The Shock Doctrine

NAOMI KLEIN's new book looks AMAZING!!
Did you see her on Bill Maher?

She's assembled the model of what's actually been happening between the corporations and our government, how they work together, what keeps the whole thing running, strategy,
hurtful worldview ... how we are screwed ...
SHOCK DOCTRINE
Knowing this is gonna help.

more descriptions and comments from some friends @ amazon:

Naomi is doing it!! I've been thinking about this stuff so much it's been making me crazy, now I hear her say it so clearly. omg HELL YES, girl!
you gotta clock the short film by Alfonso Cuarón:

Small Gods month

So at The Book Festival I saw and heard Terry Pratchett and Harry Turtledove. They were brilliant and charming and stirring and fun. I'm 100 pages into SMALL GODS right now and it's a holy hoot. The hilarious truth in this man's scenes are killer. Hahahahahaahhahaahhahahaha! He has been slaying me right from the beginning. Course, this is the 13th title in the Discworld Series, but I felt I could jump wright in. And I did and here I am and it stands alone mightily and I shall wread many more. I want to wrecommend him to everyone. It wreally is like a bitta Douglas Adams and a fista Vonnegut. It's wrelentless!

I finished The Odyssey a coupla weeks ago. It was so super awesome grande mega good I can't wait to wread the Lattimore translation, apparently closer to the Greek. I also want that BEOWULF with the Old English on the facing page. I've been in and out of Edmund Spenser's Fairie Queene, glorious and firm in its gaze and tale! Gotta pick some Harry Turtledove alternative history titles to try. Some sound amazing ... And of course, just generally flipping through hundreds of books a week at work on the 5th floor of the James Madison Building on Independence Avenue. Muscle cars, The Beatles, Johann Gutenberg, Puerto Rican slang, Rommel's attack strategies, The Harlem Hellfighters, Mary Tudor/Henry VIII fiction, piles and piles of vampire fiction, lotsa lotsa so much stuff, I should take notes ...

Odyssey Me

Just finished Book 6: The Princess and the Stranger. YES! Moving swiftly in those trim ships I am. Adventure abounds! I did the first 4 spread out in the front seat of Rebel, afternoon sunshine'n'shade, cicadas and chirpy birdies all around = Excellent Wreads! +++++ Also over the weekend I clocked James Patterson's 1st Alex Cross novel, Along Came a Spider. Loved it. Love our hero, love the pacing, love all the DC stuff. Just checked out the 2nd one, Kiss the Girls. I think they made movies out of both of these, but I'll cruise through the first few before I check da Hollywood takes. I like me some Morgan Freeman [Easy Reader Lives!!] but I did not picture him @ all as Doctor Detective Cross from SE. +++++ Been steady dipping into The God Delusion again as well.

Jack Adam Richard Daniel

Hot diggity dog diggity totally finished that Kerouac scroll in just a few days. YES! What fun! I got that fresh edition of Dharma Bums next up in Jackland. Prolly after I finish The Money Game (this thing is Truthcity!) by Adam Smith (the Modern). The first sentence is: The world is not what they tell you it is. And he gets on into it. A hotass economics book from 1967, totally applicable to today and beyond. A hoot of a wread, wright on! I did it on the airplane to and from Chicago. I should finish this weekend. I am learning from this mother. Also digging THE GOD DELUSION by the mighty Richard Dawkins. The triumph of wreason in my lap! This morning I was into Daniel C. Dennett, chapter 9 of his BREAKING THE SPELL book: "Toward a Buyer's Guide to Religions" ++ I adore this guy! Can't get enuff of his spirited analyzing of religion as natural (not supernatural) phenomenon.

!:::Kerouac:::Attack:::!

