Another Happy Return

A few, final, Ulysses-related-links:

• The Bloomsday Virus
• The History of the Day

Yeah, Bloomsday is, finally past us, and I figured I take an opportunity to post a few more links culled from my "Wake" reading list.

I spent most of the day studying for a test, but I did get a chance to watch the Ulysses movie, which is, really, the greatest, unnecessary film I have ever seen. There's a lot of French New Wave and Fellini influence in it, but yeah, they do everything they can to capture every bit of the text, making the film, itself, ridiculous for the sake of completeness, but yeah, it helped smooth over a lot of holes in my own understanding.

I, also, just finished reading The Moviegoer (I might, actually, finish a review of it) and I'm, currently, working on The Complete Henry Bech and William Gibson's Idorou.

Also, it appears quantum physicists are making teleportation/long-distance communication advances (stolen from technovelgy, again.

Plus, a bonus for Unix users out there, a allegorical/metaphorical meditation on the windows-unix rivalry by Neal Stephenson and a picture of the Hole Hawg (which was mentioned in the aforementioned excerpt, swiped from Jason Rhode's baroque little blog.

Expect Nothing but Joyce for a While...

Despite The New York Times's unfortunate reputation with book reviews, lately, it's produced two links for me, today. My Finnegan's Wake reading list (the link's head to find, so look in previous Joyce-related posts for it) has redirected me to this story, which, like most stories regarding Bloomsday, speaks rather critically of it. However, it leads off with a rather lovely anecdote about a young, Irish "lad" reading Ulysses, that's really worth reading.

Another Joyce Link...

This one stole from the modest, but respectable, j_joyce community on Livejournal.com about the dwindling population of Jews in Dublin. Take a look. It's lovely.

Reagan...No Thoughts...Just Links...

With his recent demise, it seems like everyone has something to say about Reagan. Slate, I think, provides two, interesting, perspectives.

• Reagan and the 'Rasslin Business
• Gorbachev's Role

Another, interesting, Reaganonema, apparently, there was a video game called SDI made for the commodore 64, based on the "Star Wars" plan. That's really amusing and...creepy (information, anyone?)

All I Want for Christmas

Is the Ulysses Audiobook put out by Naxos (which has managed to be one of the most ambitious (and one of my most-favorite) classical labels, around. Practically everybody's making a fuss about it, including The Guardian, that heaps laurel, upon laurel atop the durn thing. Personally (not that this is an unpopular opinion), but I see this as the only good thing coming out of the hundredth Bloomsday.

But, yeah, now I need to get a job, or sell blood, or something, to cover the expenses of that beautiful sheaf of CDs.

The Only Book News I Can Find...

Everyone's struggling for book news, right now, with two huge book festivals hogging all the credit. While I haven't seen much talk about it in the other blogs, newsagents are going ga-ga over this Rule of Four. The book-in-question is based around the infamously unreadable, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, the Resnisance's answer to Finnegan's Wake that, apparently, tells a love story in a series of nesting dreams.

Don't get too excit though, this isn't some scholarly study, just the next big crypto-thriller, in-the-spirit of The Da Vinchi Code (I'm not going to prove you a link for that one because, really, I'm pretty sure you can find it on your own) or The Cryptonomicon.

While more avid readers (of books, any books) will probably shake their head at this project, it'll probably convince one bored housewife to read the Hypnerotomachia, and that, sorta, makes this whole code novel fad seem more worthwhile.

Another Meaningless Booklist and a Little Music Coverage

Well, the Hay Festival is still going on, along with, like the American Book Expo, or something, I dunno, I'm not one to pay much attention to all this talk about trade shows (though it seems to be in-vogue, across-the-blogs). While I'm allergic to hay, everyone likes a good list (or even a bad list), so I thought I'd link you to this list of "Orange Essentials", compiled at the aforementioned festival (and swiped from the literary saloon. This is a list of 50 essential books from the past century, compiled by festival attendees and online voters (the site remains open, for some reason, even though the vote is closed).

To save your eyes, 100 Years of Solitude ranks #1, Roth performs respectably, Atwood has too many books for her own damn good, Grass (in a beautiful display of disrespect) makes the forties, and even though everyone's going ga-ga over Updike at hay, he only lands #38 (it's a shame, people just don't like to read him, do they). But yeah, interesting little list, as lists go.

