hot redheads: the liberty bell story
the short happy life of john devlin
angola blues: another mystery man thriller
how to rita novel
idiots guide to vado retro
John Collier - Fancies and Goodnights
H.G. Wells - The War in the Air
Walter Benjamin - The Arcades Project (for class)
Robert Musil - The Man Without Qualities (for the same class)
Joyce Cary - The Horse's Mouth (for a paper)
I just finished reading Jasper Fforde's "Something Rotten" Which is the latest in the thursday next series. If you like literature, you would probably like this series, as it is set in a fictional England where books are more popular than tv, and authors like Shakespear, Beckett and Milton are treated like rock stars. Fantastic read.
Currently working on Ray Bradburry's "The Cat's Pajamas" Another collection of his short stories.
Right now: Dracula by Bram Stoker, and Gotham, the really thick history of New York city until 1898
Recently: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides: I've never looked forward to reading a novel as much as I did that one. Completely compelling. Eugenides has a way to produce moods like very few authors.
Also: Palahniuk fans: Is "Haunted" as good as Choke? Or as bad as Diary?
Darkred: Haunted is a little of both. The book is weird, it contains a lot of short stories, however it is written as if charecters inside the book have written these stories so you get to know their backstory as well. Some of the short stories are amazing, i especially like the last one, about a modern day adam and eve. Others, frankly, suck. The back story of each charecter i could really do without. It should have just been a collection of short stories. If you havent, pick up stranger than fiction, his non-fiction short stories, its great. And i agree, choke kicked much ass.
I read freakonomics. liked it, didn't love it. interesting but i found myself bored and skipping lots of parts. overall idea was great, but seems more suited to columns rather than an entire book. they have inidividual servings of it in the nytimes magazine section (or did, don't know if they do anymore).
Gravitas, what do you think of the Kahn book? McCarter is one of my favorite professors at UF...If I go back there for grad school I hope to take his grad elective on Kahn (a recent offering coinciding with the new book)...
AP, very well written. The overall graphic design of the book is quite good as well. The anaylsis is in depth, but not too abstruse for non-architects. References his personal life sparingly, only to support arguments made about his professional career.
beware! while every now and then your'e rewarded with a particularly juicy observation worth writing in your sketch book (so you never have to open THIS book again) most of the book is practically unreadable.
when the footnotes start to take up 3/4 of a page, something's wrong, i.e., the author has not been able to limit his research to his main topic and has followed distracting leads. (i look to an author to have filtered this stuff out for me and discuss his primary thesis.)
while i'm sure that kwinter has spent a lot of time making his conflation of literature, physics, and philosophy hold water, it's hard to tell because it's lost in the forest of obscurant language.
i'm making the most of my last 8 months of architecture free life. Just finished "The Handmaid's Tale" (more relevant now than in the 80's when it was written...creeeepy), and "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" (possibly overhyped, but interesting look at a kind of autism). Now I'm reading Bryson's "The Lost Continent." Easy reading. Then it's straight back into the hardcore architectural theory that I love so much. Mmmm.
liberty bell - Bill Mitchell's writing is like - kinda hard to do in one fail swoop. As they are so self (to Bill) referential that you are almost obliged to at least read through the other books (city of bits, etc)
I am finally reading "Cradle to Cradle". It's made of some recycled plastic concoction so I have to say it's the first book I've read where I found myself examining the pages intently as if they were going to do tricks. Also it's excellent so far, of course, and I am filled with a sense of dread knowing that I will emerge from it as one of "those people" who lecture complete strangers on the implications of disposable diapers in grocery store aisles.
just did the latest terry pratchett for a bit of mind candy, and starting in on peter hall's Cities of tomorrow. so far interesting enough, looking at how 19th century urbanism comes straight from anarchist philosophy of the time.
how is "the world is flat" doc? he sure is plugging his book in the ny times, so much so that i sorta lost interest...
ive just started reading it jump, just down to the first 25-odd pages. I have to agree that he has this habit of pimping his older works in his writing. For example he mentioned his book 'the lexus and the olive tree' twice in every page for the first 15 pages. Of course it relates to his point of how he missed the globalization bandwagon while concentrating on US oil and foreign affairs, but its still a bit much.
But, all in all its a very informative and entertaining read. By informative i mean really informative and detailed. I am still waiting to read any cricitical literature in the book, but i guess at this point he is just laying the facts on the table, so to speak..
Karamazov might be one of the best book ever written, agfa8x. I'm currently only reading swedish literature, after having neglected it for years. Any scandinavians in here? Have a look at Torbjörn Säfve - very underestimated.
how do you find that sporadic? i read it when i was in 3rd year. i found it very amusing... does`nt it make you laugh relating yourself? there are two more from the same collection.. the first being 'punjabi baroque and other memories of architecture' the last... some 'mosquito(malarial) dreams and other visions in archi?'
THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON BY IMMANUEL (SMACKDOWN) KANT
but that's for a class.
Otherwise!
"The Master of the Senate" by Robert Caro
The third in a long biography of LBJ by the guy that wrote the pulitzer biography of that bane of the NY urban state, Robert Moses. It's fascinating; LBJ used to make his staff take dictation while he was taking a crap, OPEN STALL, in order to subordinate them. He was also a genius at negotiating and deal-making.
THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON BY IMMANUEL (SMACKDOWN) KANT
but that's for a class.
Otherwise!
"The Master of the Senate" by Robert Caro
The third in a long biography of LBJ by the guy that wrote the pulitzer biography of that bane of the NY urban state, Robert Moses. It's fascinating; LBJ used to make his staff take dictation while he was taking a crap, OPEN STALL, in order to subordinate them. He was also a genius at negotiating and deal-making.
Norman Mailer - HARLOT'S GHOST
Douglas Brinkley - THE JOURNALS OF JACK KEROUAC 1947-54
Allen Ginsberg - DELIBERATE PROSE
Neal Stephenson - QUICKSILVER
Mary Dearborn - MAILER: A BIOGRAPHY
Ralph Ellison - INVISIBLE MAN (just finished, great book)
"The Whale and The Supercomputer" Charles Wohlforth.....Interesting
read about life in the Artic and the inner mixing of Scientist, Native Americans, and Whalers. It is not an architecture book but hey....it has proven a good read.
What are you reading?
end zone by delillo
luckiest man: the life and death of lou gehrig by jonathan eig
constant's new babylon by mark wigley
hannover principles by mcdonough and braungart
the logic of sensation
gilles deleuze
a centenary of pessoa
fernando pessoa
the edifice complex, by deyan sudjic. hundred mile city by the same author is brilliant and this one is quite good so far.
hot redheads: the liberty bell story
the short happy life of john devlin
angola blues: another mystery man thriller
how to rita novel
idiots guide to vado retro
vado--I just finished a great spicy asian noir, Out, have you read it? I highly recommend.
bb8--pessoa!!! awesome, i'm not the only one who reads him (and his alter-souls)
I'm about to start Hendrik Hertzberg's Politics: Observations and Arguments. Just bought it tonight, cannot WAIT to start.
John Collier - Fancies and Goodnights
H.G. Wells - The War in the Air
Walter Benjamin - The Arcades Project (for class)
Robert Musil - The Man Without Qualities (for the same class)
Joyce Cary - The Horse's Mouth (for a paper)
I just finished reading Jasper Fforde's "Something Rotten" Which is the latest in the thursday next series. If you like literature, you would probably like this series, as it is set in a fictional England where books are more popular than tv, and authors like Shakespear, Beckett and Milton are treated like rock stars. Fantastic read.
Currently working on Ray Bradburry's "The Cat's Pajamas" Another collection of his short stories.
specs
Edward Tufte = ALL TIME FAVORITE!
But I'm not reading him now.
Instead I am reading "The Well of Loneliness" by Radclyffe Hall.
Right now: Dracula by Bram Stoker, and Gotham, the really thick history of New York city until 1898
Recently: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides: I've never looked forward to reading a novel as much as I did that one. Completely compelling. Eugenides has a way to produce moods like very few authors.
Also: Palahniuk fans: Is "Haunted" as good as Choke? Or as bad as Diary?
trying to finish peter sloterdijk's "ecume" but it takes him forever to get to a point...
Darkred: Haunted is a little of both. The book is weird, it contains a lot of short stories, however it is written as if charecters inside the book have written these stories so you get to know their backstory as well. Some of the short stories are amazing, i especially like the last one, about a modern day adam and eve. Others, frankly, suck. The back story of each charecter i could really do without. It should have just been a collection of short stories. If you havent, pick up stranger than fiction, his non-fiction short stories, its great. And i agree, choke kicked much ass.
fountainhead!!....resuming last read page.....after 6 years...i dunno if its worth...hate me!!..
sorry...
languages of the mind: essays on mental representations by r. jackendoff
quite a nice section on musical parsing and mental processing.
Visual Explanations
the Poetics of Space
Ransom - Swallows and Amazons
- Swallowdale
nothing. i packed all my books yesterday.
The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved_ Mario Livio
The Mandarins_Simon de Beavoir
Louis I Kahn_Robert McCarter
assassination vacation - sarah vowel
re6el9uy10 -
I read freakonomics. liked it, didn't love it. interesting but i found myself bored and skipping lots of parts. overall idea was great, but seems more suited to columns rather than an entire book. they have inidividual servings of it in the nytimes magazine section (or did, don't know if they do anymore).
Al Franken: The Truth (with jokes)
Heschel
Simon Sadler: The Situationist City
I read Swallowdale when I was a kid. What a great book.
Eyes of the Skin by Juhani Pallasmaa
Gravitas, what do you think of the Kahn book? McCarter is one of my favorite professors at UF...If I go back there for grad school I hope to take his grad elective on Kahn (a recent offering coinciding with the new book)...