I had been digging a Penguin paperback edition of "On the Road" for 6 days when I saw the NYTimes booksection Kerouac cover story under my cat, on the floor of my apartment. How's about this! The original manuscript has been published! Straight on through, babydolls! 8 full rolls of tracing paper [he later taped into a 120-foot scroll!] Now done up in super-handsome paragraphs-are-for-pussies all-out as-was proper printing. I've jumped over to finishing the book like this, as Jack typed those 3 weeks in April 1951. THIS F'ING ROXX! I'm wreading it with all the original names [Neal Cassady! Grand American Champion of Life! Bill Burroughs, Allen etc] and all that scorching-hot pre-edit pummeling prose, just go man, go! Yass! Yass! As of this morning [getting low, surfing on metrorail] the boys are in Mexico. Just hadda whooping time with maryjane & senoritas, thnx 2 the great Gregor, now they're in the jungles ... south ... dark, headlights out for a spell: And now we shot in inky darkness through the scream of insects and the great rank almost rotten smell descended and we remembered and realized that the map indicated just after Victoria the beginning of the tropic of Cancer. "We're in a new tropic! Nowonder the smell! Smell it!" I stuck my head out the window; bugs smashed at my face; a great screech rose the moment I cocked my ear to the wind. Suddenly our lights were working again and they poked ahead illuminating the lonely road that ran between solid walls of great drooping snaky trees as high as a hundred feet. "Son-of-a-BITCH!" yelled Frank in the back. "Hot-DAMN!" He was still high. I am tearing through this thing! Whatta ball! Hoo-ee! Here's some video of unrolling the scroll. There's a travelling exhibit, yass. Plus this supercool, upclose hi-res shot of the glorious thing.

Chief Bromden told me a tale

Heck Yes I finished Cuckoo's Nest. Superb all over the place! I didn't think it was going to be that literate. Hugely entertaining and sad and triumphant. Our narrator gives it all to us, all senses relayed and analyzed, including drug dreams and mental blockages. Everybody's hero is of course Randle McMurphy -- whatta HUGELY American character! ++++ Now I'm back in Russialand with The Idiot, wright in the middle. Prince Myshkin roxx! Is this the Ruskies' Arthur tale, more than the Christ tale? Hmmmm ... I'm also back into Against the Day. Wrockin' thru Salonica with Cyprian and Danilo, just this morning in a bar: "At the Mavri Gata there was enough hasheesh smoke to confound an elephant. At the end of the room, as if behind an iconostasis of song, oud, baglamas, and a kind of hammered dulcimer called a santouri were being played without a break. The music was feral, Eastern in scale, flatted seconds and sixths, and a kind of fretless portamento between, instantly familiar though the words were in some slurred jailhouse Greek that Danilo confessed to picking up only about one word in ten of. In these nocturnal modalities, "roads," as the musicians called them, Cyprian heard anthems not of defined homelands but of release into lifelong exile. Roads awaiting the worn sole, the ironbound wheel, and promises of misery on a scale the military staff colleges were only beginning to contemplate."

Cuckoo

Over a 5 day vacay I finished my big Man-Thing collection > super stuff!! All kinds of metaphysical hot swamp action in there! Totally dig, dug. +++ Also blazed through a likable chunk of The Idiot, about halfway now, and I'm feelin' it. Topsy turvy, flippity flop, def givin' it up to Fyodor. I saw some Russian gals @ lunch last week, and I stopped to ask them about it. They nodded saying, "Yes, of course it is grand. But next you must wread the Brothers Karamazov." I shall come back to them to ask about the pronunciations of all the names. It can get numbing! +++ NOW I'm also just starting One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by the great Ken Kesey. It's from the [half]Indian's point of view and kicks off distinctly LITERATE. (I heart Chief Bromden!) Crisp descriptions of living characters! Makes me feel attentive and nervous. The Acutes & the Chronics! 40 pages in and it's f'ing ON! This is superior writing! Came out in '62? Wow. I've always held the Merry Pranksters stuff in high wregard. Through the years Kesey's wrocked a wrespectable career: the more I learn, the more I like. So far, this lil novel is one special lil wread.

