63 posts tagged “reading”
from Moe's Books:
"NYC's most celebrated hip downtown writer, Arthur Nersesian, is the author of six novels, including the smash hit The Fuck-Up (MTV/Pocket Books), Chinese Takeout (HarperCollins), Unlubricated (HarperCollins), Manhattan Loverboy (Akashic), Suicide Casanova (Akashic), and dogrun (MTV/Pocket Books). He is also the author of East Village Tetralogy (Akashic), a collection of four plays. He lives in New York City...
Underground legend Lydia Lunch was the primary instigator of the No Wave Movement, and the focal point of the Cinema of Transgression. A musician, writer, and photographer, she exposes the dark underbelly of passion confronting the lusty demons whose struggle for power and control forever stalk the periphery of our collective obsessions."
from City Lights:
"Provocatuers Will Self and Ralph Steadman join forces in this magnificent and artfully rendered meditation on the vexed relationship between personal psyche and physical place in the contemporary world. Together, Self and Steadman illuminate the ways in which human and physical geography go hand-in-hand—how one naturally influences the other, whether we are always aware of this connection or not."
from Modern Times Bookstore:
"...acclaimed local author (and Modern Times neighbor) Dave Eggers [celebrates] the paperback release of his most recent bestseller! Based closely on true experiences of the Lost Boys of Sudan, who fled their war-ravaged country to come to the United States in the mid-1980s, this novel is heartbreaking and arresting, filled with adventure, suspense, tragedy, and, finally, triumph."
Science Thursday:
Extreme makeover for space station | Space.com | Voice of America |
MP3 hogs don’t get final oink | MTV | Technology News Daily |
from the Booksmith:
"For the past three years Frank Warren has invited people of all backgrounds to send creatively decorated postcards bearing secrets they have never before revealed. Warren has shared these secrets on his award-winning blog - www.PostSecret.com, in an internationally traveling art exhibit, and in three bestselling books. Now, in A Lifetime of Secrets, 'America's most trusted stranger' again delves into our collective confessions, presenting a never-before-seen selection of provocative post secrets."
Recipe for an awesome Wednesday evening:
Beautiful Katamari
Dutch beer
Wisconsin cheese
Australian licorice
Oh man you should have seen Aimee rock the Roller Roaster level too, after we'd been struggling with it for like an hour. Pure beauty. I'm already twitching to play some more.
Science Thursday:
Massive telescopes hunt for ET | ScienceMode | BBC |
Huge dinosaur discovered in South America | BBC | Daily Mail |
"For the past three years Frank Warren has invited people of all backgrounds to send creatively decorated postcards bearing secrets they have never before revealed. Warren has shared these secrets on his award-winning blog - www.PostSecret.com, in an internationally traveling art exhibit, and in three bestselling books. Now, in A Lifetime of Secrets, 'America's most trusted stranger' again delves into our collective confessions, presenting a never-before-seen selection of provocative post secrets."
Recipe for an awesome Wednesday evening:
Beautiful Katamari
Dutch beer
Wisconsin cheese
Australian licorice
Oh man you should have seen Aimee rock the Roller Roaster level too, after we'd been struggling with it for like an hour. Pure beauty. I'm already twitching to play some more.
Science Thursday:
Massive telescopes hunt for ET | ScienceMode | BBC |
Huge dinosaur discovered in South America | BBC | Daily Mail |
At Lisa Dent Gallery - Candice Lin. I am very sad because Lisa Dent used to be one of my favorite close-to-work galleries, where I could pop by on my lunch hour to see whatever wonderful thing happened to be on display there at the time. But she has moved to a space the other side of Van Ness and changed her hours to 12-6 Tuesdays or by appointment only. I'm sure it was a strategic move, but there's no way in hell I can leave work long enough on a Tuesday to get over there, and my feelings about the whole "by appointment only" thing have been well-publicized in the past. So all of this is just to say my chances of seeing Candice Lin's creepily beautiful drawings are slim to none, and that bums me out. Because my cold cold heart appreciates the company.
At Gallery 16 - Scott Hewicker and Cliff Hengst: S.A.N.E. The title of the show stands for Something, Anything, Nothing, Everything, and from that you can infer you are at liberty to take what you will from what you see here. Hewicker's portion of the show includes the video you see a still from at right, in which he splices together various "freak-out" scenes from B-movies. He then used these bad trips as inspiration for a new suite of paintings which hang along one side of the gallery. Directly opposite Hengst has painted directly onto the wall, detailing in giant letters all of the things he doesn't really like about himself. I had to appreciate the purported honesty, and I myself have said many similar things, though I usually confine such confessions to my therapist's couch. Hengst continues the stream-of-consciousness ramblings in a number of smaller works on paper. The artistic duo has also produced a book in conjunction with the show entitled Good Times: Bad Trips, which features work from a ton of my local favorites.
