# of pages: 31
Pages read so far: 4,947
Books read so far: 13
Avg # of pages/book: 380.54
Told ya this one would bring my average way back down ;-)
A very quick read, Woyzeck is a play by German playwright Georg Buchner. The most interesting thing (to me) about this play is Buchner didn't actually finish it before he died (he apparently died about a week before he'd planned to have it done) and he didn't leave a detailed outline for how it was all supposed to go together, so editors and translators have been piecing this script together as they think Buchner intended from four drafts and some notes since 1837. While one draft appeared to be his "final" draft, it left out large parts that were in other earlier versions of the play. Buchner apparently intended to re-insert these other scenes into this latest draft before sending it off to print, but I suppose we'll never know for sure.
That said, there are actually many different versions of this play and, while they'll all tell the same basic stories, some include scenes that others do not, and some have scenes in different places from others.
Make sense? Good.
This version was the one translated by Victor Price.
Anyway, the play is good. It's one of those stories about the dehumanizing affects of this and that on the middle class. ("This," in this case, being doctors, and "that" being the military) The play is actually based on a true story of a soldier/wigmaker whose lover cheats on him (shoulda married her, buddy), and then he kills her in a jealous rage. The man's then arrested, tried, and beheaded publicly. This version of that story (or at least, this version of this version of this story) ends before the arrest, with Woyzeck wading deeper and deeper into a lake to try to scrub the blood from his skin. (Shades of "Out, damned spot!") It's a pretty cool ending, actually.
And that's pretty much Woyzeck. There's not a lot to it story-wise or dialogue-wise, but it's a good, dark "middle-class tragedy" script. Seems like the sort of script you could do a lot of different things with, and it's been adapted into operas, movies, plays, and puppet shows in the hundred-and-seventy years since it originally came out, so that's got to say something.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Friday, January 1, 2010
Closing Thoughts: The Stand
# of pages: 1,141
Pages read so far: 4,916
# of books read so far: 12
Avg pages/book: 409.67
Bwuahaha! This book got my average pages over 400! (The next will bring it way the heck back down, though)
Remember, now, this was the complete, uncut The Stand. The Megastand, if you will. Regular stand = about 600 pages. Megastand = 1141. And here's the thing: I don't see how this could have been nearly as enjoyable of a story with 500 fewer pages. I felt like very little of the book was wasted or superfluous. (Heh...'superflu'ous...) The book was broken up into three different portions: Book I was the story of Captain Trips, the name given to a superflu that basically decimates all human life pretty much everywhere. Thanks, U.S. military! You meet a lot of characters, many of whom will die before you get to Book II, which centers around the idea that most of the country's population are gravitating toward two different settlements, one in Las Vegas and one in Boulder, Colorado. People are being drawn to one place or the other through dreams, and the Las Vegas colony is governed by a supernaturally evil man while the Boulder group is headed up by a 108-year-old black woman trying her best to live out the will of God. Book III, "The Stand," prominently featured the inevitable clash between the Dark Man and Mother Abigail's children (for lack of a better term).
Great, great stuff from Mr. King. Great characters, as always. The story opens a disjointed collection of everyday life-type stories: the teenage girl from New England who's pregnant and doesn't know what to do, the deaf-mute man who turns up in a small town in Arkansas and helps the sheriff track down the thugs who attacked him, the one-hit wonder rock star who reunites with his mother in New York City because he's run out of money and out of friends, the hapless, small-time crook who unwittingly takes the fall for a buddy's killing spree, the east Texas man who gave up all his dreams and ambitions to take care of his family, that sort of thing. These stories are all good, but they're also suddenly and violently interrupted by the lightning-fast spread of the superflu. Following the epidemic, these survivors scramble to find others, to find homes, to find life in a world that's literally covered in death and decay.
It's pretty grim stuff, by the way.
The entire superflu portion of the book, however, is only setting the game board for the true action of the story, and it's very much a blatant light vs. dark, good vs. evil, God vs. Satan kind of story. And it's a pretty awesome light vs. dark, good vs. evil, God vs. Satan story, too. I can't really go into the story itself without REALLY going into it, so I won't do that here, but suffice it to say that I really, really dug the story. And, for the most part, the telling.
Of course, this is King we're talking about, and a lot of his characters are pretty crude, so the language was R-rated and then some, and there was a lot of sex, and there was one sequence between the Trashcan Man and a grown man called The Kid that I really wish I could remove from my memory, so beware, if you're going into this book, you need a pretty thick skin to those things. However, one thing I realized about King from reading this book is that the man truly understands how the forces of evil work. His temptations scenes are flawless. You follow the descent of his evil characters, and you can see how that character goes from being well-meaning Person A or needy Person B to pawn of the devil. Really fantastic writing.
