Longing for a hug, in other words, he’s settling for the Heimlich.
Thematically, this is pretty familiar Palahniuk territory. It would be a pity to disclose the surprises of the plot, but suffice it to say that what we have here is a little bit of Tom Robbins’s Another Roadside Attraction, a little bit of Don DeLillo’s The Day Room, and, well, a little bit of Fight Club. Just as with Fight Club and the other two novels under Palahniuk’s belt, we get a smattering of gloriously unflinching sound bites, including this skeptical bit on prayer chains: “A spiritual pyramid scheme. As if you can gang up on God. Bully him around.”
Whether this is the novel that will break Palahniuk into the mainstream is hard to say. For a fourth book, in fact, the ratio of iffy, “dude”-intensive dialogue to interesting and insightful passages is a little higher than we might wish. In the end, though, the author’s nerve and daring pull the whole thing off–just barely. And what’s next for Victor Mancini’s creator? Leave the last word to him, declaring as he does in the final pages: “Maybe it’s our job to invent something better…. What it’s going to be, I don’t know.” –Bob Michaels
sexual innuendos in harry potter 6 July 24, 2005
Posted by zenandjuice in : Books, Humour , 2comments” ‘There was no need to stick the wand in that hard,’ he said gruffly, clambering to his feet. ‘It hurt.’” (p. 64)
“Just as he raised a gloved hand to wipe them, Leanne made to grab hold of the package Katie was holding; Katie tugged it back and the package fell to the ground.” (p. 248)
“Very astute, Harry, but the mouth organ was only ever a mouth organ.” (p. 278)
“…a hole opened in the middle of all the tentaclelike branches; Hermione plunged her arm bravely into this hole, which closed like a trap around her elbow; Harry and Ron tugged and wrenched at the vines, forcing the hole to open again, and Hermione snatched her arm free, clutching in her fingers a pod just like Neville’s… the gnarled stump sat there looking like an innocently dead lump of wood.” (p. 281)
“‘Pass me a bowl,’ said Hermione, holding the pulsating pod at arm’s length” (ibid.)
“‘I’m his Head of House, and I shall decide how hard, or otherwise, to be,’ said Snape curtly.” (p. 320)
“Lupin burst out laughing. ‘Sometimes you remind me a lot of James. He called it my ‘furry little problem’, in company.’” (p. 335)
” ‘Oh, hang on — password. Abstinence.’
‘Precisely,’ said the Fat Lady in a feeble voice, and swung forward to reveal the portrait hole.” (p. 351)
” ‘I dunno,’ said Harry. ‘Maybe it’s better when you do it yourself, I didn’t enjoy it much when Dumbledore took me along for the ride.’ ” (p. 355)
” ‘You see?’ Dumbledore said quietly, holding his wand a little higher. Harry saw a fissure in the cliff into which dark water was swirling.
‘You will not object to getting a little wet?’
‘No,’ said Harry.
‘Then take off your Invisibility Cloak — there is no need for it now — and let us take the plunge.’ ” (p. 556)
” ‘We need to penetrate the inner place… Now it is Lord Voldemort’s obstacles that stand in our way, rather than those nature made…’ ” (p. 558)
from www.livejournal.com/users/colddoggjuice/ (found via boingboing)
spanking the donkey July 17, 2005
Posted by zenandjuice in : Books , add a comment
After watching Matt Taibbi on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart last week, I bought Spanking the Donkey: Dispatches from the Dumb Season (amazon link).
Book Description
An up-close look at the democratic race for the White House —it isn’t pretty.Spanking the Donkey is a campaign diary like no other. Celebrated reporter Matt Taibbi turns a withering eye on the kissing contest of puffed-up martinets and egomaniacal fantasists more generally known as the 2004 Democratic primaries.
Taibbi’s contempt for the whole charade, and for most of those involved (including a generous helping of his fellow journalists), makes for a searing and highly entertaining account. His refusal to take the proceedings seriously leads him to volunteer for Wesley Clark’s New Hampshire campaign in the guise of an adult-film director, while his take on a John Edwards press conference in New York City is filtered through the haze of hallucinogenic drugs. Taking up residence in slums and halfway houses as he follows the circus around the country, Taibbi juxtaposes an idiotic dog-and-pony show in which clashes of plainly identical candidates are presented as real controversies, with the quite separate concerns of the ordinary Americans whose lodgings he shares. The gap between the antiseptic exercise in faint patriotic optimism that is mainstream politics and the harsh realities of life for the millions of Americans that the electoral parade simply passes by has never been more sharply, or hilariously, sketched.
god hates japan December 7, 2004
Posted by zenandjuice in : Books , comments closedif anyone wants to get me a christmas gift, I’ve been really wanting “God Hates Japan” by Douglas Coupland.
It’s only sold in Japan, and is available online from http://www.otaku.com/cgi-bin/itemview.asp?itemid=64225k.
