Through the Mountains of Madness

About midway through the story, I'm sorta scared. The way that Lovecraft describes these people wandering through ancient ruins of a hgih society that time left behind is so detailed, and reveals the beauty of the fictional world that Lovecraft creates with stunning accuracy. The plot describes an expedition party going to a yet unexplored mountain range, when they discover frozen corpese of some foreign race that appears to have bodily processes of both plants and animals. They decide that they must explore further, and they send a party ahead of them. This party doesn't return, so those left in the expedition decide to go looking for them. They go ahead in a small plane, and find themselves flying over some ancient, abandoned alien city, so like normal, sane people, they explore it. They're looking through this ruin, but the way lovecraft describes the situation makes me feel like something's waiting for them in the darker corners of this abandoned place. The overall apprehension of the writing really creeps off the page and into your mind.

Before the Mountains of Madness

Howard Phillip Lovecraft was an American author in the early 1900's. Residing in New England for all of his short life, he wrote short stories and novels in a genre he calls "Strange Fiction." This description, from what I've read of his previous works, is completely and totally accurate. His method of description evokes visualization that is, if anything, individual to Lovecraft. The way he puts his visions into words describes things alien and strange, like he's seen things that no other man has. I hope he brings the same visually engaging style to At the Mountains of Madness, the book I plan to read next. I've heard good things about it from Max, and I've read some of his other works in the collection The Call of Cthulhu and Other Strange Stories. I've also heard that this story ties in well with other stories of his, forming a sort of mythos around his body of works, referred to as the Lovecraft Mythos. I look forward to an extension of his already intricate web of supernatural creations. NEXT UP: At the Mountains of Madness.

Drugs are Bad, mmkay?

So, I finished. That was a hell of a trip. In both ways, too.
Last I mentioned, the duo of drug addicts were trawling their way through casinos and picking up as much trouble as they could possibly find in Las Vegas. They do more drugs, crash a police convention (of which they're technically members of), and then Raoul makes the mistake (or good decision, depends on your point of view really) of consuming extroardinarily large doses of a drug called Adrenochrome, apparently extracted from the adrenaline gland of a living human being. After some insane hallucinations, Raoul loses consciousness, and wakes up next morning with only a tape recorder as evidence of what went on last night. He drives around vegas, figuring out where he went, and learning about all of the havoc he wreaked. It ends with him leaving Las Vegas, leaving behind an insane amount of unpaid bills and a lot more angry people. Overall, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a thrilling acid trip of a book, showing you the way that the drug culture of the early 70's operated, from the eyes of one of its most enthusiastic participators.

Fear is done, now we just need Loathing.

At the halfway mark, I think I know what this book is about.

Maybe.

It details the story of Hunter S. Thompson (reffering to himself as Raoul Duke in order to protect his anonymity and prevent him from being arrested later on) and his "attorney", mysteriously referred to only as "Dr. Gonzo", as they search for the American Dream. With the events in the book taking place in 1971, the Vietnam war is raging at full steam, and the acid craze of the sixties is dying away. It starts with Raoul and Dr. Gonzo zipping through the Nevada desert at 90 miles per hour in an apple red convertible full of mind-altering substances that is just reffered to as "The Shark". As they drive, they are both tripping balls, and hallucinating left and right. They pick up a young hitchiker and proceed to scare him half to death with their incoherent psychobabble, and he runs away at the first chance he gets. They continue into Las Vegas to "cover a motorcycle race", which translates to "not cover a motorcycle race and get high some more". Their shenanigans take them from casino to casino, getting thrown out, or throwing themselves out in a stupor. Overall, the book reads like the ramblings of an insane drug addict, which Mr. Thompson was definitely one of. This insane-ramblings style does not detract at all from the story, though. It only serves to put you in Thompson's shoes as he tears his way through the depraved town of Las Vegas. Up to this point, the book is one of the most entertaining that I've ever read, and I plan to continue it.

