i changed my senior thesis topic just so i could read these again and again and again...

Easily one of my favorite books--The Discovery of India by Jawaharlal Nehru



Not as great but also good: Nehru's autobiography.

Tell me more, please. I'm very interested in India, but I know next to nothing. What do you like about this book?

i read the books like fifteen years ago. the one i read had a 21st chapter. is that canon at all? i didn't like it, the "extra" last chapter.

Here, There and Everywhere - My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles
by Geoff Emerick

Good stuff. I always thought Geoff Emerick was never given his due - after all, he did win a Grammy for Sgt. Pepper but almost never had his name on a Beatles record. George Martin gets lotsa credit for the Beatles' studio work (mostly in their musical development), but Geoff is the man who was able develop their recorded sound into something truly unique. He was barely 19 years old when Abbey Road made him a recording engineer (something unheard of at the time - most engineers were in their late 40s) and then assigned him to work with the Beatles. During his first session they recorded "Tomorrow Never Knows" and when Lennon stated that he wanted his voice to sound like it was "miles away," Emerick improvised a means of running a microphone signal thru a rotating speaker (used for Hammond organs) and thus began the group's path to recording history. Many of the tricks Emerick invented for the Beatles have become industry standards which you can select on any audio editing software - but back then it was all tube-based mixing boards, 2 or 4 track tape (the studio wouldn't allow them access to the brand-new 8 track until just before the White Album sessions) and some high quality mics. In order to create the unique sound of the Beatles, Geoff had to break nearly every rule that Abbey Road set down in regards to mic placement, signal flow, distortion, using speakers as microphones, and other stunts that would have gotten anyone else fired had George Martin not been there to protect him from the brass. All in all, it's a pretty good read.



So - how was it?

Yeah, what was the controversy again surrounding that?

this seems like quite an interesting book


i don't remember the number of chapters in my book. i had already returned it to the library. but the last chapter in my book was about [spoiler]Alex deciding to settle down: finding a good girl and a steady job.[/spoiler] was there something after that?

i got these two books for myself from a bookshop yesterday:



i have started with Schopenhauer (i'll read Kant while i'm traveling, cos it's very short). it's a pretty big book, and obviously the kind of reading that takes some effort to get through. hopefully, i can finish it by the end of the year. although, Schopenhauer is praised for a very good writing style. and from what i've read so far in this book, it is indeed quite enjoyable.
there's this long foreword for the first edition of the book, where he explains how you should approach this book. he warns people that they may not like it if they aren't used to this type of literature. but if they wasted their money on this book and found it useless they can still put in on the book shelf and it'll look good with the rest of the books or they can also give it to a lady friend so that to impress her.
Schopenhauer has some gloomy ideas about life, but he seems like a cool dude, nonetheless. i'm very excited about reading this.

The Discovery of India is part autobiography, part history of India, and it's wonderful.

He was an Indian nationalist under British rule and the first PM after independence. A lot of India's problems with bureaucracy and such are because of him, and the poor Nehruvian economy has only recently been discarded (hence the boom). But he's a great, charismatic writer, and until Narayan and Rushdie came along was regarded as the best Indian writer of English. I'm pretty sure Discovery was written from prison, but I'm not positive. He writes a lot about traveling through India and trying to establish an emotional connection with it even though he spent most of his formative years in Britain (Harrow, then Cambridge, then London), so there's a lot of passages about travel, including a really touching one about Kashmir (before shit hit the fan there). He hated religion, he was a socialist, and he was a lot more complicated than his mentor, Gandhi.

Before anything though you should read The Idea of India by Sunil Khilnani--a really great book about nation building after independence. From there you can go further back into the history.

I just started it, so I'm only about 40 pages in, but I'm impressed with Andy's writing style and insight. He certainly had some interesting experiences to share. Will get back to you as I get further into it.

Cool, thanks for the rec. As if I needed yet more stuff to read. . .

re: clockwork orange

the original version had 21 chapters (3 sections, 7 chapters each). when it was released in america it was published without the 21st chapter because the US publishing company didn't like it. burgess relented and it came out with 20 chapters.
the chapter adds a bit of symmetry to the book simply from the opening line "What's it going to be then, eh?" which also opens up chapters in each of the first 2 sections. the rest of this chapter almost entirely mirrors the first chapter in the book however with different characters and a different perspective on the world.
when Kubrick began making the movie he initially didn't know that chapter existed. The full length version of the book wasn't printed in the US until '87

I went through a phase when I was into authors' introductions for their books. In the new American version of the book Burgess writes about this, with some insight into American identity at the time of publication.

One of the things that I discovered while doing my Clockwork Orange digging was the fact that Burgess wrote a screenplay for Kubrick and offered it at a reduced price. Kubrick flatly rejected him. When Kubrick read the final chapter of Burgess (which would have been reflected in the screenplay) he commented that Burgess was probably forced to add this sappy chapter on by his publisher, that or he was just a bad writer. I would imagine Burgess has a fair amount of sour grapes over that.

do you guys thing they book is better with the last sappy chapter or not? cos to me it was the last chapter that really made me like the book.

Just started Eugénie Grandet, by Honoré de Balzac.

I like it both ways, honestly. I'm glad Kubrick was so masterful with his movie because it shows the legitimacy of that ending. Burgess ending allows Alex to grow as a human being and without that last chapter, there are several patterns set up through the novel that don't work out properly.

