well i was just lookin thru this book on the fauves that i checked out from the libary and between page 103 and 104 i found a small painting that i quite like!
still reading 'house of leaves' (discussed on another thread). it's painful, i don't recommend it, but i feel some strange obligation/compulsion to finish it.
hey glick, if you like dave eggers then i suggest you check out his newest novel, What is the What. i finished it a couple of months ago and really enjoyed it (even though it was depressing). it's the (mostly) true story of one of the sudanese "lost boys."
anyone here like michael ondaatje? one of my favorite novels by him is Anil's Ghost. In the Skin of a Lion is also very good.
Also, Maverick, by Ricardo Semler my hero of the business world..." How would you like to work in a company that has no receptionists, secretaries, standard hierarchies, dress codes, or executive perks, lets you set your work hours and even your salary, and asks you to review your boss..."
Someday
j
I've got four going. because individually they're so damned tyrannical and often need a good spanking from another unrelated book. Er...the book needs the spanking. Right. Here's an excerpt from one.
Steve Lowe & Alan McArthur Is it just me or is everything shit? The Encyclopedia of Modern Life
entry for: Alain de Botton
Whatever the subject, "popular" "intellectual" Alain de Botton will wade in with the most fatuously expected thing possible. Ask him about cooking duck and he'll say: "Very fatty." Ask him about Les Dawson's piano playing and he'll say: "To play the piano that badly, he actually had to play the piano really well. I've read loads of Proust, you know."
De Botton makes a handsome living from variations on a single phrase: "Ah, but does it?" So, for the Art of Travel, he will say: "Travel broadens the mind, they say. Ah. but does it?" And for On Love, he will say: "Love makes us happy, they say. Ah, but does it?" Throw in a few banalities, raid the philosophy and literature to reduce some of the greatest endeavours of human thought to a self-help soundbite, lunchy. [lunchy=mediocre]
Sadly, as a small child Alin never grew any hair down the central dome of his head. This meant that he grew up with the nickname Alain "Head As Smooth As A Baby's Bottom" de Botton. This is partly why he is so interested in the concept of status anxiety.
Ah. but is it?
at the moment i'm reading this thread
but when the reading vybe hits me ive been trying to read
kenneth framptons, tectonics and architure, and least i think thats the title
Fell in love with 'Devil in the White City' with its intertwining of Daniel Burnham's efforts to get the Chicago World's Fair on its feet with the story of a psyco killer feeding off of the fair's visitors.
eca03, yes, i couldn't put it down either. one night i couldn't sleep so i decided to read until i felt sleepy. i ended up staying up until 4 am! i finished it up in a few days.
devil in the white city, yes, i've heard. definitely going to pick that one up.
Haha Vado so sorry I forgot Root. He's actually a brother in my fraternity, and whenever we have to run through the list of the well-known brothers he's always the last one I remember to name. Right behind Cass Gilbert.
n_ please let me know how 'The Architecture of Happiness' is, it's sitting on my bookshelf and I've had no motivation to crack it open.
i've been wanting to read this since i heard an interview with the author on npr. my coworker told me it's a fast read so i'll let you guys know how i liked it.
May 10, 07 5:08 pm ·
·
That 1812 best-seller by Thinks I To Myself Who. Maybe I'll be done by die kalte Sophie.
If you want to read a book that will turn your head inside out, immediately pick up:
Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West, by Cormac McCarthy
Not only is it, IMHO, his best book, but it's one of the best books ever written by a human being. You have to be able to tolerate passages about violence, though.
Another great book is:
Waiting for the Barbarians, by J.M. Coetzee
Kind of has the opposite message as Blood Meridian.
"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", by Hunter S. Thompson. I read the whole book today. A much needed (and highly entertaining) break from all the urban design reading I've been doing lately... I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone.