My one qualm with the book (and this may not be the case in the 600-page version, I don't know) was that it felt, at times, like King was trying too hard to make a point. (And this could be considered semi-spoilerish, but I think you're probably fine) I think what we were going for, more or less, is that mankind is inherently sinful, and even with the best of intentions we will always fall back into our old habits. Mother Abigails' Free Zoners attempt to create a sort of utopia, a starting-over place for humanity, and their attempts to create order from chaos eventually breed the same sort of culture that will eventually have the exact same problems that the world had before Captain Trips.
This, actually, I'm fine with. I think it's a very solid (and even scriptural) truth. What confused me was the very last few pages of the book (and this is MAJORLY spoilerish, so tread carefully), where Flagg awakens among a savage tribe in South America, or Africa, he's really not sure where, and the natives come to him with their spears and bow down, and he tells them he's come to help them all: he's come to teach them to be civilized. And it's a powerful statement about how the devil can so easily manipulate our societies and our governments, and how the civilized establishment always leads us to sin and corruption and all, but...it didn't make any sense with the character! At one point in the story, Leo says "The old ways are his ways!" referring to committees and democracy and order and such, but Flagg's own community was not an "old ways" civilization; it was a dictatorship where dissenters were literally crucified. (Again, it was pretty grim, folks) So, while I kind of liked the idea of the "all men fall short of a righteous standard" theme, it suddenly felt like the whole point was, "Western civilization is SATAN! BUWHAHAHAHAAAA!!!" It was kind of melodramatic, and I may be misreading it, but it seemed kind of a weak ending to an otherwise fantastic (and disturbing) book.
Oh, and also (still spoilering), Stu Tom's trek back to Boulder went on for too long. You just nuked the bad guy; pneumonia and trudging through the snow is a tad anticlimactic after a confrontation like that.
But still. Excellent, excellent book. One of my favorites on this list so far.
Pages read so far: 4,916
# of books read so far: 12
Avg pages/book: 409.67
Bwuahaha! This book got my average pages over 400! (The next will bring it way the heck back down, though)
Remember, now, this was the complete, uncut The Stand. The Megastand, if you will. Regular stand = about 600 pages. Megastand = 1141. And here's the thing: I don't see how this could have been nearly as enjoyable of a story with 500 fewer pages. I felt like very little of the book was wasted or superfluous. (Heh...'superflu'ous...) The book was broken up into three different portions: Book I was the story of Captain Trips, the name given to a superflu that basically decimates all human life pretty much everywhere. Thanks, U.S. military! You meet a lot of characters, many of whom will die before you get to Book II, which centers around the idea that most of the country's population are gravitating toward two different settlements, one in Las Vegas and one in Boulder, Colorado. People are being drawn to one place or the other through dreams, and the Las Vegas colony is governed by a supernaturally evil man while the Boulder group is headed up by a 108-year-old black woman trying her best to live out the will of God. Book III, "The Stand," prominently featured the inevitable clash between the Dark Man and Mother Abigail's children (for lack of a better term).
Great, great stuff from Mr. King. Great characters, as always. The story opens a disjointed collection of everyday life-type stories: the teenage girl from New England who's pregnant and doesn't know what to do, the deaf-mute man who turns up in a small town in Arkansas and helps the sheriff track down the thugs who attacked him, the one-hit wonder rock star who reunites with his mother in New York City because he's run out of money and out of friends, the hapless, small-time crook who unwittingly takes the fall for a buddy's killing spree, the east Texas man who gave up all his dreams and ambitions to take care of his family, that sort of thing. These stories are all good, but they're also suddenly and violently interrupted by the lightning-fast spread of the superflu. Following the epidemic, these survivors scramble to find others, to find homes, to find life in a world that's literally covered in death and decay.
It's pretty grim stuff, by the way.
The entire superflu portion of the book, however, is only setting the game board for the true action of the story, and it's very much a blatant light vs. dark, good vs. evil, God vs. Satan kind of story. And it's a pretty awesome light vs. dark, good vs. evil, God vs. Satan story, too. I can't really go into the story itself without REALLY going into it, so I won't do that here, but suffice it to say that I really, really dug the story. And, for the most part, the telling.
