Posts Tagged ‘books’
Monday, January 4th, 2010
Not much, really. Let’s see.
- The Power of One - Bryce Courtenay
- Breakfast at Tiffany’s - Truman Capote
- George Harrison (biography) - Alan Clayson
- The Jesus I Never Knew - Philip Yancey
- Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
- Twilight - Stephanie Meyer
- In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
- High Fidelity - Nick Nornby
- New Moon - Stephanie Meyer
- The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
There are a few good ones there, but my pick would probably be In Cold Blood. The whole Twilight thing is midly embarassing, mostly because I’m neither female, nor a teenager. But Edward is so dreamy.
Tags: books
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Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
Sometimes I like to just start typing and see what comes out of my fingers. What’s on my mind lately is that I haven’t been reading much (at all, in fact) which could be why I’ve got little motivation to write. After reading quite a few books in my wonderful world-travelling days of 2007, I think I’ve only read one book this year. Riding the tube to work every day in London was a brilliant reading incentive. That, and lazing around in hostels.
I’ve got a bunch of good books within reaching distance but I got stuck on a Dickens a few months back and I lost my reading mojo. A couple of nights ago I started afresh with ‘Heart of Darkness’ by um, someone (I forget right now). Seems interesting. At least it’s short, and might help me get back on the horse.
We may possibly be watching far too many movies and TV shows. Lately I’ve been super-enjoying Dexter, as well as a bit of I’m Alan Partidge (tip of the hat to Curly). Also on my list of things-to-get-hold-of is more of The West Wing, the first series of which we really enjoyed a couple of years back.
Watching stuff on the screen is so passive though, I mean, there’s nothing that feels quite as engaging as reading a good book.
Tags: books
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Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
I’m posting this now because I am behind the frickin’ times. For posterity, my 2007 reading list:
- White Teeth - Zadie Smith
- A Time to Kill - John Grisham
- London - Edward Rutherford
- A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
- Better than Life - Grant Naylor
- Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis
- Some book about body language
- Cannery Row - John Steinbeck
- East of Eden - John Steinbeck
- Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
- Franny & Zooey - J.S. Salinger
- A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby
- A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
- The Last Juror - John Grisham
- The Dark Arena - Mario Puzo
- Red Dwarf - Grant Naylor
- Chart Throb - Ben Elton
- Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
AH THE GOOD TIMES
Tags: books
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Wednesday, November 7th, 2007
My reading list on the right-hand column is looking a bit skinny this year. Sixteen books? Is that all I can muster? That’s one book every 3.25 weeks, and I know I can do better than that. I’ve even had about 14 weeks holiday. I must be punished! All night long!
Mind you, the quality of books I’ve read has been fantastic - I’ve discovered John Steinbeck, the Red Dwarf series, and finally managed to get my hands on a copy of A Clockwork Orange. In fact, I’d count that, as well as East of Eden, and Of Mice and Men among my favourite books now. I also picked up a beautiful old hard-back copy of A Christmas Carol somewhere in France, and read it in two days. I’ll be taking that one home to add to my collection. I love old books.
I was doing quite well there while I was working at UNNAMED PRESTIGIOUS COLLEGE, averaging about a book a week. Those were good times. However I find whenever I start to struggle with a book, I lose interest for months at a time. I really need to push myself. Mere Christianity had me yawning all the way to HELL, and Edward Rutherford’s London, while a pretty interesting novel, was about the size of a telephone book. Ambitious.
Right now I’m reading A Time to Kill, by John Grisham. It’s about a lawyer. He fights against the odds, and presumably comes out on top after saying lots of clever things. He fights for truth, justice, love, peanuts, truth, and the right to assemble in a public place and perform Cats. Then he has to battle angry clowns in a restrictive designer suit, using only office stationary, staplers and such. The clowns lose because they don’t know how to use staplers.
Tags: books
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Sunday, September 30th, 2007
“Honey?”
“Yes, John? I’m trying to sleep.”
“Sorry. It’s just that I’ve got a great idea for a new book.”
“Mmm-hmmph. What’s it about?”
“A lawyer.”
“That sounds nice, dear.”
[silence]
“I’ve got another idea if you don’t like that one.”
“Mmmph.”
“It’s about a puppy with telepathic powers. He gets lost in New York City on Christmas Eve and has to find his way home before Christmas. It’s sort of a feel-good adventure thing.”
“I like the one about the lawyer.”
“Oh. OK. You’re probably right. I’ll do the lawyer one.”
Tags: books
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Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
We just had a fantastic weekend in Portugal, the land of super sexy women, sunshine, cobbled streets, delicious pastries, and fresh air. More specifically, we went to Lisbon for an all-too-short break which involved quite a bit of airport loitering, but was well worth it nonetheless. It was one of those exhausting-refreshing holidays, and made us happy we live in Europe.
Lisbon is a beautiful city, well worth visiting - but I wish we’d had just a fraction more time to spend there. A two hour stopover in Madrid airport was quite a stupid arrangement, since we’ve never been to Spain and would like to go. Not to worry, we’ll visit there later in the year.
Generally, our time was spent wandering around the city taking in the atmosphere, and planning our next meal. Most notable were the Portugese cream custard pastries which we enjoyed on more than one occasion. Being offered marijuana for sale approximately 5 times in an hour was also a little strange.
While I was away I also finished reading Of Mice & Men, by John Steinbeck, which was frickin’ awesome. I think I may have even shed a tear for the first time. I liked it so much I went back to the library and borrowed more Steinbeck.