Steve Lowe & Alan McArthur Is it just me or is everything shit? The Encyclopedia of Modern Life
entry for: Mac junkies
“Oh, Macs are just so much better than PCs. The operating system is about 12 times faster and they’re just so much more efficient in, oooh… so many way.”
Are they? Are they really? And how the fuck would you know, when all you use it for is copying CDs and looking at porn? What you actually mean is: “They look nice.”
The Mac junkie will also crap on without end about how Microsoft is a big nasty corporation. No shit? And Apple’s what then—a workers’ co-op? No, it’s a smaller nasty corporation—which uses child labour and beats its workers, whom it pays in beans, with sticks (possibly).
Do you know what Apple employees call company chief Steve Jobs? I’ll tell you: Big jobs. Or Shitty Jobby Job-head.
And that’s true. Okay, it’s not.
----
No cow is too sacred for tipping.
Next and last excerpt will be the entry for his Lordship, Norman Foster. Ok, there isn’t one for Foster but there is one for Charles, Prince of Wales. It’s bloody good too. In case you get this book and are tempted to bring into the WC. Forget it. Trust me.
P.s. Cris, if you can handle the violence in Beah’s non-fiction you’ll swim through McCarthy’s stuff.
tumbleweed...that is genius. Have you read any other Thompson books? I really want to read Hell's Angels, I hear that one is good as well. Also, after just reading a synopsis of "To A God Unknown," I'm going to find a copy tomorrow; being from a small town in Vermont afterall.
I started a book a couple of weeks ago while traveling: usually get best reading while flying on planes.
The Genius In The Design, Jack Morrissey It is kind of a East Coast Archinect West Coast Architect except the players are Bernini and Borromini. It is a good architectural read, and it is clear they struggled with the same problems we do today.
My next architectural read came as a gift last night from a favored client. I was at a social function at his house an was standing in his wifes studio surround by at least thirty people and he excuses himself
and comes back a couple minutes later with a book in hand. He says
you will really enjoy this book: "The Wright Space" by Grant Hilderbrand.
I also plan on picking up a book he wrote a couple of years ago:
sometimes i read books, but lately im really into science magazine.
generally, i can only read the first twenty pages. the rest is complete nonsense to me. for example above: "Male germline stem cells (red and green) from mice produce spermatozoa after transplantation to the seminiferous tubules of recipient mice." sounds naughty.
Tempus fugit, it was said, but it was breath that was the wingèd thing: it was breath that fled. Time was the folly of our vain making and delusion, the stinking, jaundiced pisciata di cane by which our mangy race tried to leave the mark of its unknowing on infinitas. The trickling sands of this vain making and illusion, the trickling mictus of this unknowing: these were the anxietatum that had come to rule the pulse and rob the breath. God had given us the infinite, and we had turned from it; to calendar, to horologium, to clepsydra, to clepsammia, and now to monstrous clamorous mechanisms of oscillating wheels — grand orologi that overshadowed man himself; grand orologi whose graceless rotismi commanded among the overshadowed a greater awe than did the perfect rotations of the eternal heavens themselves, as the overshadowed, in everly increasing haste and everly increasing lifelessness, made their way like automata in procession to the idiot pyre of tecnologia and godless computus.
---
Tosches is like a crazy uncle with a classics degree who prefers the company of anarchists over Oxford dons. If you can imagine a fusion of Burroughs and Iain Sinclair with a little Baudelaire you'd be close, sorta. Definitely not something to take to bed.
Cris, I had a go at the Eisenman / Borges comparative. Interesting. My understanding of portugese is dreadful. All I could make out with guesswork is that the residual potency of form undermines and derides the vanities of anthropocentrism. It sounds like circuitous bs, I'm probably way off.
