A jumble of things going on with me right about now, the beginnings and ends of eras converging.
In the meantime, here’s a quick run-down of:
What I’m Reading
How to Win Friends and Influence People – by Dale Carnegie
This book, as Olde School as non-fiction comes as it was first published in 1937, is the stuff. I’m only into the second chapter, but it’s incredibly incisive stuff: simple anecdotes that illustrate simple yet powerful principles. Don’t criticize. Everyone wants to feel important. Cool stuff.
High Fidelity – by Nick Hornby
I read a sci-fi short story by Hornby called “Otherwise Pandemonium” a few years back that absolutely blew my socks off, about a kid who buys a used VCR that begins to show him the future. It was one of those oh-my-God-I-wish-I-wrote-that things, and in took place in Berkeley, a place I called home for a few years! Bloody Brits…
And of course I knew that he wrote the books that spawned the films High Fidelity, which is great and gets better on subsequent viewings, and About A Boy, which I only found to be fair. (In Mexico I learned that the Spanish translation of the film was called Un Gran Chico – this didn’t do much to increase my digging of the film.)
High Fidelity the book is great, and had the weird effect of increasing my admiration for the film version. It’s one of those great and rare instances of book and film version working marvelously. Having first watched the film, I found the book to wonderfully flesh out the characters and story, all in charming, subtle British tones that were abandoned for Crass Americana in the movie.
For anyone who’s not aware, it’s the story of a guy, Rob, who owns a record shop and has a tendency to bail on relationships before they bail on him. The fun is all in the self-absorbed self-abuse, the modern rules of attraction and dating, and a complete over-the-top obsession with music. Good stuff all around.
Article comments