Fucking brilliant book, especially if you like shows like The Wire for their socio-economic commentary. His other book Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor is another one that's well worth reading if you enjoyed Gang Leader for a Day. I really liked how it flowed like I expected a story might, yet still retained its biographical origins, which actually segues quite nicely into what I'm reading.

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Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa

Basically it's a biographical book with the structure of a fictional story. According to the opening forward, the book is a really good counter-point to the more popular Shogun novel by Australian author James Clavell, who was willing to distort history in order to give the story more appeal. Apparently all Yoshikawa really did was change a few names out of respect for the real people they were based on, and then added in the dialogue. In either case, I've heard Shogun is fantastic and look forward to reading it at some point, but for right now I can't wait to delve into the history of one of Japan's greatest Samurai's.

Shogun is definitely worth your time. I'm not a huge buff on feudal Japanese history, at least not more than the passing interest of a Japanophile, but it definitely isn't particularly accurate, and the portrayal of Japanese and samurai culture is more based on Japanese nationalist WW II propaganda than actual history from what I've heard. Still, it's fantastic stuff.

I'm giving Naked Lunch a go.

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don't care if a lot of the people interviewed have retracted their statements, this book goes hard

After having read Neuromancer, and having been so thoroughly confused with the plot that I had to sparknotes it, I've made it about halfway through the Eye of the World. It's pretty good so far. Hopefully the series (Wheel of Time) doesn't pull a Dune and ride the curve of a negative exponential function down the axis of quality into shitland.

I'm currently reading "Letters to a Young Poet" by Rainer Maria Rilke. Small book, although really enlightening and so so interesting, it gives an insight into what the poet was like and what many of his 'life philosophies' were. Has an interesting viewpoint on solitude and creativity.

A Wacko biog. it's by a guy who knew him in the 70's on but has rather admirably barely mentioned himself... Not even to explain how they met!!!

Haha I'm happy I'm not the only who one who was thoroughly confused by Neurcomancer. Did you enjoy it at least?



At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft

I really wish the Google ereader app thing could be connected to dropbox so I don't have to keep on rebuying books I've bought at least three or four times, which is the case with Lovecraft. Still, for $4.99 I did get a lot.

Neuromancer was an interesting beast. First of all, Gibson's writing is sheer poetry, so I ended up treating it more as a series of beautiful vignettes instead of a cohesive novel. Second, having obviously not grown up in the era that the book came out, I had to do a bit of reading to understand the impact and significance of Neuromancer as a cultural piece of literature.

I think it definitely warrants a revisit at some point, as it seems like one of those novels that just gets better every time you read it.

The God Delusion, ho ho ho, Merry Christmas