Book meme - procrastination a-go-go
19 Aug 2006 08:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kangeikoStolen from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eye_of_a_cat because I am a mean stealer going about stealing things. Yes.
One book that changed your life: Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen
But - most fundamentally - political liberty and civil freedoms are directly important on their own, and do not have to be justified indirectly in terms of their effects on the economy. Even when people without political liberty or civil rights do not lack adequate economic security [...] they are deprived of important freedoms in leading their lives and denied the opportunity to take part in crucial decisions regarding public affairs. [...] Since political and civil freedoms are consitutive elements of human freedom, their denial is a handicap in itself.
This is the first time that I encountered a vision of development that synched with my perspective that was put forward by a mainstream, well-respected practitioner. It was not something that could be dismissed by idle dreaming or youthful idealism by the neo-cons all around.
One book you have read more than once: The Story of O, Pauline Reage
She did not stop to consider whether it were only terror; a panic laid hold of her: there'd be a jerk on her chain, it'd be healued down, she'd be dragged up till she stood on her bed and she'd be whipped, and whipped, and whipped; the word whirled in her braid. Pierre would whip her, Jeanne had told her so. You're lucky, Jeanne had repeated, they'll be much harder on you; what had she meant by that?
With the sheer amount of porn, erotica and vaguely titillating fic floating around the internet, some of it good, some of it awful, I like to take a break and read something that really feels like you've kicked in the windpipe. Er, in a good way.
One book you would want on a desert island: The Power Book, Jeanette Winterson
Undress.
Take off your clothes. Take off your body. Hang them up behind the door. Tonight we can go deeper than disguise.
It's only a story, you say. So it is, and the rest of life with it - creation story, love story, horror, crime, the strange story of you and me.
This book would let me escape from the desert, from the island, from myself.
One book that made you laugh: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, Grant Naylor
the last thing he really remembered with any decent clarity was celebrating his birthday back on earth. He, and six of his very closest friends, decided to usher in his twenty-fourth year by going on a Monopoly board pub-crawl around London. They'd hitched a ride in a frozen-meat truck from Liverpool, and arrived at lunchtime in the Old Kent Road. A drink at each of the squares was the plan. They started with hot toddies to revive them from the ride. In Whitechapel they had pina coladas. King's Cross station, double vodkas. In Euston Road, pints of Guinness. The Angel Islington, mezcals. Pentonville Road, bitter laced with rum and blackcurrant. And so they continued around the board. By the time they'd got to Oxford Street, only four of them remained. And only two of the four still had the power of speech.
His last real memory was of telling the others he was going to buy a Monopoly board, because no one could remember what the next square was, and stepping out into the cold night air clutching two-thirds of a bottle of sake.
There was a vague, very vague, poorly-lit memory of an advert on the back of a cat seat; something about cheap space travel on Virgin's new batch of demi-light-speed zippers. Something about Saturn being the heart of the solar system, and businesses were uprooting there all the time. Something about it being nearer than you think, at half the speed of light. Something about two hours and ten minutes. And then a thick, black, gunky fog.
He'd woken up slumped across a table in a McDonald's burger bar on Mimas, wearing a lady's pink crimplene hat and a pair of yellow fishing waders, with no money and a passport in the name of 'Emily Berkenstein'. What was more, he had a worrying rash.
He was broke, diseased and 793 million miles from Liverpool.
When Lister got drunk, he really got drrr0unk.
Red Dwarf makes me happy. That is all.
One book that made you cry: Beloved, Toni Morrison
Too thick, he said. My love was too thick. What he know about it? Who in the world is he willing to die for? Would he give his privates to a stranger in return for a carving? Some other way, he saif. There must have been some other way. Let schoolteacher haul us away, I guess, to measure your behind before he tore it up? I have felt what it felt like and nobody walking or stretched out is going to make you feel it too. Not you, not none of mine, and when I tell you you mine, I also mean I'm yours. I wouldn't draw breath without my children.
Sethe kills her baby daughter to keep her from the slaver's grasp and pays for her headstone with her body. Years later, the angry ghost of her baby comes back, and she's very, very hungry.
From the get-go, Beloved had my heart in my throat, and by the end I couldn't read for crying.
