Orion Reads
a diary of books etc.

Monday, June 01, 2009

quick update

currently reading Awakenings, a history of "The Sleeping Sickness", which is a form of Parkinson's wherein the victim more or less loses all will. Sometimes mental will, sometimes physical will (ie, you want to pick up the book, but you're body refuses). The author, Oliver Sacks (who also wrote uncle tungsten), reports on his experiments using the drug L-DOPA to 'awaken' such sleepers. I usually don't go for medical books, but this has some pretty bizarre stories in it, and Sacks is actually a pretty decent author. And the words i don't know are pretty bad-ass.

also reading On The Lower Frequencies, a history San Francisco during the last ten years or so told from an unapologetically biased punk-rock & homeless perspective. i love the dude's voice and perspective, and there's some pretty good historical material as well.

have given up reading The Diaries of Jane Somers by Doris Lessing. It's just too slow.

OH ! the thing i'm REALLY reading is Thomas Ligotti's Teattro Grotesco. This book is awesome. It's existential horror, but i can't say anything more about it now because it needs much much more than a short synopsis. I am also trying to make a short puppet-film out of one of these stories, am illustrating one of them, and am writing a piece of short fiction hopefully in the prose-style of them.