Of course, this is King we're talking about, and a lot of his characters are pretty crude, so the language was R-rated and then some, and there was a lot of sex, and there was one sequence between the Trashcan Man and a grown man called The Kid that I really wish I could remove from my memory, so beware, if you're going into this book, you need a pretty thick skin to those things. However, one thing I realized about King from reading this book is that the man truly understands how the forces of evil work. His temptations scenes are flawless. You follow the descent of his evil characters, and you can see how that character goes from being well-meaning Person A or needy Person B to pawn of the devil. Really fantastic writing.
My one qualm with the book (and this may not be the case in the 600-page version, I don't know) was that it felt, at times, like King was trying too hard to make a point. (And this could be considered semi-spoilerish, but I think you're probably fine) I think what we were going for, more or less, is that mankind is inherently sinful, and even with the best of intentions we will always fall back into our old habits. Mother Abigails' Free Zoners attempt to create a sort of utopia, a starting-over place for humanity, and their attempts to create order from chaos eventually breed the same sort of culture that will eventually have the exact same problems that the world had before Captain Trips.
This, actually, I'm fine with. I think it's a very solid (and even scriptural) truth. What confused me was the very last few pages of the book (and this is MAJORLY spoilerish, so tread carefully), where Flagg awakens among a savage tribe in South America, or Africa, he's really not sure where, and the natives come to him with their spears and bow down, and he tells them he's come to help them all: he's come to teach them to be civilized. And it's a powerful statement about how the devil can so easily manipulate our societies and our governments, and how the civilized establishment always leads us to sin and corruption and all, but...it didn't make any sense with the character! At one point in the story, Leo says "The old ways are his ways!" referring to committees and democracy and order and such, but Flagg's own community was not an "old ways" civilization; it was a dictatorship where dissenters were literally crucified. (Again, it was pretty grim, folks) So, while I kind of liked the idea of the "all men fall short of a righteous standard" theme, it suddenly felt like the whole point was, "Western civilization is SATAN! BUWHAHAHAHAAAA!!!" It was kind of melodramatic, and I may be misreading it, but it seemed kind of a weak ending to an otherwise fantastic (and disturbing) book.
Oh, and also (still spoilering), Stu Tom's trek back to Boulder went on for too long. You just nuked the bad guy; pneumonia and trudging through the snow is a tad anticlimactic after a confrontation like that.
But still. Excellent, excellent book. One of my favorites on this list so far.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Book 16/60: Through Painted Deserts by Don Miller
Somehow, I'm now reading five books at once.
Should be good, though. I'll be through with The Stand soon, and I may read Woyzeck during my lunch break tomorrow.
This book I would have waited until I'd finished the others, but my church ordered it specifically because I'd asked about it, and they want me to write a review for them, so I'm going to go ahead and get it done sooner than later.
Don Miller is most famous, I suppose, for Blue Like Jazz. I've had quite a few friends recommend BLJ (though none for this particular projetc). I read about half of that book one night while waiting for Hurricane Rita (she stood us up) and, while it was an enjoyable and engaging read, I didn't really see what the big deal about it was. I didn't think that anything the man was saying was wrong, but I guess I didn't think it was particularly novel, either. I'm not sure, either way, I wasn't that impressed.
Through Painted Deserts is a republishing of Miller's first book: observations and ruminations during a soul-searching cross-country road trip Miller took at age 21 from Houston (hey!) to Oregon. The book is subtitled "Life, God, and Beauty on the Open Road." Seems a bit like A Walk Across America for today's youth. (I remember Walk Across America as being beautiful; however, I was in grade school when I read it and my standards where much different in those days. I should revisit that someday)
Anywho, interesting thing is that Miller's less-formulaic, more-relational approach to the gospel has made him a favorite in the emerging church movement, though Miller doesn't really consider himself to be emergent. (Indeed, what I remember from BLJ didn't seem to fall too far into the emerging line of thought, though I can totally see how that movement would love most of what he has to say)
The book is published by Thomas Nelson publishers. Miller's also written BLJ, Searching for God Knows What, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, and To Own a Dragon (which may find its way on the next list) His web site is http://www.donaldmillerwords.com
Should be good, though. I'll be through with The Stand soon, and I may read Woyzeck during my lunch break tomorrow.
This book I would have waited until I'd finished the others, but my church ordered it specifically because I'd asked about it, and they want me to write a review for them, so I'm going to go ahead and get it done sooner than later.
