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books… e-readers just don’t compare

Posted 13/01/2012 under books • mobile images •

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my favourite Japanese author

Posted 04/01/2012 under books • mobile images •

I just finished reading Murakami's "1Q84", a marathon read and excellent. Typically zany Murakami.

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brave new blind faith

Posted 20/04/2010 under books •

I’m sick and tired of the time wasting triviality of Facebook. I’ve decided to take a break from using it, which is a dilemma in some ways because it’s the only way that I communicate with several of my friends. No doubt I will get back to it some time in the future, maybe next week, but right now I need a break.

This disenchantment with Facebook was exacerbated when I read Ben Elton’s “Blind Faith” last week. If ever you feel that you are addicted to social software and need something to jerk you out of that state, read “Blind Faith”, then wonder at the fact I read this book on my Kindle for Mac after downloading it to my laptop.

Elton has created a tale that is reminiscent of Orwell’s “1984” and Huxley’s “Brave New World”. In fact it’s revealing that Elton directly refers to 1984 within this text, but nevertheless Elton’s been clever in intertwining the horrors we already have, eg reality TV, evangelists and social software into a thought provoking tale for our times.

Frighteningly, just after I finished reading the book I came across a news article about Victoria Beckham aka Posh Spice aka Queen WAG, demanding sex 5 times a day from worn out husband David aka Golden Balls, because she’s broody and wants a daughter. Seems to me we are already living in Elton’s times. All we need to complete the picture is the flood.

Those of you familiar with “Blind Faith” will understand what I mean.

Now, should I publicise this post on Facebook I wonder?

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changing values…

Posted 08/04/2008 under books •

Last night I began re-reading Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”. It must be at least 12 years since I last read this book, and it was one of the books that I decided to bring back from Australia with me because I want to find out how I relate to the story at this time in my life.

Pirsig describes the tale as being “An Inquiry Into Values” and, because I consider that my perceptions of life and life’s values have changed so much over the last decade, I am keen to delve once more into the narrative of this guy’s personal Chautauqua and discover if there is more or less that this book can reveal to me now. I did the same thing with Alvin Toffler’s “Future Shock” a couple of years ago and found it to be immensely boring, whereas when I first read it after it’s release, it held me enthralled. Hopefully that won’t be the case with this revisitation.

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too true

Posted 27/11/2007 under books •

“He didn’t want a holiday’s brief deception of well-being”.

Paul Theroux, The Family Arsenal

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capote

Posted 11/06/2006 under books •

Out in front of the stable the bearded drunk had quit dancing, and the hound dog was sitting under the water trough scratching fleas. The wagons rickety wheels made dust clouds that hung in the green air like powdered bronze. A bend in the road: Noon City was gone.
Truman Capote, “Other Voices, Other Rooms”

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bye-bye, bye-bye

Posted 04/11/2005 under books •

I often find myself using the term “bye-bye” here especially with small children who are seemingly always encouraged by their mothers to “wave bye-bye at the strange looking foreigner”. So it was illuminating to read in a borrowed copy (thanks Dr. Laurie, you’re a champion mate!) of the Barry Humphries memoir “My Life as Me” a small section about this quaint term.

According to Humphries “bye-bye” has been used since the mid-nineteenth century and was often most used by his mother’s neighbourhood friend as a “bookend” to her welcoming “Yoo-hoo” upon arrival at the suburban back door of Humphries childhood home.

But the reason for my reporting on this is the marvellous paragraph that Humphries uses to describe the term:

In later years, when Mrs Gray waved, her ‘bye-byes’ wobbled. In the vernacular of the Australian housewife, ‘bye-byes’ are those tender jowls of flesh beneath the triceps of mature women, which quiver in the valedictory gesture.

How wonderfully put!

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Currently Reading - Leading Quietly - Joseph Badaracco

Posted 12/02/2003 under books •

Having read and enjoyed “Defining Moments” by the same author last year I am looking forward to reading Badaracco’s latest offering, “Leading Quietly” which I borrowed from Griffith Uni library yesterday. I also re-borrowed “Defining Moments” as well as “Leadership and the Quest for Integrity”, a book that Badaracco co-authored with Richard Ellsworth that was released in 1989.

“Leading Quietly” was released in 2002 and from the brief flick through that I have had, it seems as though it will be an easy book to consume and one that deals with issues of leadership that are often overlooked. I enjoyed “Defining Moments” and read it from cover to cover during a very busy second semester last year. Badaracco draws on several case studies as examples, and who better to draw upon for matters of ethics but some philosophers. In particular, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius and even Machiavelli.

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