Category: Books

I mentioned previously that I loved the HBO series ‘The Wire’. I found out that the writer of the show, David Simon, had written a couple books based on his experiences in West Baltimore. The books are critically praised non fiction portrayals of drugs and death in the inner city.

I picked up a used copy of one of his books, The Corner, via Amazon. It arrived last week.

Today I’m back to riding BART to work, and so I’ve started the book. 20 pages in, I’m really enjoying it.

My sister got me this book for my birthday.

Living in the world of someone who is autistic is by turns fascinating and frustrating. The amount of detail experienced by the main character is enlightening, and it is fascinating to watch him process that information. However, towards the end I experience impatience with all the detail and just wanted to get to the point.

But that was the point–understanding the world of autism. This is still a light mystery novel–and I mean that in the best possible way. It doesn’t tax too much, it’s interesting, and in the last third it’s quite a pageturner.

A fun, quick read. Recommended.

Magazines! Yes, I’m reading magazines. Unapologetically.

The best magazine find so far has been Paste. The tagline is ‘Signs of life in music, film, and culture’. It comes with a cd full of music and sometimes, a dvd. The reviews do a good job of introducing new music– providing history, background and context. At least they do for me, someone who loves msuic but has huge holes in his knowledge of the last 50 years of music.

Anyway, Paste magazine. Highly recommended. It’s like having a literate, non-condescending knowledgeable music afficionado friend with bad taste in fonts give you music recommendations every couple months.

I still get res magazine, but the editorial quality in that thing continues to plummet. res feels like the newsletter for the terminally hip video/designer kids. I still enjoy it though, not for the articles, but for the dvd that comes to subscribers. My stack of res dvds is pretty thick, and it’s great to go back through the music videos and shorts for a look at a technique or fascinating story.

The next two mags don’t have much content, but they do have decently written articles.They are related to each other in that they are concerned with technique aspects of creating something that is both creative and commercial. Best of all, they are both free.

Game developer mag has post mortems on video game projects that are (to me) more interesting than the games themselves. Discussions of programming techniques, the business of games, and interviews make it fun read.

But DV mag I read cover to cover. Not hard, it’s a thin mag, but the articles are always brimming with practical experience. No rehashed press releases, just reviews from people with experience.

The common theme is media, especially learning how to manipulate media. This is definitely where my interests are these days.

Can’t wait to see how I’m going to usethis mishmash of interests.

So, finished HP6 last night.

I read chapter 1 at lunch on Monday at the bookstore.

Did the same with chapter 2 yesterday.

Around 3pm yesterday, Amazon.com deliver my copy.

I read it from the moment I left work (5:15 or so) till around 1030pm, when I realized I hadn’t had dinner. I took a break for a bit and then read till a little after 1am.

Those books are like candy, you just inhale ’em.

-/-

Anyway, I’ll say this: I’m awfully disappointed that Harry didn’t get it on with Cho Chang in this book. C’mon, Harry! You’ve only got one more book to go.

As for the obvious thing going on with Ron and Hermione, let’s just get it over with, shall we?

I did like the way Harry picked up a new girl and then dumped her a few chapters later. He let her down easy though–“Voldemorte might hurt you to get to me. I can’t risk that.” I gotta remember that one, might come in handy.

Finished, but still thinking about:

– ‘Mediated’, Thomas de Zengotita
– ‘Khafka by the Shore’, Haruki Murakami

In progress:

– ‘Mind Wide Open’, pop-science.
– ‘Densha Otoko’, true life love story that’s been making the rounds in Japan

Next:

– ‘Tokyo Cancelled’, fiction, stories told by travellers stuck in airport when flight to Tokyo is cancelled.

“The Japan Journals: 1947-2004” by Donald Richie.

How grateful I am for this remarkable record of a life. It is the gift of the long view, life as it will be in retrospect, how the sum of little observations and activities grows into a significance and weight, how friendships unreel across decades, and how it is possible to have always a clarity, a self-honesty, that survives all the changes around.

Donald Richie is someone who always floated on the periphery of my awareness. When I went to Japan for the first time, my first feelings and observations were already captured in Richie’s writings 40 years before. He recorded for the first time what we all fell for the first time. He was Gaijin Prime, the one who came, and stayed, and made a life.

I read his words and I relate so closely to his life lived as an outsider. When, after 55 years in Japan, he is told during an interview with a grad student, “You discovered the virtues of being an outsider. It was the benefits of stigma you discovered here.”–I read those words, and I nod, because I know of those benefits.

Leafing through this book, and encountering Richie’s acquaintances a couple hundred pages apart, as he experienced them a few decades apart, you get the benefit of this long view, the way experiences echo back and forth across the years. The value of writing down things you want to remember becomes oh so clear. Richie has had an extraordinarily rich life, but perhaps that is because he has taken time to pen his thoughts. He had a remarkable range of acquaintances, and the book is filled with mundane glimpses into the lives of fame and accomplishment. But more than those glimpses of celebrity, I love Richie’s eye for the changes and subtleties of daily life: the homeless, the protitutes, the policemen in the park, and the rude youth on their cell phones.

Perhaps we all enjoy similar riches, and would know it, if we stopped to capture them.

It takes some bravery to write about one’s personal life: and for that courage I am very grateful. There are passages where Richie considers the state of love and his marriage which are heartwrenching and true. Consider:

There is not enough of this. The discussions you have inside your head are yours alone, and one day you pick up a book and realize that someone else has that same type of urgent personal dialog. It is the type of personal dialog that does not find a public voice, unless it finds a pen, or a song.

A remarkable life, and a remarkable read.

I’ve gotten started on 3 books right now:

This is what I’m reading right now.

She talks about reading as a source of creativity–the raw materials of new ideas. She quotes Mark Twain — “The person who does not read has no advantage over the person who cannot read.” Nice.