At Gallery 16 - Scott Hewicker and Cliff Hengst: S.A.N.E. The title of the show stands for Something, Anything, Nothing, Everything, and from that you can infer you are at liberty to take what you will from what you see here. Hewicker's portion of the show includes the video you see a still from at right, in which he splices together various "freak-out" scenes from B-movies. He then used these bad trips as inspiration for a new suite of paintings which hang along one side of the gallery. Directly opposite Hengst has painted directly onto the wall, detailing in giant letters all of the things he doesn't really like about himself. I had to appreciate the purported honesty, and I myself have said many similar things, though I usually confine such confessions to my therapist's couch. Hengst continues the stream-of-consciousness ramblings in a number of smaller works on paper. The artistic duo has also produced a book in conjunction with the show entitled Good Times: Bad Trips, which features work from a ton of my local favorites.
At SFMOMA - Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination. I could write pages about how inspiriational Joseph Cornell is to me, with his meticulously constructed boxes and collages, his obsessive documentation, how he used art to escape the tedium of day-to-day life. But instead I will simply urge you to go see this show, with over 200 works on display spanning the entirety of his career, many of which I'd never ever seen before. Because many of his boxes are so delicate now and have to be displayed under dim light and in inpenetrable vitrines, I forget many of them were meant to be played with. Sand flowed in fountains, balls rolled down glass chutes, springs shuddered. Cornell was fascinated with science and astronomy (his star boxes!), the nature of time itself, even fame and celebrity. But more than anything he wanted to awake the imagination, and I know I certainly walked out of the exhibit yesterday tingling with ideas. Between this show and the Olafur Eliasson SFMOMA is just filled with wonderful things right now. Get your ass over there.
-press images
-Joseph Cornell's cabinets of wonder at SFMOMA
from City Lights:
"Revolutionary Letters is an American classic arising from the utopian anarchism for which Diane di Prima has long been a spokesperson. The first of these poems were written during the active days of the late 1960s, and published by the underground press throughout the U.S. and abroad. They were also used as guerrilla theatre. Diane read the early poems from a flatbed truck in New York City and later performed them on the steps of City Hall in San Francisco with Peter Coyote and the Diggers. Four editions of the Letters were published by City Lights between 1971 and 1980. Each new printing contained 'Letters' written in the intervening period. The new poems in this edition address some of the history of the past twenty years, and were written as the various occasions arose."
-press images
-Joseph Cornell's cabinets of wonder at SFMOMA
"Revolutionary Letters is an American classic arising from the utopian anarchism for which Diane di Prima has long been a spokesperson. The first of these poems were written during the active days of the late 1960s, and published by the underground press throughout the U.S. and abroad. They were also used as guerrilla theatre. Diane read the early poems from a flatbed truck in New York City and later performed them on the steps of City Hall in San Francisco with Peter Coyote and the Diggers. Four editions of the Letters were published by City Lights between 1971 and 1980. Each new printing contained 'Letters' written in the intervening period. The new poems in this edition address some of the history of the past twenty years, and were written as the various occasions arose."
from the Booksmith:
"By George is the new novel from Wesley Stace (aka the singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding), which tells the story of two boys named George Fisher, one flesh, one wood. Weaving the boy's tale and the 'memoirs' of a ventriloquist's dummy, Stace's second novel unveils the secrets of four generations of entertainers. Exquisitely tender, By George also tells the story of two boys separated by years but driven by the same desires: to find a voice, and to be loved."
from the Booksmith:
"From the groundbreaking A Coney Island of the Mind to the 'personal epic' of Americus, Book I, Lawrence Ferlinghetti has, in more than 30 books over 50 years, been the poetic conscience of America. Now in the just released Poetry As Insurgent Art, he offers in prose his primer of what poetry is, could be, and should be. The result is by turns tender and furious, personal and political. If you are a reader of poetry, find out what is missing from the usual fare; if you are a poet, read at your own risk."
