Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

The concept as such is quite a fresh one, probably not a fresh one, but still something I never read. Its what women of the worlds most important men might have said. For example, how Desdemona could have told Othello that he was an asshole, or what Maria could have told God about herself being a virgin. Then there`s Martin Luther`s wife complaining for crowds of goodfornothings comming to them for dinner. And what I found the best of the sotireswere the words of Hetaere Megara for the women of Athens in order to stop war - she said that it`s not the lack of sex that will bring their man to victory but too much sex which will bring the end of the war without battles. Nobody listens to her, of course. I also found quite interesting what a dying Donna Laura can write to her beloved Petrarca blaming him for not caring about her at all but just loving a vision of his own, thus making her a masterpiece instead of a living woman. Feministic tendencies are quite strongly expressed in this book but why would I consider that to be such a bad thing? I have no reasons to do so.

One of these days I`m gonna cut all those Germans in tiny, tiny pieces! Man, how they know the best way to dissapoint me! This time I go to the library and I think to myself - now I won`t be getting me some boring and overblown crap, I`ll better stay with comedy. So I take a book with Hitler in Indians` closing on the cover and a title promising "Fun fun Fun!". And what do I get? Is this supposed to be funny? Man, even my change for Aerosmith`s "Falling in Love is Hard When She Pees" is funnier than these stories. Ok, they aren`t offensive, it`s just some sort of altered history which is meant to be a grotesque puzzle but to be it`s just another of those books that I can`t enjoy simply because there`s nothing in it. And it`s a book where you meet some of the biggest villains of the 20th century! It`s so depressing, how on earth can you find Stalin saying that probably some of the people who died in Syberia didn`t deserve it? I don`t find it inventive, I find it dull. And not because I would think - oh, God, how dares this Buch fellow write stuff like that! I don`t give a damn about what he dares and what he dares not. If you ask me, I would care if Hans Christoph Buch came to my place and peed on my rug - even then I would ask him how he dares to do it. I would only ask him how he dares to think that he`s a good writer if the only thing he`s capable of doing is peeing on the rug. So, Mr. Buch, what will you answer me for that?

F.C.Delius goes in this book to write about one of my favorite periods of history - the late 1960s. Here you get the Vietnam war, the hippies, the Beatles and the Stones and a young insecure man who is nearly a poet but fully a loser. He can take part in demonstrations and he can love and hate the States at the same time, but he doesn`t know what to do with a girl. And when he gets a chance to do it he blows it about as good as the fellow in "American Pie" did. Not an outstanding book but not bad either. Forgettable, that`s the word.

It was just like a strike of lighting upon my very head. Very rarely does a book move me half as much as The Collector did (although I didn`t even read it in the original language). The crazy maniac who collects butterfly and locks up a young girl in his basement is some form of that stupid sort of villain that appears in silly books but it`s not about the plot. It`s much more about the psychology of a completely insane person and of one of his victims (and don`t you think that it`s as simple as inducing fear or some sexual perversions - it`s much worse than that). And the ending is especially horrific.

School of rock? No, school of English and English literature. Sylvia Barret is a young teacher that has taken a job at a normal American highschool. Everything would be great, if the school had turned out just as she thought it would. First, the students were of different ages - some of them were still children, while the others were older than she herself. Then were were the problems of discipline and of the poor state of the school. Sylvia tried to do her best - to make the young people read, to understand that she`s not the enemy. And with some students it actually worked, not with all of them, of course. There was this guy Jose Rodrigez whom nobody cared for, there was Lou Martin - a prankster who was very unhappy most of the time, then there was E.Williams who complained all the time that he was being discriminated because he was black. And there was Joe Ferrone - her favourite student who fell in love with her, because she tried to understand him, no matter how low his marks may have been. The book is organised in quite a remarkable manner - consisting from letters, notes dropped in a box, essays by students etc. A positive experience in reading, quite good ideas in terms of education, some comic episodes.

I`m not really sure whether I`m into books about homosexual people, but this is one piece of this category. There`s this man who`s lost his lover who died from cancer, and there`s this woman who`s husband die in a traffic accident. Both of them are lonely and have no one to comfort them. The woman does find a lover for herself but she doesn`t really know wheter she wants him just for sex, or she wants him for all but sex. They form a weird couple, but I guess I have already seen a couple like this in some film. The gay men fall into the most popular category of homosexual men - they are fashion designers, and it`s actually what brought the remaining one of them and the woman together - she brought a blue dress from those gay men. Not a particulary interesting book, of course, but not half bad as well, just not my kind of literature.

