Posts by recordari

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  • Busytown: Holiday reading lust,

    Didn't someone say 'Stop it' a page or so back? Oh yes, Emma. That Emma, of the SpecOps Literary Detectives division. Ignore her at your peril ;-) I think I'm going to banish this thread to The Well of Lost Plots.

    Oh crap, I mentioned fforde in a Genre war. Better don my asbestos coat and go sit in the corner.

    AUCKLAND • Since Dec 2009 • 2607 posts Report

  • Random Play: The Big Day Out: Lambs to…,

    It's simply commercial music picked to attract 40,000 plus people in the 16-25 core age group.

    Who, like Iggy Pop, Neil Young, Billy Bragg, New Order and those other teeny bopper 60s, 70s and 80s bands you mean? When it's balanced it is truly great, when it is not, it is not.

    Camera Obscura where cool by the way, although the Monte Cristo room is getting to be a sweat box of monumental proportions. The poor wee things nearly melted after coming from minus 10 in the UK.

    AUCKLAND • Since Dec 2009 • 2607 posts Report

  • Hard News: You've got to listen to the music,

    PS As I have just read Graham Reid's excellent review of the BDO, perhaps I should have let this go, and jumped on that bandwagon instead.

    I wasn't ready for this thread to die, and I certainly didn't want to be the one who killed it. So can we move passed the cult of personalities and get back to some Video tennis?

    As I swayed in the crush of the BDO throng, this strangely came to mind. More 80s low-brow.

    Oh, yes, and while we're in that mood, how about this?

    AUCKLAND • Since Dec 2009 • 2607 posts Report

  • Hard News: Feminist as crazy old man,

    Bindel really does come off as a dreadful piece of work in that comments exchange. Patronising, immature and arrogant.

    Yes, and what I said about popping down the pub with her, can someone please apply the redacted brush of 'WTFWITA' to that aberration. I'd rather have my nails removed with pliers.

    AUCKLAND • Since Dec 2009 • 2607 posts Report

  • Busytown: Holiday reading lust,

    Cat in the Hat

    Bingo! But I've read it. And why do I trust Sacha? No eye deer, but I do... >-)

    As mentioned elsewhere, I'm planning to re-read Angela Carter's The Passion of the New Eve. Put that in a pidgeon hole and smoke it. Whoops, we're back to wild game.

    AUCKLAND • Since Dec 2009 • 2607 posts Report

  • Hard News: Feminist as crazy old man,

    I think I'll go re-read Angela Carter's Passion of the New Eve. It seems strangely apposite to what is going on here, and on the 'Reading Lust' thread. Carry on.

    AUCKLAND • Since Dec 2009 • 2607 posts Report

  • Busytown: Holiday reading lust,

    I'm going to have to consult my 'subtext analyst' because this all seems way more important than it needs to be.

    I love books. I'm as comfortable reading chewing gum crime novels like Iain Pears's Jonathan Argyl series as I am his more crafted historical novels like Stone's Fall and An Instance of the Fingerpost. The same goes with Banks in Fiction or Sci-Fi.

    Funnily enough I do know the difference, but it doesn't weigh heavily on my mind when I choose a book. It is more important to have 1) a recommendation from I reader I trust 2) positive experience of the author 3) PAS people making me feel stupid if I haven't read it.

    Lets get back to celebrating the love of books, not the distaste for labeling, which in any field, gender, genre, education or health, can result in decamping to positions of narrowly defined prejudice, IMhO.

    AUCKLAND • Since Dec 2009 • 2607 posts Report

  • Busytown: Holiday reading lust,

    And what about Steam Punk? Sorry, I'm being inciteful. Not a word. Damn, and here I was playing with the big boys. As you were. 'Clappity, clappity'.

    AUCKLAND • Since Dec 2009 • 2607 posts Report

  • Busytown: Holiday reading lust,

    The crux of Transition is that the world we live in is one of an infinite range of parallel worlds, and that, for the best part of a millennium, certain individuals, called transitionaries, have been able to flit between physical bodies in these different worlds using a drug called septus.

    The crux of Transition, IMhO, is that all is not as it seems, including the crux of Transition. Tautology or non-sequitur?

    AUCKLAND • Since Dec 2009 • 2607 posts Report

  • Busytown: Holiday reading lust,

    This is the nature of her speculative occupation, Atwood explained in her interview with Wired.com (below). Unlike sci-fi, spec-fi — especially her disastrously scary strain — has a chance of phasing into reality within our lifetime. (Just don’t confuse the two, she insists.)

    By this token I wonder if Le Guin's Dispossessed is Spec-Fi, as it depicts an ideological version of an Anarchist state, which happens to be on another planet. Le Guin said;

    Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with, not the social Darwinist economic 'libertarianism' of the far right, but anarchism as pre- figured in early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman. Anarchism's principal target is the authoritarian state (capitalist or socialist); its principal moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories.

    I don't want to start a 'Genre War', but it appears to me they are often a result of the author's own opinion (Atwood) or the readers (Le Guin), or their marketers (JS&MN - Clarke) and therefore the stuff of mythology.

    Oh, and where does Iain Bank's Transition fit? In the cuckoo's nest? There has been much discussion on this very point.

    AUCKLAND • Since Dec 2009 • 2607 posts Report

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