Digital Tension Dementia

[c215]

Middle East/ Central Asia

The Search for Peace in Afghanistan - Barnett Rubin

Stones into Schools, Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortenson

Night Draws Near - Anthony Shadid

The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright

Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi

Mirrors of the Unseen:  Journeys in Iran - Jason Eliot (I read his An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan in December before I came home)

Personal

In the Palaces of Memory, Architects of Fear - George Johnson (I finished Fire in the Mind in August before I came home on R&R)

The Writings of Austin Osman Spare

Liber Null and Psychonaut - Peter Carroll (and actually finish it this time)

Disrupting Class - Clayton Christenson

Way of the Peaceful Warrior - Dan Millman (recommended to me by my friend Terry)

Way of the Shaman - Michael Harner (and actually finish it this time as well)

Fun

American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis

A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein

A Swell Looking Babe; After Dark, My Sweet - Jim Thompson

The Golden City - John Twelve Hawks

The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell (a gift from a friend before she got out of the Army)

Why We Suck - Denis Leary

Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Pattern Recognition - William Gibson

John Dies at the End - David Wong (a xMas gift from midgardsorm)

This is the to-read list I made shortly after New Year's and at times I feel like I'm a decade behind.  Some of these titles I should have read around '96-'99 when I would have had the opportunity to discuss them at length with Eric or Brian.  Others were required reading I shammed out of in high school...

Oh well.

The list started off heavy with a Middle East/ Central Asian focus because for the first month after redeployment I was still there in a sense.  As I've since readjusted to being home, these books are no longer a priority but I'll keep the list to avoid losing the regional focus I had before I split;  CNN and BBC will have to do for now.

I finished The Golden City Friday night and started The World is My Home by James Michener Sunday.  Michener was recommended to me by Manna.  We have a loose arrangement where every other month we are going to pick a book for the other to read.  This way I stand a better chance to actually finish a book she recommends as opposed to never getting around to it as per my usual habit.  My pick for her this month was For Whom the Bell Tolls.  We'll see how our arrangement goes...

The Golden City was a let down.  Simply put, I think John Twelve Hawks should go fuck himself.  While this volume was easily building itself up to be Return of the Jedi-esque in the first 250 pages, instead we get the most half-assed, copped out ending to the trilogy.  While the first two books were fun reading (though not really worthy of the Star Wars analogy), The Golden City just feels rushed.  It could have easily been expanded into two books had the story and the characters been developed.  Good concept, poor execution.

This brings me to William Gibson.

Both Neuromancer and Pattern Recognition have been strange, long trips with me.  My fascination with Neuromancer began in Afghanistan.  Bored late one night after RIPT/TOA, I was in the MWR tent rummaging through the various paperback books they loan as part of a makeshift library.  I came across Mona Lisa Overdrive and was surprised that it was a book.  My only knowledge of the phrase 'Mona Lisa Overdrive' at the time was a song by Juno Reactor used on the Matrix: Reloaded soundtrack.  Thumbing through the synopsis, I found that Mona Lisa Overdrive was the third book of the Sprawl Trilogy.  I knew from previous wiki meanderings that William Gibson's writings were influential in rivethead culture and that Neuromancer was ground zero.  Finally making a connection between the three (song, movie, author/ trilogy), I decided I needed to read Neuromancer.

I can't tell you how disappointed I was when upon my first trip to Barnes and Noble after redeployment, they did not have the book in stock.  This is how I found Pattern Recognition.  As a consumer, I don't tend to settle for a product if I can't find what I'm specifially looking for.  I hemmed and hawed about purchasing Pattern Recognition as a compromise and eventually just walked away without either.

But something stuck, and for some reason I couldn't stop thinking about the cover.  Eventually, I settled and purchased it (albeit in dramatic fashion as I can't seem to do anything normally).  I started reading it at my in-law's place in Alabama during the 30 Days of Freedom Tour and got 140 pages into it before I found Neuromancer sitting on Manna's bookshelf (it was an El Paso book club read she never started).  Needless to say that despite my progress with Pattern Recognition I grabbed Neuromancer to save for later (ie when we weren't partying like rock stars or driving across country every three days).

I finished Neuromancer in March.

Neuromancer would have made more of an impression had I read this somewhere between '92 and '98, before I was familiar with The Matrix, Blade Runner, Mind.In.A.Box and up to my eyeballs in rivet movies and music.  Gibson's influence in the genre at this point is all too obvious but since I've discovered it reverse sequence, the magic has been an enhanced appreciation of what the story inspired opposed to the story itself.

Pattern Recognition is another story all together.  This book has been on my mind constantly since I finished it.  Gibson's first contemporary novel, Pattern Recognition explores post 9-11 society and our search to find meaningful connections in the world around us.  Technology and consumer culture are critical leitmotifs but the novel's pacing and impact weren't what I expected.  I find myself thinking about this book so often that I'm going to move George Johnson's In the Palaces of Memory up to the book I read after I finish the Michener.  There's much more I want to write about this but my thoughts are too scattered right now.  The bottom line is this has been the best book I've read this year thus far, though technically speaking, it's only the second book I've read that hasn't been adapted into a movie I've seen already.

Speaking of movies, I want to post some thoughts on last night's sci-fi bender (especially Repo Men, Blade Runner, and Aeon Flux) but I've rambled enough for now.

/transmission