I wonder why it is that way that I tend to like Swiss literature much more than books written by German and Austrian writers. Whilst I rarely can enjoy a book written by a writer from Berlin or Wienna, I don`t need to force myself in order to enjoy a Swiss writer`s work. "The grandfather" is quite a compact story about a simple man living in a simple world (and he doesn`t prove to be as complex as the simple man in Chapek`s novel). The grandfather lives in a small village in Northern Italy and that`s where he meets his future wife, that`s where he tries hard in order to be able to survive in his builder`s job. I`m not so sure why I like this book - it`s nothing special, just a very sincere and probably even honest story, it doesn`t strike me instantly like a brilliant and pretentious novel by Umberto Eco, it isn`t funny and satirical as Franzetti`s compatriot Friedrich Duerrenmatt, it isn`t particulary intellectual for sure. But who needs intellectual aspiration anyway? I guess I`ve had enough of that from the terrible two books I took from the Goethe library the last time, so this time I have no problem with a book like "The Grandfather" whatsoever.

Brokeback mountain is a tragical love story about two souls that urge to be together but but they can`t because others wouldn`t let them to. They just happen to be cowboys, they just happen to be gay and they just happen to be living in the South of the States. Donnie Darko (I can`t spell his real name correctly even if I copy/paste it from IMDB) and Heath Ledger (who`s called Ennis, Anus or Penis in this film - it`s a matter of what you want to hear) are two young cowboys who take the job of guarding sheep for a summer in the mountains. Whilst they`re there, a flame suddenly arouses between them which is expressed in the form of the good ol` in-and-out. But it`s not easy being droogies if you live in the South of the states, where faggots aren`t appreciated. Oh, now, they are usually viciously killed by the local rednecks and dragged around by their dicks until they fall off. Man, are those rednecks some twisted sick fuckers! Our heroes don`t get killed, but they have to hide their relationship, both of them get married and even get children but they can`t forget what happened between them at Brokeback mountain, so they`re left with no other option but to go occasionally "fishing" to the place where they love first appeared. Time goes by, but they are somehow quite stupid not to notice that the times change and that if they went a bit North they`d be out of the crappy macho world of the Texans and meet the glorious world of the 80s where being gay was already in fashion. Yet how can two cowboys from the South know that? They only listen to country music and participate in rodeos, or drink heavily, they have no chance to know what happens outside their little towns.

I don`t know whether the White Stripes will last as an important act of alternative music or they will fade into background like you name who, but right now it seems to me that they can`t just go wrong. Before watching and listening and enjoying this DVD I thought the Stripes had only a few really good songs under their belt. But now I`m sure that it`s not the case - "Apple Blossom", "You`re Pretty Good Lookin` (for a girl)", "Hotel Yorba" are probably the best performances of the night, but the band is impressive in deed. They even don`t do some of their most popular numbers - there`s no sign of "Fell in love with a girl" or "We`re going to be friends" or "Sugar never tasted so good". But we still get the mad Jack White slashing the guitar like he was some sort of Slash, and we get Meg White playing the drums with bare feet, and sometimes even with one hand. And if you say that a really great concert can`t happen if the band has only two members for they won`t be able to make music intense enough, you`re goddamn wrong. There`s no limits for this band, or at least it`s what it seems. Now I`m sure that one day I`ll see them live, because it would be a sin not to.

Once I used to think that Kraftwerk was a strange phenomena in the world of popular music that had close to no analogues. I used to think that "Radioactivity" was probably the best album ever made. Later on I discovered that Kraftwerk wasn`t the only band experimenting with different sounds in the 1970s and I somehow lost interest in the bands work. So today I decided - why not listen to "The Man Machine" (the German version)? So I did. And I found out that this album not only contains some of the most famous compositions Kraftwerk ever wrote but that it`s maybe the most flawless electronic album I`ve heard in my life. It opens with "Die Roboter" - a true classic despite the wrong intonation in the Russian verse. Then we switch to "Spacelab" - a simplistic song that`s perfect as a soundtrack for driving at night. "Metropolis" is surprsingly good for a song that I didn`t know from a greatest hits compilation. And then comes "Das Model" - although I still prefer the English vocals for it, it`s even better than the Robots in its electronic coolness. The long and complex "Neonlicht" is probably the best long suite in Kraftwerk`s catalogue - it way better than the boring "Tour de France". And the closing "Die Mensch -Maschine" reminds me of the opening of the Kraftwerk concert in Riga with all the "Maschine Maschine Maschine" stuff. I may not be a great fan of electronic music but I certainly know good electronic music when I see it.