Busytown: Holiday reading lust
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There also seem to be four (that's 4!) Ayn Rand in the top ten on the RL, and none (which as my 4 year old pointed out once, is exactly the same as zero) on the BL.
Aren't you glad we have gatekeepers so we don't have to see Rand at the top of any semi-official greatest books of all time list or on academic syllabi?
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And that, to coin a phrase, is a loaded Canon.
But loaded in favour of what? I think you'll find that the Top 10 contains not only four books by Rand, but three by L. Ron Hubbard. Which suggests that this Reader's List was somehow fixed by Objectivists, Libertarians, and Scientologists. It's true that Rand is extremely popular in the US (I was taken aback when I first when into a bookstore in Pittsburgh and found her works in the Philosophy section), but L. Ron Hubbard's are surely only read by his cultists.
The literary fix was in, and if you take out those seven books your two points of comparison align a little more neatly.
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There are literally *hundreds* of lists out there in networld.
I've learned to take them with a saltmine. -
I've learned to take them with a saltmine.
Umm, I think that might have been my point, but I'll just go and check .....
..... Yip. Turns out it was ;-) -
Clarity of expression, Jack, clarity of expression...
Subtlety gets you nowhere with us dumb non-academic West Coast whitebaiters. Why! we read sucking the thumbs on our 3-fingered hands-
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Subtlety gets you nowhere with us dumb non-academic West Coast whitebaiters.
Send me whitebait now!!!! Is that clear enough? And I'm just an East Cape Kina lover, so not sure we really do subtle either, but we do like to try new things ;-)
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Swopperem-time as soon as the first utterly luscious mediumsize spinewaving little darlings arrive*...
but!
Not until next season.
The 2009 season was a disaster here - hell, I had to rely on my over-the-hill-rellies for any kind of feed.As you were bookie-people - kaimoana has a certain priority in my life-
*we get our kina from the kaik' at Moeraki (East coast side) and - while there are serious contenders for other seafood goodness, a chilled set of gonads - with a tiny bit of of the semidigested kelp & your choice of dressing - is heaven-on-the-entree-plate- -
*we get our kina from the kaik' at Moeraki (East coast side)
At a wedding on the coast last year, lots of city folk came along (including me I guess, cause we live in the Akl now), and there were bowls of fresh Kina sitting there with everyone pulling faces, while I got a chair and fork and had a merry old forage. Waste not want not...
Time for some Duck curry from the local Thai, and I may even read a book...
...but really I'm dreaming of hooking bobos [sp] with safety pins after boiling them on the beach at Whanarua Bay.
Arohanui.
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(That line about not washing the Internet above? Lyndon's. Just thought I'd better point it out.)
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I had a wretched experience with some fresh kina a few years back. I think it was the second helping that did it. I didn't even want the second helping; I was just trying to be a polite guest, and show my appreciation for the effort they had gone to. Fevers, chills, crawling on the floor to the bathroom - it was no fun. I lost about a kilo overnight.
I will never eat fresh (as in raw) kina again.
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Jack - we say 'bubu's (pupu's) elsewhere except when they are bobos)
0 Deborah! I sort of feel personally responsible.
What you had was anaphylatic shellfish poisoning and - speaking on behalf of my own mother who has known since 1993, Westport-
after ingesting mussels (which she had eaten since babyhood) do NOT EVER TRY
KINA AGAIN.For people eating kina who've never encountered kina before:
echinoderms (in this case, sea-urchins (from hedgehog, because of the spikes)) need to be FRESH.
Do NOT eat frozen-then-thawed.
Do NOT eat chilled-but-over-2 days old.
DO eat fresh from the sea, fresh from the shell - when the dear little things come from an unpolluted area. -
And Jack, arohanui mai na-
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@Deborah. Sorry to hear about that. Not something I've suffered from. Generally if you have seen where they come from, swum around, and even maybe picked a few up yourself, it has been ok, at least for me.
(That line about not washing the Internet above? Lyndon's. Just thought I'd better point it out.)
What? I'm all subtitled out.
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However I believe I shall never wash the Internet again all the same.
I've been feeling A LOT like this recently. :D
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I was quoted by squids-in-space writer William Gibson
Rastas in space, surely ;)
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Rastas in space
I loved that bit
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I loved that bit
As did I. It was actually just in my mind earlier today, too. I received an email out of the blue from someone who had come across the label's press-release 'blurb' for an old album of mine, which includes
Imagine King Tubby at the controls of a New Zealand spaceship, throbbing and shifting into a bottomless pit of reverb upon meeting the Wordsound rockers in a malaria infected basement. Not like praying the Angelus with pilgrims but an intestinal cleanser that chains your brain to a rusty carousel. [...] Classify under : throbbing NZ claustrophobic dub sponge.
and asking if it had anything to do with William Gibson.
I replied that the writer was a man from Belgium who in his thirty or so years had consumed more heavy heavy hydroponic skunk-weed than five ordinary mortals could manage in their entire lifetimes, and that there was no real way of knowing.
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Warren Ellis linked to me once in April of 2007 - no Internet washing for me after that. Which I guess explains why so much of the Internet I see is filthy. There can't be any other reason.
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My collection of fantasy books have all gone up on trademe
how did that go?
I have to do this exercise soon...
is there a market out there?mine are not in fine condition
and ya just really wanna put them
in the hands of someone
whose face will light up
on seeing themor is there a Communal Library somewhere?
a Rest Home for retired tomes
or an Idea Orphanage even?imagine a library town where each house
was a different subject,
a new dawn over
Dewey Lawns... -
how did that go?
I think there's a limited market for books on trademe. Ordinary old books, give away or sell at a garage sale.
I had a collection of Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms books, from when I was a geeky teenager, which I had held onto in the foolish belief that my son might want to read them one day. They sold OK - some went for $2 - 3, others went for about $10 (new they're about $20 I guess).
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If anyone's interested (there's no sci-fi involved) I'm reading Wolf Hall and it's aMAZing.
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Yeah. I found Wolf Hall so hard to read. The 'he' was disconcerting. It built up momentum towards the end but it wasn't my cup of tea. I've lent it to people who have loved it.
And also on matters of possible interest: Kate de Goldi in the latest Listener. An article about a NZ novel to be reissued (?) on 1 Feb, 'Sydney Bridge Upside Down'. Sounds fab. Her article is worth a read too. It starts with the theory that NZ lit is affected by the slaughterhouse basis of our national economy. Gawd.
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If anyone's interested (there's no sci-fi involved) I'm reading Wolf Hall and it's aMAZing.
Isn't it just -- though let's just say I remain unconvinced that Cromwell has gotten a bum rap. Have you read anything else by Hillary Mantel, because I was also pleasantly surprised by 'Beyond Black'. One of those books where you think you've got a handle on what it is, then it cunningly morphs into something else that's unexpected at the time, but later seems inevitable. Mantel also has a deliciously tinder-dry sense of black humour I find attractive.
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This is about the fourth recommendation of Hilary Mantel I've come across this month.
And at least one of the others was from someone else who is generally hard to please.
My literary discovery of the holidays - years and years late - is William Golding.
I'd read Lord of the Flies as a teenager - my English class didn't study it (we did the One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest as the modern lit novel that year) but one of the other English classes did and it sounded intriguing.
It was - and I'm sure I'd get more out of it now.
But I picked up a biography of William Golding with some of my Christmas book vouchers.
The life itself is a bit boring - writers by and large just sit at desks and write - but the discussion of his work has sent me looking at some of his other books.
I just started 'The Inheritors' which I'm really enjoying, in a somewhat mordant way.
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