"Spin spin whisky and gin, I suffer for my art Bartender"
This is just a good, old fashioned horror story. Diary by Chuck Palahniuk is an excellent read and athough he borrows an obvious device from Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby, it is none the worse for it.
OK, you can see it as a post-modern novel highlighting the unstoppable rise of capitalism and, on a small scale, what a group of people choose to do about it. But on the other hand, you've got old folks saying "We don't want yooze folk round 'ere no mowa" whilst the rest of them stand around sagely saying nothing whilst plotting doom and destruction. An old cemetary, dark woods, crazed loons running around the place plus the fires of Hell - this is a classic 70's horror film in a book.
Seriously, I like the way our opinion of Peter is made to change throughout the book and I particularly liked the references to the psycology of art, the psychosomatic illness Stendhal's syndrome and tying these in with Plato and Jung's views on the subject.
I loved it and I can't wait until David Fincher turns this one into a film too. A keeper!
This is dedication to the cause of Music Quality and well worth a read if you care about the music you listen to:Rip Rowan: Over the Limit
Sadly, I think that the majority of people felt this was a Jumble Sale one rather that a Keeper.
I am in the Keeper camp and I felt that this book was excellent, probably coming second out of the whole list (below right) so far.
If you subscribe to the view that this book is only 40 years away, say, in the future then this is a very scary book indeed. We are all surely aware of what the future holds if we carry on the way we do. This book sets it out in black and white for us and yet we will doubtless still elect to carry on in the way we do. As Crake points out, if Mankind were wiped out save for a few here and there, we could never populate the earth again. We have used up ever resource getting here in the first place; there's not enough left for us to do it all again no matter how long it takes.
On a different level, someone pointed out that you can see Crake as God, Oryx as Nature and Snowman as Humankind. Two guardians sitting on Snowman's shoulder as he made his way through life, living, soiling and spoiling as a human being.
The books contains plenty of action and suspense with some wicked genetically created animals, Wolvogs and Pigoons. Atwood is also very clever in running different time-lines through the book and keeping the pace up by switching between the stories.
A keeper for me.
PLINK gets all its user data from 'FOAF' (Friend-of-a-Friend) files which anyone can add to their web site.
Typepad creates these FOAF files automatically and so I am going to try to develop a People TypeList to generate the FOAF file.
However, this could take a while for a few reasons ...
EURid - Information about registering a .eu domain name
Although the company .EURid have come in for a bit of stick, they have produced this useful tentative timetable outlining the countdown to the release of this huge new Top Level Domain (TLD) .eu. This suggests a free-for-all in Nov '04.
The .eu level is going to be as big as .com, .org etc. We will see a land grab as big as any in recent years with all companies, big and small going for the names of their choice.
I use Easily for registrations and I am hoping that they will provide plenty of notice via their email newsletter as to key dates and actions.