Bustin' June Moves

Oh boy!!! This is the most handsomely packaged paperback I've ever owned. Chris Ware is the artist, and he's done up the story on the front and back covers. Even the jacket flaps got some hot VOLTAIRE action. YES! One of my all-time favorite books! The smart-ass triumph of Reason! I am grinning, laffing, raising my fist. Candide! Cunegonde! Pangloss (Leibniz)! Cacambo! The Anabaptist! The Jesuits! All the action! I wread this when I was a teenager, with the French on one side, and the English on the other. This second go is even more wrewarding!


The Iliad got me going ... then on into The Odyssey ... then into the different studies of Homer, which brought me to this, one of the essential takes on the Greek mindset: The Discovery of the Mind by the mighty Bruno Snell. This is a monument of Greek studies. Every chapter roxx ass and makes me say, "Damn!" out loud. I'm learning so much here. All of Western thought began with the GREEKS. :) Yay!


YES! And YES again! Our boy Greg Palast has put together a modern masterwork of research and presentation. This level of horror and frustration shouldn't be this funny, but it is! And how! This book is important. We'll be going back to this one years from now. Of course, we aaaall should be reading it NOW. Here's Howard Zinn's quote: "One of the best tomes on politics written in modern days." It is too! It is!

Bradbury Plus

Wrolled on through The Martian Chronicles ~ whatta gas! Every chapter is a different point of view along the general continuum of our settling on Mars. It was begun as short stories in the early 50's and each tale carries right through and beyond the 00's. Soooo good. I read the first half on a transatlantic flight from Philadelphia Pennsylvania to Manchester England. The second half was clocked on the way home. This is thoughtful stuff.

Now wreading hot comic from the mid-80's: D.R. & QUINCH. From Alan Moore and Alan Davis comes ... smartass abandon! I love this! YES! Big thnx to the mighty Schmame for passing it on ... In between, I still dive in for a good 6-10 pages of getting fired up with Sam Harris: End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation are both killer attax. I keep 'em both with me all the time now. Dig! I still haven't finished The Iliad or my Man-Thing collection. And now I want more. There always seems to be more and more.

Gotta New Pile

Still reading ILIAD. I'm in Book 16. Fuggin' Righteous. But today I've been reading Cell by Stephen King. Whatta hoot! The thing takes off immediately. Hot action, on page 88 before I even looked up. Also, last night I read the first bit of Fahrenheit 451. I LOVE THIS BOOK! I picked up the 50th Anniversary paperback, so attractive, so hot! It really is one of my all-time hall-of-fame awesome books. And one of the few which SCORES as a movie too. To Kill a Mockingbird and Lolita spring quickly to mind, although there are others of course ... yeah that 451 movie is a SCORCHER! I should watch that once a month ... so yeah, it's a sunny Sunday and after I've come back from my run through Rock Creek Park over to Arlington Cemetery I've been reading paperbacks. Cell, 451, and The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I've been wanting to hit this for years. Killer stuff. I've peeked through the first bit and it's kickin' off with some mind-bendingly lovely verbage. Give it up to the acclaimed translators of this edition, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Right on. I finally also picked up the Red, the White, and the Blue copies of Average American Male. Yes. I'm knee-deep in awesome paperbacknesses ... yum.

ILIADIN'

Oh boy Oh joy Oh my Oh I!
I began The Iliad this week.

Rage -- Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.

It's been an amazing wreading coupla days: Homer and Steven Pressfield. I'm going back and forth. Gates of Fire for the continuing Thermopylae tale > BRILLIANT ACTION OMG! I LOVE THIS BOOK! Just finished Chapter 24, the most intense battlescenes so far. Then I'm back in Iliadland. I'm loving the Pronouncing Glossary in the back, so many names and places, such high-lovely poetry! Can't wait to read other translations. I'm reading the Robert Fagles paperback, the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, thick'n'sturdy on-the-go Grand Storytelling! I am lifted imagining!

