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A Guy's Moleskine Notebook

Thoughts and reflections on works of fiction and literature. Pondering of life through pictures and words. Babbling about gay rights. Travelogues and anecdotes.

  • [1] Annie Proulx: Brokeback Mountain
  • [2] Arthur Golden: Memoirs of a Geisha
  • [3] Yu Hua: To Live
  • [4] Alan Hollinghurst: The Line of Beauty
  • [5] Colm Toibin: The Master
  • [6] Carlos Ruiz Zafon: The Shadow of the Wind
  • [7] William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience
  • [8] Charles Higham: The Civilization of Angkor
  • [9] Graham Greene: A Burnt-Out Case
  • [10] Dai Sijie: Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch
  • [11] Alan Hollinghurst: The Swimming-Pool Library
  • [12] Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita
  • [13] Colm Toibin: The Blackwater Lightship
  • [14] Alan Hollinghurst: The Folding Star
  • [15] Ross King: Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling
  • [16] Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov
  • [17] Jonathan Franzen: The Corrections
  • [18] Colm Toibin: The Story of the Night
  • [19] John Banville: Shroud
  • [20] Leo Tolstoy: Resurrection
  • [21] Peter Hessler: River Town, Two Years on the Yangtze
  • [22] Ian McEwan: The Atonement
  • [24] Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Love in the Time of Cholera
  • [25] Ignacio Padilla: Shadow without a Name
  • [26] Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose
  • [27] Richard Russo: Straight Man
  • [28] Fyodor Dostoevsky: Notes from Underground
  • [29] Alan Hollinghurst: The Spell
  • [30] Hermann Broch: The Death of Virgil
  • [31] James Baldwin: Giovanni's Room
  • [32] Ken Kesey: One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
  • [33] Xingjian Gao: One Man's Bible
  • [34] C. Jay Cox: Latter Days
  • [35] Harper Lee: To Kill A Mockingbird
  • [36] William Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew
  • [37] Daniel A. Helminiak: What The Bible Really Says about Homosexuality
  • [38] James Baldwin: Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone
  • [39] Kenji Yoshino: Covering - The Hidden Assault of Civil Rights
  • [40] Italo Calvino: If, On a Winter's Night A Traveler
  • [41] Arthur Phillips: The Egyptologist
  • [42] George Orwell: 1984
  • [43] Michael Warner: The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and Ethics of Queer Life
  • [44] Andrew Sullivan: Virtually Normal
  • [45] Henry James: The Wings of the Dove
  • [46] Jose Saramago: Blindness
  • [47] Umberto Eco: The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
  • [48] Dan Brown: Da Vinci Code
  • [49] Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go
  • [50] Ken Follett: The Pillars of Earth
  • [51] Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace
  • [52] Michael Thomas Ford: Alec Baldwin Doesn't Like Me
  • [53] Jonathan Franzen: How To Be Alone
  • [54] Jonathan Lethem: The Fortress of Solitude
  • [55] Matthew Pearl: The Dante Club
  • [56] Zadie Smith: White Teeth
  • [57] Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Double
  • [58] Jose Saramago: The Double
  • [59] Andrew Holleran: Dancer from the Dance
  • [60] Heinrich von Kleist: The Marquise of O & Other Stories
  • [61] Andrew Holleran: In September, the Light Changes
  • [62] Tom Perrotta: Little Children
  • August 12, 2006

     

    I Feel Ditched

    Hoping to catch up with friends as the class comes to an end, I called at least 10 people yesterday and not a single one of them returned my call. So I feel ditched and under-appreciated. How long does it take to spare a minute and return the call? I'm not going to talk more on this subject. Forget you all. lol. I'm trying to get a last-minute deal to get away, preferably a non-European destination. Osaka might be nice for a week, it's only 9 hours away...

    The conclusion of summer session breathes fresh air in my tight schedule and takes a huge load off my shoulder. All that is left is to grade the stash of papers and bubble in the grades. In lieu of an in-class final exam, I make my students turn in a portfolio that consists three pieces of thoroughly revised, polished writing in consideration for the course grade. One of the three must be the paper on The Brothers Karamazov or War and Peace. So I spent the afternoon reading papers at The Sweet Inspiration, a quieter and less cruisy joint in the Castro on Market near Noe, although I had to be abstained from their delicious chocolate moussee cake.

    My iPod has been acting funny recently, not that it presages any serious technical failure. The shuffle function does not seem to shuffle up the songs in an even and random manner. Yesterday's shuffled playlist (at least the first 57 out of 814 tracks I've got on the iPod) repeated at least half of Thursday's shuffled playlist. Isn't that weird or what? It also has a tendency to favor certain artists and tracks from particular albums so that no matter how I reset the shuffle mode the same tracks always play first. Maybe Apple should look into that and improve the function in time for the future generations of iPods. Speaking of iPods, the recent terrorist attack foil in London not only renews the fear and panic among air travelers and government bureaus, it also robs passengers of their basic necessities for comfort en route. iPods and books are forbidden and have to be stored in the checked bags. iPods are said to be capable of detonating liquid bombs but what is wrong with books? I can already imagine the dreadful 14 hour flight to Hong Kong sans reading and sans iPods. *sigh*


    For the very least I've got Sandy Lam's latest single: All By Myself. I can't wait until the release of the CD on 8/25.

    8 Comments:

    Blogger matty said...

    Oh! I only got your vmail a little while ago!!!! I wasn't ignoring you -- I was at work and can't have my cell on. Sorry! I wish I were at SI right now -- I'd have a cookie and a Diet Coke!

    Must be nice to be able to just take off to all these exciting places. I am unable to travel. No $$$ none. nada. zipped. broke. done. But, I am going to get that Faye Wong CD if B will finish going thru his book collection which he plans to sell today but I fear the store will be closed before we get the books there.

    kisses
    matty

    8/12/2006 1:55 PM  
    Blogger mattviews said...

    LOL I'm just kidding, although I really wondered what happened to everyone. Even the city is quiet and dead.

    Faye Wong CDs could become so expensive as she might not make anymore music. She gave brith to a second daughter recently and is living in Beijing.

    8/13/2006 6:30 AM  
    Blogger johnNokc said...

    Hi Matt -- Sorry you've got the lonelies and hope today is better. Looks like your iPod is allowed according to the latest info from the TSA. However, I fear it is only a matter of time before airline passengers wearing paper hospital gowns are all that's permitted on board.

    8/13/2006 7:05 AM  
    Blogger manoverbored said...

    NO BOOKS?!

    I'll never fly again.

    It's ships from now on for me.

    8/14/2006 1:08 AM  
    Blogger carmilevy said...

    From what I've read elsewhere, the iPod's shuffle feature is hardly random. You have little to worry about.

    iPod-less flight, however, freaks me out. I know I'll need to take to the skies again soon for work.

    Hope your phone rings again soon.

    8/14/2006 6:15 PM  
    Blogger Robert said...

    I read that if you happened to rate your songs with the iTunes' star system, your iPod will actually pick the songs with the highest ratings - first. So if you have a song with a 5-star rating, it'll most likely be picked, and shuffled and played again. blahblahblah.

    Do you remember that Faye Wong CDs that she did covers for the Cocteau Twins' songs? That was the only CD I have of hers. It was okay. :-)

    Too bad we don't live close to each other Matt! hehe!

    8/15/2006 7:21 AM  
    Blogger Jef said...

    I like the sound of "bubbled in grades."

    There wasn't something else I wanted to comment on, but my brain must be telling me I should go to sleep instead.

    8/16/2006 9:57 PM  
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