Don Miller is most famous, I suppose, for Blue Like Jazz. I've had quite a few friends recommend BLJ (though none for this particular projetc). I read about half of that book one night while waiting for Hurricane Rita (she stood us up) and, while it was an enjoyable and engaging read, I didn't really see what the big deal about it was. I didn't think that anything the man was saying was wrong, but I guess I didn't think it was particularly novel, either. I'm not sure, either way, I wasn't that impressed.
Through Painted Deserts is a republishing of Miller's first book: observations and ruminations during a soul-searching cross-country road trip Miller took at age 21 from Houston (hey!) to Oregon. The book is subtitled "Life, God, and Beauty on the Open Road." Seems a bit like A Walk Across America for today's youth. (I remember Walk Across America as being beautiful; however, I was in grade school when I read it and my standards where much different in those days. I should revisit that someday)
Anywho, interesting thing is that Miller's less-formulaic, more-relational approach to the gospel has made him a favorite in the emerging church movement, though Miller doesn't really consider himself to be emergent. (Indeed, what I remember from BLJ didn't seem to fall too far into the emerging line of thought, though I can totally see how that movement would love most of what he has to say)
The book is published by Thomas Nelson publishers. Miller's also written BLJ, Searching for God Knows What, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, and To Own a Dragon (which may find its way on the next list) His web site is http://www.donaldmillerwords.com
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Books 13, 14 and 15/60
Okay.
So I'm really digging The Stand, and I'm not putting it down for awhile or anything. However, it is 1,100 pages long, and I like to feel like I'm making progress, so I'm going to tackle a couple shorter books while I'm still working on the one larger one.
I'm told real readers do this sort of thing all the time.
Second note: I'm making a change to the list, because the cheapest I can find a copy of Fool's Gold by Doug Tjaden for is $27.00 plus shipping. For a book that it didn't really look like I was going to be able to get into anyway...maybe next time.
Replacing Fool's Gold will be Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden. I need to be reading this anyway, since I'm currently in rehearsals to perform in it. Plus, it's a great, great story of renewal and redemption. And those stories are always my favorites. Interestingly, this was not considered one of Burnett's better stories at the time of the author's death, and now it's possibly the best-known thing she's ever written and is often considered one of the best children's books of the 20th century.
Go figure.
The second mini-book I got with my Power Card today is Powers, a graphic novel by Brian Michael Bendis. I really enjoy Bendis' work in the mainstream blockbuster comics (specifically his stuff with Secret Invasion and New Avengers, so it will be cool to see what he did with his "own" stuff, since this is a creator-owned property, I believe. Basically, it's kind of a detective story set in a world where super-powers are fairly common, though not omnipresent. Should be cool.
The third and shortest entry in this list-within-a-list is Georg Buchner's play Woyzeck. I know nothing about it going in other than that it's German, and I really don't know a lot of German theatre. Also, the playwright died before he finished it, so if there's an ending to the translation I'm reading, then somebody else wrote it for him. And, unlike certain tales of Tolkein, there isn't one definitive posthumously-written ending; apparently various editors and translators have taken a stab at it.
Fun.
All right, that's what I'm up to. Stand, Secret Garden, Powers, and Woyzeck. Awesome. Reading is cool, kids.
So I'm really digging The Stand, and I'm not putting it down for awhile or anything. However, it is 1,100 pages long, and I like to feel like I'm making progress, so I'm going to tackle a couple shorter books while I'm still working on the one larger one.
I'm told real readers do this sort of thing all the time.
Second note: I'm making a change to the list, because the cheapest I can find a copy of Fool's Gold by Doug Tjaden for is $27.00 plus shipping. For a book that it didn't really look like I was going to be able to get into anyway...maybe next time.
Replacing Fool's Gold will be Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden. I need to be reading this anyway, since I'm currently in rehearsals to perform in it. Plus, it's a great, great story of renewal and redemption. And those stories are always my favorites. Interestingly, this was not considered one of Burnett's better stories at the time of the author's death, and now it's possibly the best-known thing she's ever written and is often considered one of the best children's books of the 20th century.
Go figure.
The second mini-book I got with my Power Card today is Powers, a graphic novel by Brian Michael Bendis. I really enjoy Bendis' work in the mainstream blockbuster comics (specifically his stuff with Secret Invasion and New Avengers, so it will be cool to see what he did with his "own" stuff, since this is a creator-owned property, I believe. Basically, it's kind of a detective story set in a world where super-powers are fairly common, though not omnipresent. Should be cool.
