Jason at Negro, Please! is engaged in a yearlong meme in which he will read the equivalent of (at least) one book a week and provide thoughts on it. Given that I feel as though I haven’t been reading enough print media recently, I feel this would be an excellent plan for me, as well. Naturally, I have some catching up to do, but I think I can handle it.
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Democracy Matters by Cornel West
- Publisher: Penguin
- Year: 2005
- Pages: 240
- In Brief: A professor of Old Testament studies with bitchin’ hair waxes grandiloquent about the dire state of political discourse. A good book, but a little redundant, and a bit too academic, to be either compelling or useful.
- №1
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The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green by Joshua Braff
- Publisher: Algonquin
- Year: 2004
- Pages: 272
- In Brief: The brother of popular film star Zach Braff pens a novel about two agnostic boys in a traditional Jewish household. Lively, imaginative, and heartbreaking, this book is an excellent light read.
- №2
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America the Book by Jon Stewart & al
- Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
- Year: 2005
- Pages: 240
- In Brief: Funny fake newscasters branch into writing faux textbook, which is every bit as funny as the show. Never has a political history book been so entertaining. Why are you still reading this? Go buy it!
- №3
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The Annotated Brothers Grimm ed. by Maria Tatar
- Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
- Year: 2004
- Pages: 416
- In Brief: I find out that the Frog Prince actually symbolizes a phallus in this charmingly informative book that gives a new context to favorite fairy tales. Hint: they weren’t as innocent as you thought. Neither were the Bros. Grimm two strapping young lads played by Matt Damon and Heath Ledger; instead, they were two portly Germans who Christianized pagan folklore (but damn good historians). Recommended.
- №4
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Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
- Publisher: Holt
- Year: 2004
- Pages: 224
- In Brief: The book that started it off is good, but lacks lustre compared to the Pitt/Norton interpretation. Trademark Palahniuk style, if a bit rough around the edges. Start with a different one, maybe…
- №5
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Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susannah Clarke
- Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
- Year: 2004
- Pages: 800
- In Brief: Jane Austen meets Harry Potter in this tale of magic in the 19th century. It reads like an actual memoir, with an entirely invented history; if you can make it through all 800 pages, it’s a very fine read.
- №6
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When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? by George Carlin
- Publisher: Hyperion
- Year: 2004
- Pages: 320
- In Brief: Carlin’s showing here is lame, especially compared to the hilarious Braindroppings. Read an older book, or listen to an old album, and it will be much more satisfying.
- №7
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A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
- Publisher: Vintage
- Year: 2001
- Pages: 496
- In Brief: Simultaneously masturbatory and self-flagellating, this odd memoir is laugh-out-loud funny, but only to English geeks. Otherwise, you may just find it tiring. Big nods to the Modernist school of writing, with lots of pardoy and violations of the Fourth Wall.
- №8
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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
- Publisher: Vintage
- Year: 1998
- Pages: 224
- In Brief: Hunter S. Thompson’s classic tale of mindblowing drug use in Las Vegas that somehow manages to have a point. Nowhere near as political as much of his other writing, this book is more or less a paean to the idealistic 60s and a lament of the decline of the 70s.
- №9
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Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell
- Publisher: Touchstone
- Year: 1967
- Pages: 266
- In Brief: Famous atheist/agnostic waxes ponderous about life, the universe, and everything. Interesting concepts (it’s easy to see why he is notable in the histroy of disbelief), but a bit redundant after a while. It’s just essays, so you can pick and choose what you read.
- №10
Comments (9 comments)
Did you raid my bookshelf? Because if you haven’t yet, I’ve got the Russel book and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Yeah, that’s where I got them from. I’ll also probably read the philosophy of the Matrix book.
hi, found this site searching something on google, but aynways, ive read a book on the philosophy of the matrix, and if youre talking about the same one, it wasn’t very good. Some good points in teh beginning, but the rest of the book is really repetitive.
anyways, cool site
One White Duck » Blog Archive » Ego libros lego! / July 11th, 2005, 12:52 pm / #
[...] Following the lead of Heliologue, who is himself following Jason at Negro, Please, I will also make a move to read 52 books in 52 weeks and review them. It will be monstrous but I admit that I will enjoy it. Plus, it will - or at least should - motivate me to keep the site updated frequently with my musings. [...]
misspinkerton / September 22nd, 2005, 12:33 pm / #
no need to study the philosophy of the Matrix, it can all be summed up in one concise story:
Plato’s Parable of the Cave (Also known as the Allegory of the Cave)
That’s it and that’s all. Though, that paved the way for many future philosophic/psychoanalytic theories—Like Althusser’s Ideolgical States and Ideological State Apparatusses, or Lacan’s “Mirror Stage as a Formative Function of the I”
If that were true, the series wouldn’t have been as bad as it was. The problem was, they started with Plato’s cave allegory, but then threw in an omnium gatherum of other, unrelated philosophies.
The problem with the philosophy of the Matrix is that not everyone is a raging pothead and therefore won’t find it so mind blowing.
“Like, what if the world we think we see… [dramatic pause] isn’t there?”
“Dude, that’s deep.”
i always thought the “deeper” philosophy of the matrix were the moral implications of artificial intelligence.
if you create self-aware, free-will beings such as the computer programs, beings that can see the wrongness/rightness of their actions (think the program at the train station who makes sacrifices for his daughter-program in order to give her a better “life”/existence), then this “artificial” intelligence would have the same moral value as a human being. that’s why the movies had to end with the “copout” resolution of peace. for either side, humans or machines,to wipe out the other would be to commit genocide in a sense. to create artificial intelligence—truly self-aware artificial intelligence—would be to create something on an equal metaphysical plane of existence with ourselves.
would we be gods? perhaps.
and if that’s true, kind of gives you a whole new perspective on what happens after death. pull the plug on a “computer program,” and we all know it ceases to be. pull the plug on a human? philosophers and theologians have been guessing at that for… well, forever.
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