AP, very well written. The overall graphic design of the book is quite good as well. The anaylsis is in depth, but not too abstruse for non-architects. References his personal life sparingly, only to support arguments made about his professional career.
the sunday new york times from three weeks ago
god, it's so long
gravitas, i'm also reading Pallasmaa. it's for a paper but i do take pleasure in reading it, as well.
sorry, i meant to address that to AP
David Adjaye: Houses - recycling, reconfiguring, rebuilding
this is way more than a monograph - I read this one cover to cover.
h.p. lovecraft: against the world, against life by michel houellebecq
by Barbera d’Arcy. Copywright 1973 First edition.
sanford kwinter's 'architectures of time'.
beware! while every now and then your'e rewarded with a particularly juicy observation worth writing in your sketch book (so you never have to open THIS book again) most of the book is practically unreadable.
when the footnotes start to take up 3/4 of a page, something's wrong, i.e., the author has not been able to limit his research to his main topic and has followed distracting leads. (i look to an author to have filtered this stuff out for me and discuss his primary thesis.)
while i'm sure that kwinter has spent a lot of time making his conflation of literature, physics, and philosophy hold water, it's hard to tell because it's lost in the forest of obscurant language.
maybe i'm dumb.
i'm making the most of my last 8 months of architecture free life. Just finished "The Handmaid's Tale" (more relevant now than in the 80's when it was written...creeeepy), and "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" (possibly overhyped, but interesting look at a kind of autism). Now I'm reading Bryson's "The Lost Continent." Easy reading. Then it's straight back into the hardcore architectural theory that I love so much. Mmmm.
- The Brothers Karamazov
liberty bell - Bill Mitchell's writing is like - kinda hard to do in one fail swoop. As they are so self (to Bill) referential that you are almost obliged to at least read through the other books (city of bits, etc)
I am finally reading "Cradle to Cradle". It's made of some recycled plastic concoction so I have to say it's the first book I've read where I found myself examining the pages intently as if they were going to do tricks. Also it's excellent so far, of course, and I am filled with a sense of dread knowing that I will emerge from it as one of "those people" who lecture complete strangers on the implications of disposable diapers in grocery store aisles.
just got 'The World is Flat' by Thomas Friedman
just did the latest terry pratchett for a bit of mind candy, and starting in on peter hall's Cities of tomorrow. so far interesting enough, looking at how 19th century urbanism comes straight from anarchist philosophy of the time.
how is "the world is flat" doc? he sure is plugging his book in the ny times, so much so that i sorta lost interest...
ive just started reading it jump, just down to the first 25-odd pages. I have to agree that he has this habit of pimping his older works in his writing. For example he mentioned his book 'the lexus and the olive tree' twice in every page for the first 15 pages. Of course it relates to his point of how he missed the globalization bandwagon while concentrating on US oil and foreign affairs, but its still a bit much.
But, all in all its a very informative and entertaining read. By informative i mean really informative and detailed. I am still waiting to read any cricitical literature in the book, but i guess at this point he is just laying the facts on the table, so to speak..
will let you know as soon as im done!
cool
Karamazov might be one of the best book ever written, agfa8x. I'm currently only reading swedish literature, after having neglected it for years. Any scandinavians in here? Have a look at Torbjörn Säfve - very underestimated.
Gautam Bhatia's "Silent Spaces - and other short stories in Architecture"
how do you find that sporadic? i read it when i was in 3rd year. i found it very amusing... does`nt it make you laugh relating yourself? there are two more from the same collection.. the first being 'punjabi baroque and other memories of architecture' the last... some 'mosquito(malarial) dreams and other visions in archi?'
THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON BY IMMANUEL (SMACKDOWN) KANT
but that's for a class.
Otherwise!
"The Master of the Senate" by Robert Caro
The third in a long biography of LBJ by the guy that wrote the pulitzer biography of that bane of the NY urban state, Robert Moses. It's fascinating; LBJ used to make his staff take dictation while he was taking a crap, OPEN STALL, in order to subordinate them. He was also a genius at negotiating and deal-making.
THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON BY IMMANUEL (SMACKDOWN) KANT
but that's for a class.
Otherwise!
"The Master of the Senate" by Robert Caro
The third in a long biography of LBJ by the guy that wrote the pulitzer biography of that bane of the NY urban state, Robert Moses. It's fascinating; LBJ used to make his staff take dictation while he was taking a crap, OPEN STALL, in order to subordinate them. He was also a genius at negotiating and deal-making.
Norman Mailer - HARLOT'S GHOST
Douglas Brinkley - THE JOURNALS OF JACK KEROUAC 1947-54
Allen Ginsberg - DELIBERATE PROSE
Neal Stephenson - QUICKSILVER
Mary Dearborn - MAILER: A BIOGRAPHY
Ralph Ellison - INVISIBLE MAN (just finished, great book)
dood quicksliver is an amazing read. i intend to get through the entire baroque cycle by next year.
an author i discovered while in the UK- Iain Banks- the algebraist
he isn't published in the US.
dood quicksliver is an amazing read. i intend to get through the entire baroque cycle by next year.
an author i discovered while in the UK- Iain Banks- the algebraist
he isn't published in the US unfortunately
Sun and Steel -- Mishima
"The Whale and The Supercomputer" Charles Wohlforth.....Interesting
read about life in the Artic and the inner mixing of Scientist, Native Americans, and Whalers. It is not an architecture book but hey....it has proven a good read.
"The Image of City" by Kevin Lynch
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