Also, for those of you who like reading music, or music, period, I've been searching out a lot of wonderful MP3-only labels and would like to direct your attention to earlabs. This site is an excellent MP3 label of electronica (modern and classic) that also serves as a hub to dozens of other MP3 labels (including Kikapu and Fukk God Lets Create, both-of-which, are amazing). I've discovered so much great music, today, and I implore you to, too.

Roy Wins Big...Again!

Probably no-more-than-a-week after I discover (or, I should say, realize) that Arundhati Roy has political interests, she's been awarded the Sydney Peace Prize, which will fit nicely on her mantle, alongside the booker she took home for The God of Small Things.

Oh, the Guardian and their Hay...Thing...

The Guardian loves to promote its Hay Festival, which seems like an insanely fun time, really. But yeah, today's Guardian Books has a couple amusing articles on the festival including this tiny collection of drawings by authors and a story about a game of scrabble between the guardian and authors.

However, the real meat of today's Guardian comes in the form of an entertaining, racous article about Colin Wilson's autobiography. I've always liked the guy, half-because he's a great writer and half-because he's such an odd fucker (even though I don't get his whole UFO/occult thing).

Really, it's been a while since an article's made a want to read a book so bad, or at-least read that copy of Poetry and Mysticism that's been sitting on my shelves for unknown years.

Anna Karenina Makes Booksnob Banned List

Scooped from a certain Livejournal, the new Oprah's Book Club book is none other than
Anna Karenina, one of the books that been on my queue to read, and one of the books that I will, probably, now, have to read in-secret.

I guess the question is why do readers-of-books hate Oprah's Club so much. Its really hard to say. I'm saying, she does good thing for America, I guess, arms soccer moms with a greater body of literary knowledge, but I dunno, I think the real problem is the fact that people are reading these great novels (because all the selections she's made for her "new" book club are great novels), but they're reading them because a celebrity wants them to read them. Book people read for the love of the book, you know, because they pick it up in a store and they're so engrossed in it that they find themselves reading it on their way to the counter, because the reviews (we love reviews, mind you, we hate celebrity endorsements, but we seek out book reviews like starving (wo)men) give us starry-eyed hopes of how great it must be, and because our friends track us down and beg us to read it (often making forcible loans that they may/or may not get back. That's, more-or-less, how book people operate, in my mind.

Plus, I think, part of it is because Oprah's readers, generally, don't aspire to greater heights (though some of them do, I've known a few, and they've become passionate bibliophiles). Oprah's readers remind me of kids who sit in fashionable coffee shops and read Chuck Pallinuk (sp?) novels and the Confessions of a Wallflower (or, whatever it's called) with their lips moving. They do it to appear hip or interesting and don't move on from their little bubble of Oprah books. If, I think, people moved on to Love in the time of Cholera or Travels with Charlie and In Dubious Battle, I'd be a bit happier about it, but right now, it seems like a celebrity (though, probably, a well-intentioned one), stealing books from famous bodies of work and making them their own.

Plus, it's Anna Karenina, the sorta book that gets bibliophiles misty-eyed, the book that Tereza's book. It feels like she's stealing our memories, and while I (and all the other bibliophiles who will whine about it) are asses for saying so, it hurts, a little.

P.S. Please ignore grammar, this was intended as something-of-a-rant.

The Length Only Masks the Lack of Content or A Request

My computer's been down for a few days, so I've been unable to update. I've been making a lot of progress through the Foundation Trilogy (I'm on Second Foundation, right now), and I'm enjoying it, terribly. There may, or may not, be a review of it, written by my own hands, up in the next few days (I've written so few book reviews in my life, so I'm, really, not confident of my ability).

Right now, I'm trying to find information on this fight between HG Wells and Henry James. A fellow I just met was telling me about it in the bookstore and it seems that Henry James and HG Wells drew the battle lines for the modern novel during a discussion they had (James thought novels should be about what happens in a character's mind and Wells thought they should be about what, actually, happens). I love James, and while I know precious little about Wells, I am quite the fan of science fiction (even if I'm a recently-returned fan to the genre). So far, I can't find the dialogues, however, I have managed to find This Extensive Page of James Links and this quote...

When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. - H.G. Wells

The quote is, I believe, from The Wheels of Chance, a bicycling pastoral he wrote. As a fellow who still hasn't learned to drive a car into his twenties, I support any and all velocipedic literature.

If anyone knows where I can find more on the debate, please tell me. Thanks.