Faithful readers, it has been some time since I have addressed you, and I know you are dying to find out what I have been reading.  Well, even if you’re not, I figured I’d go ahead and document it here with a few random thoughts.

Here’s the list so far for the year:

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman

The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman

The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross

The Reader by Bernharnd Schlink

Ripped by Greg Kot

I think I talked about all of those up to Sex, Drugs, etc.  So to sum up:

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - cloying.  I’ve read a lot of negative stuff online where people are bashing Klosterman for being sickly sweet and lightweight, and I can see where they’re coming from with that.  Eating the Dinosaur was the first book of his that I’d read, and SDCP was pretty good, but several of his essays were half-baked, half-thoughts, which had I been an editor, I would have tossed the book back in his face and told him no.  His essay on soccer, in particular, was moronic.  He seems oblivious to the idea that soccer may be popular in parts of the world because it is really cheap, requires basically no equipment, and can be played almost anywhere.  It’s not just an “outsider” sport, which is what his argument states.

The Rest is Noise, by Alex Ross - highly recommended, but I doubt anyone will read it who hasn’t already expressed an interest in that area.  It’s about the history of 20th century classical composers, starting with Mahler and Richard Strauss at the turn of the century and more or less ending with John Adams and Thomas Ades at the beginning of the 21st.   I could go on about this book for some time, as I found it to be very well written.  It didn’t drag at all, and it expanded my grasp of a subject who, in retrospect, I can now tell I had only the faintest understanding.  The sections on Strauss in Nazi Germany and Shostakovich in Soviet Russia were wonderful and illuminating.  Fascinating people, and interesting to see them struggle with their art and their lives as the world and history pass them by.  Also, Ross had me reaching for the dictionary, as words I had not seen since my SAT days came rushing back to me:  inchoate and panegyrics.  Thanks for those, Alex.

The Reader - quick read.  Basically like Kundera-lite.  I’d already seen the movie, so I can’t separate the movie from the book.  However, the book is much better than the movie, as is usually the case.  The book focuses more on the philosophical, using the story of the man and his lover as a conduit to an exploration of ideas, rather than the focus of a love story in itself.  My shame knows no bounds on this, mostly because the copy I read had “Oprah’s Book Club” stamped across the front.  I couldn’t find a copy that was unmarred in my local HPB.

Ripped - another quick read.  This was a quick overview of the Internet and music from 2000-2009.  Radiohead’s In Rainbows, NIN’s releases, Metallica, etc.

Anyway, starting up with a new novel now, recommended to me by a friend.  He says it’s a quick read, so we shall see.  It’s not really the genre that I read, but then I went and bought the Novik Napoleon-dragon books, so go figure.  Anyway, the book is Storm Front, by Jim Butcher.

Sorry for the lack of updates.  I hope to keep you better informed in the future about things in my daily life that you couldn’t care less about.  Also, I will write more dick jokes.

So, the iPad. You may have heard of it by now. I haven’t purchased one yet, but that’s only because it would be fiscally irresponsible for me to do so at this time. I went to a local Apple store recently and got to play with one, and I have to say it is uber shiny geek porn. It’s a fun a little toy for casual computing and I can’t wait to get mine.

And yet, there are some ‘idealists’ out there decrying this little toy as the harbinger of the end times. That somehow the app centric device is bereft of the ability to create or that its locked down development environment will somehow completely change the landscape of computing as we know it. Bollocks. There isn’t an iPhone OS release that isn’t jailbroken within days, and that is just in that tiny niche market. Countless programmers slave tirelessly over open source software for no financial reward, and I’m supposed to believe a gadget is going to stop them? As for the ability to create? I can write a novel on one, does that not count? I can paint, but I guess that doesn’t count either. Turns out you can’t you can remix music too, but that just isn’t creative enough is it? One blogger with a mad on said that the removal of the camera from the iPad somehow chopped off the most democratic form of creation. WTF. Maybe its the art snob in me that went to school for 4.5 years to get an art degree or maybe its the fact that I actually work at creating things, but I don’t count your shitty phone camera photos as art. Granted, I think its silly from a technical perspective that they have opted remove the camera, but the idea that its exclusion is somehow a targeted attack on creativity is simply ridiculous.

Of course no one is bringing to light the real danger of this device. Everyone wants to talk about its business model, or what gadgets weren’t included, but no one is brave enough to bring you the truth. Until now. The iPad will destroy your posture. There I said it. You’re going to be spending hours staring at your lap and that can’t be good for your neck.