What are you reading?

[Bobafett]

Started reading Asimov's Foundation and Empire.   Very good nerdy book.

[kellerb]

I just finished the Rum Diary and now I'm about to delve into Ham on Rye by Bukowski

[cactusfan]

One Train Later by Andy Summers, his memoirs

absolutely great. i was blown away. i picked this up because i vaguely knew he'd been around the london music scene in the '60s and '70s before being in the Police, and i thought maybe there'd be a few amusing anecdotes or whatever. boy was i wrong. this is a great book. the writing is fantastic. in a way it's clear it's written by someone who doesn't write books for a living, yet his voice is unique and powerful and trippy and beautiful. personally i'm drawn to books more for the writing than for whatever is being written about. in this case i was making an exception, but damn did it ever turn out to be great.

he was right there in the '60s as the london scene took off, jamming in little clubs with the unknown clapton and tons of other people, touring in a popular band playing r&b hits. when the psychedelic scene hit he dove right in. there's great descriptions of his first and subsequent acid trips. he played with a number of psychedelic bands, jammed with hendrix, went to america, played with the Animals for awhile before crashing and burning in LA. goes back to london and just slaves away for years as a guitar for hire, barely able to survive and support his wife and daughter, before stumbling into the police.

you don't have to have the slightest interest in the police or even summers going into this book. it's fantastic just for the perspective of reading about a working, starving musician in those years, and then at the end of the book, reading about what it's like to then be touring with what was briefly the biggest rock band in the world.

plus he just comes across as the greatest guy. not great like he's a saint, not at all. just great for his attitude and honesty, and his own spiritual quest through his love of music.

highly recommended to everyone here.

here's an excerpt that he excerpts from an interview he gave in '80, talking about their then new song Shadows In The Rain:

"The way we are playing it live now is turning it into a seminal piece of Police music. A lot of people are being pulled up short by it. I found the guitar part after I recorded it. We started more of less from scratch in the studio. Sting had this old jazzy rhythm, nothing the like the version on Zenyatta and we tried a lot of things, I put on two guitars which complemented each other and made a weird reggae rhythm which we decided was an improvement, being slower and more funky. Then I went in and laid the pseudo-psychedelic tape echo part all the way across, and everybody liked that. I did it playing through an Echoplex and Stewart moving the tape speed up and down so it sounded like it was bubbling, twisting, and turning the whole way. Obviously I couldn't do that live, so I started working out this more orchestral part; chords with the echo and repeat wound all the way up so that when you hit the guitar the original sound isn't heard. All you hear is the echo, and I swell that up with the volume control, shhhhhhh, and it's like a string section is coming in.
You're got to hit it just before the beat so that you don't hear the repeat of the echo, you only hear that great cloud of sound emerging. Combined with that, I fragment all the chords. The chord structure is fairly basic, but i play them all in flattened ninths and invert them so that it all sounds much more modern.
I mean, the riff at the end when Sting sings "shadows in the rain" over and over is a basic a minor, but I actually use a strange inversion of an a minor sixth chord. It's high up on the neck, and as it starts to feedback I hit a high harmonic on the top string, which echoes against the feedback, and then you start to get this whole new effect. You enter another world. I really like the dark brooding quality of it. I think it's a good way for us to go."

here's Shadows In The Rain from 2/2/81, Tokyo:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/ax9bs0

[alcoholandcoffeebeans]

HELLS YES.

Well, in the wee hours of the night, when I wasn't looking, the pre-order page for Chuck's next book Snuff made it's way onto Amazon.com. It's slated to be released on May 20th, 2008. As always though, this information could change. Though I doubt it will.




By now, many of you who saw Chuck read on his last tour, know the story of Snuff. But for those of you who don't, here's the official summary blurb from Random House:

"Six hundred dudes. One porn queen. A world record for the ages. A must-have movie for every discerning collector of things erotic."

"Didn't one of us on purpose set out to make a snuff movie."

Cassie Wright, porn priestess, intends to cap her legendary career by breaking the world record for serial fornication. On camera. With six hundred men. SNUFF unfolds from the perspectives of Mr. 72, Mr. 137, and Mr. 600, who await their turn on camera in a very crowded green room. This wild, lethally funny, and thoroughly researched novel brings the huge yet underacknowledged presence of pornography in contemporary life into the realm of literary fiction at last. Who else but Chuck Palahniuk would dare do such a thing? Who else could do it so well, so unflinchingly, and with such an incendiary (you might say) climax?

Pre-Order 'Snuff' Today!