Fear and Loathing in the Third Marking Period

To preface this post, I recently watched the movie, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which was adapted from a book by the same name by Hunter S. Thompson. The movie consisted of two hours of Johnny Depp and Benicio del Torro stumbling around Nevada in a drug-addled haze, pissing people off and generally having a good time for two hours. So, having also heard about how the book was great from a few friends, I decided I'd check it out. Before you even open the book, the cover gives you a hint as to how twisted (literally) the story inside is.

As you can see, it's a bit of a strange cover, showing Hunter S. Thompson's pretty face all twisted up, with his masive pilot shades reflecting the sights of nighttime Las Vegas in a manner just as distorted as his face is. The movie was a whole lot of distorted fun, and I expect the book to be just as much, if not more.

Remember kiddies, don't do drugs.

Beck's over, time for some Fear and Loathing

Considering the fact that this book was only written in '99, this biography only covers about a quarter of Beck's career. It catches him in a stage of development, when he hasn't fully grown into himself as an artist. Of course, no artist is ever done developing, but this is at a particularly early point in his life as a recording artist. It catches him before, during, and after his first big hit. in 1994, he released Loser, an anthem of low self-esteem that caught on fire after it was played on rotation on a small college radio station in California. After selling millions of the album the song appeared on and touring to support it, pressure was on for a new album, one that could successfully measure up to the genre-mashing madness of his first album. So, he disappears for two years, working with the Hip-hop producing-masters, the Dust Brothers, on the recording of his followup album. In 1996, he finally released Odelay, an album that so many critics list as one of the best albums, ever. Combining hip-hop, country, funk, electronic, and just about every other genre Beck could find and absorb, Odelay changed the way that a lot of people viewed genres. With Odelay, Beck showed that even though genres have their differences, it's all just music. After releasing Odelay and touring extensive touring around the world, Beck took another two years to recharge his creativity, writing songs and thinking his way through how he was going to handle his next album, Midnite Vultures, which was not yet released by the time that the book was published. All in all, this biography details the formative years and beginning of the career of a great musician, who has since continued to release great music. Go Beck.

Next up: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas!

Beck - A werido, but definitely not a Loser

Had this one written for a while now, never got around to posting it.

So, at the midway point through Beck: Beautiful Monstrosity, I think I've gotten a fairly good idea of what Beck's life was like before he'd completely developed as an artist - completely and totally, without any doubt, the American Dream. After growing up in a house where avant-garde art was the norm, walking down streets where he'd hear hip hop at one end and salsa on the other, he had all these ideas floating around in his head. Then, he discovered old american folk music, which was to be the basis for all of his musical endeavors for the rest of his life. After studying all of these influences, he decided to capitalize on an offer to go anywhere in the US in a greyhound bus for $30. So, he undertakes a long journey with his girlfriend on this Greyhound bus, bumming out across America until he reaches the promised land of New York. Losing his girlfriend on the way (by accident), he ends up entrenched in the hipster scene of Anti-folk, the epitome of everything not mainstream. Beck describes it as "folk music played with a punk attitude..."

The author writes in a mostly biographical style, but connects the facts and quotes and recountings to form a narrative out of Beck's early musical life, using descriptions he's gathered from visiting the very places that Beck stood, putting the reader directly in Beck's shoes. So far, I'm really liking this.

Next Up! Beck!

So, the next book I'm gonna be journeying into is a biography of eclectic musician and artist Beck Hansen, better known as just Beck. If you don't listen to Beck, go do it now. Hell, I'll even give you a link. http://grooveshark.com/#!/album/Odelay/111102
Now that you're listening to glorious Beck for context, I'll give a short explanation of Beck as a musician. He mashes up every genre you could thinik of, from hip hop to jazz to country and folk, and puts them in songs. And even though those genres may seem to be things that don't go together, it works out quite well. As to what I know about his life, I know he grew up in a really diverse environment in LA, where he was exposed to lots of different cultures and types of music, leading to a fairly eclectic musician.

I've been a pretty big Beck fan since about 2008, when I heard some songs from his (then) new album Modern Guilt on the radio, and decided to buy it. However, I happened to get on the Beck train as soon as it stopped, because he didn't release an album for 6 years after Modern Guilt. This lack of new Beck forced me to go back into his catalogue, and I just ended up liking him more and more, with each new album I listened to. After a solid 6 years of listening to Beck's old stuff, he finally released a new album on february 25th, so I'm reading a biography of him to commemorate the event. What's interesting is that this biography was written in 1999, so it gets a picture of Beck before he was fully developed as a musician, it gives a more candid view of him in the middle of his development. I look forward to reading it!

