I have been reading a bunch in the past few weeks. I'm almost done with the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's going well, still interesting, and I've read all of the songs. Lately, though, I've become annoyed at all the "lo!" and "behold!"s that litter the pages of The Return of the King. Everything is "lo!" this or "behold!" that. Alas, I am stricken with annoyance.
I also managed to borrow A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius from the library. It was quite good. Very funny, very sad, and the writing was excellent. The best thing about it is that it is a great statement of sort of Generation X attitudes. The writing is self-aware, and self-aware of it's self-awareness, etc, etc, and it's all very modern and hip.
Posted by ahyatt at November 4, 2003 05:42 PMI loved AHWoSG. I heard Dave Eggers do a reading at Left Bank Books -- very funny. He's totally turned some publishing traditions on their heads. For example, he changes the text between editions of his books, and he loves to toy with the media in an intricate publicity/anti-publicity dance. Amanda saw him at Wash U a long time ago, and he gave each person in the audience $5 of his speaking fee. His Pirate Supply Store is sort of a model for The Commonspace.
Posted by: Brian on November 5, 2003 10:13 PMAh, but does the Commonspace sell tubs of yellow lard? Actually, I've been meaning to go to the Pirate Supply Store. It's fairly close to where I work. I'll blog about it when I do...
Posted by: Andrew Hyatt on November 7, 2003 08:57 PM