...not necessarily architecture related. I am currently immersed in "You Shall Know Our Velocity!"...Dave Eggers is genius. I can't put it down...maybe due to lack of proper chapters, hence no good stopping point.
Yeah that book is really great, from the beggining, from the cover of it... but they told me the one he wrote before about....genius... is far better...
I'm just tryin to find some time reading "fightClub" after learning by heart all the dialogues of the movie...
"Blink - the power of thinking without thinking", Malcolm Gladwell.
"The Life of Pi" by Yann Martel
"A Fine Balance", Rohinton Mistry (I had to take a six week hiatus from reading after this one - couldn't soil the memory of this work with some 'mere' book).
I loved the first 3/4 of "You shall know our velocity" but I think it fell apart after that. For those who read it, you can probably guess what point in the naration I'm refering to. I also really liked the introduction to "Heartbreaking work..." but got a bit tired by the end.
Speaking of Davids, I think David Sedaris is very fun to read. I believe I've read everything he's published at this point.
freq_arch--What did you think of Life of Pi? I had mixed feelings about it--it was well written, it lingers in my mind, the "plot twist" at the end was interesting, but in the end...I don't know.
If the question is "what did we read read recently" instead of "what are we reading," I'll offer A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin. It took forever to read, but I thought it was fantastic.
I typed an open bracket "[" followed by an "i" followed by a close bracket "]". Did the same thing to close the tag except added a backslash "/" . Look at the code below for posting a link--same idea as regular HTML, just using [ instead of <.
snjr:
Honestly, I don't recall the specifics much (Life of Pi). Probably because I followed it immediately with "A Fine Balance' (utterly engaging and all encompassing read).
I just really enjoyed Pi - a great time suspending my disbelief.
snjr:
OK one specific thing I liked: someone asserting dominance over a Bengal Tiger by eating its shit. Think about that - it's got some seriously wicked commment on submission, control.
I can't hink of any other context that something as inverted as that makes sense. That's what I liked about it.
and two ARE books, trying to finally finish my exams...but i am sure you all can guess how riviting "construction documents" is to read, real "edge of your seat kind of page turner"
super-cannes by ballard, mentioned by smokey, is one amazing twisted book
just finished "a season with verona" by tim parks...brilliant book about football culture in italy - you'll laugh your arse off.
before that "pattern recognition" by william gibson - recommend highly
how many of you have read Devil in the White City. A few people have recommended it, like my mother, but only one recommendation from someone I would consider listening to. I've tried starting it a few times but got too busy with other things to really get in to it. I think its mainstream success scares me off a little. (I've always been a big fan of woody allen's scepticism of his own success, he thinks he cant be that good if its popular).
anyways, an architecture fiction / reinterpreted-history that i did enjoy was From Bauhaus to Our House. Anyone read it?
batiment, the last "what are you reading" thread had several thumbs-up reports on Devil in the White City. You can probably do a search on the title and find them.
I really liked the book, as did my partner. We have an original edition of the architecture catalog published at the time of the Exposition, so it is kind of fun to look at all the buildings mentioned.
I've started Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networkd City. It brings up a lot of interesting notions about location in the wired world, but I'm having a hard time just reading straight through it - seems to be more rewarding when I open it at random and read for ten minutes, then contemplate.
a wild sheep chase by haruki murakami, out of sequence, it's sequel was the first i'd read of his. in any case they're all gold dust.
otherwise struggling with the society of spectacle and relieving myself with the sleepless in seattle script.
i used to read v-2.org a lot more, now whenever i read collisiondetection.net i don't think i read enough of him. i read kottke.org for the snippets but also to look for his sometimes interesting and lengthy links, lunch hour length. overall, internet reading is losing out to book reading, and murakami in particular. that said, i'd already lost the time to browse when i got a job.
french: good on ya mate. i just finished david peace's red riding quartet (1974-1983). great books and they just got better. i'm looking now to find a reasonably priced copy of his new book GB84 about the miners strike, but getting it in the u.s. is tough.
