Books 'n Shit

The Amityville Horror
by: Jay Anson

I finished this one up last night but wanted to give it a full day before I wrote on it. Some of you may have seen the movie from 2005. Fuck the movie because it didn’t reflect the book at all. I picked up an older edition at a used bookstore in Winter Garden called ‘Here Be Dragons’. It sat on my shelf for a while and finally decided to pick it up about a week ago seeing as it was Halloween and I wanted a classic spook. This book was one of the more peculiar books I’ve read.

To start off, the book claims to be a true story. I’m all about suspending my disbelief for the sake of a great read so I was cool with that. It begins as many haunted house stories do. Family moves from another town into an older house. It just so happens that one of he occupants of this older house killed his entire family and claimed to have done it because god told him to. The deal on the house was incredible and this family wasn’t at all superstitious. Anyway, crazy shit starts to happen and the atmosphere begins to evolve. 

Now, I must say I didn’t have the highest of hopes for this book. I had watched the 2005 version of the movie and was completely and utterly disappointed by it. To be honest, I only bought it because I was high at the time and I only began reading it because it was around halloween and it was a new author. When reading it, even the writing itself was somewhat off putting. It was as if the author was trying to hard. He used a lot of exclamation points during the narrative and that threw me off.

BUT

There was something about this book.

I can count on two fingers how many times I was creeped out while I was actually reading the book in my room. Like physically reading and feeling creeped out while I was reading. But then I’d put the book down after four or five chapters. Then I’d start to try to sleep. 

An hour would go by.

I’d realize just how many imaginative situations were running through my head. My mind got dark.

Real dark.

It was as though a switch was turned on that set my mind loose to imagine things that could not possibly occur in a physical universe without supernatural intervention. I got sufficiently creeped out. It was somewhat of a delayed effect. It was as though living in this fictional story had created some sort of mindset within myself that aided in a suspension of disbelief beyond the book. Outside of the “fiction” presented. 

Basically, this is my stance.

I got a lot out of entertainment out of this book. I enjoyed it. It stuck with me. Will it continue to stick with me for the rest of my life? Nah. But it was enjoyable. So if you like a classic spooktacular book, go at it man. You’ll find what you’re looking for.

Reuniting myself with The Golden Age of Grotesque. I’ve missed this album. 

I don’t know if nostalgia plays a role in my love for this record but I don’t care. 

Currently watching.

House of Leaves
by: Mark  Z Danielewski

This was a doozy. You might have heard about it already. You might not have.
House of Leaves is a book about a book that was written by a man named Zampano that’s about a movie called The Navidson Record, all with continuous commentary via footnotes by a man referred to as Johnny Truant.
The Navidson Record concerns a man named Will Navidson, his partner Karen and their two children. They move into a house in a rural area to escape the hustle and bustle of the big city as well as repair their relationship. Although they have a life together and two children, Will and Karen actually never married. This house seems normal until a hallway mysteriously appears. What’s even weirder is that this hallway is spatially impossible within the measurements of the house. Things get crazier from there. While reading Zampano’s commentary on The Navidson Record, Johnny Truant pipes in time and again with comments, many of which are unrelated to the film Zampano is describing but concern his life surrounding these writings. If you’re not following the story line, I apologize. It’s difficult to explain. Or I’m just not good at explaining it.
Let me just say that there was one scene that made my blood run cold and haunted me for days. No other book has done that before.
It’s very very ‘experimental’ and comes across as extremely pretentious. Seriously. I cannot begin to tell you how many plaid shirts and empty packs of American Spirits this book would have lying around if it were a human being. I feel like that sentence itself was even pretentious. Oh god, it’s inside of me.
Read this fucking book.

Haunted
By Chuck Palahniuk

Finally finished this book. I didn’t like how it was arranged at all. It is a collection of short stories loosely and recklessly tied together by an unexciting main ‘plot,’ but I dug his style. I’ll definitely be reading more of his novels, but I have no doubts that my introduction to Palahniuk was through his weakest work.

Why Evolution is True
By: Jerry Coyne

For about two years, I’ve been all for evolution but I never really knew exactly why. I’ve been wanting to gain a bit more insight into the argument and evidence for a while now and was recommended this book as a strong introduction into evolutionary biology. I had picked up Richard Dawkin’s book The Greatest Show on Earth but was told that it may be a bit too technical for someone who did not already have at least an introductory background in the field of study. So I decided to start this one first.
Jerry Coyne does an incredible job of laying out the evidence for evolution in a way that is understandable to those of us that do not have a masters in biology. Though it did require full, uninterrupted attention while reading I felt as though I was able to grasp the concepts without having to re-read sentences or entire paragraphs.
Coyne does not introduce anything that would be considered earth-shattering to the scientific community but for someone like me who does not have a strong knowledge of evolution, I finished this book feeling enlightened and empowered.
I highly recommend this to anyone with an interest or even mild curiosity in evolution.

On the Road
by Jack Kerouac

I just finished this book. It deals with a character named Sal Paradise and his adventures across America while meeting up with a variety of different people, including the eccentric Dean Moriarty. The book starts out with Sal heading to Denver from New York on an adventure. Interestingly enough, I had just quit my job and got on a plane to Colorado. I started reading this book in the Denver airport on a drunken layover having absolutely no idea how relative the theme would be to my current situation. I’m no adventurer, but I think it gave me a better understanding of the spark behind each word Kerouac chose in describing that lifestyle. Go read this.

oldworldwisdom:

“Is it agreeable?” somebody asked.

“Neither agreeable nor disagreeable,” I answered. “it just is.” Istigkeit - wasn’t that the word Meister Eckhart liked to use? “Is-ness.” The Being of Platonic philosophy - except that Plato seems to have made the enormous, the grotesque mistake of separating Being from becoming and identifying it with the mathematical abstraction of the Idea. He could never, poor fellow, have seen a bunch of flowers shining with their own inner light and all but quivering under the pressure of the significance with which they were charged; could never have perceived that what rose and iris and carnation so intensely signified was nothing more, and nothing less, than what they were - a transience that was yet eternal life, a perpetual perishing that was at the same time pure Being, a bundle of minute, unique particulars in which, by some unspeakable and yet self-evident paradox, was to be seen the divine source of all existence.”

  - Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception