Friday, June 10, 2005

Text-o-holic cycling


Abandoned
Originally uploaded by PsuedoZen.
Two things to comment about today:

TEXT-O-MANIA
It happened again. I went to the bookstore to buy Steven Johnson's Everything Bad Is Good For You (about popular culture making is more clever). I went to the Waterstone's on Spui square which is my favourite bookstore. I came out with three books and a magazine:
1. Steven Johnson: Everything Bad Is Good For You (was very close buying a book about the slow movement)
2. Safran Foer: Everything is Illuminated (praised my my friend Jurjen, a young man in Ukraine searching for a woman his grandfather saved from the Nazis, the text is supposed to be amazing)
3. Mark Haddon: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (the salesperson recommended it cos I got a third book for free, won the Whitbread Book of the Year prize)
4. Colors magazine latest issue (a long-time weakness)

BIKES
In addition to weather bikes is the other thing to talk about in Amsterdam. My score so far:
1. Bike stolen: been there
2. Bike broken: been there, paid the bill
3. Bike accident: today, after a truck drove out of Warmoestraat, this pole came up with such speed that I was not able to stop and flew over my bike to the street. I am ok, my right foot hurts a bit.

2 comments:

Tommi Laitio said...

Well, haven´t read the book either yet so have to comment based on your comment.

Isn´t the entire concept of low/popular and high culture a bit old-fashioned for this kind of purposes. It´s a bit like stating that there can be nothing useful on tv and all books you read are good for you.

Anonymous said...

Haha, I was in Waterstones in London and also bought the three discount books, and one of them was The Curious Incident of the Night Time Dog! (The others I chose were ofcourse all totally fictional as well.) I've already read it, and found it interesting because of the way it makes you understand what it is like to be autistic. Tell me what you thought of it.