Plato - The Republic (finally, but not worth the wait)
Eric Auerbach - Mimesis (some bits really good, but I'll never remember any of it)
Adrian Stokes - Michelangelo (about to start)
What are you reading?
thought i'd bump this because i'm looking for stuff to read.
just finished this
[img]http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/41-GxYdSkCL._AA240_.jpg[/url]
very very bleak, but also very very good.
and i'm re-reading this
a classic, of course.
so, what are you reading?
dammit! the first one should be:
Frederic Jameson: Archaeologies of the Future. The desire called Utopia and other Science Fictions
Jorge Luis Borges: Complete Non-Fiction
Dave Eggers: What is the What (recommended)
Dr Seuss: The Lorax
well i was just lookin thru this book on the fauves that i checked out from the libary and between page 103 and 104 i found a small painting that i quite like!
i mean it was a painting that someone who had checked out the book had painted. not a plate from the book.
The Kite Runner,
Two Democracies,
and The Art of Clear Thinking
don't like eggers....i forced myself to read half of "you shall know our velocity"...but that's just me.
right now, i'm reading:
nature's numbers: the unreal reality of mathematics
folding architecture
the secret lives of people in love (short stories by simon van booy)
still reading 'house of leaves' (discussed on another thread). it's painful, i don't recommend it, but i feel some strange obligation/compulsion to finish it.
hey glick, if you like dave eggers then i suggest you check out his newest novel, What is the What. i finished it a couple of months ago and really enjoyed it (even though it was depressing). it's the (mostly) true story of one of the sudanese "lost boys."
anyone here like michael ondaatje? one of my favorite novels by him is Anil's Ghost. In the Skin of a Lion is also very good.
Bill Bryson:
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Science for the rest of us and a good read.
Also, Maverick, by Ricardo Semler my hero of the business world..." How would you like to work in a company that has no receptionists, secretaries, standard hierarchies, dress codes, or executive perks, lets you set your work hours and even your salary, and asks you to review your boss..."
Someday
j
Cris, haha i'm actually reading that right now. It is really a great book.
eastcoastarch, which one? the road, or invisible man?
I've got four going. because individually they're so damned tyrannical and often need a good spanking from another unrelated book. Er...the book needs the spanking. Right. Here's an excerpt from one.
Steve Lowe & Alan McArthur
Is it just me or is everything shit? The Encyclopedia of Modern Life
entry for: Alain de Botton
Whatever the subject, "popular" "intellectual" Alain de Botton will wade in with the most fatuously expected thing possible. Ask him about cooking duck and he'll say: "Very fatty." Ask him about Les Dawson's piano playing and he'll say: "To play the piano that badly, he actually had to play the piano really well. I've read loads of Proust, you know."
De Botton makes a handsome living from variations on a single phrase: "Ah, but does it?" So, for the Art of Travel, he will say: "Travel broadens the mind, they say. Ah. but does it?" And for On Love, he will say: "Love makes us happy, they say. Ah, but does it?" Throw in a few banalities, raid the philosophy and literature to reduce some of the greatest endeavours of human thought to a self-help soundbite, lunchy. [lunchy=mediocre]
Sadly, as a small child Alin never grew any hair down the central dome of his head. This meant that he grew up with the nickname Alain "Head As Smooth As A Baby's Bottom" de Botton. This is partly why he is so interested in the concept of status anxiety.
Ah. but is it?
No one does snark like the Brits.
sounds like a good (although very british) read xentr0py!
i'll have to look out for that one. the us amazon doesn't have it, although the uk amazon does.
christian de duve
'life evolving'
just read...
Simulation & Simulacra - Baudrilliard
The Republic - Plato (why, I do not know, but it was interesting)
currently - Design Like you Give a Damn - AFH
on deck - Architecture & Disjunction - Tschumi (but maybe i'll mix in a novel or somethin)
at the moment i'm reading this thread
but when the reading vybe hits me ive been trying to read
kenneth framptons, tectonics and architure, and least i think thats the title
by Bill Buford--a middle aged New Yorker editor decides to slave away as a line cook in Mario Batali's kitchen... lots of fun to read.
