Sunday, November 11, 2007

Birthday swag

Birthdays are a time for renewal, upgrading, taking stock, making plans and goals for the year to come, and of course a celebration with appropriate snacks and beverages (yum!). Along with renewing the contents of the sock drawer, I also upgraded the top bookshelf with the long out-of-print The Time of Music by Jonathan D. Kramer. I've mentioned this book a couple of times in passing, and it will be a real treat to be able to refer to it at will, rather than having to trek down to the UA library, where the copy might be checked out, or worse, missing. All thanks are due to my loving partner, who gave me permission to track down a copy.

4 comments:

Brian Olewnick said...

I detect a Hofstadter section down there....

Caleb Deupree said...

Yes, you certainly do. For some reason I've never been able to make it all the way through GEB, but I loved Metamagical Themas and the Ton Beau de Marot.

There's hidden Pynchon and Barthes sections too. I'm saving Against the Day for a week on the beach next month.

Brian Olewnick said...

I see th Neal Stephenson books as well. I totally loved "Cryptonomicon" but couldn't get 150 pages into the next one--the silver cover (I can't even recall the name right now). The artifice in his writing style just stopped me cold. I've had several people tell me to give it another go but haven't yet worked up the enthusiasm to do so.

Caleb Deupree said...

The Baroque Cycle. For some reason I loved them too (as well as Cryptonomicon), bought each one as a first edition when they came out (two of the three signed), and couldn't put them down. I'd like to read all of them again, but keep hoping for another entry in the Cryptonomicon series — there's a story that begs for continuation.

In an interview with slashdot, he spins on the difference between Beowulf writers and Dante writers, an image that has stayed with me, and which I've found fruitful for other arts as well.