The third and shortest entry in this list-within-a-list is Georg Buchner's play Woyzeck. I know nothing about it going in other than that it's German, and I really don't know a lot of German theatre. Also, the playwright died before he finished it, so if there's an ending to the translation I'm reading, then somebody else wrote it for him. And, unlike certain tales of Tolkein, there isn't one definitive posthumously-written ending; apparently various editors and translators have taken a stab at it.
Fun.
All right, that's what I'm up to. Stand, Secret Garden, Powers, and Woyzeck. Awesome. Reading is cool, kids.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Book 12/60: The Stand by Stephen King
And not just any The Stand, but the complete and uncut The Stand. The The Stand which is five-hundred pages longer than the originally-published The Stand, which was something like six-hundred pages long.
A little over a year ago, a couple of friends got me to read King's post-apocalyptic western/fantasy/sci-fi epic The Dark Tower. I'd never read King, but I think I assumed he was strictly a writer of disturbing horror stories (It, Carrie, and things like that came to my mind) I trusted these friends, however, and dove into DT. It was incredible. I loved it. I actually find myself wanting to read it again, and it hasn't even been a year since I finished the seven-book epic. I discovered that, first and foremost, King is a great storyteller with an incredible imagination and a knack for writing great characters. And that his stories often contained uncannily disturbing images, and that he was very good at describing these dark and disturbing scenes, but the storytelling was always at the forefront.
As I confessed my enjoyment of DT, friend and trusted literary critic Dave-o told me I needed to check out The Stand at some point, not only because it was one of King's better novels, but also because of the epic good-vs-evil struggle that was the heart of the story. All I knew of the story was from commercials for the made-for-TV movie: there is a super-flu, and it kills millions of people. That fit pretty well into my It-writing view of Stephen King, so I figured it was yet another grotesque horror novel that I needed to avoid.
So, after a bit of a disappointment with Nick Hornby's book, I decided I wanted something I knew would be quality, something I could really sink my teeth into as I read it. Some "meat". And something long, too.
The 1100-page complete and uncut The Stand ought to fit that bill perfectly.
Don't expect my closing thoughts on this one any time soon.
A little over a year ago, a couple of friends got me to read King's post-apocalyptic western/fantasy/sci-fi epic The Dark Tower. I'd never read King, but I think I assumed he was strictly a writer of disturbing horror stories (It, Carrie, and things like that came to my mind) I trusted these friends, however, and dove into DT. It was incredible. I loved it. I actually find myself wanting to read it again, and it hasn't even been a year since I finished the seven-book epic. I discovered that, first and foremost, King is a great storyteller with an incredible imagination and a knack for writing great characters. And that his stories often contained uncannily disturbing images, and that he was very good at describing these dark and disturbing scenes, but the storytelling was always at the forefront.
As I confessed my enjoyment of DT, friend and trusted literary critic Dave-o told me I needed to check out The Stand at some point, not only because it was one of King's better novels, but also because of the epic good-vs-evil struggle that was the heart of the story. All I knew of the story was from commercials for the made-for-TV movie: there is a super-flu, and it kills millions of people. That fit pretty well into my It-writing view of Stephen King, so I figured it was yet another grotesque horror novel that I needed to avoid.
So, after a bit of a disappointment with Nick Hornby's book, I decided I wanted something I knew would be quality, something I could really sink my teeth into as I read it. Some "meat". And something long, too.
The 1100-page complete and uncut The Stand ought to fit that bill perfectly.
Don't expect my closing thoughts on this one any time soon.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Closing Thoughts: High Fidelity
# of pages: 323
Pages read so far: 3,732
Avg pages/book: 311
Once again: Wow.
I hated this book.
You remember how I said I wanted Richard (of Neverwhere) to stop whining and get on with the story? High Fidelity's Rob is approximately six hundred times worse. I got the impression I was supposed to laugh at the guy's haphazardness, his childish inability to move past the latest live-in girlfriend to dump him, his awkwardness in the social scene, and his uncomfortable situations involving his ex, his mom, her mom, et cetera. But I didn't. Rob spent the entire book being petty and childish, and rather than finding it amusing I found it exasperatingly annoying.
I thought for awhile that the book was going to be a coming-of-age type tale, the journey of a man who's lost in life and finally is forced to learn to grow up and stop being a baby. And had that been the case, I would totally have been cool with selfish whiny emo Rob (who was 35, by the way, and having what seemed to be an early midlife crisis). However, Rob spent most of the book not WANTING to change. He was a jerk to pretty much everybody pretty much the whole time, and at the end of the day he still pretty much gets what he wants. And while the man talks a great deal about changes, and about re-ordered priorities, the last sixty or so pages don't seem to suggest that he really truly ever does.
