Herding Chaos

I loved this paragraph so much that I stenciled it on my door in college. Now I find out that the original text (from the scroll of On the Road versus Kerouac’s novelization) goes as follows:

the only people that interest me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing … but burn, burn, burn like roman candles across the night

It’s not that different, however, the wonderful ending was added later.

…exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!

The NYT has some terrific examples of the covers of On the Road in other countries. Some places really got it, others not so much.

Even better than making a list of the books I read, I’ve decided that I need a little reminder of what they were about and if I liked them. Here’s what I read in July and even though the month just ended, I’m having a hard time figuring out if I’m missing anything.

Women Who Run With the Wolves - Clarissa Estes
She restates her thesis over and over again, but this was a pretty interesting book. Estes looks at myths and archetypes and deconstructs them to illustrate how they were built to teach lessons on being an “authentic” wild woman.

Good Fairies of New York - Martin Millar
I picked this up in a bookstore in DUMBO when I went to Brooklyn last month. I thought it sounded cute and light and Neil Gaiman wrote the intro, which I thought might mean more than it did. Fairy wars in NYC, some predictably odd humans, eh - I can’t really recommend it.

Waiting - Ha Jin
I had a good long sob when I finished this. Communist Chinese culture wrapped around a love story that was sad, slow and sweet.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
While Book 6 made me cry, this one was just way too predictable and neat. I was reading this during our trip to the west coast and a lady at breakfast mentioned something about Potter dying. I thought she might be spoiling it and was fairly impressed that it might really end that way. Sadly, no.

Tears of the Giraffe - Alexander McCall Smith
I like these books. This one had fewer investigations and more detail about Precious’ life, but that was OK.

The Poe Shadow - Matthew Pearl
Pearl used fictional characters to investigate the last 5 days of Edgar A. Poe’s life, the details of which are apparently not known. This was a little bit Devil in the White City and a little bit Alienist, and I liked those two books better than this one. To the book’s credit, I am now much more interested in picking up some Poe, especially the Dupin stories, since I love me a good detective story!

I’m in the middle of reading Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, which I stole from Brian’s shelf when I thought I’d have to sit in the dentist’s office for hours waiting for him instead of assisting the dentist during his (Brian’s) emergency root canal.

If it wasn’t 1000+ pages, it would be a quick read. It is essentially a thriller/spy novel - the pacing is quick, and even though it’s heavily referential, the references are in-your-face obvious. (or maybe I’m not geek enough to pick up on the references–ha!) It’s a big step up from Dan Brown, but not even close to Pynchon or even DeLillo, who always seem to get pulled in for comparison’s sake.

While Snowcrash is an essential part of the literate web geek’s canon, this book moves into the hacker realm. I am not a hacker, a programmer, or anything close to that. I do not get “root” jokes even though I can tell you why they should be funny. In fact, I suppose it’s significant that one of the character’s names is Root, but eh - I’m only half way though the book - if it’s obvious to me now, then I almost hope his name has no significance. That’s too “over the head with a brick” for me. I like subtlety.

Take this passage, which made me feel really cool that I knew exactly what he meant, and then really lame & obnoxious for being taken in that easily:

They take seats across the head of the table which is wide enough for a Last Supper tableau. In the Jesus position is a really big chair. It is the kind of thing you’d get if you went to a Finnish designer with a shaved head, rimless glasses, and twin Ph.D.s in semiotics and civil engineering, wrote him a blank check, and asked him to design a throne.

Still, it’s good beach reading and since I’m in Florida at the moment it’s only fitting.

This gets me thinking…it’s been a good 10 years since I’ve approached Gravity’s Rainbow. I’ve read the first few pages so many times that every time I think about it, I get a craving for banana pancakes (apparently I’m not alone). This summer maybe…

I’ve been consistently keeping track of the books that I read for almost a year now for the sole reason that sometimes I forget what I’ve read and buy the same book (or checkout the same book) twice. Midway through the first chapter I realize that it’s all sounding familiar. Sometimes I make it halfway through the book and then all of a sudden it clicks. It’s pretty lame when I realize that I’ve wasted a good day or two on re-reading something.

I’ve found that the monthly list helps me remember what a book was about - the season helps trigger the recollection of what the weather was like, where I was when I was reading, who I talked to about the books, etc…

I’ve been managing all of this on my backpackit site, but I don’t pay for that site and the page limit restriction is hassling me, so it’s time to clear up some space.

My book list