October 2011 Wind-up

I have so many excuses for this. Unfortunately they are all not very convincing. Not a single one, actually. I haven't read on in Gravity's Rainbow for over a month now. Yes. I know. Shame on me. And shame, indeed, I feel. It also took me over 6 months to finish Infinite Jest, which holds a very special place among all of my other reading experiences now. And the last episode that I read of GR was really really good. Slothrop on his British-candy binge. Hilarious. Something terrible must have happened at that point in my life that prevented me from reading on. Is something good about to happen to get me started again? I will let you know.

Stuff that I bought in October:

• Books:
• Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted
• Tama Janowitz, The Male Cross-Dresser Support Group
• Zadie Smith (ed.), The Book of Other People
• Gabriel García Márquez; Leben, um davon zu erzählen (Living to Tell the Tale)
• Roland Barthes, Mythen des Alltags (Mythologies)
• Tickets for performances:
• Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
• Elfriede Jelinek, Das Werk/Im Bus/Ein Sturz
• Giuseppe Verdi, La Traviata
• Giacomo Puccini, Tosca
• Tonights Anti-Halloween Show at the Sonic Ballroom with Cologne HC-Punkband My Defense
• Movie theater tickets:
• Lars Von Trier, Melancholia
• Steven Soderbergh, Contagion

Stuff that I read, watched, listened to, saw, attended, whatever, this month:

• Bush (everything)
• Jonathan Coe, The House of Sleep (to be contd.)
• The Believer Book of Writers Talking To Writers (contd.)
• Some (very, very few) of Immanuel Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgement)
• Jefferson Airplane, The Best Of
• Lars Von Trier, Melancholia
• Steven Soderbergh, Contagion
• Giuseppe Verdi, La Traviata
• Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
• Duncan Jones, Source Code
• Dexter, season 6
• Bored To Death, season 3
• How To Make It In America, season 1
• Some live-tennis, especially China Open and Istanbul Masters

I'm not ready to say something of value about Melancholia, so I will say something that is probably equally not of value about Jonathan Coe's The House of Sleep. To have bought this novel on a flea market a few months ago was a very unlikely move for me. I neither knew the author nor the book title and judged solely from its front jacket, which depicts a bed of nails, and its back jacket, which tells me about narcoleptics and film afficionados drawn together in a gothic manor, that it would make for a nice little read. And it does, kind of. Nothing more to be said about this one.

I don't have much time, so everything in telegram style from now on: Like new season of Dexter. Not so much as masterpiece first season. Bored to Death don't like George this season. His role too dumb now. Like women's tennis dresses. Source Code evil military propaganda. Death not enough for soldier to serve country. Wonderful afterlife awaits after death in military. Contagion real nice epidemic movie. Question Soderbergh leaves (intentionally?) open: What about highly aggressive mutated virus in Durban cluster? We (western civilization) just don't give shit and let poor people in South Africa die? Like Jefferson Airplane. La Traviata dumb opera. Opera's contemporary place only in other fiction as nice backdrop. Like Batman. Jelinek's Ein Sturz best play in long time. Get chance to c My Defense live? Go do it. Don't like hardcore but their gigs rock like fuck.