Join The Future: Bleep Techno and the birth of British bass music
it’s a really good northern perspective centred around sheffield, leeds, nottingham…
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That’s an excellent read, thank you.
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Bewilderment - Richard Powers
I’d had a few customers in my bookshop recommend this to me and it’s astonishing. It reads with a mixture of child-like wonder at the universe and the grief of personal loss. I’m finding it profoundly moving. It has been a long time since a book has done this to me.
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Just getting into Graeber’s Debt over the last few days. I think I bought the eBook on release, as it was obviously going to be an important book. It’s been sitting in my Kindle for a while so I kind of randomly started reading it. And it really drew me in.
The introductory material on barter is riveting, particularly if you’ve ever tried or even succeeded at trading synths.
I read encyclopedias for fun as a child, Wikipedia for fun as an adult, and Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle multiple times. Also for fun. So YMMV.
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Currently reading The Most Fun Thing by Kyle Beachy, it’s a collection of essays, on the surface about skateboarding but more about life and finding meaning in something frivolous and childish as an adult. I’m finding it feels a bit pretentious at times but I think that probably has more to do with the author being an academic than anything else. It’s gotten some comparisons to Barbarian Days but I feel like it’s a bit more heady and contemplative and less memoir-ish, so far at least. There are definitely some deep dives into skateboarding that could be tedious for people uninterested in skating but overall I think a lot of his observations and musings about how being so intertwined with skateboarding can be applied to other subculture related activities, like music scenes and whatnot.
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I just read a great interview with that guy. If you like him, Neil Postman ought to be up your alley. He was a prophet of what was to become of our society and culture when overloaded with information.
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Structure and Synthesis: The Anatomy of Practice
by Mark Fell
An artist whose musical output and approach I always liked, presents this compendium of articles and theory, very interesting
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Neil Postman is on my radar! 
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Ha ha thanks. Stopped me from making the same mistake (re-reading as an adult)
Currently reading all of Jim Thompson’s books which ib would have loved as a teenager and am enjoying now anyway
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I went through a big crime fiction phase in my late 20s primarily consisting of Jim Thompson’s novels and Ed Brubaker’s comics. That stuff is a good time but I always end up needing a good long break from all the dingy characters before long. Which one are you on now?
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I hadn’t heard of him unitl your message. I will have to try a couple. Thanks!
I had a Ellroy binge, once. And yeah, I haven’t really read crime fiction since.
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Just reading the grifters. The biography is a good read too… what a life. Is all drawn from his experiences. Building up to “a killer inside”.
I also enjoy Chester Himes and of course Iceberg Slim. As i get older I enjoy them for different reasons I did when in was younger. They read like “noir” to me (I love a good film noir)
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I actually think bridge is a lot better than sprawl. Neuromancer is flawless, but the next two books in the Sprawl trilogy are kind of boring.
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1Q84 Book Three
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So many good books mentioned here, real grateful to everyone whose been sharing their current reads & recommendations!
I haven’t had much time to read at all in the past few months and am still on Frank Herbert’s Heretics of Dune, but come July I’ll have plenty of time on hand and once done with the Dune series, I plan to read a few of the recommendations here.
To add to the mix, I recommend “A Systems View on Life” by Fritjof Capra as well as “Cosmos and Psyche” by Richard Tarnas.
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Already proposed here but there is change:
“House of leaves” by Mark Z. Danielewski will be reissued in French in August, possibly in other languages.
Those who haven’t read it and who would like it, here is an opportunity to pay less for it than a Monomachine…
Well if you’re looking for a love story between a cab and a librarian in 1960s Louisiana, it doesn’t fit the bill at all, but if you’re looking for a weird book about an altered reality and the unhealthy slide into madness with a superb book with an exceptional layout, you have come to the right place.
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I never tire of Murakami, will read and re-read Murakami for the rest of my life, that’s for sure!
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My personal favourite is still Hard Boiled Wonderland, absolute magic!
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