now reading ...

Mostly for uni, which is kind of depressing, but also kind of exhilarating. I've got some fun ideas about violence running around in my head, and with that in mind am deep in Fight Club and American Psycho. This is the first time I've read AP, but the movie has the dubious honour of being the only movie to keep me up at night. In retrospect, watching it in a darkened room when I was the only one home may not have been the best idea I've ever had. If there are any burly males out there that want to keep me company while I watch it again, drop me a line.

Please note that we'll be watching the movie in a well-lit room, for the purposes of taking notes.

I've just finished The Virgin Suicides for the fourth or fifth time. I know a lot of people aren't wild about this book - quite a few people have told me they find it unsatisfying - but I'm not one of them. I think you just need to be in (one of) the right mindset(s) to read it. My first time, I was in a slitting-my-wrists bad mood. You'd think that would make the whole book make sense, huh? Nope, I was carried away by the language, and found myself feeling much better about the world. Go figure. Later, I found the ambiguity of the text magical, and have always felt that there's something universal about the story. The idea of the Lisbon girls as modern myth has always made sense to me.

Anyway, I'm now rereading it for my 'Contemporary American Prose' class, and while I'm not sure about the spin the lecturer is putting on it (an allegory for the Clinton presidency? Come on), I'm considering this one as a choice for my final essay.

Theory-wise, I'm reading Butler's Undoing Gender, Connell's Masculinities, and continuing to struggle with Spivak's Can the Sub-altern Speak? This is for my 'Gender, Race, Australian Identities' class, and when the tutor told us that the material would, quote-unquote, make our ears bleed, I didn't take her seriously. After all, the last time they told me that, it was about Foucault's History of Sex -- and Foucault is my Favouritest Theorist Ever. I love Foucault. Foucault didn't make my ears bleed. Hell, I read Foucault for fun. Spivak, on the other hand -- well, it didn't make my ears bleed. It just made me want to gouge out my eyes with a spoon.

I'm just not convinced that, over the course of 38 pages, she manages to say much that's useful -- or much, full stop.

In the just-for-kicks barrel, I've got Annie Sprinkle's Post-Porn Modernist on the go. I pulled it out last week when I was looking for an article I knew I'd read somewhere (I spend a lot of time looking for things I've read or seen somewhere), checked the index, then decided to read it cover-to-cover. If you're not familiar with Ms. Sprinkle, check it out - she's the original porn-queen-turned-Ph.D with some fantastic sex-positive material. Plus gender-fucking, which is one of my favourite things in the whole world.

And lucky last, Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. If you haven't read this, do so immediately. Right now. Don't wait for me to tell you about how it's the first book my mum's read all the way through in probably five years. Or how she finished it and phoned me to ask if I'd send her Chabon's other books. Just read it. It's awesome.