Now, it is VERY likely the cast that I am just the wrong audience for this particular book. There wasn't really a character I liked or related to (except maybe for Dick and Anna). The majority of the film and music analogies the book pulled were lost on me, as I figured they probably would be. I was totally the kind of guy that the guys in this book would have ripped to shreds as soon as I'd walked out of their shop. In fact, it kind of felt like that's exactly what they were doing the entire time I was reading the book.
Hornby is a good writer, I can tell that. I liked his dialogue and his descriptions (the ones that didn't start with "She looked like particular actress from particular eighties movie", at least) and his narrative voice. And he told this particular story well. I just hated the story and everybody in it. So no hard feelings, Nick (as though you'd possibly be upset that some random book blogger didn't like your novel). I'll see you at A Long Way Down.
Pages read so far: 3,732
Avg pages/book: 311
Once again: Wow.
I hated this book.
You remember how I said I wanted Richard (of Neverwhere) to stop whining and get on with the story? High Fidelity's Rob is approximately six hundred times worse. I got the impression I was supposed to laugh at the guy's haphazardness, his childish inability to move past the latest live-in girlfriend to dump him, his awkwardness in the social scene, and his uncomfortable situations involving his ex, his mom, her mom, et cetera. But I didn't. Rob spent the entire book being petty and childish, and rather than finding it amusing I found it exasperatingly annoying.
I thought for awhile that the book was going to be a coming-of-age type tale, the journey of a man who's lost in life and finally is forced to learn to grow up and stop being a baby. And had that been the case, I would totally have been cool with selfish whiny emo Rob (who was 35, by the way, and having what seemed to be an early midlife crisis). However, Rob spent most of the book not WANTING to change. He was a jerk to pretty much everybody pretty much the whole time, and at the end of the day he still pretty much gets what he wants. And while the man talks a great deal about changes, and about re-ordered priorities, the last sixty or so pages don't seem to suggest that he really truly ever does.
Now, it is VERY likely the cast that I am just the wrong audience for this particular book. There wasn't really a character I liked or related to (except maybe for Dick and Anna). The majority of the film and music analogies the book pulled were lost on me, as I figured they probably would be. I was totally the kind of guy that the guys in this book would have ripped to shreds as soon as I'd walked out of their shop. In fact, it kind of felt like that's exactly what they were doing the entire time I was reading the book.
Hornby is a good writer, I can tell that. I liked his dialogue and his descriptions (the ones that didn't start with "She looked like particular actress from particular eighties movie", at least) and his narrative voice. And he told this particular story well. I just hated the story and everybody in it. So no hard feelings, Nick (as though you'd possibly be upset that some random book blogger didn't like your novel). I'll see you at A Long Way Down.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Book 12/60: High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
Wow.
So the purpose of this project was to pick up and read some thing I wouldn't normally pick up and read on my own.
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!
High Fidelity has been made into a movie and a Broadway musical. All I can tell from the comments and the synopsis on the back are that it's a very dry, witty examination of sex and masculinity from the viewpoint of a disenchanted thirty-something who has yet to "get it right," whether you're speaking relationships or sex. The guy also runs a record store, and so apparently a major part of the narrative is he and his employee buddies debating top five lists on all things pop culture.
In short, this book appears to be everything that I am not. I'm kind of excited about that, but hopefully it's not so full of jokes only to be understood by the in-crowd culturally speaking, because I haven't been too current on pop culture since Hammer Time was burning up the airwaves.
Not joking.
Anyway, love, sex, pop music, and cynicism, here I come!
So the purpose of this project was to pick up and read some thing I wouldn't normally pick up and read on my own.
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!
High Fidelity has been made into a movie and a Broadway musical. All I can tell from the comments and the synopsis on the back are that it's a very dry, witty examination of sex and masculinity from the viewpoint of a disenchanted thirty-something who has yet to "get it right," whether you're speaking relationships or sex. The guy also runs a record store, and so apparently a major part of the narrative is he and his employee buddies debating top five lists on all things pop culture.
In short, this book appears to be everything that I am not. I'm kind of excited about that, but hopefully it's not so full of jokes only to be understood by the in-crowd culturally speaking, because I haven't been too current on pop culture since Hammer Time was burning up the airwaves.
Not joking.
Anyway, love, sex, pop music, and cynicism, here I come!
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