Autumn of the Patriarch - gg marquez
Diaspora - greg egan
Dune - briam herbert
Beyond Good and Evil - Nietzsche
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus - Wittgenstein
another book by leon uris: armageddon. published in 1963. novel set mostly in berlin, about the beginnings/evolution of the cold war between 1943 and 1963.
lately i've been reading these old bestseller-type books. if you acknowledge that our current bestsellers (clancy, crichton, grisham, turow, patterson, etc.) reflect a contemporary view of the world, it's interesting to see something like berlin in 1962 through the eyes of a novelist in 1963.
[remember when the ussr broke up, how there was a lot of anxiety that clancy and lecarre had lost their primary subject and james bond was going to have another enemy?]
What are you reading?
...not necessarily architecture related. I am currently immersed in "You Shall Know Our Velocity!"...Dave Eggers is genius. I can't put it down...maybe due to lack of proper chapters, hence no good stopping point.
Yeah that book is really great, from the beggining, from the cover of it... but they told me the one he wrote before about....genius... is far better...
I'm just tryin to find some time reading "fightClub" after learning by heart all the dialogues of the movie...
dave eggers genius? nah. he's just a decent writer with a huge f'ing ego that annoys me. a heartbreaking work of staggering genius just bothered me.
but currently, i'm reading "love in the time of cholera" by garcia-marquez and collections of short stories by nabokov.
I suppose Eggers style is polarizing...If you are not into it I can see how it would be bothering. And so far, yes...I like A.H.W.O.S.G. better.
Two sailing books:
Dove by Robin Lee Graham
The Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet
Last three titles I found really interesting:
"Blink - the power of thinking without thinking", Malcolm Gladwell.
"The Life of Pi" by Yann Martel
"A Fine Balance", Rohinton Mistry (I had to take a six week hiatus from reading after this one - couldn't soil the memory of this work with some 'mere' book).
I loved the first 3/4 of "You shall know our velocity" but I think it fell apart after that. For those who read it, you can probably guess what point in the naration I'm refering to. I also really liked the introduction to "Heartbreaking work..." but got a bit tired by the end.
Speaking of Davids, I think David Sedaris is very fun to read. I believe I've read everything he's published at this point.
david sedaris is great. slap your ass funny, insightful and touching at the same time.
didn't we just have a 100+ post thread on this last week?
i dont know...what was it called...i searched for book related topics...maybe i can't search very well
freq_arch--What did you think of Life of Pi? I had mixed feelings about it--it was well written, it lingers in my mind, the "plot twist" at the end was interesting, but in the end...I don't know.
If the question is "what did we read read recently" instead of "what are we reading," I'll offer A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin. It took forever to read, but I thought it was fantastic.
snjr - how did you get italics for the text?
I typed an open bracket "[" followed by an "i" followed by a close bracket "]". Did the same thing to close the tag except added a backslash "/" . Look at the code below for posting a link--same idea as regular HTML, just using [ instead of <.
Edwarde Tufte's Envisioning Information and Visual Explanations
The twin birth certificate of Gordon and Sebastian. It says the Matta-Clark boys were born 22 June 1943.
-- J.G. Ballard
Recluse26 - I have those open as well...I love the map of the ocean floor and topography in Envisioning pg 91
thanks snjr i will experiment with that
snjr:
Honestly, I don't recall the specifics much (Life of Pi). Probably because I followed it immediately with "A Fine Balance' (utterly engaging and all encompassing read).
I just really enjoyed Pi - a great time suspending my disbelief.
snjr:
OK one specific thing I liked: someone asserting dominance over a Bengal Tiger by eating its shit. Think about that - it's got some seriously wicked commment on submission, control.
I can't hink of any other context that something as inverted as that makes sense. That's what I liked about it.
Dramas: Anything by Neil Labute and Kenneth Lonergan.
modern construction handbook by andrew watts
by Umberto Eco
The Loch by Steve Alten
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk
Fiction is my friend and I need to turn my brain off for a few months after thesis.
right now. bangkok 8. spicy asian noir.
i am reading three books right now,
da vinci code..yes i haven't read it yet
and two ARE books, trying to finally finish my exams...but i am sure you all can guess how riviting "construction documents" is to read, real "edge of your seat kind of page turner"
super-cannes by ballard, mentioned by smokey, is one amazing twisted book
just finished "a season with verona" by tim parks...brilliant book about football culture in italy - you'll laugh your arse off.
before that "pattern recognition" by william gibson - recommend highly
must read for archinects and architects is "Hawksmoor" by Peter Ackroyd: fiction about architecture in early 18th century London - 1985
how many of you have read Devil in the White City. A few people have recommended it, like my mother, but only one recommendation from someone I would consider listening to. I've tried starting it a few times but got too busy with other things to really get in to it. I think its mainstream success scares me off a little. (I've always been a big fan of woody allen's scepticism of his own success, he thinks he cant be that good if its popular).
anyways, an architecture fiction / reinterpreted-history that i did enjoy was From Bauhaus to Our House. Anyone read it?
1980 by david peace. PRet terrifying book but entertaining.
pretty terrifying. Sorry.
- Superstudio
The Snake - Stig Dagerman
Doktor Glas - Hjalmar Söderberg
chakras
The Stories of Paul Bowles
Life without object is a must read, a-f. I thought I knoew much more about superstudio than I did when I read it.
batiment, the last "what are you reading" thread had several thumbs-up reports on Devil in the White City. You can probably do a search on the title and find them.
I really liked the book, as did my partner. We have an original edition of the architecture catalog published at the time of the Exposition, so it is kind of fun to look at all the buildings mentioned.
The bad guy in the book was REALLY BAD.
25 way to win with people -John Maxwell
Last reading-related discussion here.
I've started Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networkd City. It brings up a lot of interesting notions about location in the wired world, but I'm having a hard time just reading straight through it - seems to be more rewarding when I open it at random and read for ten minutes, then contemplate.
radical reconstruction
lebbeus woods
How to be a star at work.
How to be a star at work.
the torah (in a not religious way)
how do you read the torah in a non religious way??
by Jean-Paul Satre
a wild sheep chase by haruki murakami, out of sequence, it's sequel was the first i'd read of his. in any case they're all gold dust.
otherwise struggling with the society of spectacle and relieving myself with the sleepless in seattle script.
i used to read v-2.org a lot more, now whenever i read collisiondetection.net i don't think i read enough of him. i read kottke.org for the snippets but also to look for his sometimes interesting and lengthy links, lunch hour length. overall, internet reading is losing out to book reading, and murakami in particular. that said, i'd already lost the time to browse when i got a job.
henry miller tropic of capricorn
french: good on ya mate. i just finished david peace's red riding quartet (1974-1983). great books and they just got better. i'm looking now to find a reasonably priced copy of his new book GB84 about the miners strike, but getting it in the u.s. is tough.
Freakonomics by Steven Levitt
anyone read it? thoughts?
Austen - Northanger Abbey
Chesterton - The Club of Queer Trades
Hugo - Les Misérables
Bloom - The Anxiety of Influence
Bonhoeffer - Creation and Fall, Temptation
non-arch? hmm...
Autumn of the Patriarch - gg marquez
Diaspora - greg egan
Dune - briam herbert
Beyond Good and Evil - Nietzsche
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus - Wittgenstein
another book by leon uris: armageddon. published in 1963. novel set mostly in berlin, about the beginnings/evolution of the cold war between 1943 and 1963.
lately i've been reading these old bestseller-type books. if you acknowledge that our current bestsellers (clancy, crichton, grisham, turow, patterson, etc.) reflect a contemporary view of the world, it's interesting to see something like berlin in 1962 through the eyes of a novelist in 1963.
[remember when the ussr broke up, how there was a lot of anxiety that clancy and lecarre had lost their primary subject and james bond was going to have another enemy?]
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