Cris,
the road. i'm not really into fiction books but this one really got me drawn into it. couldn't put it down.
just read:
Finding Flow - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
just started:
Chrome Yellow - Aldous Huxley
Fell in love with 'Devil in the White City' with its intertwining of Daniel Burnham's efforts to get the Chicago World's Fair on its feet with the story of a psyco killer feeding off of the fair's visitors.
Up next is 'Life of Pi' then 'Freakonomics.'
Devil in the White City is a great book
yeah well dont ferget young john wellborn root.
eca03, yes, i couldn't put it down either. one night i couldn't sleep so i decided to read until i felt sleepy. i ended up staying up until 4 am! i finished it up in a few days.
devil in the white city, yes, i've heard. definitely going to pick that one up.
thanks!
just finished: the fountainhead
currently reading: the architecture of happiness
next read: oracle bones
Reading "The Catcher in the Rye" right now for the first time.
Just finished John Dutton's "New American Urbanism". Good book, great diagrams and case studies.
Haha Vado so sorry I forgot Root. He's actually a brother in my fraternity, and whenever we have to run through the list of the well-known brothers he's always the last one I remember to name. Right behind Cass Gilbert.
n_ please let me know how 'The Architecture of Happiness' is, it's sitting on my bookshelf and I've had no motivation to crack it open.
my coworker just lent me this:
i've been wanting to read this since i heard an interview with the author on npr. my coworker told me it's a fast read so i'll let you guys know how i liked it.
That 1812 best-seller by Thinks I To Myself Who. Maybe I'll be done by die kalte Sophie.
If you want to read a book that will turn your head inside out, immediately pick up:
Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West, by Cormac McCarthy
Not only is it, IMHO, his best book, but it's one of the best books ever written by a human being. You have to be able to tolerate passages about violence, though.
Another great book is:
Waiting for the Barbarians, by J.M. Coetzee
Kind of has the opposite message as Blood Meridian.
And my third pick is:
Mao II, by Don DeLillo.
"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", by Hunter S. Thompson. I read the whole book today. A much needed (and highly entertaining) break from all the urban design reading I've been doing lately... I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone.
Bluelitespcl - It's alright. Nothing too life changing. I highly recommend de Botton's other book, 'The Art of Travel'.
Steve Lowe & Alan McArthur
Is it just me or is everything shit? The Encyclopedia of Modern Life
entry for: Mac junkies
“Oh, Macs are just so much better than PCs. The operating system is about 12 times faster and they’re just so much more efficient in, oooh… so many way.”
Are they? Are they really? And how the fuck would you know, when all you use it for is copying CDs and looking at porn? What you actually mean is: “They look nice.”
The Mac junkie will also crap on without end about how Microsoft is a big nasty corporation. No shit? And Apple’s what then—a workers’ co-op? No, it’s a smaller nasty corporation—which uses child labour and beats its workers, whom it pays in beans, with sticks (possibly).
Do you know what Apple employees call company chief Steve Jobs? I’ll tell you: Big jobs. Or Shitty Jobby Job-head.
And that’s true. Okay, it’s not.
----
No cow is too sacred for tipping.
Next and last excerpt will be the entry for his Lordship, Norman Foster. Ok, there isn’t one for Foster but there is one for Charles, Prince of Wales. It’s bloody good too. In case you get this book and are tempted to bring into the WC. Forget it. Trust me.
P.s. Cris, if you can handle the violence in Beah’s non-fiction you’ll swim through McCarthy’s stuff.
Right now I'm in the middle of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne.
tumbleweed...that is genius. Have you read any other Thompson books? I really want to read Hell's Angels, I hear that one is good as well. Also, after just reading a synopsis of "To A God Unknown," I'm going to find a copy tomorrow; being from a small town in Vermont afterall.
great recommendations everyone!
farwest1, definitely check out more cormac. i really liked the road.
xentr0py, great excerpt! definitely going to have to get that. and yeah, the road had its moments where i was thinking "my god!"
oh, and speaking of borges, anybody read portuguese?
cris my wife reads portugese....she is from Brazil.
