Man on radio (approximately, you're going to have to trust me to give the jist fairly accurately): "It's very good that Susan Boyle went on the programme and displayed her talent, and impressed a good number of people. It really improved the image of people with learning disabilities. However, once she became famous we needed to take more care of how we treated her, and show more understanding of her condition."

( susan boyle, societal role, liberalism/utilitarianism, on the road, blah, self-indulgent shit )</div>

I try not to fall into a naturalistic fallacy. I like to think I am not that stupid. But I do know that as we stray from stable biological/sociological conformations the stress we come under doubles and redoubles. A happy society of peoples will be in harmony with their material nature - not that we can hope to understand this soon. Yet another argument against design: who would design a race of creatures that could never be made happy?

There are a lot of reasons I love Ray Allen aka Jesus Shuttleworth. Some time before the playoffs I'll probably mention a few of them. But here's one more I can add to the list, from this article by J.A. Adande on ESPN.com:"This all started on Christmas Day, at the Celtics-Lakers game, when I walked into the visitors' locker room at Staples Center and asked Boston's Ray Allen what he'd been reading lately. (In 17 years of covering the NBA, that's the first time I've asked such a question; then again, Allen is the only player I've ever seen reading books before games.)"

There you have it. That's my Ray Ray.

I was away for a fortnight. Imagine my delight to find on my return that my younger sister (who is commencing year 11) has chosen reading material from my shelves - American Psycho to be read concurrently with Catch-22! Also a degree of disconcert - it is a little graphic. I should like to know what her English teacher really thought when she told her what she was currently reading.

Meanwhile I pay tribute to the great Alexander Solzhenitsyn who recently passed away by tackling his epic August 14, which takes in seemingly every angle of the East Prussian campaign at the outset of WW1. His descriptions are a perfect blend of the matter-of-fact with heart-aching compassion.
As much a fictionalised historical account as a novel, the book is obviously thoroughly researched and the movements and intrigues of corps and generals take centre stage. I'm struggling with large descriptions of troop movements, but fortunately I'm finding these can be read in a fairly passive fashion if need be, allowing the reader to comprehend the sense if not the letter of Solzhenitsyn's reconstruction.
 When the penny drops as to how misled or abandoned Russian troops were in those times, the effect can be quite chilling.

In what is rapidly becoming a summer tradition, I raided the family bookcase and came away with approximately 19 books, most of which I will not understand. Huxley, Sartre, Fowles and Bellow accompanied by some of my dad's sci-fi novels.

In the two weeks away I read Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Both are excellent, but I would say I prefer Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath is widely considered his masterwork and every page carries a sheen of humanity and compassion. His characters face the same struggle as all disadvantaged and poverty stricken people, and our emotional investment in the Joad family is heartwrenching.

By comparison Rushdie's second novel, the recently dubbed 'Booker of Bookers' proclaims itself to be a rather more specific metaphor, its tale mirroring that of post-independence India, but in fact both reader and narrator ultimately question the fidelity of this linkage. The narrator uses a stunningly fluid, hugely descriptive voice which I found extremely reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and the story is continually surprising. All in all it's an excellent book, but I found its penchant for self-reflection, though beautifully written, somewhat grating.

I've since tackled the rather bemusingly written Zodiac by Robert Graysmith, which is more of a amateur sleuth's guide to the case files than an engaging overview of what was a fascinating and grisly series of events.

I update my profile at GoodReads.com with what I've been reading. It's pointless and nerdy. Add me if you use the site!

I just finished Crime and Punishment; so I can feel self-satisfied for the next day or several. In fact I've started already upon George Monbiot's Heat which is about global warming and has thus far been at least thrice as depressing. I always read more at home, but I think especially now, as I'm gradually resolving to give up silly things like TV, computer games and internet obsessions. This obviously in preparation for next term which will be Hard. Work.

Anyway, you can see what I've been reading, and sometimes what I think of it, at GoodReads.com, which is sort of last.fm for books. I've only just started using it; I hope it's going to encourage me to read more. My profile is here (my last.fm profile, here) and you should join, add me, or neither.

I have other self-betterment plans but I'm not feeling great, so they're sort of scuppered before they've begun. I need to study a bit today anyway. Rest assured I'll post if/when I get round to them.

Oh one more thing for fans of dostoevsky, nihilism, irony; I have a copy of "The Essential Nietzche" which I very nearly began straight after finishing Crime and Punishment. Ha!

I'm not dead.

Tired: There aren't enough days in a week, let alone hours in a day. My sleep is messed up, and I can't correct it now; I'm going to have been up for 24 hours and be pretty tired by the time 6pm has come and gone. But that can't be helped. I'm working a pretty hectic amount.

Work: I have a practical module that should occupy 5 hours a week. In actuality it's taking up 10, two afternoons that I need for other modules and things. My partner for the project is not communicative, and appears to work a 60+ hour week. Which I don't, can't, wouldn't want to do, and quite honestly don't think is necessary. Hard work is a virtue, don't get me wrong, but sometimes a bit of dynamism would really help us out in these sessions, and it doesn't benefit me at all to take a two day break to read up on the subject. Fill in the forms. Hand them in. Get the work done and move on.

I've also got to do a presentation on Friday and I'm pretty sure my group for that hate me. They haven't even seen my part of it yet. I hope they're going to be pleasantly surprised.

Housing: Found a house for next year. It is nice, not expensive (cheaper than at present), but for three people so claustrophobia will set in, inevitably. Will I enjoy living on Heron Drive next year? I hope so, but I'm not certain yet.

Writing: I started writing something new, during a seminar in fact. I like the idea at the moment. At present I'm jotting down scenes and passages that seem particularly vivid right now. Bridging them could be a hellish job. But it's fun. It's a simple story and I'm mainly using it to get a feel for writing extended pieces, experiment with style. A good friend has offered to read and critique product. Much appreciated but not certain I'm ready for that!