"From the groundbreaking A Coney Island of the Mind to the 'personal epic' of Americus, Book I, Lawrence Ferlinghetti has, in more than 30 books over 50 years, been the poetic conscience of America. Now in the just released Poetry As Insurgent Art, he offers in prose his primer of what poetry is, could be, and should be. The result is by turns tender and furious, personal and political. If you are a reader of poetry, find out what is missing from the usual fare; if you are a poet, read at your own risk."
from Diesel:
"It has been ten years since Junot Diaz’s collection of short stories, Drown, was published to great acclaim. Drown was gritty and breathtaking and drew the reader into the immigrant Dominican population in the United States. It’s been a long wait but it’s finally here; Mr. Diaz’s second book. This is the story of how 500 years of historical and familial bad luck shape the destiny of its fat, sad, smart, lovable and short-lived protagonist, Oscar Wao. Walter Mosley said 'The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is radiant with the hard lives of those who leave and also those who stay behind-it is a rousing hymn about the struggle to defy bone-cracking history with ordinary, and extraordinary, love.' Mr. Diaz currently teaches at MIT."
Once: In case you were wondering, this movie absolutely holds up during a second viewing. If anything I was able to appreciate even more what a near-perfect piece of film-making it is. The fact that it looks almost effortless actually speaks to how much thought went into it. The music scenes still sent chills down my spine. And the story, though simply told, is by no stretch of the imagination slight.
"It has been ten years since Junot Diaz’s collection of short stories, Drown, was published to great acclaim. Drown was gritty and breathtaking and drew the reader into the immigrant Dominican population in the United States. It’s been a long wait but it’s finally here; Mr. Diaz’s second book. This is the story of how 500 years of historical and familial bad luck shape the destiny of its fat, sad, smart, lovable and short-lived protagonist, Oscar Wao. Walter Mosley said 'The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is radiant with the hard lives of those who leave and also those who stay behind-it is a rousing hymn about the struggle to defy bone-cracking history with ordinary, and extraordinary, love.' Mr. Diaz currently teaches at MIT."
Once: In case you were wondering, this movie absolutely holds up during a second viewing. If anything I was able to appreciate even more what a near-perfect piece of film-making it is. The fact that it looks almost effortless actually speaks to how much thought went into it. The music scenes still sent chills down my spine. And the story, though simply told, is by no stretch of the imagination slight.
Science Thursday:
Polar ice on the rocks | CBC | ABC News |
Space is the place — for germs | National Geographic | BBC |
At the San Francisco Disposal and Recycling Art Studio Art Studio - Nemo Gould: Waste Deep. Gould creates his amazing kinetic sculptures out of found objects, so he's a no-brainer match for the dump's artist-in-residence program. At the opening Friday night some attendees first seemed a little nervous about twisting the knobs and pressing the buttons, but once you've seen someone else make the octopus pictured at right move up and down like some demented creature out of 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, well, you want to do it too. In another corner a Jacob's ladder sprang into life at the press of a foot-pedal, and corkscrews performed a dance inside an old television set. My favorite piece, however, didn't move at all: It was a cat seemingly constructed out of a saw handle, a sheet of metal, and four chair legs.
Our rainstorm the next morning lent the perfect backdrop to the San Francisco Ghost Society's Fall 2007 day-long lecture series at the Park Branch Library, which I was drawn to out of curiosity mediated by a healthy dose of skepticism. I don't know if I believe in a "spirit world" per se, but I am fascinated by the mythology of ghost stories and films. Hey, I saw Ghostbusters at a very impressionable age. And I've definitely experienced some very spooky things myself. So I was bummed my excruciatingly slow bus got me to the library only in time to catch the tail end of Leon LeGant's talk about releasing spirit energies from homes, if only because the guided meditation he was leading the crowd through seemed pretty darn awesome. I stayed for Anne Leong's workshop on understanding dowsing rods, where I learned about the different kinds of tools used to dowse and that it's a bad idea to dowse outside in a strong wind. Nobody ever said ghost hunters aren't practical. Leong then had volunteers dowse for quarters that had been hidden in the room, and damn if I didn't see with my own eyes one woman's rods make an abrupt turn to the right and lead her right to a quarter. I'm still not ruling out sheer dumb luck though.
At Triple Base - Bryson Gill and Jay Nelson: Double Blind. My internal dowsing rod led me straight to the Mission Saturday afternoon to check out Gill and Nelson's double show. The two friends attended CCA together and influenced each other's work, but then went their separate ways. They created works specifically for this show without checking in with each other, to see where they were still the same and where they were different. Gill seems interested in renderings of quite literal architectural totems, while Nelson's work is tending to the more abstract. Both artists have a love of the surreal, I think it's fair to say. It's an excellent idea for a show, and well-executed in the small gallery.