--
Dennis
Webmaster
A Writer's Cult, LLC
http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net

just incase you like to read his stuffs, like i do

[sunrisevt]

Started reading Asimov's Foundation and Empire.   Very good nerdy book.

If you're a sci-fi nerd, ever check out Dan Simmons? If not, have a look---he's awesome.

[Bobafett]

I will check that out today at the local bookstore.  thanks, cause i need something new for my trip this week. :mrgreen:

[sunrisevt]

You got it--epic, literary space opera is the best way I can describe him. Great escapist fun. Two different series: one of four books that starts with Hyperion, another of two, the first is Ilium. Both are too dense and crazy to describe. They can influence your dreams.

[August]

Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner
Dean Karnazes



Totally ridiculous and inspirational.
a

[sls.stormyrider]

^^
that guy is  - shall we say, very motivated. Must be interesting to see what drives him.

Just finished EC, now on Wonderful Tonight (Patti Boyd). Great stories about the "origins"

[August]

Freally.
He didn't run for 15 years and then ran again on his 30th birthday.
For those not familiar with an "Ultra Marathon"

The Badwater Ultramarathon describes itself as "the world's toughest foot race". It is a 135 mile (215 km) course starting at 282 feet (85 m) below sea level in the Badwater Basin, in California's Death Valley, and ending at an elevation of 8360 feet (2548 m) at Whitney Portal, the trailhead to Mount Whitney. It usually happens in July, when the weather conditions are most extreme and temperatures over 120 F (49 C) in the shade are not uncommon. Consequently, not many people—even among ultramarathoners—are capable of finishing this race.

And some of his accomplishments...

Significant race wins:

    * 2004 Badwater Ultramarathon[5]
    * 2006 Vermont 100 Mile Endurance Run[6]

Running accomplishments:

    * 128.75 miles in 24 hours on treadmill in NY (2007)
    * 350 miles in 80 hours and 44 minutes without stopping (2005)[7]
    * North Face Endurance 50: fifty marathons in fifty U.S. states in fifty consecutive days
    * inaugural South Pole Marathon in running shoes
    * 148 miles in 24 hours on a treadmill (2004)[8]
    * single-handedly completed the 199 mile Providian Saturn Relay six times
    * 1000-Mile/10 Day Buckleholder at the Western States Endurance Run[9] (i.e., better than ten twenty-four hour finishes. Note: Karnazes current count is 11 finishes in less than twenty-four hours each)

Other endurance accomplishments:

    * swimming across the San Francisco Bay

It really is a great read.
It's more about focus and determination that the act of running.
a

[willsteele]

^^ Dayam.  Thats some hard core stuff.

Just started Miles Davis - The Autobiography.  To quote the man..."its a motherfucker".  Fantastic reading so far.

[Caravan2001]

Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner
Dean Karnazes



Totally ridiculous and inspirational.
a

Karnazes is a machine...I don't know how he does it.  They had a good cover story on him in Outside a few months back, whicih is where I really learned about him.  That stuff is crazy. My wife's aunt and uncle are ultra-runners/marathoners and they do these crazy 100 mile races in the desert in California (not to mention the Ironman multiple times).  People like that are a different breed.  SO driven.....all they do is run.  My wife's unce goes through like 20 pairs of running shoes in a year....I'm lucky to get 1500 miles a year in on my bike....

[sls.stormyrider]

couldn't imagine. different breed is right. 26m in one day is enough for me.

[rowjimmy]

I've recently read:

Slash - Slash
Slash is no poser. Dude hung tough through some crazy shit (good and bad and ugly) and reveals it all without self-aggrandizing.


Survivor - Chuck Palahniuk
I loved Fight Club -the movie and so I knew it was only a matter of time before I delved into this guy's catalog. Just to taunt myself I didn't read Fight Club first. This book, optioned for a film that was scrapped in the wake of 9/11, is a serious and yet seriously funny indictment of our celebrity-and-marketing cults. (edit to add: the book was recently re-optioned and the guy who directed "I Am Legend" has supposedly expressed a desire to make the movie)


Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Ok, so I didn't torture myself long. This book is terrific and it's little wonder that someone had to make a film from it. What is impressive is the quality of the transformation of this book into film. That an adaptation of such loyalty could come from a book that so ably shrugs off narrative conventions is remarkable. That this is a "first published novel" from the author is stunning.

So, Now I'm reading:

Haunted - Chuck Palahniuk

[sunrisevt]

In the words of Ralph Swenson, Dean of Graduate Admissions and teacher of "Marathon Training" for PE credit at UVM:

"Ultra runners are strange critters."