Final post for Hypthetically Speaking

So, I finished this book a long time ago, but I've been putting off posting about it.

Well, that was weird.

Around the halfway point, I said something similar about it being weird. It got weirder. Much wierder.

I found that this book was a journey in many, many ways.
It was a journey for the main character, going through the traumatic experience of realizing that he is but a character in a story, with no control over his actions, to realizing the power that only he holds over himself.
It was a journey for the main character in that he and the narrator travel quite a ways in their attempts to complete the quest of killing the author.
It was a journey for the author, as he writes the narrator and main character taking a trip into his subconscious, and examining with a magnifying glass the many influences that come together and make the individual that is David Dill, artist, writer, and person.

Overall, the book was a hilarious trip that takes you from meta to super-meta to further levels of meta that have yet to be named. Well done, Mr. Dill.

Midpoint ruminations

Alright, so around the halfway point, Hypothetically Speaking is weird. NOTE: I'M PROBABLY GONNA SPOIL SOME STUFF HERE SO IF YOU WANNA READ THE BOOK (which you should) DON'T READ THIS PART.

So, the narrator starts out by destroying the main character's house with a giant tree, to get his attention. They then go through several treeheadings of people who did not please the narrator or would have gotten in the way of the master plan that said narrator had all plotted out. So, in short, the narrator wants the main character to kill the author, so he can fully hijack the story (as opposed to the large influence, but not ultimate control, that he has over the story) and become lord of the story's universe. It gets more complicated and confusing from there. And then some.

/SPOILERS OVER YO

So, this book is really funny. It has some quality/classy humor, and then some pathetically bad jokes, but all of them are entertaining in the end. The Narrator being given a character of his own provides for some earth-shattering fourth wall-breaking. Pop culture references are used extraordinarily often, and to added comedic affect. It is clear that Mr. Dill is highly versed in many forms of different arts and culture, going from music to movies to visual arts, and his references can draw a smile from almost anybody who considers themselves a fan of something. The plot of the book seems, at the halfway point, to just be a vehicle with which to transport this really cool idea that Mr. Dill had. The sometimes juvenile writing really keeps the story fresh and keeps you laughing. At this point, I'd definitely reccomend the book to anyone who isn't offended easily.

Hey. I'm Owen, and I'm gonna read some books.
So, the first book I'm going to be reading is not, in fact, Ilium, the book that I had at first thought I'd be reading. Once I saw that it had ~700 pages, I realized that I was very, very stupid, and decided to read a different book. The book that I'll be picking up is called Hypothetically Speaking, and it is written by the best substitute teacher in the Wissahickon School District, the good Mr. David Dill. Mr. Dill, while subbing for Mr. Perlman last year, happened to mention that he wrote a book. A group of students, including myself, took interest, and checked out his blog, where he had published the book. Nobody really went any further than just skimming over the intro, but the idea stayed with me, in the back of my mind, waiting for the right time to emerge, and it did. I was down a book, and needed a good idea for something to pick up, and fast. The idea of Hypothetically Speaking stepped up to the plate, taking the chance it was afforded to save me from being screwed.

Anyway, now that I'm done introducing the circumstances under which this reading came to be, I'mma talk about the book. So far, it's a very meta-, self referencing sort of deal.The beginning definitely sets up a strong sense of rising action. The foreword (which, for once, actually contributes to the plot) is written by the author, warning in a cryptic manner that the narrator of the book is trying to kill him, and that he doesn't have much time. It then goes into the first chapterella (cause it's in a novella, geddit?), in which the narrator shows himself to be a megalomaniacal pyschopath with some immeasurable amount of power. Things get weirder from there, and it definitely holds one's attention with humor and left-field plot devices. I like it so far, but I'm not really too deep into it. I can definitely see that this book is going to have a clear conflict, but the resolution- not so sure about that.

till next time
me