Haruki Murakami – Een kat achterlaten

Haruki Murakami - Een kat achterlaten

Abandoning a Cat / Een kat achterlaten is een prachtig boek waarin Murakami over zijn vader schrijft. Af en toe zie je typische Murakami-thema’s terugkomen in de herinneringen die hij vertelt. De ietwat verloren mannen, een verwarrende oorlog in het verre en veel te grote China, sociaal onhandige personen, … veel stof voor de trouwe Murakami-lezer. Zeer mooi vormgegeven Nederlandse uitgave, gebonden op Japanse wijze, prachtig geïllustreerd door Marion Vrijburg.

Can not stop reading – Maus by Art Spiegelman

Maus Compleet

You can’t put this down, I read somewhere before acquiring this book.

Indeed.

Much has already been written about this classic comic Maus by Art Spiegelman; just adding I love it and indeed couldn’t put it down. Two volumes straight.

24 april rondje Zwanenburg

Vandaag deed ik mijn tweede rondje door Zwanenburg. Vanuit het nieuwe winkelcentrum bij de voormalige suikerfabriek liep ik aan de westkant langs het dorp. Het grootste deel van de wandeling liep door een vrij oninspirerende woonwijk. De hele wijk leek drooggelegd voor de werkzaamheden aan het riool. Een ander deel is een enorme bouwput op de plaats waar een industrieel complex moet hebben gestaan.

Zwanenburg, april 2021
Zwanenburg, april 2021

Craig Mod’s blog and newsletters

Craig Mod has a beautiful blog at craigmod.com. Craig is what I would call a generally very interesting person. He writes about his travels – he walks a lot, about photography. His blog inspired me to start writing longer form blog posts again.

Craig manages a few very interesting newsletters. I can recommend all three.

A Curious Mind – Brian Grazer

I was not just a little annoyed when I finished A Curious Mind. I wrote a summary on the title page: “Summary: Be curious and do a lot of names-dropping.”

A Curious Mind

The book is quite entertaining but far from the books that normally get a #1 New York Times bestseller.

Grazer tells us about his curiosity process: his inexhaustible drive to visit people he admires, mostly very famous people, and have inquisitive conversations with them. (Except with Edward Teller, one of the inventors of the hydrogen bomb, who does not want to talk to Grazer and it portrayed as a single minded unpleasant person.)

A huge pile of names-dropping forms the basis of Grazer’s stories. He meets the greats of the world and all of them becomes his friends. It is annoying at page 30, and becomes unbearable throughout the rest of the book.

If you are interested in movies and Hollywood, you may find it all interesting, but for someone searching for the curiosity learnings it is hard to digest.

Curiosity gives meaning to life. It makes you pay attention to others. I gives you a determination to act.

Neuromancer – William Gibson

Neuromancer - William Gobson

Neuromancer is an unavoidable read. A classic. The beginning of the books reminds me immediately of the first scene of Bladerunner. The Sprawl indeed is referenced by Sonic Youth (The Sprawl on Daydream Nation) – I had read somewhere they were influenced by the cyberpunk writers.

Where is the beauty in these fabricated, technology-dominated futuristic worlds? Societies dominated by drugs, tech, criminals, violence.

An amazing book, forward referencing many SF movies that followed. The creators of The Matrix heavily borrowed from Neuromancer, just to mention one.

The dangerous but exciting habit of always carrying a camera

I always carry a camera with me. Even in the car. Admittedly that is dangerous, but it can also be rewarding. Yesterday I caught this picture.

DIY, Mistakes, and Unschooling – Mark Frauenfelder

Mark Frauenfelder is my favorite inspiring nerd (well meant) and I find him greatly inspiring. Here he talks about how making mistakes accelerates learning.

Boing Boing is a site he founded, The Magnet is a great newsletter of his, Recommendo is another great site.

A Maker Dad contributes to the maker movement. An ...
A Maker Dad contributes to the maker movement. An ...

Catching the Big Fish – David Lynch

Catching the Big Fish is such a great book. It consists of small stories about ideas, meditation, creativity, film making and other things in David Lynch’s film making life. The tone is wonderfully light. Condensed advice for the living. It is a massive source for inspirational quotes, and I just thumbed through to get to these.

Catching The Big Fish

Sometimes restrictions get the mind going. If you’ve tons and tons of money, you may relax and figure you can throw money at any problem that comes along. You don’t have to think so hard. But if you have limitations, sometimes, you com up with very creative, inexpensive ideas.

Little fish swim on the surface, but the big ones swim down below. If you can expand the container you’re fishing in – your consciousness – you can catch bigger fish.

It would be great if the entire film came all at once. But it comes, for me, in fragments. The first fragment is like the Rosetta stone. It’s the piece of the puzzle that indicates the rest. It’s the hopeful puzzle piece.

In Blue Velvet, it was red lips, green lawn, and the song – Bobby Vinton’s version of “Blue Velvet”. The next thing was an ear lying in a field. And that was it.

The Ear in Blue Velvet
David Lynch

Ilja Gort: How to open a bottle of wine and pour a glass (video)

The no-BS guide to opening a bottle of wine and pour from it.