I started a book a couple of weeks ago while traveling: usually get best reading while flying on planes.
The Genius In The Design, Jack Morrissey It is kind of a East Coast Archinect West Coast Architect except the players are Bernini and Borromini. It is a good architectural read, and it is clear they struggled with the same problems we do today.
My next architectural read came as a gift last night from a favored client. I was at a social function at his house an was standing in his wifes studio surround by at least thirty people and he excuses himself
and comes back a couple minutes later with a book in hand. He says
you will really enjoy this book: "The Wright Space" by Grant Hilderbrand.
I also plan on picking up a book he wrote a couple of years ago:
"Playing with Trains" Sam Posse
Here is a site for all you "Book Worms"
http://www.themodernword.com/authors.html
lateral forces
sometimes i read books, but lately im really into science magazine.
generally, i can only read the first twenty pages. the rest is complete nonsense to me. for example above: "Male germline stem cells (red and green) from mice produce spermatozoa after transplantation to the seminiferous tubules of recipient mice." sounds naughty.
im going back to the basics:
The Production of Space
- Lefebvre
believe it or not last weekend i read The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. i'm also halfway through AfterCulture
Nick Tosches
In the Hands of Dante
Tempus fugit, it was said, but it was breath that was the wingèd thing: it was breath that fled. Time was the folly of our vain making and delusion, the stinking, jaundiced pisciata di cane by which our mangy race tried to leave the mark of its unknowing on infinitas. The trickling sands of this vain making and illusion, the trickling mictus of this unknowing: these were the anxietatum that had come to rule the pulse and rob the breath. God had given us the infinite, and we had turned from it; to calendar, to horologium, to clepsydra, to clepsammia, and now to monstrous clamorous mechanisms of oscillating wheels — grand orologi that overshadowed man himself; grand orologi whose graceless rotismi commanded among the overshadowed a greater awe than did the perfect rotations of the eternal heavens themselves, as the overshadowed, in everly increasing haste and everly increasing lifelessness, made their way like automata in procession to the idiot pyre of tecnologia and godless computus.
---
Tosches is like a crazy uncle with a classics degree who prefers the company of anarchists over Oxford dons. If you can imagine a fusion of Burroughs and Iain Sinclair with a little Baudelaire you'd be close, sorta. Definitely not something to take to bed.
Cris, I had a go at the Eisenman / Borges comparative. Interesting. My understanding of portugese is dreadful. All I could make out with guesswork is that the residual potency of form undermines and derides the vanities of anthropocentrism. It sounds like circuitous bs, I'm probably way off.
Colin Ward - A Decade of Anarchism
http://www.amazon.com/Decade-Anarchy-1961-70-Colin-Ward/dp/0900384379/ref=sr_1_1/105-5870036-3797208?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179164074&sr=8-1
also by Colin
Taking Houses and Talking to Architects
http://www.amazon.com/Talking-Houses-Colin-Ward/dp/0900384557/ref=sr_1_2/105-5870036-3797208?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179164074&sr=8-2
http://www.amazon.com/Talking-Architects-Colin-Ward/dp/0900384883/ref=sr_1_7/105-5870036-3797208?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179164074&sr=8-7
a personal finance book
i'm currently re-reading john kennedy toole's a confederacy of dunces. i first read it senior year of hike skool, 8 years ago. it's really funny!!!
Plato - The Republic (finally, but not worth the wait)
Eric Auerbach - Mimesis (some bits really good, but I'll never remember any of it)
Adrian Stokes - Michelangelo (about to start)
sometime in the near future
The Political Ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas
Dino Bigongiari
right now
The City: American Experience
Alan Trachtenberg
and before that
Atlas of Novel Tectonics
Reiser + Umemoto
"Civilizing Terrains", William Rees Morrish. Again. Love it.
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.