I'm a Man-Thing baby

Holy Buckets of Swampjuice! I've waited years for the release of Essential Man-Thing and finally this week it arrived! I am wreading it muck-slowly, so mossy-awesome, this is one of my all-time favorite comics presented cleanly, in order, no ads, no color, just supernatural Philosophy of Self in the Everglades action. DC's got Swamp Thing and Marvel's got Man-Thing. Both rock, but right about now it's MAN over SWAMP. Both go supreme with The Sword's Age of Winters album in headphones!
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Also this week, I started the ASTOUNDING historical novel Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield. This is a wonderfully rich and well-researched telling of The Battle of Thermopylae. Soooooo good! Ancient war come to life more than ever before! The Asian Hordes! The Spartans! Xerxes! Leonidas! More than just the men or the armies, this is a triumph in presenting and preserving knowledge of beaucoup d'ancient ways of living ~ 24 centuries ago! I will be loving this book for many weeks to come, simply KILLER so far ... I see others have loved it too ... It's more than just the 300 story, so much more going on before and after the most famous fighting.
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Of course I've been rollicking in instant classic The Average American Male
~ @ 22 pages to go I didn't want it to end, such a wickedly life-affirming story! I bought three copies, one in each available color: white, red, and blue ... yeah dude ... will buy more copies next week for gifts ... I laughed out loud throughout, and that counts! Such a spirited modern tale inside these handsomely clean and durable paperbacks, love the feel, perfect for on-the-go irreverent city wreading hell yes ... guess I'll give the fat 'right on' to HarperPerennial for that ... but seriously: Go Chad Kultgen! Hope this turns into more for him. Here are the funny promo videos.

Grape Juice in a Wine Glass

I finished The Book of Lost Things, with its imaginitive conclusion, I totally loved it in the spirit of A Spell for Chameleon, which I adored ... wread the Grant/Sherman chapter in my new McPherson book, Glory Bee! Righteous {Right! Yes!} Defense!! Love those guys ... Off now to clock The Lion in Winter from '68, a Walter Wrecommends fer sher, should be a hoot I'm sure cuz that BECKET was hot as hell and this is the followup featuring Anthony Hopkins' first role, so no wreads tonite ... but I gotta give a shout out cuz today's the day the best book of year came out: THE AVERAGE AMERICAN MALE by Chad Kultgen. Rock On, Brother Chad! We Salute You! + Fuggin' Highlarious Headbutt!

Sunday Wreading

Loving this Book of Lost Things book all weekend, but especially today. I've wread 120 pages and it is a light delight. Fairy tales coming to life, whispering books, great beasts, predatory wolves and man-wolf things walking on two legs and wearing trousers, nasty trolls and harpies, lotsa fun, thnx mum.

I'm also dipping into A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius in between. Did about 30 more pages, he's very very good, that Eggers. PLUS I just picked up the smoking-hot Sam Harris slim volume attack: Letter to a Christian Nation. LOVE IT! Good Gravy, man! Let 'er rip! Loud'n'Proud, bro!

Darry Nudges

Got an ASAP from my Mom today. She went nuts over a book and wanted me to read it, so I checked it out from our nation's grand liberry and read the first few chapters during turkeysandwich lunch. It seems sweetly adventurous, much like others my dear mother has recommended. Its tag line is Everything You Can Imagine is Real ~ Lotsa dying mother stuff at the beginning, which is just like A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius, which I'm concurrently reading, so that's a lil odd. This novel is called The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly, who usually writes thrillers. Its call# is PR6053.O48645 B66 2006.
You can read the 1st chapter HERE