Great read. I hope this goes a long way to demolishing the "Saint Joe" myth. The other thing that struck me was that, although Strummer did terrible things thoughout the life of The Clash to his bandmates (especially Mick Jones and Topper), everyone was so generous with their memories of Strummer. They could have easily said, five years on, "What a cunt." But I guess enough time had rolled by that whatever bad feelings occurred were, well, not buried but resolved. If there was any man who had a hard time resolving his own behaivor, it was Strummer himself.

yeah, i think kubrick is wrong there. if i remember correctly, burgess was pretty ticked off that his american publisher took out the last chapter, and blamed it on the american audience's incapacity for optimism at the time of publication.

had to read the metamorphosis this morning to get ready for a test...still hits a little too lcose to home, but i guess that's what makes it great. very 'kafka-esque' as jesse eisenberg would say

I don't remember if I read 20 or 21 chapters. Guess I'm going to the library. I need to pick up the new Harry Potter anyway.

McSweeney's Issue 24
This one features a pretty excellent symposium about Donald Barthelme.

Is everyone/anyone familiar with Barthelme?

You should be.


Seriously.

i really need to read more mcsweeney's and not just their books of lists which are amazing

I just signed up and realized half my friends were already on there. Kickass site.

I miss our McSweeney's subscription.

Saw this post, signed up.

I lost two hours of my life this morning browsing and rating books.

It's pretty expensive. Too expensive for my budget. Luckily I got a subscription for my birthday.

If you want some good new literature for cheap, check out Tinhouse. Great stuff only $20 for a subscription (4 issues annually)

yeah, the thing is whether or not it is better without the last chapter, I just can't get past the fact that it is supposed to be there. So that is the only way I can really conceive the book at all.

as far as what I am reading, well I am reading like 9 books on teaching english/reading/writing.
I also just read this last night for the high school class I am observing at (it was ok, it was definitely below a 9th grade reading level, and it was about imaginary friends, and what real friends are all about. Some of it was rather engaging, but I am sure the kids will hate it):



and for fun right now I am reading:

and for the third time I am reading:

Not really, but Genaneg will love seeing someone else post it.

This is a pretty good collection. 4/6 stories are winners, other 2 are lacking but not bad by any means.

Barthelme is still a must for all.

This year I let all of my McSweeny's subscriptions go, based on last year's collections, which I thought were meh.

Yeah, McSweeneys has gotten pretty predictable with its stories. If anything, I would suggest just reading "The Last Adventure of the Blue Phantom" (and the Barthelme, of course) in the bookstore. Not really worth the money unless you have a nicely padded budget.

NSFW





































Pretty wild articles. I actually wtf'ed a few times so far. Good stuff.

^
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Virgin Megastore always had these things laying around in the book section. What kind of person actually bought these (as opposed to flip through surreptitiously and say "WTF?")

Dudes like me, for starters. But actually, BUTT is pretty significant in the gay community counterculture. It features a pretty impressive collective of talent for a queer magazine. Wolfgang Tillmans and Bruce Labruce; those two individuals alone should spark some interest.

Just finished it. Terrific read.

Did you ever get around to reading this? Sadly, I'm not sure I have anything intelligent to say as a result, but I spent an absurd amount of time poring over this, along with the longer and much, much more torturous version, The Critique of Practical Reason, about 10 years ago while I lived in Germany, ostensibly to study philosophy.

I hope you didn't take my sardonic comment too much to heart. I was also thinking of those kinky dominatrix/lingerie books they sold, along the same lines.

i'm making my way through robert draper's bio-cum-presidential-chronicle on george w. bush, 'dead certain'. definitely not my favorite book about the bush presidency--the two suskind books remain the cream of that crop. but what it lacks in insight--and it lacks plenty in that department, particularly in examining W's decision-making process/apparatus--is almost makes up for with rich anecdotes.

All for school:







George Bernard Shaw, The Matter With Ireland. Important but very very boring. It's taken me weeks just to plow halfway through.
Gregory Castle, Modernism and the Celtic Revival Haven't started yet. I generally love anything containing the root word "-modern-" in the title, though.
James L. Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire Nationalism is just really cool. Lots of theory and anthro work.

Sorry,i dont frequent this thread often, but wanted to know if anyone reads Dennis Lehane's books?

the reason i ask is i wanna read Gone Baby Gone before seeing the movie. I know it's part of a series using the same characters and is the 4th book in the series.

So.... can i read this out of order?

thx

This is wonderful:



Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day
It came out the same year as Midnight's Children, so they get compared a lot. Dense, interior, quiet--everything Rushdie is not--and really a beautiful novel.

I loved this:

"Oh, I never slept at all, in those years. No, no--there was medicine, there was music, there was the German language to be learnt, there was no time to sleep. I think I was delirious in those years. I used to walk down the broad avenues, and look at the cherry trees in bloom, and smell the lime blossom, and hear music at every street cafe, in every park--and, really, I was delirious."

just started "confederacy of dunces"
pretty good so far...

for the most part it stays that way. my only complaint was that i had no personal connection to any of the characters...i didn't really care what happened to any of them.

just this morning i was reminded of Ignatius while reading Zero's responses to Human Studies

Just started...


I'm about 60-70 pages in and it's a good read.

Geoff Emerick - "Here There And Everywhere - My Life of Recording the Music of The Beatles"

On deck...

Andy Summers - One Train Later

And what I'll be drinking in for the next 12 months:

Krazy and Ignatz, 1927-1928: "Love Letters in Ancient Brick"

color me curious

how is that so far?

Awesome. Blew through it in two days.

If you are an NBA junkie, it is a must read and you should get it today.

If not, wait for the paperback.

i am an NBA junkie
not enough to wanna read John Amaechi's book

gimme some background on his book though if you can

Received in our office's "book swap" Immortality by Milan Kundera.

At this point, it's interesting, if not terribly life-changing for me. Got through the first chapter, where he philosopically riffs on the life of an imaginary woman. Now he's telling some story about people hanging with Goethe in the 1800's. Is there some sort of point that this all builds up to?