At Jack Hanley Gallery - Djordje Ozbolt: Meetings with Remarkable Men. Continuing my Saturday afternoon Mission art walk, I strolled over to Jack Hanley. Ozbolt is a talented portraitist, but he seems to be determined to never do the same style more than once or twice. One of the paintings in this show you might expect to see in a colonial American townhouse, another in a Santa Cruz student's dorm room. I particularly liked two canvases that were almost monochromatic, The Mother and Old Blue Eyes; you can see them at the link above.
Finally, Saturday evening it was back to the Haight for a Citrus Club noodle dinner and the Jack Kerouac celebration at All Saints Church sponsored by the Booksmith and City Lights in honor of the 50th anniversary of the publication of On the Road. I fully confess that I've never read it, being much more a Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder woman myself if I'm going to go near the Beats, but it was fun to see a gathering of luminaries such as Michael McClure, Barry Gifford, and John Leland, author of the recently-released book Why Kerouac Matters. The female side of the equation was represented by local author Suzanne Kleid, who read from Edie Kerouac-Parker's memoir You'll Be OK: My Life with Jack Kerouac. Notably absent was Joyce Johnson, unable to attend due to health issues. But of course we had the one loopy guy in the back who laughed too loud at all the wrong times and asked an annoying question that McClure dignified with a two-word answer.
Our rainstorm the next morning lent the perfect backdrop to the San Francisco Ghost Society's Fall 2007 day-long lecture series at the Park Branch Library, which I was drawn to out of curiosity mediated by a healthy dose of skepticism. I don't know if I believe in a "spirit world" per se, but I am fascinated by the mythology of ghost stories and films. Hey, I saw Ghostbusters at a very impressionable age. And I've definitely experienced some very spooky things myself. So I was bummed my excruciatingly slow bus got me to the library only in time to catch the tail end of Leon LeGant's talk about releasing spirit energies from homes, if only because the guided meditation he was leading the crowd through seemed pretty darn awesome. I stayed for Anne Leong's workshop on understanding dowsing rods, where I learned about the different kinds of tools used to dowse and that it's a bad idea to dowse outside in a strong wind. Nobody ever said ghost hunters aren't practical. Leong then had volunteers dowse for quarters that had been hidden in the room, and damn if I didn't see with my own eyes one woman's rods make an abrupt turn to the right and lead her right to a quarter. I'm still not ruling out sheer dumb luck though.
At Jack Hanley Gallery - Djordje Ozbolt: Meetings with Remarkable Men. Continuing my Saturday afternoon Mission art walk, I strolled over to Jack Hanley. Ozbolt is a talented portraitist, but he seems to be determined to never do the same style more than once or twice. One of the paintings in this show you might expect to see in a colonial American townhouse, another in a Santa Cruz student's dorm room. I particularly liked two canvases that were almost monochromatic, The Mother and Old Blue Eyes; you can see them at the link above.
Finally, Saturday evening it was back to the Haight for a Citrus Club noodle dinner and the Jack Kerouac celebration at All Saints Church sponsored by the Booksmith and City Lights in honor of the 50th anniversary of the publication of On the Road. I fully confess that I've never read it, being much more a Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder woman myself if I'm going to go near the Beats, but it was fun to see a gathering of luminaries such as Michael McClure, Barry Gifford, and John Leland, author of the recently-released book Why Kerouac Matters. The female side of the equation was represented by local author Suzanne Kleid, who read from Edie Kerouac-Parker's memoir You'll Be OK: My Life with Jack Kerouac. Notably absent was Joyce Johnson, unable to attend due to health issues. But of course we had the one loopy guy in the back who laughed too loud at all the wrong times and asked an annoying question that McClure dignified with a two-word answer.
from the Booksmith:
"How does Steve Almond get himself into so much trouble? Could it be his incessant moralizing? His generally poor posture? The fact that he was raised by a pack of wolves? Frankly, we haven’t got a clue. What we do know is that Almond has a knack for converting his dust-ups into essays that are both funny and furious. The result is (Not that You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions – a book you will feel foolish for not having read.
Science Thursday:
Southpaws get their day | Scientific American | Times, UK |
Hot or not? Smell the difference | Scientific American | CBS News |
from the Booksmith:
"George Saunders's first foray into nonfiction - The Braindead Megaphone - is comprised of sharply observant essays on literature, travel, and politics. Echoing the work of Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut, Saunders leads the reader across the rocky political landscape of modern America. The result is a look at the real world brimming with wonderful, marvelous strangeness."
As soon as I make it through work today I'm going to unplug my computer for a few days and go play tourist in San Francisco with my brother. I'll report back from the other side!
