Sark – July 2019

Een dag op het eiland Sark. Een vreemd bezoek aan de plaatselijke kerk, waar dood, geloof en alcoholverslaving de dienst schijnen te bepalen.

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? – Raymond Carver

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

I was thinking how to formulate what it is that makes the stories in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? so special. It may be the way Carver tells a story without making a point. Something is in the air but you don’t know what it is. Maybe it is similar to Haruki Murakami‘s work, in that sense. Nothing is happening, but something is. Carver walks around it. You sense something. It becomes increasingly clear that there is something. But what?

Photo-nerd PS: the picture on the cover of the book is by Todd Hido.

St Helier – July 2019

Jersey – a day ending with a disgusting meal of fish with brown sauce – or something awkward like that. We were really tired and just wanted to have a meal and get to sleep. Pretty sure we would have walked out otherwise.

The waiter was rude too.

Fish meal with brown sauce
on the ferry to Jersey
flower in asphalt
feet resting
young men standing in sea
plant in wall

Haruki Murakami – Abandoning a Cat

Een kat achterlaten

Abandoning a Cat / Een kat achterlaten is a beautiful book in which Murakami writes about his father. Now and then you can see typical Murakami themes peek through the memories he recounts. The somewhat lost men, a confusing war in the far away and way too large China, socially awkward persons, … much food for the close Murakami reader. Very well-designed Dutch edition, bound in Japanese manner, magnificently illustrated by Marion Vrijburg.

Maus – Art Spiegelman

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

Maus Compleet

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 volume 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.