Ishmael

"There is nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as your does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are lords of the world, they will act like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now." Daniel Quinn (Ishmael)

Ishmael is a captivating novel about overall social change. It seamlessly challenges popular beliefs and ignites alluring debate. It could be argued that never before has an author brought to life a discussion between man and beast so utterly moving and thought provoking. Regardless of whether or not you personally enjoy this work, you will none-the-less be unable to stop yourself from debating and discussing it with anyone willing to lend an ear.

My Year of Meats

"Coming at us - in waves, massed and unbreachable - knowledge becomes symbolic of our disempowerment - becomes bad knowledge - so we deny it, riding its crest until it subsides from consciousness.

If we can't act on knowledge, then we can't survive without ignorance.

So we cultivate the ignorance, go to great lengths to celebrate it, even. The faux-dumb aesthetic that dominates TV and Hollywood must be about this. Fed on a media diet of really bad news, we live in a perpetual state of repressed panic. Ignorance becomes empowering because it enables people to live. Stupidity becomes proactive, a political statement. Our collective norm."

Ruth Ozeki - My Year of Meats

Want to (even momentarily) step out of the box?

Encompassing a vast and steaming buffet of cultural perversion and America's attempt to impregnate a universal code of greed, gluttony, and ignorant inhumanity on unsuspecting nations My Year of Meats delivers everything from a life-altering message to characters of unending depth. The reader is seamlessly pulled along for a painfully evocative ride leaving a heavy stomach and an ironic yearning for seconds as soon as the last page has turned. Jane Takagi-Little, a half-Japanese half-American documentarian, delves blindly at first into the meat industry within the United States while filming a television show to be aired in Japan on the 'wholesomeness' of American Beef. With the show sponsored in its entirety by BEEF-EX, Jane is brought to a stranglehold decision - follow capitalist doctrine and support one's sponsor or follow her gut and veer off the assigned path with devastating consequences. This is a story of manifest destiny, the blind leading the blind, and one woman's attempt to take the small audience she has and create something engrossing.

Read it - sometimes you find a jewel that is not on the best-seller shelf. This is that jewel.

Some Summer Reads!

With beach/cafe/vacation time right around the corner (yay!) a number of people have asked me for my opinion on what to read (which is nice).... I thought I would put a few down here in case anyone else is interested...... feel free to comment if you agree/violently disagree with any of the following.....

Book #1 - "Shantaram" by Gregory David Roberts

This book is an EPIC - like a 900 pager. I haven't personally read it but have had people (many in fact) get oddly mad at me that I haven't read it yet. It has been sitting on my shelf for a while now calling my name. Its a non-fiction (or loosly based non-fiction) about an Australian (Roberts) who is sentenced to 19 years in prison for a serious of armed robberies. He escapes and spends his fugitive years in Bombay India. There he establishes a free medical clinic for slum-dwellers and spends the rest of his time as a gunrunner and general go-to guy for the Bombay mafia. This book is supposedly life changing and has a little bit of everything in it - but like I said its a 'biggie' - roll up your sleeves and dive in head first.

Book #2 - "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn

This book is a MUCH slower pace and could even be alluded to as a 'lecture' of sorts between Ishmael (an orphaned gorilla educated by a lonely wealthy Jewish merchant tortured by the effects of the holocaust) and a typical over dramatic and assumingly socially aware university student. They discuss/debate/argue man's place/effect on earth. Ok may initially sound preachy and kinda weird right? Well not so - this book (I didn't actually agree with a lot of the points in it) has kinda lingered in the back of my mind ever since I read it - like 2 years ago.

Ishmael is a captivating novel about overall social change. It seamlessly challenges popular beliefs and ignites alluring debate. It could be argued that never before has an author brought to life a discussion between man and beast so utterly moving and thought provoking. Regardless of whether or not you personally enjoy this work, you will none-the-less be unable to stop yourself from debating and discussing it with anyone willing to lend an ear.

Book #3 - "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" by Philip K. Dick

A kind of sci-fi, new age, classic (yes - new age AND classic - hmmm). Its about a new age world where androids are so advanced that they function as typical citizens in modern day society - albeit though with problems of being classified as second class citizens. The only way to tell an android vs a human is an 'emotional test' where - you guessed it - emotions are monitored. There are 'rogue' agents out to destroy certain androids and it is one of these androids that the story is told through. Not everyone is a sci-fi lover but if you want to 'dip your toes in' just to see what it's like then this is a great launching pad for a new genre.

Book #4 - "Slaughter House Five" by Kurt Vonnegut

Another classic - should be easy to find. If you haven't already read anything by Kurt Vonnegut then you really need to know he is a writer in a league all on his own. Slaughter house five is about an anti-war American fighting in Dresden during the second world war (written surrounding Vonnegut's own personal experiences in the war). An anti-war contemptuous satire about man's inability to learn from his mistakes arguably even more relevant today than when initially published over 40 years ago. Another 'interesting' read regardless of whether you end up liking it or not (although I am fairly certain that with this one you will).

Book #5 - "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

And for the somewhat 'fluff' read. I for some reason continue to gravitate towards zombie books - weird? This book is yet another 'classic' - well kind of.

Seth Grahame-Smith has taken the original Pride and Prejudice and thrown in a zombie twist. Some argue that there is too much Pride and Prejudice and too little zombie action but for someone who has so desperately tried to read Jane Austen in the past with very little success I find the odd "eating of brains" when you have had just about enough old english and female clucking for your liking to be the perfect satisfying combo. I am not finished it just yet but I am secretly hoping that everyone in the book dies by zombie. Plus - its a pretty cool looking cover - if you don't read much the cover alone is a great conversation piece.

Now go enjoy that never-overused cliche of coffee and cafe patio reading!