Black Coffee Blues by Henry Rollins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Oh, Henry. The ladies love ya. The dweebs wanna be ya. All you need is a Nudie suit, cowboy boots and some lounge-singer crooning lessons, you could rip up Las Vegas!
I can’t be objective about Henry, and I have no idea about the artistic merit of this book at this point. It’s just Henry, and Henry has been part of my life too long not to love it.
Yes, yes, I’ve only just begun working through the projects – but I actually finished reading the book itself a little while ago. And I think it says something, that I had such a good time with it that I decided to actually put it to work and do the weekly projects. Right? How often does a book actually inspire you to action, including ones that are designed specifically for that purpose?
I have a print copy of the book (and it’s a lovely object, well-designed.) It’s structured on a weekly basis for a full year. Each chapter has an essay linked to the main project assigned for the week. Then there’s the ‘Zumba for the Soul’ section per week, three more random activities/tasks/suggestions. And an inspirational quote/biographical tidbit to sign off.
I think – and Ms. Grout herself notes – that it would be easy to read the book purely as inspiration, to feel good and get lit up with enthusiasm and then… move on and forget about it. That would be a shame, though. I forget who I’m quoting when I invoke the law of precession – Buckminster Fuller? Things happen, when you take action. Things you couldn’t have predicted. Many more than you would have expected, all flowing from your original act like a fountainhead.
But it was pretty probably Goethe who said something about action having ‘genius, power and magic in it’, and how therefore actually getting off your arse and doin’ it – whatever magic act of creativity you have in mind – was probably the best thing.
The results you get in life – good, bad, indifferent, astounding – depend on how much you engage. Engage 10%, get 10% results – i.e. results that you’ve actually brought into being as a result of your interaction. Engage 90%, get 90% results. If you don’t engage – get out there, interact, create, ask, try – then you’re not getting results at all. You’re just a null object, having no effect on reality whatsoever. You’re a bit of flotsam, along for the ride. You might as well not exist.
Lemme quote Taylor Parkes: ‘Activity is king’.
What would happen if you engaged 100%? I’d like to find out, personally.
This book is terrific. But the results if you follow its prescription, if you treat it less like a pretty recipe book, and more like the actual contents of your food cupboards that you’re gonna cook and eat – could be truly astonishing.
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I liked the biblical stuff about David and Goliath – the interpretation that David’s victory was about the tactics and ruthlessness of the underdog, rather than a heavenly blessing, was very interesting. The chapter about the Northern Ireland troubles was very depressing though. I loved the bit about the Resistance in WWII France – the community that basically said, ‘We’ve got our Jews, you come get ’em if you want ’em, see what you get!’ was – well, almost funny, although you feel bad laughing at something so serious.
I often finish a Gladwell book feeling as if I’ve been entertained, but not sure what I’m supposed to have really learned. This is one of those.
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I really love this book, although I’m not sure why considering just how depressing it is. I think perhaps just because of that. Ehrenreich truly tells it like it is, and there’s none of the sugarcoating of economic abuse and exploitation that you get with even supposedly impartial media like the BBC and UK liberal press these days. Also I’m into it just because I love memoir beyond any reasonable point and every detail of Ehrehreich’s wilfully grim and dispiriting experiences is fascinating to me.
There is a temptation, as a reader, to keep second-guessing her choices, and the choices of her more truly blue/pink collar colleagues. To think and hope, wishfully, deludedly, that given the same circumstances one would do better, would rise above somehow and bootstrap one’s way up. It’s perhaps the same ‘blame the victim’ mentality associated with rape, bullying or whistleblowers – it feels so much safer to convince yourself that the system works, the target slipped up and was at fault somehow, and it could never happen to you. But it ain’t so, bud.
“The universe that constantly spins out new galaxies wants to shine through you, to speak through you, to expand through you.”—A tweet I tweeted out this morning Elizabeth Gilbert tells a funny story in her book, Big Magic. She was working as a cook on a ranch in Wyoming. She was drinking beer one night […]
via Get your boom box on the right frequency and call in miracles — Pam Grout
Yeah, that’s pretty cool.
On the Decay of the Art of Lying by Mark Twain
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Less satirical than you might expect from the title, sharp, funny, memorable.
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