Sunday!

Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

Related Post Roulette

30 Responses

  1. Will Truman says:

    Gonna have the TV set up any day now*. Then I can start watching stuff. Other than Community, which I have been watching on my phone. I also need to pick Project Superpowers back up.

    * – Before that, though, we need to move the sofa and love seat.Report

  2. Anne says:

    Getting ready to go see “Now You See Me” we kind of have a thing for Jesse EisenbergReport

  3. Maribou says:

    Have now seen the first 4 episodes of Babylon 5. Still listening to Duane’s wizard series on audiobook – I’m up to book six now. Read No Straight Lines (anthology of queer comics), Tender is the Night (Fitzgerald), and a slew of Keri Hulme books. Other stuff too, but those were the most notable. 🙂Report

  4. NewDealer says:

    http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/transit/

    Transit by Anna Seghers. She was a refuge from Nazi Germany who wrote a taut thriller about being a paperless refugee from Nazi Germany.

    She was also a commie.Report

  5. NewDealer says:

    My primary entertainment is reading. I tend not to watch TV because it cuts down on reading time but so many facebook conversations and other conversations seem to revolve around TV like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Girls, etc. Makes me a bit left out.Report

  6. Slade the Leveller says:

    I’m just about done with Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Though I’ve not read McCarthy’s books in published order, I do seem to be reading them in ascending wanton violence order. I never thought a novel could be more nihilistically violent than No Country for Old Men, but Blood Meridian has it beat hands down.Report

    • aaron david in reply to Slade the Leveller says:

      If you haven’t yet, I would suggest reading Suttree next (assuming a McCarthy next.) Parts of it are knee slapping funny, but it is also intensely sad, and seemingly quite personal for him.
      That said, and even with the nihilism, Blood Meridian is in my view one of the very best books from the last century.Report

    • J@m3z Aitch in reply to Slade the Leveller says:

      It’s an incredible book. I think it stand as one of the Great American Novels. But if you’re reading McCarthy in ascending order of wanton violence, you’ve reached the end. Thank god, I think.Report

  7. Chris says:

    Finally watching Orange Is the New Black, and reading Conrad and Ford’s The Inheritors. Oh, and Creative Evolution, and mediatin’ on the élan vital.Report

    • aaron david in reply to Chris says:

      Have you read Fords “The Good Soldier”?
      I am reading Victory on your suggestion, loving it.
      Also, I meant to recomend to you Mishima’s Sea of Fertility.Report

      • Chris in reply to aaron david says:

        I have read it. Ford is a wonderful write, not quite Conrad, but then nobody is. If you haven’t read his Henry VII trilogy, definitely check it out.

        Glad you’re enjoying Victory. Let me know when you finish.

        And Sea of Fertility is now on my list, thank you. Reading a bit about it, it sounds right up my alley.Report

      • Michael Drew in reply to aaron david says:

        I’m here at my mom’s house and I found a nice old copy of Victory; it’s packed to take home. I wasn’t aware someone here had recommended it. I’ll definitely give it a look now. Was there some reasoning/description behind the recommendation you made, Chris, or was it just “It’s good!”? I don’t know much of Conrad beyond Heart, and I’d like to have some context to know what makes it stand out as worthwhile for some. If there’s a link to a comment (if that’s where Chris made this recommendation) someone could possibly provide, I’d be more than appreciative.Report

      • aaron david in reply to aaron david says:

        Michael, Chris had a post a while back about what he reads while taking public transport. It seems that he and I have very similar tastes, and he feels that Victory is Conrad’s best work. We are both bid fans of Bulgakov also,Report

      • Chris in reply to aaron david says:

        I believe it was in the comments to another Sunday! post, in which we were talking about Conrad. Conrad is likely my favorite English-language writer (to the extent that he can be said to have written in English), and I almost always recommend Victory to people who say they are reading something by Conrad (I believe in Aaron’s case it was The Secret Agent, which is also an excellent book). Everyone reads Heart of Darkness, and since the consensus is that Nostramo is his greatest work, people who like Conrad usually read that, along with Lord Jim (my personal favorite) and The Secret Agent (I believe I recmmended Under Western Eyes as a companion to The Secret Agent), but for some reason, they don’t often read Victory, which I think is a shame. It’s in the same vein as Nostramo and Lord Jim (and to a lesser extent Heart of Darkness and N_____ of the Narcissus): psychological novels on an epic scale about flawed heroes with (murky) pasts that have led them outside of the world (which is to say, Europe) and into situations from which we, and likely they, know they cannot escape, and which will ultimately lead to their destruction (if this is a spoiler, you’ve never read Conrad). Victory was written after Conrad’s most productive period, at a time when it was widely believed that his talent was on the wane. I think this may be why it tends to get less attention even today, but it is a masterpiece, a revival of his talent akin to a light bulb becoming brighter just before it burns out completely.

        On the content of the book, it contains a love story, as suspenseful and action-packed a climax as you’ll find in a pre-movies novel, and a sort of allegory about modern Europe in the hero’s story, so that there are multiple ways to read it (which is common with Conrad). Like Lord Jim and Nostramo, it has passages so beautiful that you’ll be hard pressed to find their rival in the work of any other English-language novelist, but it has some cheesy dialogue and some messy stylistic elements as well (you’ll probably see some obvious structural parallels to a couple classic works, which at times can feel a little clumsy, though I won’t give them away). I love it flaws and all, and approach it like an ancient statue with pieces broken off: the flaws enhance the beauty of what remains (a metaphor I stole from Pat Barker). So like I said, I recommend it to anyone who likes Conrad.Report

      • Glyph in reply to aaron david says:

        the flaws enhance the beauty of what remains

        I will have to remember this. It may explain quite a few of my favorite things (GbV, for one).Report

      • Chris in reply to aaron david says:

        I really did steal the metaphor itself (the sculpture) from Pat Barker. I believe it’s in Toby’s Room, but it could be in Life Class.

        More people should read Pat Barker. In fact, I think I may write something saying as much.Report

      • aaron david in reply to aaron david says:

        At the vary least they should read Regeneration, that is a fantastic book.Report

      • Chris in reply to aaron david says:

        Yes! Dude, you just earned yourself a beer if you’re ever in Austin.

        The whole trilogy is excellent (I think it was The Ghost Road that won the Booker Prize). I just read Life Class and Toby’s Room in the last year or so, and found them just as powerful, so if you haven’t read them, I recommend them.

        I don’t read a lot of contemporary English-language literature, but I can’t imagine there are many people writing in this language today who are better novelists than she. At least when she’s writing about that period.Report

      • Chris in reply to aaron david says:

        Oh, and the movie adaptation of Regeneration is pretty good too.Report

      • Mike Schilling in reply to aaron david says:

        “The Good Soldier” is the saddest story I know.Report

      • Chris in reply to aaron david says:

        That is definitely a bold way to begin a book.Report

      • Michael Drew in reply to aaron david says:

        Chris, I am profoundly grateful that you took the time to write that out again for me. You’re a gentleman, and, from what I understand and can determine, a scholar as well.Report

      • J@m3z Aitch in reply to aaron david says:

        At least when she’s writing about that period.

        Not one of my favorite literary topics…Report

  8. aaron david says:

    Chris, you are right, that movie version is pretty good. Buy the way, have you ever seen the Tim Roth version of “Heart of Darkness?” I have found it on Youtube.Report