Ssssippin' Ssssnapples

These thirst-quenching Snapples, these White Tea cold drinx are LOVELY!
Nectarine! Asian Pear ! I can't get enuff!
Green Apple! All them Green Tea ones too, soooo megayum to the maximum.
I've been sitting by my big-ass window in my comfortable-ass reading chair covered in Axis Bold As Love blanket, Big Franklin right next to me, snoring. We both been hittin' that spot lately. Mostly I'm reading A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius and my new Lincoln paperback. And sippin' the hell outta them snapples. Gotta fridgeful right about now too! Hahahaha that's some down-home, modern-ass yumminess right there. The pink lemonade rox ass too of course and I gotta whoooole row of raspberry sugary tea so please don't step to me. I'm hot child in the city, don't ever wanna be no fool Mr. T pities.

OOoooooOooo! In my End of Faith book he called Pacifism FLAGRANTLY IMMORAL! OMG! I TOTALLY HEART SAM HARRIS TO THE MAX! I've been wreading him in fourpage jabs.

Wrob's Wreading

The new James M. McPherson is gloriorious!
THIS MIGHTY SCOURGE!!!
A collection of essays with a gorgeous-ass cover. If you are at ALL interested in our great Civil War, and if you even LIKE the sound of words, even justa lil bit, you'll go Hog Wild for this, a LOT! Hot Dog! +++++
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DAVE EGGERS DAVE EGGERS
Dubbled meself with dubble-eggers: the smoking hot new one <WHAT IS THE WHAT> in GORGEOUS 50's schoolbook hardback & the hilarious high five paperback that is A.H.W.O.S.G. heck yes! How much funnin' it is this! Sakes Alive!
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THE END OF FAITH!!!!!!


RELIGION, TERROR, AND THE FUTURE OF REASON
Sam Harris scorching paperback! Sparks & Arrows! Direct Hits All Over! Loud & Proud writings, can I getta HELL YES! This is str8 Body Temple Defense, plus justice. I'm uplifted re-reading him, hoping me up into imagining things actually changing, peeple growing on a large scale, helping each other naturally through community, discarding heart-scamming religions and simply adoring the ones they love, be they family or friends or fantasy lovers or favorite female mc's ...

"We can no longer ignore the fact that billions of our neighbors believe in the metaphysics of martyrdom, or in the literal truth of the book of Revelation, or any of the other fantastical notions that have lurked in the minds of the faithful for millennia -- because our neighbors are now armed with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. There is no doubt that these developments mark the terminal phase of our credulity. Words like "God" and "Allah" must go the way of "Apollo" and "Baal," or they will unmake our world."

And THEN he lays into Religious Moderates!!!
OMG!
HELLS BELLS!
Now THIS is what I am talking abouts!
/wrubbing handes vigorously

"Religious Moderates are themselves the bearer of a terrible dogma: they imagine that the path to peace will be paved once each of us has learned to respect the unjustified beliefs of others. I hope to show that the very ideal of religious tolerance -- born of the notion that every human being should be free to believe whatever he wants about God -- is one of the principal forces driving us toward the abyss."

And he DOES show us. Early and often. This stuff is hot lava in y'all's neighborhoodes. Thank you, Sam Harris, raised fist.
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Got the new L'ENFANT book: Scott W. Berg did the wresearch, wrote it up, and it ... is ... niiiiiiice. GRAND AVENUES: THE STORY OF THE FRENCH VISIONARY WHO DESIGNED WASHINGTON DC. Hail.
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On page [794] of Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Thomas Thomas Pynchon Pynchon's AGAINST THE DAY +++ I should write about this every day. Every day I read more, even if it is only a paragraph, but every time there's more and more and then some more, hahaha, and i know the fun sometimes is imagining you never hafta read it all or ever even find an ending cuz cuz cuz he pax it in, longcharge paragraphes galore WE WIN! Wrob hearts this book beaucoup.
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Wreading Flannery O'Connor's short story "The Violent Bear it Away" > 1955 > from a Library of America collexion: an LC Copy 2 from Fort Meade, lovely green cloth cover. This is some serious writing.