In other developments, we’ve booked and paid for our busabout trip which will take us around a big chunk of Europe later in the year. Most likely this will start around the 19th of July, just in time to make a pit-stop for a family gathering in Austria in early August.
Tune in next week for tales of Sweden, Estonia, Finland, and the strange case of the singing homosexual tortoise. That is, unless I get hit by a bus.
Tags: books, super magical trip of joy, touristy crap
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Friday, March 16th, 2007
I’m reading some more J.D. Salinger at the moment, good stuff. We discovered a local library where they let you borrow books for free! Libraries are a great idea. Now I don’t just read Dinosaur comics and stupid blogs for nutrition. Plus you can read books on the tube which makes it much less boring. iPod + Book + Tube = fun, happy times.
Work is going well. I work, they give me money. I use the money to buy trips to interesting places, like Portugal, Sweden, Estonia and France. Sometimes I use it to buy food and pay the rent, too. I will probably be working there full-time for another two months I reckon.
The Portugal trip is coming up next weekend. I am pretty pumped. The only thing I know about Portugal is that the O Porto chicken recipe comes from there. Plus they used to sail around in ships killing people and being a big world power and stuff. And they play in the World Cup sometimes.
Update on touristy stuff: we went to Greenwich Park last weekend. It was nice. They had squirrels. I think I got about five million pictures of squirrels.
Update on my mindbrains: When I first arrived here, I had the taste for travel and thought maybe I’d like to apply for my ancestry visa and stay longer. You know, travel the world and all that crap. Then after a couple of weeks I decided I wanted to go home at the end of the year. Now I think we’ll probably go home, but there’s a small chance we might like to come back and see a bit more of the world. Bear in mind, next on the agenda is babymaking, so we’ll see how it all fits together next year. We should probably try not to be in the Netherlands somewhere for the birth of our first child, if at all possible. Neither of us really know what we want out of life in the next couple of years so our plans are likely to change without warning.
Tags: books, my uncertain future, touristy crap, work
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Saturday, February 24th, 2007
I have no time to blog because I am reading a real horrorshow book, O my brothers. It is a malenky story about a young malchickiwick not unlike myself who likes a bit of ultra-violence and the old in-out-in-out, as we all do in the nochy. Our poor little droog finds himself in a real vonny mesto surrounded by starry vecks in white coats trying to like mess with his gulliver. There is tolchocking and plenty of the red red red krovvy to go around for us all, my little droogies, yes yes there is, or my name isn’t Your Friend and Humble Narrator.
Tags: books, films
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Saturday, December 23rd, 2006
Last year I unleashed my favourite books / films / albums of the year upon the world in the 2005 Afe Awards. It was so totally amazingly excellent that I decided to do it again, right now.
Here are the rules. It’s favourite discoveries from the year, regardless of release date.
Movie
Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) had me by the balls from start to finish, both times I watched it. I watched some pretty bloody good Hitchcock films this year (in fact I watched some pretty incredible films overall) but this was the best. Fascinating story, excellent acting, and a very interesting theme. Jimmy Stewart is der bomb. Technically I think I watched this back in 1997 when I was studying film at Uni but I wasn’t paying attention back then. They also made me watch Citizen Kane and I thought it was shithouse, so my taste has definitely changed since then.
Runner-up for my film of the year is The Philadelphia Story (1940). Yeah, I’m a sucker for old movies, especially if they have Jimmy Stewart in them. The weird-arse trip out Korean movie Oldboy was also in the running.
Book
This is a close one because I think I only read about seven or so books this year. I should be ashamed of myself. Bram Stoker’s Dracula was good, but I think I’ll give the Afe Award to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. What an interesting book. Nothing really seemed to happen but it was still fascinating. I’m not kidding.
Album
This was a very good year for me in music. Apart from discovering Bob Dylan I’ve found three albums which I’d now consider to be in my top ten of all time:
Augie March released their third LP, Moo, You Bloody Choir. It’s not their best album, but by Augie standards that still means top notch quality music. They’re still a relatively young band, yet to prove themselves with a couple more albums, but they are certainly the best Australian band. I’d still rate Radiohead as the best active band today though. U2 can lick my balls.
Slightly better than the Augie release came Sufjan Stevens’ colourful folk-pop masterpiece, Come on feel the Illinoise. I’m still not sick of this album. It makes me happy, and sometimes sad. I still make love to it occasionally, too.
But my true favourite of the year is Elliott Smith’s XO. Forget about the skip button, you can just stick this baby in and let it play. The guy was a genius. ‘Nuff said.
Hope you enjoyed this year’s Afe awards. Please return next year and I promise to give you large slices of chocolate cake. Feel free to leave your own favourite books / albums etc. of the year in the comments section. It’s fun, I promise.
Tags: books, films, Music
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Friday, November 17th, 2006
I’m worried about my house. What should I do?
Choose your own adventure #1 : Rent the house out to a bunch of share house people. Get a friend to keep an eye on the place and collect the rent while I’m overseas. Lots more money, lots more hassle.
Choose your own adventure #2 : Rent the house out through a real estate agent. Pay commission through the nose and also get less rent. Much less money, much less hassle.
The financial difference is significant. I would probably be at least fifty bucks a week better off renting out each room individually. But of course there are no contracts, bonds, and the possibility of having empty rooms sometimes.
P.S. Does anybody remember the Choose your own Adventure books? They were frickin’ awesome. Yeah, I was a book nerd as a kid.
Tags: books, house
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Hello, I'm Afe.