Reading: Read a wonderful book in The Zero by Jess Walter. This tremendous disjointed work of fiction follows Brian Remy, 9/11 hero cop, as he makes sense of the world in the days and weeks following New York's darkest hours. He can't convince his son to stop mourning him, he's retiring with a fake bad back and damaged eyesight that will soon fail, and he's begun to experience 'gaps' in his consciousness. Walter ponders upon the state of American culture and security while his protagonist attempts to regain control of his existence, and begins to realise there's a sinister side to these dissappearing periods.

More than anything, I was taken aback by the sheer beauty of Walter's prose. Reading this on the back of a fairly low-grade spy thriller, I was nearly crying with joy at the end of the first sentence, and couldn't help but put this book down regularly, close my eyes and meditate, not on the concepts, but the words and their arrangement, like the array of shades on an oil painting. Unlike me, Jess Walter has a fantastic ability with metaphor. A definite recommend for fans of Catch 22, Mailman (Robert J. Lennon), Vonnegut, and maybe also Salman Rushdie.

I'm following up with The Last Testament, by Sam Bourne. Not such a hit, there's one obvious comparison to be made (other than every shoddy paperback spy thriller ever written, I suppose). Moderately better writing style than Dan Brown but a far weaker sense of storytelling, and a nasty habit of hinting at things that haven't been revealed yet at least 5 times a chapter (which are 4 pages long). I'm not disappointed. It's a bit of a waste of paper, but a bit of diversity in one's literary diet can't be a bad thing.

Next up is Crime and Punishment, which I am looking forward to very much (that's not just relative). I haven't read many classics but this is one that has long appealed to me. It'll be the first time in some while I'll have read something written before 1900. And then a little bit of non-fiction; Heat, by Guardian journalist George Monbiot. Recommended to me by a fellow at a house party, purchased cheap online, I'll be interested to see what direction it takes.

We're moving on up I guess. Shifting some gear into 40 Johnson Road tomorrow, weekend in Nottingham and back Monday-ish. In that time I hope I shall get a chance to take some photos, and see the Library Tapes gig at Lee Rosy's tomorrow night. And catch up with beloved friends and housemates.

Plus I'll take some books up with me. Still reading George Orwell's book about miners The Road to Wigan Pier, it's not exactly a barrel of laughs. Bought a biography of Alan Turing the other day in the charming Sarum Book Shop, and I'm anxious to get into that, as I imagine anyone is when they buy shiny new books.

So, gonna go measure some stuff up and write some notes on the train, and see what fun I can have fending for myself in the heartless midlands.

It must be an exam period if I'm suddenly overcome with a desire for extracurricular knowledge and self-broadening. The papers themselves should go just fine, I think. But my word for the day is "cavalcade", meaning "a procession of people travelling on horseback", my current favourite NBA playoffs team is the Cleveland Cavaliers, and I just finished my second book in a week. Which is satisfying, as I don't usually read enough.

First I tackled Waxwings by Jonathan Raban, which was a beautifully written story of two immigrants to the USA and how in their own ways they feel both outsiders and at home at different times. It had a nice gentle lilt to it and a lightly written charm that made me chuckle on more than a few occasions.


And next, O my brothers, was A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. I unapologetically read the novel with the film in mind, but it really prodded thoughts around in my head, which was really good. A slender, well written piece in which the words themselves were satisfying, without even mentioning the order in which they were used. It embellished my understanding of what I had seen on TV no end, obviously, and I devoured it greedily. Excellent book.

So what's it to be, then? I think I shall be fine as long as the questions asked are not ones to which I do not know the answer.

I have ambitions, and a short length of time stretching ahead of me. I guess you can tell a lot about someone from what it is they really hope to achieve.

i) Revision - I am ahead of my revision schedule but will feel utterly embarassed if I don't get through it and perform well in my 3 exams in late january. I will keep working. 5 hours a day still leaves me at least 10 hours to improve myself in other ways.

ii) Health - I keep drinking extraordinary amounts of water, and this makes me feel more active. I'd love to go out running, but a) Physical exercise in any form would probably kill me and b) it is friggin' cold. I wish it weren't cold. I will not be joining a gym. So increased fitness is hard to come by. But I will find a way. I rather hope that I'll be able to jog a couple of miles without keeling over and dying by mid-2007.

iii) Reading - I'm way into this "reading for leisure" thing. In the last week I polished off a couple of fairly trashy/slushy books (The Godfather by Mario Puzo and that Tractors in Ukrainian book everyone was on about 6 months ago). I'm embarking on American Gods by Neil Gaiman right now. It's damned good and for the first time in a long while I can say I'm engrossed in reading.

iv) Writing - I know I'll be saying 'learning to tie shoelaces' next, but I really want to start writing stuff again. I guess that's what LJ is, a bit of a practice ground. I have been drafting record reviews for the nottingham student music magazine and they are good but there is a dearth of new albums that I really want to listen to. I have been reading Something Awful (my favourite site - http://www.somethingawful.com) daily and I wish I could write like any of those guys. They're brilliant. Realistically, they are better writers than me (depressed smilie).

v) Juggling - silly, but I've pretty much nailed 3 balls. Now I need a few more tricks and to get 4 balls going well. I can do a few cycles but then everything ends up on the floor and that doesn't look so good.

vi) Guitar - If I have any time, I'd love to pick up a guitar and learn a bit more. It is a perennial disappointment to me that I do not play guitar.


If I have any other time there's always chess, and go, and expanding my array of general knowledge (which is in decline, depressingly). This has been a very sobering post.