May 30, 2000
I never got around to I never got around to reading Mircea Eliade's three-volume History of Religious Ideas when I was in school, though I did read The Sacred and the Profane, which was quite good. So, now I'm in the middle of the second volume. Hey, it's fascinating stuff.
Posted by schampeo at 02:10 AM
One book I've been reading One book I've been reading for months: Gotham. Expect to check back in a few more months and discover that I'm still reading it. Not that it isn't good, it's just very long.
Posted by schampeo at 02:05 AM
When I finish one of When I finish one of the other books I'm reading, I'm going to pick up Opened Ground, a collection of poetry by Seamus Heaney. Some of you may recognize the poet from the excellent magazine Double Take, which has included an excerpt from "The Cure at Troy" for as long as I've been subscribed.
Posted by schampeo at 12:49 AM
May 29, 2000
I've been reading Linkers and I've been reading Linkers and Loaders by John Levine. An excellent reminder that all of the software we take for granted is still just a collection of sequential zeroes and ones fed to a processor one word at a time.
Posted by schampeo at 02:37 AM
May 27, 2000
I'm also reading Code and I'm also reading Code and other Laws of Cyberspace, but I'm not very far into it. Even after twenty pages, it's already blown me off my complacent seat and got me worried (which is to say, got me thinking) about a few of the issues surrounding the whole privacy debate, but from a completely weird perspective. Great book so far.
Posted by schampeo at 06:41 PM
Michael recommended Underworld to me Michael recommended Underworld to me some time ago, I think around the time I had just finished Infinite Jest and was finishing up my book. I've read most of DeLillo's other stuff, and really enjoyed White Noise and Ratner's Star. But after slogging through Libra, I'd sort of lost heart. Well, I found a hard copy of Underworld in the bargain stacks at Borders (please kill me before my book ends up there) for $4.99. Probably the best five bucks I've spent in a very long time.
Posted by schampeo at 06:31 PM
Lately, entirely due to Heather Lately, entirely due to Heather Champ's posting some haiku on her site, I've been reading up on Basho and haiku in general. I had a phase in college where that was all I was reading: Basho, Li Po, Tu Fu, and the rest.

On Love and Barley - Haiku of Basho
Matsuo Basho
The Essential Haiku - Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa

It's difficult to say which of these sets of translations of Basho is more accurate, especially when you don't speak or read Japanese. But I greatly prefer those found in Ueda's commentary, perhaps because they are surrounded by commentary. It bothers me to read Hass and Stryk's versions, ripped from the context of the travelogues that so often accompanied his haiku. I read The Narrow Road to the Deep North in college, about the same time I read Kerouac's On the Road, and it made for a good juxtaposition between the true Japanese Zen poetry of Basho and the manic and strange American version.
Posted by schampeo at 06:18 PM