Saturday 7 February 2009

No Hessing about

Hey hey, Dusty Anachronists - thankyou for being up for this communal reading shenanigan!

Just a brief thought on how to work it - if we all kick off reading a specific book at roughly the same time, discussion will be open from then on. And it will remain open on all the books, till the end of time. I'll moderate it, but lightly.

We'll get some links going about authors, context, background etc, too.

Also, participation is as you feel. I'll keep the blog updated with whenabouts we're gonna be reading/discussing which books, and feel free to join in whenever.

So, without any more Hessing about, Siddhartha (1922) is going to be the first book. Anyone who doesn't want to buy a copy can get the full text on Project Gutenberg, apparently. It's going to plunge us into talking about some major big shit (enlightenment, dude!) so I'm almost tempted to revoke it and make us read something piss-easy instead, like Kafka's 'The Vulture', where a vulture mutilates a man's feet before it drowns in his blood. Nice and concise.

No, Siddhartha it is.

13 comments:

  1. This sounds great - cant wait :)

    Here are some good websites to get books like these for super cheap:
    www.betterworld.com
    www.bookfinder.com
    www.bookfinder4u.com

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  2. I bought my copy last night, I'm all ready to go! My palms are sweaty from the excitement! :)

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  3. OF BULLS AND ENLIGHTENMENT...

    Hi Guys!
    In the copy I bought there is a preface from the translator in which are mentioned some traditionnal Zen illustrations knows as the ox-herding pictures. I'd never come accross them before so I had to look them up and thought I'd share them... So here there are, or at least one version of them:
    http://www.lnouvel.com/bull/bull.htm

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  4. Jesus. None of that slow-start bollocks, then.

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. Eli can you post the picture of my copy from the Facebook group - I don't have the author-a-tay. It is has a nice cover.

    I'm on page 80. Is that the sort of conversation we're meant to be having?

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  7. We're starting discussing the innards of the book next week...

    Walrus, who are you, I'll nick that picture, thanks!

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  8. Wow Eli! I thought you'd be "lightly" moderating and I see that "the author deleted a post already"! Fuck I'd be curious to know what was in it, that it fell under the implacable hammer of censorship :)

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  9. I have no idea, Rav deleted it, ask him!!!

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  10. Go The Dusty Anachronismbook Club, go!

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  11. If I had to sum up Hesse's 'Siddartha' in two words: "mercifully short". But hey, let's talk about it!

    If you want to see Siddartha being born in comic book form, have a look at page 271 (vol. 1) of Osamu Tezuka's 'Buddha'.

    Here's an image gallery from 'Buddha':

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/collective/gallery/2/index.shtml?collection=buddha&mode=dynamic

    Tezuka's 'Buddha' tells Siddartha's life story from well before Siddartha's birth up until his death. It's eight volumes long but there are lots of talking animals padding out the action. I recommend it.

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  12. testing again...

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