Counting on the stillness of her own soul, she had forgotten the other one: the soul of her baby girl. Who would have thought that a little old baby could harbor so much rage? Rutting among the stones under the eyes of the engraver's son was not enough. Not only did she have to live out her years in a house palsied by the baby's fury at having its throat cut, but those ten minutes she spent pressed up against dawn-colored stone studded with star chips, her knees wide open as the grave, were longer than life, more alive, more pulsating than the baby blood that soaked her fingers like oil.
One book you wish had been written:The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Last of all is set the name of Melkor, He who arises in Might. But that name he has forfeited; and the Noldor, who among the Elves suffered most from his malice, will not utter it, and they name him Morgoth, the Dark Enemy of the World.
The book that was published was edited, rearranged and otherwise altered by Christopher Tolkien after the death of J.R.R.. Given that The Silmarillion is the only one of Tolkien's works that I like - indeed, that I adore - I would have liked to have read the original version.
One book you wish had never been written:The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
A chair, a table, a lamp. Above, on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath, and in the centre of it a blank space, plastered over, like the space in a face where the eye has been taken out. There must have been a chandelier, once. They've removed anything you could tie a rope to.
This book scared the living daylights out of me and gave me nightmares for weeks. I wish I had never read it. It's a dystopia I never wanted to exist in my brain, or anyone else's, for that matter.
One book you are currently reading:Palestine, Joe Sacco
How much do you spend on books? I am a poor man and I spend 30 pounds a month on books! And you spend 500 pounds on her in TWO days!
She loves me.
Love? Ha! She would leave her children?!
Palestine is a graphic non-fiction novel about, well, Palestine. I'm only one chapter in, but it's thus far interesting. Will have more to say later, when I've finished it and had a chance to formulate some opinions.
One book you have been meaning to read:The Lovely Bones, Alice Seebold
The blurb has this to say: This is Susie Salmon, speaking to us from heaven. It looks a lot like her school playground, with the good kind of swing sets. There are counsellors to help newcomers to adjust, and friends to room with. Everything she wants appears as soon as she thinks of it - except the thing she wants most: to be back with the people she loved on Earth.
From heaven, Susie watches. She sees her happy suburban family implode after her death, as each member tries to come to terms with her terrible loss. Over the years, her friends and siblings grow up, fall in love, do all the things she never had the chance to do herself. But life is not quite finished with Susie yet.
athena25 has been raving about this book for ages, and it's been sitting on my shelf for a while now. I really do intend to read it one of these days.
eye_of_a_cat because I am a mean stealer going about stealing things. Yes.One book that changed your life: Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen
But - most fundamentally - political liberty and civil freedoms are directly important on their own, and do not have to be justified indirectly in terms of their effects on the economy. Even when people without political liberty or civil rights do not lack adequate economic security [...] they are deprived of important freedoms in leading their lives and denied the opportunity to take part in crucial decisions regarding public affairs. [...] Since political and civil freedoms are consitutive elements of human freedom, their denial is a handicap in itself.
This is the first time that I encountered a vision of development that synched with my perspective that was put forward by a mainstream, well-respected practitioner. It was not something that could be dismissed by idle dreaming or youthful idealism by the neo-cons all around.
One book you have read more than once: The Story of O, Pauline Reage
She did not stop to consider whether it were only terror; a panic laid hold of her: there'd be a jerk on her chain, it'd be healued down, she'd be dragged up till she stood on her bed and she'd be whipped, and whipped, and whipped; the word whirled in her braid. Pierre would whip her, Jeanne had told her so. You're lucky, Jeanne had repeated, they'll be much harder on you; what had she meant by that?
With the sheer amount of porn, erotica and vaguely titillating fic floating around the internet, some of it good, some of it awful, I like to take a break and read something that really feels like you've kicked in the windpipe. Er, in a good way.
One book you would want on a desert island: The Power Book, Jeanette Winterson
Undress.
Take off your clothes. Take off your body. Hang them up behind the door. Tonight we can go deeper than disguise.
It's only a story, you say. So it is, and the rest of life with it - creation story, love story, horror, crime, the strange story of you and me.
This book would let me escape from the desert, from the island, from myself.
One book that made you laugh: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, Grant Naylor
the last thing he really remembered with any decent clarity was celebrating his birthday back on earth. He, and six of his very closest friends, decided to usher in his twenty-fourth year by going on a Monopoly board pub-crawl around London. They'd hitched a ride in a frozen-meat truck from Liverpool, and arrived at lunchtime in the Old Kent Road. A drink at each of the squares was the plan. They started with hot toddies to revive them from the ride. In Whitechapel they had pina coladas. King's Cross station, double vodkas. In Euston Road, pints of Guinness. The Angel Islington, mezcals. Pentonville Road, bitter laced with rum and blackcurrant. And so they continued around the board. By the time they'd got to Oxford Street, only four of them remained. And only two of the four still had the power of speech.
His last real memory was of telling the others he was going to buy a Monopoly board, because no one could remember what the next square was, and stepping out into the cold night air clutching two-thirds of a bottle of sake.
There was a vague, very vague, poorly-lit memory of an advert on the back of a cat seat; something about cheap space travel on Virgin's new batch of demi-light-speed zippers. Something about Saturn being the heart of the solar system, and businesses were uprooting there all the time. Something about it being nearer than you think, at half the speed of light. Something about two hours and ten minutes. And then a thick, black, gunky fog.
He'd woken up slumped across a table in a McDonald's burger bar on Mimas, wearing a lady's pink crimplene hat and a pair of yellow fishing waders, with no money and a passport in the name of 'Emily Berkenstein'. What was more, he had a worrying rash.
He was broke, diseased and 793 million miles from Liverpool.
When Lister got drunk, he really got drrr0unk.
Red Dwarf makes me happy. That is all.
One book that made you cry: Beloved, Toni Morrison
Too thick, he said. My love was too thick. What he know about it? Who in the world is he willing to die for? Would he give his privates to a stranger in return for a carving? Some other way, he saif. There must have been some other way. Let schoolteacher haul us away, I guess, to measure your behind before he tore it up? I have felt what it felt like and nobody walking or stretched out is going to make you feel it too. Not you, not none of mine, and when I tell you you mine, I also mean I'm yours. I wouldn't draw breath without my children.
Sethe kills her baby daughter to keep her from the slaver's grasp and pays for her headstone with her body. Years later, the angry ghost of her baby comes back, and she's very, very hungry.
From the get-go, Beloved had my heart in my throat, and by the end I couldn't read for crying.
Counting on the stillness of her own soul, she had forgotten the other one: the soul of her baby girl. Who would have thought that a little old baby could harbor so much rage? Rutting among the stones under the eyes of the engraver's son was not enough. Not only did she have to live out her years in a house palsied by the baby's fury at having its throat cut, but those ten minutes she spent pressed up against dawn-colored stone studded with star chips, her knees wide open as the grave, were longer than life, more alive, more pulsating than the baby blood that soaked her fingers like oil.
One book you wish had been written:The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Last of all is set the name of Melkor, He who arises in Might. But that name he has forfeited; and the Noldor, who among the Elves suffered most from his malice, will not utter it, and they name him Morgoth, the Dark Enemy of the World.
The book that was published was edited, rearranged and otherwise altered by Christopher Tolkien after the death of J.R.R.. Given that The Silmarillion is the only one of Tolkien's works that I like - indeed, that I adore - I would have liked to have read the original version.
One book you wish had never been written:The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
A chair, a table, a lamp. Above, on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath, and in the centre of it a blank space, plastered over, like the space in a face where the eye has been taken out. There must have been a chandelier, once. They've removed anything you could tie a rope to.
This book scared the living daylights out of me and gave me nightmares for weeks. I wish I had never read it. It's a dystopia I never wanted to exist in my brain, or anyone else's, for that matter.
One book you are currently reading:Palestine, Joe Sacco
How much do you spend on books? I am a poor man and I spend 30 pounds a month on books! And you spend 500 pounds on her in TWO days!
She loves me.
Love? Ha! She would leave her children?!
Palestine is a graphic non-fiction novel about, well, Palestine. I'm only one chapter in, but it's thus far interesting. Will have more to say later, when I've finished it and had a chance to formulate some opinions.
One book you have been meaning to read:The Lovely Bones, Alice Seebold
The blurb has this to say: This is Susie Salmon, speaking to us from heaven. It looks a lot like her school playground, with the good kind of swing sets. There are counsellors to help newcomers to adjust, and friends to room with. Everything she wants appears as soon as she thinks of it - except the thing she wants most: to be back with the people she loved on Earth.
From heaven, Susie watches. She sees her happy suburban family implode after her death, as each member tries to come to terms with her terrible loss. Over the years, her friends and siblings grow up, fall in love, do all the things she never had the chance to do herself. But life is not quite finished with Susie yet.
athena25 has been raving about this book for ages, and it's been sitting on my shelf for a while now. I really do intend to read it one of these days.